Glock stood before the map on the first floor, holding a piece of charcoal and marking something on it.
He looked up as Lu Yuan and Bo Er walked in.
"You're back?"
"We're back." Lu Yuan glanced at the new markings on the map. "How is it?"
"Better than last night." Glock set down the charcoal and wiped the soot from his forehead with the back of his hand. "The defenses on your side blocked most of the impact. The number of brothers who fell tonight is much lower."
He traced a circle around several marked points on the map with his finger.
"And I've received word that the other positions have mostly held their ground as well."
Bo Er leaned against the doorframe and said gruffly, "The copper wall worked. And that group of nuns from the church—if it weren't for their blessing last night, we wouldn't have been able to withstand that frontal wave at all."
"The copper wall was only part of it, and the church was only part of it." Glock looked at him. "I just received a notice from the branch. I have a few things to say, so listen up."
He turned around to face everyone on the first floor.
In addition to Lu Yuan and Bo Er, there were four or five other Nightwatchers who had just rotated back from other positions, wiping their weapons and changing bandages in the corner.
They stopped what they were doing when they heard Glock's voice.
"First thing." Glock held up a finger. "Starting today, the Holy Church will officially participate in the nighttime defense of the North Ward."
"The four nuns who appeared at our position last night didn't just happen to be passing by." Glock flipped through the notice in his hand.
"The church proactively contacted the branch and offered to assist in the defense. The vice director has already approved it."
"The specific arrangement is that the church will send two groups of nuns to cover the North Ward collapse hole and two positions in the southwest direction of the outer city. Each group consists of four people responsible for blessings and long range fire support. Command remains with the Nightwatchers; the church personnel will not participate in ground deployment."
A Nightwatcher couldn't help but speak up. "They're being that kind?"
"It's not kindness," Glock answered quickly. "It's an exchange. The church requested permission to enter the collapse hole to perform a 'purification rite' after the defense is over. The branch is still negotiating what exactly they are purifying."
Lu Yuan leaned against the wall, remaining silent.
The church's long term presence meant the nuns would repeatedly appear on the position.
When the lead nun had left last night, she had given him a look. That discerning gaze was not hostile, but it was more unsettling than hostility.
She had sensed something.
Lu Yuan was not sure exactly what she had sensed—whether it was the aura of Forbidden Lore he had accumulated over the years, or that thing brought out from the Sea of Knowledge that still lay dormant in his shadow.
Or perhaps something else entirely.
But one thing was certain: if the frequency of contact increased and the distance grew closer, the probability of being identified would only rise.
Lu Yuan set the thought aside; it was not something to worry about right now.
"Second thing," Glock continued. "There has been a change in personnel on the Ascension Society's side. They lost a Descendant last night, and the Ascension Society is aware of it. They said they would provide a replacement, but they didn't give a specific time."
There was a hint of dissatisfaction in Glock's tone. "Additionally, the grey-haired woman, the coordinator sent by the Ascension Society, was gone this morning. No notice, no handover—she just vanished."
"She's gone?" Bo Er frowned.
"I don't know," Glock said briefly.
Lu Yuan said nothing. But he remembered clearly.
Last night, that woman had knelt down, picked up a core component from the fragments of the Descendant, and her lips had moved silently.
She had gotten what she wanted, so naturally, she left.
As for the shredded Descendant, it had never been a comrade in her eyes from start to finish.
"Third thing." Glock turned back to the map. "Daytime clearing tasks will proceed as usual. Fungus mats disposal, debris cleanup, and barricade repair. Each team will execute according to yesterday's assignments." He looked around at everyone. "No major changes. Do everything we can while it's light out."
The briefing ended.
The Nightwatchers dispersed to prepare.
Lu Yuan called out to Bo Er.
"Go to the position with me after we eat."
"To do what?"
"Check the corpses."
Bo Er looked at him again. "Which ones?"
"The greater ghouls," Lu Yuan said. "When the counterattack ended last night, I had some people drag a few greater ghoul corpses into the ruins of the textile workshop."
Bo Er thought about it and did remember.
During the closing stages of the counterattack, Lu Yuan had personally pointed out a few people to drag those large, charred corpses away from the front of the position. At the time, Bo Er thought he was just worried the corpses would block the path and affect the barricade repairs.
"You set them aside in advance?"
"The copper ground will continuously corrode the tissue of the ghouls," Lu Yuan continued. "If left on it, they'll rot into dust in less than half a day. To examine them, they must be moved to a place without copper."
Only then did Bo Er understand. "You thought about checking them back then?"
