Chapter 1056: Act 228 – The Newly Born Species
“Eh, your name is… Cetty, right?”
The main door of the Cat and Whiskers Inn opened a crack, and Romaine peeked out with one eye, looking curiously at the somewhat disheveled girl in front of her.
At this moment, she did not care how strange it was that a living person suddenly appeared on the road outside the inn; everyone else had gone out, and there was no one to chat with her. Brendel was not around, and given Dierphir’s condition, White Dew did not allow her to disturb the latter. She was indeed quite interested in the chancellor’s daughter, who appeared to be exceptionally bright, but unfortunately, the latter had only exchanged a few words with her before turning aloof.
Earlier, she had spent half an hour observing the river flowing outside the inn, but this always became tedious. Now that someone had come to chat with her, she was indeed quite pleased.
Cetty trembled slightly and nodded with a pale face.
“Did you lose something?”
“No… nothing.”
“But you usually don’t come to the inn at night.”
“I…”
Romaine suddenly found it very interesting. She opened the door, grabbed the girl’s hand, and pulled her inside, winking playfully: “Don’t take it the wrong way; Brendel told me to be cautious.”
The poor girl was so startled that her heart skipped a beat, and her mind was in a chaos of thoughts: “Aren’t you supposed to be cautious?”
However, Romaine was unconcerned: “Cetty is one of us, so I figured it should be fine.”
The merchant miss’s warmth and unreserved trust made Cetty’s heart race; it was entirely different from what she had expected. She had thought that people from Erluin would be brutally sinister and arrogant, not cheerful and treating her as one of their own. She felt out of place and was suddenly filled with guilt.
On one hand, she felt driven by the desire for revenge, yet she couldn’t equate the person in front of her with her revenge target.
“Do you have anything fun with you?” Romaine curiously noticed the girl’s hand clutched to her chest.
“No… nothing!” Cetty’s face turned pale, her forehead damp with cold sweat, but fortunately, Romaine did not notice and instead focused intently on her embrace.
“So what are you here for?”
“I…” Cetty stammered, “Uncle Kent went out, and I came to see if you needed anything; the kitchen… the kitchen has…”
“That’s perfect,” Romaine interrupted. “Come chat with me.”
“What?”
“I’m not hungry, but I’m very bored; Cetty, come chat with me.”
“I… um… alright. Do you want to drink, we… we have cider in the kitchen.” It seemed Cetty finally managed to think straight and said a complete sentence.
“Cider.” Romaine pondered for a moment and nodded, “But you have to be quick.”
Cetty sighed in relief, her entire person in a daze as she walked towards the kitchen. She wasn’t sure if she should continue but thought it would be best to find a private room to think for a moment.
However, just as she moved, a white shadow suddenly zipped past in the darkness, and an elegant white fox landed gracefully in front of her.
Startled, she looked at the creature suddenly appearing on the table not far away. It raised its head, staring at her with its cold, gleaming gaze, giving the strange illusion that it was somehow wise.
As Cetty pondered this, White Mist suddenly spoke up, its tone icy:
“What do you have in your arms?”
Cetty froze, feeling as if she had been struck by an arrow, not because the fox was speaking, but because of the question’s content. The cold, undeniable tone left her without any room for surprise, and she felt her blood freeze from head to toe.
“I…”
“White Mist, Cetty doesn’t have anything. I asked her earlier,” it stated plainly.
The unpretentious remark made the girl feel incredibly embarrassed, but White Mist interrupted again, “Be quiet.” Romaine pouted in grievance, which made White Mist turn back to look at the inn waitress, its narrow eyes glinting with wisdom: “I don’t know who is manipulating you, little girl, but it seems you don’t know much. I advise you not to be fooled; those playing schemes behind your back have no good intentions.”
It paused, “In her eyes, your trivial life isn’t worth considering.”
White Mist instinctively assumed it was the Queen of Rustra behind the scenes manipulating Cetty, which is why it spoke that way.
Cetty began to waver; or rather, she had already been hesitant. She stood there, bewildered, and after a long while, shakily took out what was in her arms.
In her hand was a palm-sized test tube sealed with a cork, filled with a peculiar liquid. This liquid seemed unimpressive when hidden beneath fabric, but when brought into the darkness, it emitted an icy, fluorescent glow.
The glow radiated from Cetty’s hand, illuminating the dark inn and outlining every table and every chair in the hall.
Romaine’s eyes widened in curiosity, unable to contain herself: “Eh?”
The monotone tone mocked Cetty, and she lowered her head, assuming the latter was mocking her earlier lies. However, in reality, Romaine had not thought that way at all; she simply found it fascinating.
“Did she tell you to use this stuff to poison?” White Mist narrowed its eyes, expertly guessing what was said, “She definitely didn’t tell you that pulling this out would alert the entire inn.”
Cetty was also stunned, evidently not expecting this ‘poison’ to cause such a reaction. Even if she were foolish, she realized she had been used; this sort of poison would take her life before anyone else’s—no wonder the two accompanying secret order knights had strictly prohibited her from bringing out this poison beforehand.
Thinking about those two accompanying secret order knights, her scalp tingled. Those knights were not to be trifled with; she had witnessed their killing before and couldn’t help but fearfully want to warn the two ‘people’ in front of her.
But at that moment, White Mist frowned, unease filling its thoughts. No one would use such a loud poison to alert their opponent. It seriously suspected there was another scheme behind that woman—throughout, White Mist had always believed it was the Queen of Silver plotting behind the scenes.
Suddenly, it said to the girl in front of her, “You’d better keep that thing away; I suspect it’s not poison at all.”
As if to confirm its words, before Cetty could react, the bottle in her hand started shaking violently, the glass test tube cracking sharply, splitting in the middle.
