"As a Witcher, it's your freedom to go and investigate monster sightings or not."
Qishi holds his chin in one hand and plays with a bronze-colored hourglass in the other.
"But better not be too disheveled oh, we've been evaluating your contributions internally lately."
Eleazar's brow furrowed slightly, and his eyes couldn't help but look between the other woman's flourishing fingers.
As that hourglass flipped and righted itself, and flipped and righted itself again, he was surprised to find that the silver jug he had tried to release from his hand was likewise falling toward the ground in a stop-and-go fashion, in the same rhythm, stop-and-go again.
Time in this room is being played with at will by that hourglass.
In the next second, the cavernous gaze dropped past.
Then Eleazar realized that every grain of gravel in the hourglass was the scales of some creature, filled with the scent of a long-ago time and an amazing pressure that made souls tremble.
His eyes were completely captivated, and then even more so when he saw a lingering image.
In a dark and lightless world, a bronze-colored ancient dragon crouched in front of a huge vortex, its pupil light deep, and the figure that brought infinite majesty had stood there for an unknown number of thousands of years, and time seemed to be constant.
[There is nothing more bitter in life than knowing that you are going to lose it, but it hasn't happened yet...]
...
Returning to his senses, Eleazar pursed his lips and looked at the saintly maiden's smirking face as he slowly bent down and picked up the silver jug suspended at his feet.
"Heh, you think you can sway me with this level of things luring?"
"What's the difference between such behavior and the devil?"
"My will is as strong as steel, and I will never be tempted by you."
"But I'm in a good mood today, so there's no harm in giving you a face."
At Garn's dazed look, Witcher turned and opened the door to his room and walked out.
"Stinky, stinky sewers is it, so I'll begrudgingly run it for you."
"Che~" the nun looked at the departing back with contempt.
...
Instead of going straight for the sewer drill, Eleazar first found witnesses who had witnessed the sewer anomaly.
A homeless man living in a sewer.
The old man with the scruffy face was now lying in the hospital bed with a horrified look on his face.
"There are monsters in the sewage tank! I saw Hank dragged in with my own eyes by a pair of green arms!"
The acolyte who was making a statement looked back at Witcher.
Eleazar's face rested thoughtfully on his chin.
"Is it a water ghost?"
At that moment, the nun came over with a glass of bad-tasting water.
"Here's a sample of the water we scooped up, it hasn't been tested yet."
Eleazar tips it up and takes another closer look.
"It's normal sewage, nothing out of the ordinary, it could have something to do with where you took your samples, if it's a leak of an unknown transcendental solution, it means that the source is so deep that by the time it got to the location you sampled, it would have been diluted cleanly."
After analyzing the situation, he put down his glass of water and then saw the nun's odd face again.
"What's wrong?"
"Oh, nothing, I thought you'd taste it~"
Eleazar blankly glanced at the nun and turned to leave the sacred convent masquerading as a hospital.
It's not surprising that there are corpses in the sewers, so it's not surprising that water ghosts are swimming around, but the question is what breeds water ghosts, and whether that leaking transcendental medium will breed any other dangerous creatures.
Looks like a trip down the drain is unavoidable.
Eleazar sighed helplessly and made his way to the site of the accident where the water ghost attack had occurred, nodding to the two acolytes watching before jumping right in as they looked on in admiration.
"Worthy of a Witcher, jumping right into the dirt without raising an eyebrow, how dedicated!"
"Not really."
"Get a light down here!"
At that moment, the sound of a call from under the manhole cover interrupted their conversation.
The two acolytes looked at each other, and one of them turned and walked to the makeshift campsite, fished out a brand-new carrying lamp, set it with a holy crystal, and then walked back over to the sewer opening and slowly lowered it down.
Eleazar caught the ball of light that fell from the sky.
"Huh?"
He looked at the mass of light in the lamp that served as an energy source.
You're treating the Holy Crystal like it's an everyday object, aren't you?
Walking through the dimly lit sewers, Eleazar immediately gouged the crystal.
But only after taking it out did he realize that the crystal had been used many times, with only a little bit of energy left in the remains, belonging to a non-recyclable waste use.
"Che, how petty..."
Reinstalling the crystal back, he tapped the brightly flickering lamp again to stabilize the glow.
Eleazar silently senses the environment in the sewers.
The dark tunnel, with a clean landing only a few feet wide on either side sloping down to the center sewage tank, which was half a meter wide and flowing through the middle of the sewage, did leave no place to hide if something in the water suddenly launched an attack.
There was no color of anything transcendent visible in the water for the time being, for the entire passageway he was in now was all white traces of holy light flowing through it, conspicuously having been ruthlessly purified by the acolytes.
To discover a little something, you have to at least step out of the place that has been baptized by the holy light before you might find a trace of something.
After walking for a long time, the traces of light beside him faded.
"Wow..."
Meanwhile, there was a movement of water churning in the sewage tank.
It seemed that the monsters that had escaped the purification of the holy light were all converging at the edge with great hunger.
"Big brother, wait!!!"
Eleazar pulled out his revolver with a quick eye and killed each of the dark figures that were ready to lunge out from under the water.
"Bang Bang!!!"
A few streaks of dirty blood splashed up from the water, and then a few ebony, blackened corpses floated up and over with the current.
[Residue of magic potion: 980→974]
To prevent this water ghost's corpse from being fed upon by other creatures and causing another subsequent transcendental event, Eleazar brews up another spit of dragon breath to destroy it completely.
"Squeak..."
The movement here seems to be attracting the unknown again.
Eleazar looked at the swarms of sewer rats running past at his feet and looked up to see a pair of red pupils as big as headlights slowly emerging from the front.
A giant rat!
"That big? What the hell did you eat?"
Witcher, who had emerged from behind it, looked back and questioned.
The body of the frozen giant rat slowly split into two halves.
After stepping forward and inspecting the body, finding no specialized organs formed by transcendental activity, he took another mouthful of the dragon's breath and set the mutated creature's corpse ablaze.
[Magic potion residue: 974→973]
These are mutated creatures that have only recently been infested with transcendental mediums and are presumably growing a little longer before they can develop evil transcendental activity.
Continuing, he noticed that the sewage tank in the center was gradually drying up.
Finally, Witcher comes to a top-broken iron fence.
Poking his head out, he looked out and realized that there was a very spacious field below.
It is assumed that originally it was a reservoir for sewage, with diversion channels on all sides, but at the moment that place has become empty.
A creature the size of a house lay on its back on a shallow layer of dirt, letting out dull breaths like it was asleep.