Eugene and Bella properly dressed themselves and rushed out of city hall.
The guards protecting city hall were also moving busily, and Eugene grabbed one of them and asked,
“What happened?”
“We don’t know either! We’re checking now!”
It seemed the city hall side had not properly confirmed the information yet.
Behind them, the Dragon Knight team Stone, Yung and Luohan, came outside.
Seeing Eugene standing outside, Yung asked,
“What’s the situation? Have you figured it out?”
“Not yet. It doesn’t seem word has reached here properly.”
Yung sank into thought. He seemed to be thinking about how to handle this.
Eugene did not wait for his judgment.
“Let’s just go there ourselves. Something may have attacked again, like the Verde Wolves.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
Yung nodded at once. Luohan did not seem to have any particular complaint either.
Moving efficiently without useless pride. That was Stone’s strength.
“What about Dark Thunder? Should we wake them?”
“For now, just wake them. Tell them to guard city hall, just in case.”
They asked a passing guard to wake Noan and Henri, and the four of them headed straight toward the scene of the problem.
There was no space at city hall for dragons to transform. And if they made a mistake, the wind pressure from their wingbeats might collapse nearby houses, so the four had to travel on foot.
Then Bella raised her hand.
“I think it will be faster if I run.”
“Then you go first and check the situation. We will ride horses. Do you know the way?”
Bella nodded.
“I know it because I went there earlier today.”
“Eugene?”
“I know too. I’ll guide you. Follow me.”
Soon, Bella vanished from sight in an instant, leaping over the buildings.
The remaining three rode horses past the now noisy city wall and headed toward the outer city district.
The sky over the outer city was full of smoke.
It was truly chaos.
A fire spreading from somewhere was burning houses, and people covered in soot were running out while evacuating the wounded.
Yung said,
“There do not seem to be that many injured. It may simply be a fire.”
“…….”
Eugene did not bother adding anything.
Because on the way, he had discovered that one section of the fence protecting the outer city district had been broken.
And that was a different form from the one he had seen during the day, which the Verde Wolves had broken.
“Mm.”
Eugene cast magic.
The spell he had stolen and learned from Algina, Water Cannon.
Soon, countless spheres of water appeared before him and began pouring one after another toward the place on fire.
“A mage is here!”
“We’re saved! We’re saved!”
The people cheered, scooped up the droplets bursting from the Water Cannons with buckets, and threw them toward the flames again.
“Use my mana.”
Luohan stretched out his hand and supplied mana to Eugene.
While the two were working to suppress the fire,
Yung jumped down from his saddle to confirm the situation.
Tak!
As soon as he got off the horse, Bella dropped from somewhere and appeared before Yung.
“It was a monster attack. The fire seems to have simply started from lamps that fell and braziers that broke because of its attack.”
Yung’s eyebrow twitched.
“A monster attack? But people are all out here like this?”
Monsters were not assassins.
Once they attacked, they ravaged the surroundings and turned every visible person into chunks of meat before returning satisfied.
Because of that, when an attack occurred, most people fled without looking back or hid inside their houses.
It was only natural for Yung to find this strange.
“That is…… the situation seems a little unusual. According to the sentries guarding the outer wall, the monster did not enter from outside, but went from inside to outside.”
“Not from outside in, but from inside?”
“Yes.”
What on earth did that mean?
A monster had appeared inside the city?
Did it fly, or did it use a tunnel?
Either possibility was not good news. Yung pressed his forehead and asked,
“So, the bastard? Did you catch it?”
“No. It seems it broke through the fence and fled outside.”
Bella pointed to one place at the scene.
Several wooden buildings were lying collapsed sideways, as if something had rammed into them.
Clearly, they were traces of destruction left by something moving through.
And those traces continued all the way to the fence in the distance.
Yung ground his teeth.
“Good. Twinfaker, you stay here and help suppress the fire and rescue people. We will ask the city hall guards for help and figure out the situation more accurately.”
“Understood.”
Yung and Luohan mounted their horses again and left the scene.
Bella stuck close beside Eugene, who was still firing Water Cannons toward the flames.
“What about the mother and daughter from earlier?”
Eugene asked. He was asking what had happened to the female believer and her daughter, whom the two had visited earlier that day with Priest Palmer to witness the rite.
“…….”
No answer came immediately.
Before Bella opened her mouth, Eugene had already sensed something strange.
“……They died. Both of them.”
“Damn it.”
Eugene clicked his tongue.
He had experienced the deaths of people dozens, hundreds of times, but it still felt foul when someone he had met died.
But Bella’s words did not end there.
“It seems the place where the monster first appeared was that house.”
“What? Really?”
Then had those two been killed by that monster?
“Yes. That is not all.”
Bella tapped her nose with a finger.
“From that house, there was a smell.”
“What smell?”
“The smell I caught from the canyon full of Gongha Trees.”
***
The events of the day flashed through Eugene’s mind, and his eyebrow twitched unconsciously.
Bella, noticing Eugene’s state, fell silent for a moment.
“……Zarabandishita.”
“Zarabandishita?”
“Priest Palmer said it. Slaves who received Espacio’s power.”
Eugene clearly remembered the words Priest Palmer and the female believer had exchanged that day.
‘I heard Mr. Herman next door recovered from illness through Zarabandishita’s blessing.’
Bella asked,
“Are you saying the Espacio faith and this incident are related?”
“Probably.”
Before they knew it, the flames had died down.
