The final payment for the commission was settled quite swiftly.
Elias and Aaron completed their transaction after climbing out of the sewers.
A stack of gold crown notes was tucked into his pocket as 200 gold crowns successfully arrived.
Afterward, Elias handed the young fellow over to the Seventh Agency without the slightest lingering attachment.
Aaron looked back at him with an extremely complex expression, but Elias acted as if he hadn't seen it.
In this mad world, survival did not depend on overflowing compassion.
Before he left, Branch Manager Guardian called out to him.
The stern warning in the veteran's remaining eye was palpable.
"Mr. Batman, you had better act with caution."
"After today's incident underground, that 'Lord' of the Mist Veil Society has likely marked you as a target."
Elias nodded solemnly.
He was not surprised.
Or rather, from the moment he accepted the job as the lighthouse keeper, he had already become the primary prey in that "Lord's" eyes.
By the time Elias stepped out of the cordoned-off area and walked all the way back to Ash Street, the sky had turned completely dark.
The night sky of Hope County was shrouded in thick coal smoke and moisture, presenting an oppressive deep purple hue.
However, the city streets rarely showed such signs of life.
Some colorful flags and stall arrangements for the Spark Festival had already begun to take shape.
A cold evening breeze blew through, and the air was filled with the warm, sweet scent of roasted chestnuts and the pungent sulfur smell left behind by low-quality fireworks.
Elias paused to take a deep breath of this mundane, lively air.
There was no smell of rotting seafood, no stench of the sewers, and no whispers of evil gods that caused ears to ring.
It was good to be alive!
He thrust his hands into his coat pockets, tightly clutching that stack of cash, yet his heart still felt very unsettled.
The sense of crisis was like a cancer clinging to his bones.
Just a single Scale Three mutated siren had already left him in such a wretched state, nearly costing him his life.
If not for his good luck today and the Seventh Agency drawing the brunt of the hostility, he would have been a pile of shredded meat long ago.
Even so, the only self-defense weapon he had to save his life had completely turned into a piece of scrap metal.
However, he still wanted to try and perform some emergency repairs.
Tonight, he planned to try that 'Dream Prayer Ritual' Old Ed had mentioned before to perform a diagnosis first.
Then he would decide on his next move.
As for going to the Arcane Black Market again?
There certainly wasn't time today.
If he returned too late, Arthur would definitely interrogate him to no end.
And even more troublesome than Arthur was Charlotte.
Elias was still wary of her sharp spiritual intuition.
He had to keep the two of them in the dark because he was afraid they would end up like his previous self, losing their lives by getting involved with things they shouldn't touch.
This was also the terrifying nature of mysticism.
Even if one didn't get hit by a curse, simply being subjected to spiritual hijacking after drinking a spirit vision potion was a massive danger.
Elias was resolutely unwilling to put his brother and sister in such peril.
In a world with such supernatural powers, ignorance was actually a form of happiness.
Of course, the most realistic point was that the massive bounty of 3,000 gold crowns promised by the Seventh Agency wouldn't be wired to the post office until tomorrow.
You couldn't browse a black market without money.
So, he quickened his pace and returned home early.
He pushed open the wooden door, and a wave of warmth carrying the scent of cooking hit him.
Elias entered, hanging the new coat he had bought on the way home on the coat rack.
He had thrown away the set of clothes he wore in the sewers and even used a shop's washroom.
After tidying himself up, he had bought a new set of clothes to change into before coming home.
He saw Charlotte coming out of the narrow kitchen, holding a large iron stew pot that was still steaming.
"Al, you're finally back."
Charlotte placed the stew pot heavily on the dining table and wiped her hands on her apron.
There was a strange look in her eyes; had she really followed the wrong person today?
The clothes didn't match.
"Arthur specifically asked me to stew some vegetables for you, and I even went to the corner to buy some cheap bacon."
"But we have to wait for him. We'll eat together when he gets off work."
While arranging the tableware, Charlotte spoke casually, as if it were an afterthought.
"When I came back from the neighbor's house this afternoon, why didn't I see you?"
"What did you do this afternoon?"
"Did you bring back anything fun for me on the way?"
Elias pulled out a chair and sat down naturally.
"Oh, I didn't bring anything."
"I just went to see an old friend this afternoon and played around with him for the whole time."
Fighting for his life with a siren was also a kind of playing.
"Then a few more friends showed up. By evening, those friends and I worked together to send that old friend of mine away."
Directly performing a physical exorcism and sending it to see its "Lord."
"After that, two more fellows arrived."
Elias leaned back in his chair, his expression unchanging.
"I saw it was getting late, so I said I had to get back for dinner."
"Then those friends of mine took the two newcomers to a tavern for drinks."
Drinking tea in a Seventh Agency underground interrogation room was about the same thing.
Charlotte listened with a look of confusion.
What old friend and new fellows?
However, she soon thought she had caught the main point and frowned, giving a stern warning.