"Those things aren't ordinary ghouls." Lu Yuan's eyes darkened slightly as he spoke. "Ordinary ghouls don't have those things on them."
Bo Er didn't ask further.
He pulled two pieces of desert hardtack and a canteen of water from a supply box, handing one set to Lu Yuan.
The two of them crouched on the steps at the entrance of the Alchemy Workshop to eat breakfast.
The bread was very hard, and chewing it felt like grinding teeth.
Bo Er mumbled while gnawing on the bread, "Those people from the church... they really did help a lot last night." He swallowed a mouthful and added, "But Bronze City is really getting more and more chaotic lately..."
"Yeah," Lu Yuan said, taking a sip of water.
Bo Er thought for a moment but said nothing more; the branch had its own considerations.
He broke off the last piece of bread, stuffed it into his mouth, patted the crumbs off his hands, and stood up. "Let's go. While the sun is still high."
Lu Yuan also stood up. He glanced down at the edge of his vision.
【Sanity: 69/120】
Having not slept all night, his Sanity had not recovered.
But it hadn't continued to drop either.
However, he could now drink a perfect Sanity potion. He pulled out a bottle and downed it.
【Sanity: +10... 79/120】
"Let's head out."
The ruins of the textile workshop were located about forty meters behind the left side of the position.
It was a semi-collapsed brick building with half its roof gone, but the walls were still relatively intact.
Crucially, the floor was not made of copper.
It was ordinary stone brick and soil.
This was why Lu Yuan had chosen this place last night.
The corpses of the greater ghouls were leaned against the corner of a wall.
There were three in total. After they were dragged over last night, Lu Yuan had ordered them to be covered with a tarp.
Now, as he pulled back the tarp, the condition of the corpses was better than expected.
Lu Yuan chose the most intact one to begin his examination. Bo Er's copper sword had pierced its abdomen last night, and the holy light burn had exploded from the inside, charring the entire torso into a massive, hollow shell.
But the shell remained. The outer keratin plates were not completely shattered, looking like a hollowed-out suit of armor with limbs splayed on the ground at bizarre angles.
Because they had not touched copper, the tissue had not continued to corrode.
They were preserved reasonably well.
Lu Yuan knelt down and began the inspection.
He looked at the outer layer first.
The cross-section of the keratin plates showed a layered structure, stacked one on top of another. The outermost layers were the darkest and hardest, while they became thinner and softer the further inward they went.
"This isn't natural growth." Lu Yuan used a copper blade to push aside the outer keratin fragments.
There was a clear boundary line between the innermost layer and the muscle tissue.
The keratin had not grown out from the skin; rather, it had been attached layer by layer, as if it had been deposited after being repeatedly 'fed' by something.
【Detection Target: Abnormal deposition structure found on the target's body surface... non-natural hyperplasia...】
Lu Yuan flipped over a keratin fragment.
There were some extremely fine, thread-like residues on the inner side. They were greyish-white and almost identical to the mycelium of scavenger fungus.
It was the mycelium that was feeding the keratin layer.
There was something underground using derivatives of scavenger fungus to 'cultivate' these greater ghouls.
Lu Yuan set down the fragment and moved his gaze to the head of the corpse.
The skull was mostly shattered, but the mandible was still relatively intact.
He used the tip of his knife to carefully pry away the charred muscle tissue, revealing the teeth beneath.
Three layers.
A hallmark characteristic of ghouls. The outer layer consisted of sharp, newly grown teeth that curved outward.
The middle layer consisted of smaller transitional teeth.
But the innermost layer...
Lu Yuan's movements stopped.
The innermost layer of teeth were not sharp.
They were molars.
Human molars.
They were neatly arranged and fully formed; he could even see traces of a dental filling on one of them... a small piece of metal filling that had corroded black, but the shape remained.
Someone had a dental filling.
This greater ghoul was once a human.
A normal person who had seen a dentist and lived in the city.
Lu Yuan slowly stood up.
He looked down again at the charred husk. A body that was a size larger than normal.
The keratinous armor covering its entire body. Three layers of teeth.
Semi-metamorphosis stage.
All of this had been built up bit by bit upon the foundation of a 'human'.
First came the infection.
Then the metamorphosis. Then the feeding, screening, and strengthening.
Until it became this thing.
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +0.3... 12.7/100】
【You have come into contact with a dead, silent curse...】
Bo Er stood beside him, having remained silent the whole time.
But he had also seen that filled molar.
"It's a person?" Bo Er's voice was very low.
Lu Yuan did not answer immediately.
He walked out of the ruins to the edge of the position and found a corpse of an ordinary ghoul that had not yet been cleared.
