Chapter 44: Rewards
[Name: Watcher's Coin
Rank: Rare
Effect: This coin has the [Prognosticator] 's skill called [Fate Vision] skill was engraved in it. When you activate this skill by pressing the blue gem at the center, you will see the other's or other place's destined future.
Usage: 1/ Week.]
'Is he the one who caused the previous coincidences?' Charles furrowed his thin trimmed eyebrows for a second and soon shook his head. He knew that this was not the right time to think, so he put the [Space Ring] on his ring finger and stored other things into it. After that, he went near Addie's headless corpse and stored it in the space ring.
'It's time for me to go.' He muttered inwardly and then ran into the nearby dark alley.
A few minutes later, Charles stealthily walked out of Gold Street and soon entered Slum Street. After that, he acted like he was looking for a rent house for another three hours and finally went to Henry's house to discuss his housing problem. Charles then asked him to let him stay in the old hut for the next two months and even acted seductively to make him agree to his request. Although Henry refused his request initially, he reluctantly agreed when Charles gave him extra two silver coins.
...
In the meantime, Gold Street suddenly turned into a hotspot filled with security guards and Mystics. Although Charles managed to take Addie's headless body from the mud road, the bloodstains and brain matters were still present all over the area, causing huge sensational news. Many mystics with different backgrounds arrived at the battle area and noticed many abnormalities about the fight. Jimmy also stood with a gloomy look on his face in the nearby dark alley and watched the battle area while talking with the Holem's Crown in his mind.
'Why did you ask me to come here?' Jimmy asked in a weak, helpless tone. If a high-rank mage looks at his soul, they will find that his soul was in a fragile state.
'Don't look annoyed. The one who died during this incident is the Red-haired man. He is the one we saw him during this earlier morning.' The Holem's Crown lightly flickered as it spoke to Jimmy's mind in an old man's voice.
'Are you saying that Edith Oliver is behind this incident?' Jimmy raised his eyebrows in suspicion and asked.
'I'm 100 percent sure about that. But I couldn't guess about the other person's identity. I also sense the power of the 'Divine' in the surrounding area.' It stopped for a moment and then continued with a sigh,
'Looks like I need to see it for myself.'
A second later, Jimmy lifted his head and noticed that everything around him suddenly went quiet. No, he saw that the surrounding people, drainage water, flying crows, annoying bees, and the green trees suddenly froze. After that, the whole surrounding broke all of a sudden and was replaced by a different scene.
He saw a black-haired woman in a white shirt, and black skirt walked on the dirt road and soon stopped her footsteps as she saw a luxurious silk curtained carriage was coming from the opposite direction.
"Edith Oliver." Widening his eyes, Jimmy watched the scene where the carriage suddenly stood in front of Edith and soon sharpened his gaze not to miss a single detail.
He then saw how the Red-haired man tried to control her mind and how Edith retaliated with her fire magic spells. After watching the magical battle, he got astounded deeply. He also saw that a strange invisible power attacked the red-haired man and got confused. Moreover, he noticed that he couldn't hear whatever the other party discussed with Edith Oliver and became more puzzled.
The whole fierce battle came to an end in less than twenty seconds, causing Jimmy to widen his eyes in disbelief. Unlike other battles he saw in his lifetime, this battle appeared more mystical and confusing.
'Edith... Fire Mage... Something feels off about her...' While Jimmy was staring at the headless Addie, the Holem's Crown muttered in puzzlement.
In a second, Jimmy woke up from the daze and asked,
'Why are there two Fire Mages of Nightwind Family appear here? What if-?' He was about to imagine another possibility of her being disguised as Charles, but suddenly he forgot about it.
With a clueless face, he coughed quietly and then asked,
"Is she also after you?"
'I can't predict her action. What worries me is not her presence but her backer's identity. Moreover, that backer seems to be walking on the path of 'Divine'.'
'Path of Divine?' Jimmy got more curious and asked.
'A dying soul doesn't need to know about that.' The Holem's Crown cut him off and then broke the realistic illusion. In a blink, the surrounding broke into multiple broken glasses and soon replaced it with a real scene.
Jimmy let out a bitter laugh and nodded while lowering his head in dismay. After that, he turned around and then went deep into the dark alley.
...
Addie's death caused confusion and panic among the Riverdale Citizens. Although the Rank-4 [Historian] class mystic visited the incident area to get some clues, he found out that someone had already erased the evidence from the 'Past' itself and became disappointed.