A burst of white light erupted from the shattered glass fragments, shooting towards the obliviously curious merchant miss.
“Watch out!”
“This is the blood of the gods!” White Mist suddenly jumped up, recognizing what it was: “Damn, that cunning woman!”
Cetty turned her head with difficulty; she didn’t understand what the “cunning woman” meant, but she saw the white light firing from her hand, striking about three inches in front of Romaine, blocked by a layer of glowing white light. However, it quickly exploded, and the glowing cyan mist immediately enveloped the entire inn.
She had no idea what this substance was, only instinctively watching the scene unfold, suddenly feeling a tingling sensation in her fingertips. Looking down, she was horrified to find a layer of gray, stone-like coloration creeping up her arm. It began forming countless spots, then quickly coalesced, turning her arms into hard stone in a matter of moments.
Before she could react, the petrification had spread to her neck, locking her voice in her throat, followed by her face. Cetty soon felt her consciousness fading.
The last thing she saw was White Mist shooting out of the window like lightning.
The inn fell into a still silence in an instant.
Outside the Cat and Whiskers Inn, an hourglass quietly rested on a rock. In the moonlight, its smooth glass surface emitted a faint glow.
It faced a tall building standing alone by the roadside until a hand picked it up.
“It’s time.”
A hoarse voice said.
In the forest, several shadows suddenly came to life, twisting as one after another secret order knights emerged from the bushes. If Cetty had seen this scene, she would have likely screamed, as she could never have imagined so many people had followed her here.
The two leading figures were the very secret order knights who had escorted her here. One of them held the hourglass and coldly commanded the others, “Alive; you should understand the master’s meaning.”
The secret order knights said nothing and proceeded to leave the forest, each holding a crossbow in one hand and a net in the other, forming a surrounding circle as they approached the Cat and Whiskers Inn. However, this suburban inn was eerily quiet at this moment; as the group walked onto the road, no sound came from the pitch-black building.
The two leading secret order knights exchanged a glance but did not express much. That was Gaia’s divine blood, one of the top three divine bloods within the organization, second only to elemental divine blood. As for the legendary highest Maasa blood, that was something no one had ever seen.
Presumably, everyone inside the inn, aside from their target, should have been petrified.
The leading knight’s expression became difficult to read; the three divine bloods were treasures within the church, and the organization had made considerable progress in their research on them in recent decades, barely able to apply it to mortals. As a core member, he was very curious as to how the “big figure” could bear using such things on a mere human girl.
He thought that he would soon have his answer.
However, as they drew closer to the inn, the knights gradually noticed a problem. A wisp of green mist was seeping from the inn’s window and the wooden seams of the door, and soon some began to halt their steps—divine blood was still in a state of diffusion, indicating the target might not have absorbed it.
Could it be that she was petrified?
Or was something unusual happening?
In either case, it was enough to raise caution, and all eyes returned to the leading knight, whose face slightly darkened—this was clearly a minor deviation from expectations.
“Stop.” He raised his hand, signaling everyone to halt, but was somewhat surprised to find that the others looked at him not with the expected obedience, but with an indescribable, horrified expression.
In his eyes, reflected in the gazes of everyone present, was a look as if they had seen a ghost.
He instinctively reacted, feeling a shock run through his scalp, throwing the hourglass from his hand and reaching for the curved knife he had concealed beneath his cloak.
The curved knife was astonishingly drawn out with an ease that felt unbelievable.
The leading secret order knight didn’t look back but swung his hand back over his shoulder, expecting to strike something; instead, he felt his hand gripped by a cold hand.
That hand was not large, but it was as cold as ice, and the secret order knight stared in shock as his right hand and the knife were easily yanked away from his body as if breaking a twig.
Then, pain surged like a tide, and he screamed as he knelt on the ground. A flash of cold light, and his head fell, rolling into the dust on the road, becoming a bloody mess.
The entire process lasted no more than a few seconds, and even the onlookers had yet to react when all sound came to a sudden stop.
Everyone instinctively ignored the headless corpse on the ground, their gaze fixated on the suddenly appearing woman.
She was a little girl.
At most fifteen or sixteen years old, dressed in local attire with a strong flair, she did not appear to be Crusian. She had long brown hair, a broad and smooth forehead, and looked quite petite and adorable. If not for the eerie abnormality in her two eyes.
The girl floated in mid-air, her long hair swirling as if caught in a breeze, and her eyes were devoid of whites or pupils, only a deep black swirling like two black holes, threatening to draw one’s very soul within.
She spoke, her voice wholly unlike the merchant miss’s light and cute tone, but cold and hoarse, carrying an inherent superiority:
“Mortal, what do you want by drawing me out with such things?”
Then she frowned, pressing her bloody hand to her forehead as if in great pain:
“Ugh, it’s so uncomfortable… Brendel…”
Aside from her, nobody present seemed able to make a sound; a clever knight attempted to sneak away, but as soon as he moved, he suddenly screamed, collapsing to the ground, clutching his head.
Before everyone’s eyes, that person’s head exploded like a watermelon, red and white human fragments flying everywhere, their lifeless body slowly falling into the dust, convulsing a few times before becoming still.
“This… this is…” At last, someone stammered with difficulty, as if squeezing out a few words from their throat: “Mind… mental ability, psychic shock.”
Every heart in attendance surged with turbulent waves; secret order knights capable of participating in such an operation were certainly not the outer circle of followers. As core believers, they knew many secrets beyond what ordinary people could fathom.
In Vaunte, no wizard could wield mind abilities, and even the Buga, who were of Silver Kind, could not do so. Only a few strange beings possessed the most rudimentary psychic energy, but the level of psychic shock before them could only remind them of one term.
Non-human.
Everyone regretted deeply; what kind of existence had they provoked?
