As Ms. Cecil's oppressive question echoed across the empty square...
The night wind howled.
Aside from the occasional sound of carriage wheels rolling over cobblestones in the distant streets, the surroundings were deathly silent.
"Meow—"
The black-and-white tuxedo stray let out an inviting cry.
It tilted its head in an unsettling, human-like manner and glanced to the side.
It was signaling her to follow.
But Cecil remained unmoved.
She neither advanced nor retreated.
The woman and the cat stood frozen on the frigid Spark Square.
It looked like a poorly performed mime act.
In the midst of this stifling silence.
"She's not following you. What do you plan to do?"
Old Ed suddenly spoke up.
"Holy shit!"
Elias nearly had a heart attack from the sudden voice.
"Can you make some kind of noise before you talk?!"
"You're like a damn ghost!"
Elias cursed furiously in his mind.
"Everyone is laying low! We're playing mind games!"
"In such a quiet atmosphere, don't just suddenly spring back to life like a corpse, okay?!"
"Living people can be scared to death!"
"And ghosts scaring people can cause a straight-up brain hemorrhage!"
"Fine, fine. You're the boss; you call the shots."
Old Ed snorted, his tone showing no sign of an apology.
"But I must remind you."
The old man's voice became sly, tinged with a bit of schadenfreude.
"That lady has likely uncovered everything you did back in Hastings Port."
"You have to understand that official agencies never care about being fair—they'd rather kill the wrong person than let a suspect go."
"If those Seventh Agency folks insist on pinning a label on you over this..."
Old Ed clicked his tongue.
"Then you're definitely going to spend a few years behind bars."
"I don't need your commentary!"
Elias snapped back irritably.
His gaze pierced through the stray cat's distorted vision, staring at Cecil in the square.
"It seems she's not here to physically purge me today."
Elias calmed down.
"If she really wanted to kill me, she would have struck the moment she played the Hastings Port card."
He narrowed his eyes slightly.
"It looks like she came here with the intention of negotiating."
"And..."
Elias switched back to his own perspective and carefully scanned the dark corners around him once more.
Other than trash blowing in the wind, there was nothing.
"I haven't detected any traces of other investigators in the vicinity for now."
"This doesn't make sense..."
He began to analyze the situation, his tone full of suspicion.
"What if I suddenly decide not to play fair and launch an attack?"
"Even if I'm only at Scale Two, there's only a one-rank difference. Isn't she afraid of failing miserably?"
"This means she's extremely confident in her own strength," Old Ed chimed in lazily.
"She's demonstrating both the power to come alone and the sincerity to sit down and talk."
"Forget it, I don't buy that."
Elias curled his lip, dismissive of the old man's heroic way of thinking.
"She's afraid to follow me into the dark alley. Is it possible that has nothing to do with 'sincerity'?"
Elias's gaze sharpened.
"What if her support simply hasn't arrived yet?"
"Impossible!"
"Absolutely impossible!"
Old Ed immediately and confidently shouted his rebuttal.
Elias fell into deep thought.
"I don't know exactly what kind of investigator Ms. Cecil is."
"But you have to remember, she's a special envoy sent directly by the Landon headquarters to track down John!"
"How could she possibly negotiate alone with a freelance transcendent of unknown background like me?"
"It's too risky."
"So, there's only one truth."
"My leaning is that she called for backup long ago."
"But for some sudden reason, they haven't made it here."
The moment he finished speaking.
On the nearby Spark Square, Cecil spoke again, her voice cutting through the night wind.
"I will not follow you."
She stared at the stray cat, her tone cold and firm.
"If we're going to talk, we talk here!"
She paused, her voice suddenly rising several decibels, carrying an unquestionable warning.
"Don't forget, you took loot that doesn't belong to you."
"The Seventh Agency should have held you strictly accountable for pocketing a high-risk item!"
"But I haven't reported this matter to headquarters yet."
Cecil's wary gaze swept back and forth across the dark corners surrounding the square.
