Chapter 379

Chapter 379: Confronting the Madman

Agatha walked along the cold, deserted street. The cityscape she knew so well now seemed filled everywhere with a silent, eerie air. In the shadows between buildings and behind tightly shut doors and windows, it felt as if pairs of eyes were hiding, spying on her.

She was searching for a way out of this Otherworld—or for the culprit who had trapped her here.

Any place that looked out of place might be a rift where it intersected with the Mortal Realm, yet so far she had not found such a rift anywhere in this eerie “Frostholm city-state”.

There was only one thing she was sure of: she had already touched the shadows that had been shrouding the city-state all this time. Whether by accident or by the hidden hand of the mastermind, she had managed to cross the “screen” that had always blocked her sight.

This place that looked like Frostholm yet was not Frostholm had to be the source of the strange incidents that had plagued the city-state lately.

From far away came the sound of wheels rolling over cobblestones, faint jingling of carriage bells, and the noise of doors opening and closing.

Agatha raised her head toward the direction of the sounds, yet saw only an empty street. But a little farther away, she could indeed see shadowy shapes like carriages flashing past at intersections, and figures like pedestrians hurrying across those distant crossings.

There were “people” in this city, but most of the time she could only see distant phantoms. Here she could hear the voices of residents, but could rarely locate exactly where those sounds came from.

It was like a gaudy, distorted, twisted dream.

Agatha’s figure passed through yet another intersection, then stopped in the shadows between buildings.

Blind wandering would only waste her strength and time. She needed to judge her surroundings carefully.

She closed her eyes and let her senses spread out around her, carefully picking out all the details in the environment—sounds, smells, the direction of the wind, and… the warmth of living people.

After a moment, Agatha lifted her head toward a certain direction and started walking that way. Her eyes were still closed, yet she avoided every obstacle in her path as if she could see everything clearly. She threaded through alleys, passed junction after junction and side street, and did not know how long she walked before she stopped in front of a building at a street corner.

Agatha opened her eyes and saw a small restaurant before her. Its lamps were blazing inside, and lively voices came from within.

The sounds were very real. She could feel the presence of living people inside.

Agatha steadied herself and went up to push open the restaurant door.

A clear bell rang as the door opened, and the scene inside the restaurant rushed into view. For a moment Agatha felt dazed. She even wondered if she had already left that strange Otherworld and returned to the normal Mortal Realm.

The restaurant was brightly lit. Guests could be seen eating at tables everywhere, while servers busied themselves back and forth between the tables and the counter. The shop assistant in charge of greeting customers was working behind the counter. At her ears rang the clear clink of knives, forks, cups, and plates, as well as people chatting about the weather, their work, and prices. The cold, deathly air she had soaked up out on the street seemed swept away by this bustling “worldly scene”.

Yet the next second, Agatha noticed something deeply wrong here. Though the diners were eating at their tables, every cup and plate in front of them was empty. Though the shop assistant bustled behind the counter, he only paced back and forth in place, wiping the same cup over and over.

Everyone was like an automaton with its program set in advance, just repeating the actions that ordinary people should have in daily life—only… their imitation was eerily lifelike.

Agatha frowned. Once she sensed the truth, the atmosphere here felt even more uncanny than the empty street outside. But she did not turn to leave. Instead, she stepped further into the shop.

The stranger a place was, the more it meant she was on the right track.

With Agatha’s first step, the lively chatter inside the restaurant suddenly stopped.

All the diners who had been talking closed their mouths at the same time, yet the expressions from their conversations still remained on their faces, and their hands still held the motions of eating. In the wide space, once the voices were gone, only the monotonous clatter of cups, plates, and cutlery remained.

When Agatha took her second step, the clatter of cups and cutlery vanished as well. Everyone in the restaurant stopped moving, as if their power had been suddenly cut off, and froze beside the square tables.

As Agatha took her third step, everyone in the restaurant put down their knives and forks. They rose like zombies and turned their heads, dozens of empty gazes falling on her.

Agatha looked toward the counter in front of her. The shop assistant who had been wiping the same cup at last stopped as well. But unlike the zombie-like diners around him, this shop assistant slowly lifted his head, and when he looked at Agatha there was a faint smile on his face.

