Chapter 298

Chapter 298: PTSD

Outside the caretaker’s hut, on the path leading to the mortuary, the heap of charcoal that barely kept a human shape still lay where it had fallen. Several Church Guardians were preparing to move the remains into a wooden crate, but when they saw the Gatekeeper and the graveyard’s caretaker appear, they stopped what they were doing.

Gatekeeper Agatha pointed at the charred remains and said: “The one you saw yesterday should be him. Of course, what is left here now is only a shell. The ‘Visitor’ who once occupied this shell has indeed left.”

The old caretaker walked up to the remains and bent his head to examine them for a moment, his brow slowly tightening: “He was…”

“If I’m not mistaken, he was one of the four cultists who disguised themselves as priests last night,” Agatha said calmly. “This shell died from the backlash of a symbiotic pact with a Abyssal demon.”

The old caretaker fell silent, his face severe. He seemed to be thinking about something. Two minutes later he suddenly looked up and said: “The body you sent last night…”

Agatha nodded and raised her hand to point in another direction: “Over here. But its condition… is even stranger.”

Led by the Gatekeeper, the old caretaker came to an open patch at the edge of the mortuary grounds. This was where they stored processed “samples” and other key evidence that would be sent back to the great Cathedral.

The old caretaker stared in shock at what Agatha pointed out to him.

It was a heap of glass jars of various sizes.

“You mean… this is the corpse you sent yesterday? The ‘Restless One’ who chatted with me in the coffin for half the night yesterday?”

The old man stared at the pile of jars for a long time before he finally could not help turning suspiciously to Agatha. “Just one night ago, he was still lively enough to knock on the coffin lid!”

“Yes. But when the Guardians found this pile of stuff, all we could do was use shovels to gather it up and pack as much as we could into jars. Only the outline it still kept at the time and the spot where it was lying can prove that this really is the dead we sent to the graveyard last night,” Agatha said, shaking her head. “As you can see, it is a semi-solid… sludge, with only faint traces of biological tissue left. And even those last traces are quickly transforming into more sludge as time passes.”

She paused and pointed at one of the largest jars.

“There used to be a few bones in here. Now there is only this strange, sticky substance.”

The old caretaker frowned and stared hard at the bizarre matter inside the glass jars.

It had no trace of organic structure left. It was dark red mixed with black and gray, like silt from the bottom of a river.

If he did not know that the Gatekeeper would not lie to him, he would never have been able to connect this stuff with the Restless One who had babbled in his coffin yesterday.

“All right, the dead turned into sludge. Strange things always like to come in batches,” the old caretaker finally sighed. “But now that it’s come to this, how am I supposed to explain it to this dead’s family? They’ll come to the graveyard to say goodbye to their kin, and I’ll have to tell them that yesterday a few Annihilators sneaked in to make trouble, and something like a Subspace shadow showed up, so somehow their family member turned into a few jars of liquid?”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. Their family won’t be coming to trouble you,” Agatha said expressionlessly, shaking her head. “They have already finished the farewell ritual at Cemetery No. 4 next door. The miner who fell into the well will be sent into the furnace on schedule.”

The old caretaker blinked, and his expression suddenly turned serious: “You forged a body to deceive the dead’s family?”

“We haven’t sunk that low,” Agatha said calmly.

“Then…”

“We found another body. At noon today, we discovered a worker who had fallen to his death in that pump shaft. He was identical to the body we sent here last night.”

The old caretaker stared, his expression going stiff.

After a long moment, he finally came back to himself and instinctively turned his head toward the nearby platform, where the simple coffin they had delivered to the graveyard last night still rested.

Then he looked back at the sample area, at the heap of glass jars that were terrifying to look at.

“…In the name of the God of Death, what on earth did you send here yesterday?”

“We will investigate,” Agatha said. Her face rarely changed, but now it looked more serious than usual. “The only thing we can be sure of now is that the body sent to Cemetery No. 4 should be the ‘real’ one. It showed no agitation and did not collapse or dissolve. The corpse we sent here yesterday… was tampered with by extraordinary power.”

The old caretaker did not speak for a while. He just looked troubled. At that moment, a black?clad Church guard came down another path and walked straight up to Agatha.