Without minding the outside fuss, Charles returned to the single hut in Edith's appearance and started checking the contents in the space ring.
After separating the normal items like dresses, smoking pipes, loaves of dry bread, water can, and few gold coins from the space ring, Charles took out a red-covered book, two crescent-shaped earrings, a Pupil-Less eyeball from it and placed them on the stone slab.
First, he inspected the red-covered book and soon noticed it was just an ordinary book with some Blen words written inside a page. He looked at those characters for a moment and soon placed them inside the space ring to check it later. After that, he cast his [Inspect] skill on one of the crescent-shaped earrings and found out that it was a ritual material for contacting the God of Moon, Anos!
'Anos... A Lawful God that governs the domains of Moon, Cold, Water, Blood, and Ice.' Charles stared at those earrings for a second and soon turned his gaze towards the strange pupil-less eyeball.
[Name: Eye of Shadow
Rank: Rare
Effect: With this artifact, you can put a shadow mark on your opponents and spy on them from afar. Unless the target went 5 km away from the user, the shadow mark won't disappear for the next three days.
Cooldown: 2/ Week]
'Looks good.' Charles nodded his head and then transferred all of his important things into the Space Ring. After that, he sneakily went out of Riverdale City at night and buried Addie's body in the depths of the mangrove woods. After that, Charles stealthily returned to the city and isolated himself from the outside world. He first took out the normal book from the space ring and stared at the inscribed words for a whole five minutes.
It was just a single paragraph. But the one who wrote those characters arranged in a complicated manner like a bunch of code-words.
The real Charles was an archaeological student, and he knew much about these secret code methods. If Charles had walked on the path of Explorers, it would have been very easier for him to decode the message hidden in the book. Unfortunately, the current Charles chose a different class and was walking on a different path.
'Looks like I need to find an explorer and ask his help.' He sighed as he put the book into his space ring and then started concentrated his attention on improving his strength.
He used most of his time on understanding the spell models using the Runal Language knowledge and mastered the spell models one by one. Occasionally, he would sneak out of Slum Street, remove his disguise and go to El Street as Charles. He then stays in 45 El Street for a day and then returns to Slum Street to do his usual disguising.
In a blink, four weeks passed.
Aug 5th, Second Arcane Era, Year 6396.
During the past four weeks, Charles mastered the [Fire Wings] and [Crimson Cure] spell models in his mind and was about to analyze his next spell model thoroughly. Moreover, he also entered the Dreamworld thrice and even gained 800 Exp points by killing many strange black goblin-like creatures.
When killing those creatures, he also found something odd about those dark goblins and started paying more attention to those creatures. Charles noticed that the black goblins were different from other nightmare creatures, and they acted more like civilized creatures than the mindless ones. Furthermore, Charles saw that those creatures were coming from Riverdale City's outer area and could even communicate with each other! Although those creatures' actions piqued his interest, he didn't dig further and continued analyzing the spell models.
As for his current search mission, there was no progress at all. He also noticed that Jimmy also isolated himself from the outside world and seemed to be preparing for something. Only Luke did some research and found something odd about Willy's movement during the past few weeks. Except for him, none found an important clue about those three Historians' disappearances.
As usual, Charles sat on the stone slab in the old hut and was deeply immersed in understanding his fourth spell model, [Burning Thoughts]. As he was about to finish comprehending the twenty-sixth word, a sudden knocking sound came from the outside and woke him up from his deep meditation. He opened her jade eyes in annoyance, stood up from the stone slab, went near the wooden door, and opened it from the inside.
In front of him stood a lean man with blonde hair, amber eyes, and an oval face. He wore leather armor over his brown linen shirt, black pants, and black leather shoes and appeared around 25-years-old. He also wore a red gem-embedded bracelet in his hand and was staring at him...
No, he was staring at her with a stiff smile on his face. He was none other than Jimmy Holmes!
Seeing Jimmy's appearance at the entrance, Edith turned her face into a smiling one and greeted in a soft female voice,
"Good morning, Sir. Jimmy."
Jimmy nodded at her in response and soon asked cautiously,
"Are you also a Mystic, ma'am?"
As he ended his words, the smile on Edith's face vanished in an instant and was replaced with a cold one. Before Jimmy could take a step back, Edith took a black pistol from her new space ring and pointed it on Jimmy's forehead.