Eugene shook the droplets of water flowing from his fingertips and said,
“Let’s find someone named Herman. She said that person received Zarabandishita’s blessing.”
“Understood.”
That was how the two searched for Mr. Herman, who was said to live next door to the female believer.
When the two, who had quickly rushed over to extinguish the fire and even helped with rescue, asked for help, the surrounding citizens all pricked up their ears and listened.
“Herman? You mean that skinny man? The one who lives next to Tanya’s place?”
“Herman Marquez?”
“Right, right. He’s over there.”
“Mr. Herman! The Dragon Knights are looking for you!”
When one young man shouted that, one of the people searching through the remains of a house collapsed by the fire suddenly lifted his head.
“Huh!?”
Herman Marquez was a skinny man who looked as if he might fall over if someone merely tapped him.
Eugene and Bella said they had something to ask and led him to a place out of sight of the people.
Perhaps because they had clear identities as Dragon Knights, or perhaps because Eugene and Bella made a good impression, Herman followed them without showing any particular signs of anxiety.
Thanks to that, Eugene was able to ask questions relatively comfortably.
“Mr. Herman, are you a believer of the Espacio faith?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“I heard from someone that you received Zarabandishita’s blessing and recovered from illness…… Could you explain what happened?”
Herman Marquez seemed curious about why Eugene and Bella were asking that, but when Eugene slipped him a silver coin, he began speaking smoothly.
Herman Marquez had been suffering from illness.
It was an internal illness, one where his coughing would not stop, fever struck him at all times, and no matter what he ate, he would quickly vomit it back up.
The illness was quite severe, and no matter whether he called a doctor or called Palmer, a priest of the Espacio faith, to perform a rite, it showed no sign of improving.
Then, as he was dying like that, he heard a rumor.
A priest of the Baifun Espacio Order had crossed the border to proselytize.
They said several people had recovered from fatal illnesses after receiving Zarabandishita’s blessing from him.
Though he was a priest of a different sect from the one Herman believed in, when his life was immediately at stake, what was there to be picky about?
They were all believers of the same Espacio anyway.
Herman said he went to find the priest from Baifun immediately.
And he succeeded in curing his illness after receiving the blessing from him, then immediately changed sects and began telling the people around him how amazing that blessing was.
Eugene asked,
“Zarabandishita’s blessing. How did you receive it? A spell? Or a rite?”
Herman’s expression became a little strange.
“There was something like that too, but…… he fed me something strange.”
“Something strange?”
“It was like some monster’s meat. The priest said it was Espacio’s flesh.”
“…….”
Nothing came to mind at all. Eugene asked again with a strange expression.
“Did that priest say he ate it too?”
“Yes. On top of that, the priest did not merely recover from illness. He had even received divine magic. He moved objects without touching them.”
“He moved objects without touching them?”
“Yes. He floated a kettle and poured water, or moved a brush in the air and drew pictures.”
“……!!”
Hearing those words, Eugene and Bella’s eyes widened.
Telekinesis.
Physical force exerted solely by thought, without any medium whatsoever.
That was one of the abilities possessed by the Voidnir.
A supernatural ability impossible to reproduce with magic.
A power with a source completely different from what the people of the Pernia Continent handled.
In the future Eugene and Bella had experienced, people called it psychic power.
‘Is he a human-mimicking Voidnir?!’
Bella, seemingly excited, twitched her nose and tapped Eugene’s shoulder.
Eugene cleared his throat and stroked his chin.
He wanted to warn her not to judge too hastily, but this time, he was excited too.
Bella’s guess could not simply be called jumping ahead.
Eugene sank into serious thought. Then he asked carefully,
“Mr. Herman, are you all right? Did you feel anything strange in your body after receiving that blessing?”
“……Well? The illness has not completely vanished, but I am much better than before.”
Eugene jerked his chin toward Bella.
He was telling her, who was knowledgeable about the human body, to check Herman’s condition.
After asking for permission, Bella examined Herman’s body. Then she looked at Eugene and shook her head.
‘There is nothing particularly strange.’
Eugene decided to change the question.
And he confirmed the information that Herman had introduced the priest from Baifun to the female believer they had visited during the day.
“What is the name of the Baifun priest?”
“He said it was Jeremiah.”
Eugene and Bella searched for Jeremiah.
With help from the people, they found the inn where he had been staying, but only heard that he had gone out in the afternoon and had not returned.
Jeremiah’s whereabouts were unclear.
But there was a result. After Eugene barely persuaded the innkeeper and they entered Jeremiah’s room, Bella once again detected the smell she had noticed in the canyon and at the place where the monster had appeared.
Having confirmed that much, Eugene reached a tentative conclusion about the current situation.
The female believer of the Espacio faith had called Priest Jeremiah in order to cure her daughter’s illness.
And something went wrong there, causing the current incident.
When he explained that, Bella had a question.
“Was Jeremiah the monster that broke the fence and fled? Or is he controlling the monster?”
“We’ll know once we check.”
Eugene said that and nodded.
Bella was just about to ask how they would check that.
Yung and Luohan, who had left to understand the situation, returned.
Eugene and Bella, Twinfaker of the Dragon Knight Order, were summoned by Stone and returned to city hall.
Time passed.
When the night had fully passed and the dawn sunlight was gradually peeking over the mountain ridge,
many people gathered at city hall. And a meeting was held to discuss the incident that had happened during the night.