"Al, don't you dare go learning to smoke and drink with those shady characters on the street!"
"Alright!"
Elias agreed extremely readily.
He sat at the dining table, looking at the pot of stew with a few pieces of cheap bacon and oil slicks floating in it.
His mind involuntarily flashed to those indescribable mutated fish he had roasted on the island, as well as the shredded meat and blood all over the sewers.
For a moment, he was at a loss for words, his stomach lacking any appetite.
"Did you go to Jester Alley today?"
Charlotte was wiping the table, her head down, as she once again tossed out a seemingly casual question.
But that single, nonchalant sentence immediately triggered Elias's alarm.
Trying to play dumb in front of a master of playing dumb?
Jiang Huan saw through this low-level probing technique at a glance.
Moreover, Charlotte was just a young adult at most; her acting was still too stiff.
"No."
Elias also replied casually, his tone so relaxed that his heartbeat didn't even change.
Charlotte's hand with the rag paused for a moment.
She didn't sense a lie.
"Oh."
Charlotte pursed her lips.
"A friend of mine thought she saw you over there. She told me when I ran into her this afternoon."
Elias complained wildly in his heart.
'The friend you're talking about is probably yourself, isn't it?'
'Making up friends now, are we?'
Of course, while Elias complained internally, his face wore an expression of sudden realization and innocence.
"Is that so? Then she must have seen wrong."
"I went to the Central District today."
This sentence was also the absolute truth.
The Central District sewers were still in the Central District.
At this point, Charlotte fell completely silent.
She even began to doubt herself.
Why had she become so suspicious since Al came back this time?
That was clearly her own brother she depended on; what was wrong with her!
It wasn't until Arthur returned home from work with a weary step that Charlotte gave up trying to squeeze any useful information out of Elias.
Instead, she spent the whole evening blaming herself, feeling like she was suffering from a nervous breakdown and being overly paranoid.
Late at night.
Elias returned to his small, dim room and locked the door.
'Your damn mouth sure can talk,' Old Ed's raspy voice rang out in his mind, filled with amazement.
'To think even such a sharp spiritual intuition could be fooled by you.'
"Nonsense, I am very honest!" Elias retorted.
"No one is more honest than me!"
"I never lie!"
'If you're so honest, why don't you just say you've also researched mysticism?'
'That would actually be easier,' Old Ed countered.
"I could indeed say I've researched mysticism."
"But the timing is wrong."
"Ms. Cecil just showed off her skills yesterday, and today I say I know a thing or two."
"Wouldn't Charlotte and Arthur find that move extremely suspicious?"
"It would actually look fake. You just don't understand."
As they bickered, he walked to the desk and quickly arranged the ritual items he had bought today.
That's right, he intended to use the 'Dream Prayer Ritual' Old Ed had mentioned.
Primary goal: to appraise this sea cucumber elemental gun and see if it was still worth saving.
How could a gun be so limp and floppy?
As a gun, you can't let others think you're incompetent, right?
And the math was easy to do.
Even if the 3,000 gold crowns arrived smoothly tomorrow, which sounded like a fortune.
In the world of transcendents, even if he spent all that money, he could at most buy a slightly better supernatural item or a containment object with controllable side effects.
If this gun could still be fixed and used.
Then he could save that money and go to the black market to buy a Scale Two potion to advance his own strength.
It was better to rely on oneself; one's own Scale level was the ultimate truth.
Elias took a deep breath and cleared his mind.
He pulled a pure silver dagger from his inner pocket.
Next, he unscrewed the wooden cork of a small glass bottle containing the glow-amber solution he had just mixed in the washroom.
He carefully dipped the tip of the pure silver dagger into the bottle, coating it with a layer of the solution.
Then, Elias closed his eyes and concentrated all his mental power.
He guided the spirituality within his body, conducting it down his arm to the tip of the dagger.
The dagger tip coated in glow-amber instantly lit up with a faint white light.
Elias opened his eyes, walked to the four corners of the room, and tapped the wooden floor once with the glowing dagger tip in each corner.
Four drops of glow-amber emitting spiritual fluctuations were fixed in the corners.
"Open."
With the aid of Spirit Vision.
Elias clearly saw the white spirituality in those four corners, as if it had gained life, rapidly spreading upward along the walls.
They climbed to the ceiling, connecting and intertwining in the very center of the room.
Within a few short seconds, a faint, glowing, enclosed geometric dome took shape.
An extremely simple Sanctuary had been created.
This thin layer of barrier could perfectly isolate the spirituality generated by the ritual inside the room, preventing it from leaking out and attracting certain evil entities.
At the same time, this simplified Sanctuary could also block the penetration of external spiritual bodies, malicious mental spying, and even ordinary physical attacks for a short time.
Everything was ready.
Elias tossed the limp piece of scrap gun onto the center of the table.
"Stop with the useless chatter."
"Let's first see what the situation is with this gun now."
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