Even though she couldn't see anything, the palpable pressure still made Elias, hidden in the shadows, feel a brief tightness in his chest.
She took a deep breath.
"I am negotiating with you with the utmost sincerity."
Her next sentence instantly made Elias feel as if he had fallen into a glacial pit!
"Charlotte is very safe right now."
The moment he heard that name, Elias felt as if an invisible hand had gripped his heart.
His blood seemed to flow backward, and his hands and feet went cold!
The residual blood instincts of this body exploded in that instant, nearly making him lose control and rush out.
"The Seventh Agency will never use ordinary people as bargaining chips or leverage."
Cecil's voice continued, sounding as though she were trying to be reassuring.
"You can rest assured on that point."
"But if you persist in your ways and end up being arrested as a supernatural criminal..."
She paused intentionally, letting the threat ferment in the air.
"She will be very sad."
This casual remark was like a precision deboning knife, stabbing directly into Elias's most fatal weakness and twisting it twice.
This was an absolute open scheme!
In the shadows, Elias tried to convince himself.
He was a transmigrator; he had no real connection to Charlotte.
His protection of Charlotte over the past few days was entirely out of a promise to the original owner.
Yes, exactly.
...
Fine, you played the emotional card... and you played it right.
Damn it!
Before Elias could recover, Cecil dropped the final bombshell of the night.
"The person in the treatment room this afternoon was you, wasn't it?"
Her gaze became extremely sharp, as if she wanted to swallow the hidden Elias alive.
"Illegally conspiring with infernal creatures."
"Do you know what that means?"
Her voice carried a spine-chilling coldness.
"It means the Seventh Agency will hunt you to the ends of the earth."
"And then you'll spend the rest of your life in the Emerald Sea."
The Emerald Sea?
Behind a streetlamp not far away, Elias was suddenly stunned.
The oppressive atmosphere of the confrontation instantly suffered a bizarre break.
"What did she say about the Emerald Sea?"
Elias asked in his mind, completely confused, his adrenaline stuck halfway through his system.
"In my memory, isn't the Emerald Sea just a sea region south of the Kingdom of Velen?"
"How should I know?!"
Old Ed was also caught off guard and shouted irritably in his mind.
"Don't forget, I've been dead for fifty whole years!"
"I don't even know if the current monarch is a man or a woman. How would I know what hellish name they gave their prison!"
"Oh!"
Suddenly, Old Ed let out a strange cry.
As if he had remembered something terrifying.
"Oh!"
"Oh my ass! Just spit it out!"
Elias felt a wave of nausea from the old man's raspy voice, and his head throbbed even harder.
"She might be talking about..."
Old Ed's voice took on a rare tone of gravity and dread.
"Pris Isle."
"A long time ago, there was a Mage Tower there that reached the clouds."
"Of course, that was a Mage Tower from hundreds of years ago."
"Later, the Kingdom took over and converted the place into a fortress."
"It's specifically used to imprison those heinous or mentally unstable supernatural criminals."
The old man clicked his tongue, seemingly having quite the opinion of the place.
"It's possible that in the fifty years since I died, after they established the Seventh Agency, they simply continued using that place as a specialized supernatural prison."
Hearing Old Ed's description, images from a famous magic movie from his past life instantly flashed through Elias's mind.
Surrounded by sea.
Grim and terrifying.
The thought of spending his days in a sunless stone cell, rooming with a bunch of lunatics who could lose control and turn into monsters at any moment, made Elias shudder.
He looked at Cecil, who was still standing straight under the distant streetlamp.
Since things had come to this.
Not only had she used his sister's safety to set the stage and played the emotional card against him.
She had even served up a life-long 'room and board' prison package.
It seemed he couldn't keep hiding like a coward anymore.
However...
Illegally conspiring with infernal creatures?
Bullshit!
That infernal demon was the one who suddenly started licking me!
What am I supposed to admit?!
Rate on N.U.
