Chapter 332

Chapter 332: The Tailing Duo

In the whole house, aside from the last room where Brown Scott had been, they did not find anything that could be called an Anomaly.

In fact, even that room the gray black sludge had corrupted no longer held any trace of the supernatural. Aside from the visual shock brought by those bizarre sludge-like masses, there was not the slightest supernatural power left anywhere in the building.

Everything that did not belong to the mortal world had vanished along with Brown Scott.

On the first floor of the house, Galina still slept. The tall Senkin woman, her skin like stone, leaned in the corner of the sofa. Her sleeping posture was calm and gentle, her face relaxed.

In her dreams, she was still a student studying under her Teacher, still living quiet, ordinary days. Her learned and kind Teacher had just finished many years of travel and had recently returned home, ready to tell her many, many stories about faraway places.

“If only Heidi were here. She would mix some potions that would at least make this young lady feel a bit better when she woke up,” Morris lowered his head to look at Galina on the sofa, his expression a little complicated. “I can tell she was very close to Brown.”

“…The gloom will pass,” Duncan said. He fell silent for a moment, rummaged in his pocket, and took out a small crystal pendant. He brought it to his lips and whispered something to it, then pressed it into Galina’s hand. “Have a good dream. Everything will get better.”

Morris quietly watched what Duncan did. After a long time, he finally could not help speaking: “You even brought those pendants over here?”

“…I stocked up too many last time. I had half a box left that I really couldn’t sell. No one even wanted them as gifts,” Duncan said. His face looked expressionless (mostly because the bandages hid it), and his tone was flat. “So I figured I’d hand them out while traveling later… do you want one?”

“No, thanks,” Morris hurriedly waved his hand. “This kind of feminine jewelry doesn’t really suit me.”

“Oh, right.”

…

The night wind blew through the dark, deathly quiet alley. In the faint glow cast over from the gas lamp at the corner, Vanna watched the surroundings with sharp, alert eyes.

Alice stood at her side and tried her best to mimic her, looking around as well, but it was obvious Alice had no idea what Vanna was actually watching for.

“The street is so quiet. There’s no one at all,” probably because she was not used to such a silent, oppressive place, the doll finally could not help speaking. “Miss Vanna, what are you always looking at?”

Vanna answered in a calm tone: “Any supernatural beings that might appear, or suspicious shadows clinging around that building, if there are any.”

“Huh?” Alice froze for a moment. “Will there be?”

“…What do you think Mr. Duncan asked us to stand by out here for?”

Alice thought about it and said: “Because he thinks I get in the way?”

Vanna said: “…You’re right.”

Vanna felt it would be hard to explain anything clearly to this solid wooden head, so she simply chose not to.

But she herself understood very well why they were keeping watch here.

A “replica” that had returned from the Deep Sea had been moving around the city-state for many days, and that replica had been living in the building not far away. The Annihilators who followed the Abyssal Lord could not possibly ignore that.

It was even possible that they had been the ones pulling the strings behind this whole affair.

Mr. Duncan and Mr. Morris had gone to investigate the situation inside that house. They were there to investigate, but also to bait a trap. Would any cultists be watching this place? Would the power that had sent “Brown Scott” back make a move tonight? Would shadows lurk in this street? If uninvited guests appeared, would those shadows still stay put?

Vanna controlled her own breathing and heartbeat, drew in her presence and power, and when she had confirmed that the street was still quiet, she once again hid herself beneath the building’s shadows.

Then she saw Alice beside her suddenly think of something and lean forward. The next moment, the doll raised her hands, cupped her own head and gave it a shake, then popped it off with a little “pop”. With one hand on the wall and her head held up in the other, she leaned out at the corner and swayed it back and forth toward the street.

Even a battle-hardened Inquisitor could not stop her eyes from twitching at that sight. Vanna stared, lowered her voice, and said: “What are you doing?!”

After Alice finished wobbling her head at the corner, she heard Vanna’s voice, hurriedly pulled her head back, and popped it back into place with another little “pop”. She looked completely innocent: “I was checking what was happening across the street…”

“Next time you have a plan like that, at least tell me in adv—” Vanna glared at the doll across from her, but halfway through the sentence she swallowed the rest, waved a tired hand, and said: “Forget it. Never mind.”