The smile even seemed a little friendly.

“Hello, Miss Gatekeeper,” the shop assistant spoke. He was a young man with short blond hair and a rather decent face, wearing a white shirt and a black jacket. He was polite as he talked, as if he really were serving a guest who had just walked in: “I’m very glad you could visit us. What do you think of this delightful city?”

“It seems you’re the one behind all this,” Agatha said calmly, fixing her gaze on the blond “shop assistant” before her. “Finding you was a bit easier than I expected.”

“Or perhaps not as easy as you imagine,” the blond young man laughed. “Would you like something? Contaminated sewage? Bread made of dirt? Or… an empty bowl? We have plenty of those here.”

Agatha had no intention of answering. She simply raised her Gatekeeper’s cane and swept it through the air.

In an instant, the blond young man behind the counter was wrapped layer upon layer in pale flame that appeared out of thin air. Within a few breaths, that shell of flesh was burned to ash by the Gatekeeper’s Cremation Fire. Only a scattering of gray-white bone ash drifted down and settled on the counter.

Yet Agatha’s expression did not change at all, because before the flames had even flared, she had already sensed that there was no living aura inside that young man.

A strange squelching of viscous matter sounded from the side. Agatha turned her head and saw one of the stiffly standing “diners” by a nearby table suddenly begin to tremble all over. In the next second his body melted like wax. Black, muddy substance surged and shifted over his surface, and within a few breaths that diner had changed into a blond young man in a white shirt and black jacket.

“What an unfriendly way to say hello,” the blond young man said, brushing dust from his clothes and looking at Agatha with a hint of helplessness. “Miss Gatekeeper, you don’t really think that would get rid of me, do you? Do you think I would recklessly expose my true body in a place this dangerous?”

“I know you’re not here,” Agatha said without changing expression, “but at least this can make you stop your noise for a while.”

“All right, all right, it seems you’re not in the mood to chat—you’re a dull woman. By comparison, that Professor Merson was much more interesting in his final moments,” the blond young man said with a shrug. “But that’s fine. As long as you stay here quietly for a while, I don’t mind if you’re a boring prisoner.”

The instant she heard the words “Professor Merson”, Agatha’s expression changed slightly. She thought of the vanished Dagger Island, and of the reports that spoke of a series of explosions there just before the island disappeared. Then she caught the information hidden in the last few sentences he had said.

“What did you mean by those last words?” She fixed her gaze on the blond young man before her and spoke in an icy tone.

“Nothing much, I’m only asking you to stay here as a guest for a while,” the blond young man said, smiling brightly. “You don’t need to worry about the situation ‘up there’—soon, another you will return there. She will gather the guardians just like you did and compile a report based on the actual situation at the sewage treatment plant…

“Don’t worry, she will report everything faithfully, including the corruption at the plant and the replacement of its staff. Then, just as you usually do, she will return to the Cathedral to make her report and speak with Bishop Ivan. After that, she will patrol the city-state, continue handling all the problems it faces, and continue the investigations you failed to finish… Nothing will be delayed.”

Agatha’s face finally turned completely cold. She stared hard at the blond young man before her: “You even made a ‘replica’ of a Gatekeeper?!”

“Is that so hard?” The blond young man slowly withdrew his smile and looked at Agatha with a faintly mocking gaze. “Of course, she doesn’t have your power. But aside from that, she has no flaws. She is even more perfect than any replica we have ever made before—do you know just how perfect? She… doesn’t even know she’s fake.”

Agatha’s face was like frost. The knuckles of the hand gripping her Gatekeeper’s cane turned slightly white. “You can’t fool the Cathedral with a replica—there are countless sharp eyes there.”

“Countless sharp eyes—mortal eyes,” the blond young man said unhurriedly, meeting Agatha’s icy gaze without a hint of fear. “You are overestimating your colleagues. And speaking of replicas… do you truly think that you and the others are any different from the ‘replicas’ you talk about?”

He smiled again and slowly raised both hands, like a preaching Saint revealing the truth of the world: “Miss Gatekeeper, from the very beginning there has never been any such thing as a replica—or rather… we are all replicas. That is the truth.”