The guard gave Agatha a quick, low?voiced report, then handed her a thick piece of card.

Agatha glanced at what was on the card. Her expression did not change. She just nodded slightly: “Understood.”

“What happened?” the old caretaker asked casually.

“Do you remember there were four heretics who entered your graveyard yesterday?” Agatha raised her head and handed the card to the old man. “You took care of two. One turned into charcoal outside your hut. Now we have found the whereabouts of the last Annihilator.”

The old caretaker took the card and saw that it was a photograph.

On some concrete ground somewhere lay a heap of remains in which one could only vaguely make out a human shape. The remains were clearly charred—just like the pile of charcoal at the door of the caretaker’s hut.

Obviously, it was the backlash after a symbiotic pact with a Abyssal demon was severed.

“It was that woman…” The old caretaker frowned and looked up at Agatha. “She is dead? How did she die? Where?”

“Two blocks away. In full view of everyone, this pile of remains suddenly dropped into the middle of a crossroads,” Agatha said. “A Death-Omen Bird demon also appeared at the same time, clearly already in a runaway state. That demon lasted less than a few seconds in the Mortal Realm before it collapsed and vanished. The bystanders at the scene called the constables.”

The old caretaker thought for a moment and shook his head lightly: “I’m not an expert in this field. Just tell me what you think.”

“My view is that this heretic probably also saw the ‘Visitor’ you met last night. The eyes of Abyssal demons find it easier to see the ‘truth’, so her Death-Omen Bird went insane and, in its madness, dragged its master down into the depths of the Abyssal Deep,” Agatha analyzed calmly. “Judging from the remains, this heretic was torn apart by other Abyssal demons before the backlash from the symbiotic pact killed her. That is the typical outcome of falling into the depths of the Abyssal Deep without protection.”

The Gatekeeper finished speaking calmly and let out a soft breath.

She fixed the old caretaker with her gaze.

“I feel… that something is turning its gaze on our city. The days ahead may not be peaceful.”

…

Duncan arrived at the restaurant before dusk.

He did not know when it had started, but somehow the restaurant had become the place where the crew gathered in their spare time.

As soon as Duncan entered, he saw Morris marking Nina’s homework, while Nina sat at another table not far away, supervising Shirley, Dog, and Alice as they spelled words.

Vanna sat near the restaurant window, carefully reading a Church book.

The atmosphere looked rather good.

Duncan walked straight over to Morris and casually handed him a letter: “A letter from your wife.”

“From Mary?” Morris put down his pen, looking a little surprised at the letter the captain handed over. He took out the small letter opener he always carried and opened the envelope while muttering: “I wrote in my letter that there was no need to hurry to reply.”

“Anyway, the ‘postage stamp’ only costs a few fries,” Duncan said with a smile. “See what it says. Maybe it’s something urgent.”

Morris nodded, took out the letter, and skimmed it quickly. As expected, he frowned without thinking.

“What does it say?” Duncan asked, curious, then added: “If it’s personal, you don’t have to tell me.”

“…The second letter from Brown Scott has arrived. It was sent only three days after the first one,” Morris did not hide it, though his tone sounded odd. “His mental state in the letter was clearly not right. Mary was worried that the letter carried something unclean, so she burned the original, but she repeated what it said. Brown was extremely anxious and urged me not to go near Frostholm.”

“…It seems your friend sensed a bit of the truth,” Duncan said thoughtfully. “Unfortunately, when I went to investigate Frostholm, it did not go very smoothly, and I wasn’t able to find out anything about your friend.”

“Ah? You went to Frostholm to investigate?” Morris was startled and couldn’t help crying out. “When did you go?”

“Just last night,” Duncan did not hide it. After all, everyone here was his own people. “I borrowed a body. It’s just a pity I couldn’t find out much. It wasn’t this troublesome last time in Pland.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he suddenly heard a soft thump from not far away.

Duncan and Morris looked toward the sound at the same time and saw that the book in Vanna’s hands had fallen to the floor.

Vanna the inquisitor had a rather odd look on her face.

Morris asked worriedly: “…Vanna, are you all right?”

“She is fine,” Duncan waved a hand and answered for Vanna. “She just has a bit of PTSD.”