This corpse lay on the copper ground and was already severely corroded. The skin had sloughed off in large patches, and the muscle tissue had turned into a dark brown paste under the searing of the copper.
But the mouth was still recognizable.
Lu Yuan knelt down and pried open the mouth.
Two layers of sharp teeth.
No residual molars.
This indicated that the metamorphosis of ordinary ghouls had completely overwritten their human characteristics.
Perhaps ordinary ghouls were not transformed from humans...
He could only hope that the greater ghouls were different, which was why they retained human traces.
Lu Yuan stood up and returned to the ruins.
He flipped over the left hand of another greater ghoul.
The five fingers were completely deformed, the nails gone and replaced by black keratin claws.
But on the inner side of the palm, beneath the charred skin, there remained a very thin layer of human skin patterns.
Palm lines.
Every person's palm lines are unique.
This ghoul's palm lines were still there.
"They're all humans." Lu Yuan stood up. "At least the greater ghouls are all humans."
Bo Er's expression changed.
He looked down toward the hole—that pitch-black, currently quiet hole.
The things that had surged out from within last night were not monsters. They were people who had once lived in this city.
Forgotten people.
"How long?" Bo Er's voice was a bit dry. "How long have they... been down there?"
Lu Yuan looked at the degree of corrosion on the metal filling in the molar.
It was corroded almost beyond recognition.
Only a very thin residue remained attached to the molar's groove, its surface covered in pin-sized pits.
If it had been ten or twenty years, it wouldn't have rotted like this.
Even in a high humidity underground environment, for a metal filling to corrode to this extent...
"A long time." Lu Yuan did not look up. "Far more than a few decades."
He stood up, his gaze landing on the charred husk once more.
A passage suddenly flashed through his mind.
On the way to Bronze City, Herman had said...
"It is said that ten thousand craftsmen were mobilized back then, and it took thirty years to complete."
Ten thousand craftsmen.
Thirty years.
The formula had long been lost.
The inscriptions that the Engravers had spent ten years carving.
And then what?
Where did those craftsmen go? Ten thousand people finished building a copper city, and then... they just vanished into history?
Lu Yuan looked down at that remnant molar.
Hundreds of years.
Perhaps longer.
Bo Er fell silent.
He had been in Bronze City for ten years.
When he had come here from the outside ten years ago, he felt it was the safest city in the entire western part of the empire.
The city walls could block the eerie.
The runes had never been extinguished.
But no one told him what was buried beneath the city walls.
"Then last night... those we killed..." He didn't finish his sentence.
Lu Yuan didn't respond either.
Bo Er understood this point himself.
He closed his mouth and quickened his pace.
Behind them, the sunlight shone on the ghoul remains scattered across the copper ground.
They were being corroded bit by bit by the copper.
In a few more hours, nothing would be left.
After walking for a while, Lu Yuan spoke.
"Don't tell anyone about this."
Bo Er's footsteps paused for a moment, then he nodded.
He understood.
It wasn't just that these things used to be human; more importantly, it was why these people had turned into ghouls.
Bo Er had a faint suspicion in his heart.
"What about the corpses?" Bo Er asked, looking at Lu Yuan. "Just leave them there?"
"Leave them for now," Lu Yuan said after some thought. "The floor of the textile workshop isn't copper, so they won't continue to corrode in the short term."
He was silent for a few seconds.
"But there's one thing I can't figure out."
"What?"
"The branch didn't issue an order to preserve the greater ghoul corpses."
Bo Er thought about it but said nothing.
"Ours wasn't the only position that encountered greater ghouls last night," Lu Yuan said as he walked. "All those corpses are lying on copper ground and will rot into dust by noon today. If the branch didn't know their origin, they should have ordered samples to be kept for examination. But they didn't."
"You mean... the branch knows?"
"I'm not sure," Lu Yuan said. "It's also possible they just can't spare the effort. The pressure on the inner city is much greater than ours; the branch might not have the energy to manage corpses in the outer city."
Lu Yuan paused.
"But Kraus isn't the kind of person who would overlook such details."
Bo Er didn't ask further.
The two of them finished the rest of the walk in silence.
When they returned to the Alchemy Workshop, there was an extra carriage at the entrance of the outpost.
It wasn't a supply wagon.
It had come from the direction of the inner city.
Two people stepped out of the carriage.
Walking in front was a thin old man wearing grey robes with several patches. He was slightly hunched and leaned on something that was either a cane or an iron rod.
【Detection Target: ? (Knowledge Pathway · Inscriptionist)】
Rate on N.U.