Alice looked completely baffled, but just as she was about to speak, she seemed to sense something again and could not help glancing outside: “Miss Vanna, I keep feeling… like someone is nearby, but I can’t see anyone.”

“Someone nearby?” Vanna became alert at once. She did not relax just because Alice usually seemed unreliable. Instead she tensed every nerve, sensing the aura around them as she asked in a low voice: “Where?”

“Just diagonally across, under that street lamp,” Alice whispered as well. To show how careful she was being, she even crouched down while she pointed toward the mouth of the alley. “But I only saw the strings, not the person.”

At first Vanna did not react. She only looked in the direction Alice was pointing. Two seconds later she suddenly froze, turned back to stare at the doll, and said: “Strings? What strings?”

“The strings on people, of course. Everyone has them. They float from their bodies up into the sky,” Alice said, gesturing as she spoke, her tone completely matter-of-fact. “There are some behind the head, and on the hands and feet too…”

She suddenly paused, then added: “Oh, right, Mr. Duncan doesn’t have any – though he is Mr. Duncan, so that’s normal…”

As Alice talked, her voice finally grew hesitant and trailed off.

Slow as she was, she finally noticed the strange look on Vanna’s face.

“…You can’t see them?” The doll hesitated and came up with the only explanation she could think of. “Uh, then I won’t laugh at you. The captain said people’s eyes aren’t all the same…”

“…I can’t see them, but this isn’t the time to talk about that,” Vanna snapped fully awake and forced her attention back to the street lamp not far away. “Are those strings still there?”

She knew what mattered most right now.

Alice could see invisible “strings” floating on human bodies, and she had always taken it for granted that this was normal and that everyone else could see them too. Because she took it so much for granted, this fact had only just slipped out now because of an offhand remark. This might well be the special power she had as Anomaly 099, or it might have some deeper, stranger explanation behind it. But either way, none of that was something they should be studying right now.

Someone was hiding nearby, and now he – or they – had already been exposed to the doll’s sight. That was what mattered.

“They’re still there, and they’re swaying a little side to side,” Alice whispered, glancing up at the area around the lamp across the way. Then she frowned. “Ah, it looks like a few of them are gone?”

“A few are gone?” Vanna’s heart gave a sudden jolt. The next second, vigilance surged up inside her. Years of battle-honed instinct and the crisis premonitions granted by the Goddess exploded together in her senses, making her snap her gaze toward a certain point deeper in the street.

In a patch of eerie shadow where the street lamps could not reach, darkness writhed and suddenly took shape.

In almost an instant, a gaunt, skeletal phantom appeared there. Right after it, a deformed freak linked to that skeletal shadow by chains also emerged –

It was a person, or at least the outline was still human. Yet his body had long since twisted and swollen into a horrifying state. His skin looked as if it had been scorched by fierce fire, charred and curled. His bones had grown out of order, forming broken plates along the surface of his body. Sharp bone spurs jutted and spread from his back, like the remains of some Deep Sea monster. Where his face should have been, there was only a hollow depression, within which a dim red glow flickered.

With just one glance, Vanna knew what this thing was. It was an Annihilation Priest who had already entered a deep symbiotic pact with Abyssal Demons and “purified” his own body to an extreme degree.

Annihilators regarded their flesh-and-blood bodies as cages forged by the gods. The way they pledged loyalty to the Abyssal Lord was by constantly using the power of Demons to reshape their own bodies, “purifying” their forms. This process gave them more and more Demonic traits and made them less and less like humans.

Once an Annihilator had purified himself far enough, his limbs mutated to a degree that even a temporary Transmutation spell could no longer turn him back into human shape, and he could no longer move among human society. He then had to rely on lower-ranking cultists to serve and feed him. In return, however, he gained far greater power, as well as a stronger, more direct connection to the Abyssal Deep and the Deep Sea.

These cultists really were watching this place!

The thought flashed through Vanna’s mind, and in the same instant her body leaped high into the air.

To be able to move freely inside the city-state, she had not brought that steel greatsword of divine blessing.

But for a loyal priest of the Storm Goddess, a “sword” was not such an inconvenient thing.

The air compressed. Moisture gathered. The breath of sea and wind condensed in her hands into a blade of solid ice – just barely enough, but usable.

“Heretic!”