Chapter 411

Chapter 411: Tracking.

The room fell silent for a moment.

The silence lasted for more than ten seconds before Agatha finally heard Bishop Ivan’s deep, hoarse voice come from beneath the bandages: “Ah-oh.”

“…Your reaction is a bit unexpected.”

“Because your information is too unexpected,” Bishop Ivan seemed to finally recover. He adjusted his sitting posture, and his tone became very serious. “You’re saying the Boiling Gold vein of the Frostholm city-state ran dry decades ago? That’s the truth you found down there?”

“Yes. In the deepest part of the Second Waterway there is a door, probably sealed by the first City Hall. Behind the door is a mine tunnel that has long since dried up. Judging by its position, it should be in the rich deposit zone at the bottom of the mine—the area that would, in theory, be mined last…”

Agatha did not hold anything back. She recounted everything she had discovered underground, and as she spoke, Bishop Ivan’s gaze visibly grew heavier.

After a while, Agatha finished describing what she had seen below, but then added with some hesitation: “…That was only one tunnel. There are countless tunnels in the mine. Even if it’s the deepest part of the rich deposit zone, we still can’t judge from that alone that the entire mine has dried up. So a large part of my conclusion is guesswork… I know this guess is too wild.”

“…Yes, a rather wild guess,” Bishop Ivan said slowly. “After all, if the Boiling Gold mine really ran dry long ago, then what have we been hauling out of the mine over the past half century? What is the Boiling Gold catalyst that Frostholm has been shipping to other cities all these years?”

Agatha said nothing. She knew there was no way to avoid the questions Bishop Ivan raised, and no way to answer them.

The Frostholm city-state had always produced the highest-quality Boiling Gold ore and finished catalyst rods. In the past fifty years, the output of Boiling Gold from Frostholm alone was almost equal to the combined total of all the other city-states around the Frost Sea. Boiling Gold in the mines flowed out endlessly. The mining machines devoured wealth day and night, and the smelting plants sent out catalysts to the whole world. Ships that used those catalysts sailed across the Boundless Sea.

And in that whole half-century, not a single Boiling Gold order had ever gone wrong.

If the vein had truly run dry decades ago, then never mind just the Frostholm mine—what had been burning in the steam cores of all those ships on the Boundless Sea? Phantoms?

After a long time, the Gatekeeper could only sigh softly: “…If that too is a creation of corruption, then our world has truly become absurd to a frightening degree.”

“Our world has always been absurd. But perhaps… this time you really have found a key clue,” Bishop Ivan shook his head. “Let’s not worry about whether the guess itself is crazy. From a rational viewpoint, the contradiction between a vein that ran dry decades ago and a mine that is still producing steadily now is very likely tied to the anomalies currently afflicting the city-state.”

“…But according to the clues we had before, the current anomalies should have been caused by the cultists of Oblivion,” Agatha reminded him. “What do they have to do with the mine?”

“They might not be connected to the mine at all—they may simply have used and triggered this crisis,” Bishop Ivan said, thinking quickly. The experience of decades, especially his experience dealing with cultists, was helping him piece this puzzle together. “Those heretics couldn’t have been laying out a plan in the city-state for decades without being noticed. What’s more, the drying up of the vein might go back to the time of the Queen. In that era, Frostholm’s suppression of heresy was far harsher than today. No cultist could have escaped the Queen of Frostholm’s eyes…”

As he spoke, the old Bishop paused, then suddenly asked: “You said just now that Governor Winston knew nothing about the door deep in the Second Waterway?”

Agatha nodded: “That’s what he said.”

“…I don’t really believe him,” Bishop Ivan said, hesitating as he shook his head. “The situation was indeed somewhat chaotic in the time of the first City Hall, but the handover between the first few governors and their administrations shouldn’t have had such a huge gap—especially not with a secret this crucial and sensitive…”

“You mean Governor Winston is hiding something from me?” Agatha frowned. “Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe to maintain City Hall’s authority. Maybe because this secret is tied to something bigger. It could even be that something has already taken control of him. It’s hard to say,” Bishop Ivan said. His gaze suddenly settled on Agatha. “What surprises me more is that you didn’t grow suspicious about this. You never used to overlook things like that.”

Agatha froze.

In that brief moment of shock, she recalled what she had experienced on the way back from the Second Waterway—the reflection in the pool, and the “other self” in that reflection walking in the opposite direction.

“Agatha, what’s wrong?” Bishop Ivan’s voice pulled her out of her distraction.

Agatha blinked and shook her head lightly.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” There was obvious doubt in Bishop Ivan’s tone. “You’ve drifted off more than once these past two days, and…”

“I’m fine. I’ve been fine all along,” Agatha interrupted the old Bishop. For some reason, after that brief daze, her tone now sounded relaxed. She let out a soft breath and rose from her chair. “I just suddenly figured some things out—I should set out.”

Bishop Ivan stood up: “…You’re heading to the mine?”

“The navy is holding back the enemy. The Constables and Guardians are keeping the situation under control. They’ve bought us time. I still have a chance to find the source behind all this. It’s time to go.”

Agatha paused for a moment, as if to stress her point, then added: “Time is limited. I can’t rest here for long.”

“All right, then go,” Bishop Ivan nodded lightly. “I hope you can uncover the truth smoothly and come back safely.”

“I will uncover the truth.”

…

In the thick fog, distant gunshots rang out from time to time. Now and then they were joined by warning broadcasts from Constable or Guardian units, and the automatic sirens of certain facilities.

The city-state was now a blur in the fog, and unseen terror seeped through the mist.

“All things considered, I’d rather face hundreds or thousands of fully armed cultists, or charge back and forth a few more times in a city that’s burning to the ground.”

Vanna dismissed the greatsword of solid ice in her hand and frowned at the ground in front of her as she spoke.

Within their limited field of view, the ground was crisscrossed with terrifying cracks. Filthy black sludge slowly flowed and writhed in those fissures, then quickly began to harden. Some of the sludge even barely kept the outline of a human form, yet its key limbs were twisted in ways that made one’s skin crawl.

“Too disgusting,” Vanna muttered.

“Honestly now, would you really like to fight another battle in a burning city?”

Morris’s voice came from the side. The old scholar held the Gatekeeper’s cane in one hand, glanced at the shattered “battlefield” before them, and spoke casually to Vanna.

“…All right, no, I don’t,” Vanna shrugged. “Whether it’s a replica city-state shrouded in thick fog or a burning city under the Black Sun, neither is any better.”

As she spoke, the thick fog flowed, and a tall figure suddenly loomed out of the mist behind Vanna. Its head was swollen and misshapen, a giant single eye trembling violently in the fog. The next second, the monster lunged at Vanna.

But Vanna did not even turn around. She simply stomped hard on the ground. An invisible shockwave spread out in an instant, and the deformed twisted entity only managed one step before its lower body shattered. It crashed to the ground and quickly turned to sludge.

Under her conscious control, Morris, who was only a few steps away, was not affected at all by the shockwave. The old scholar merely adjusted his blessed monocle and calmly looked around at the fog-filled streets.

The next second, he suddenly looked toward a certain spot, a gleam of silver rising in his eyes: “McKafini Conjecture and Proof.”

The next second, a series of dull explosions, like watermelons being stomped to pieces, came from the fog. Several vague figures appeared in the mist, their heads bursting like fireworks.

“The good news is that these low-quality replicas imitate thought to some extent, and whoever controls them needs a mind as well,” Morris said, withdrawing his gaze as the silver light faded from his eyes. “At first I worried they were all empty shells of chaos. In that case, the power of knowledge wouldn’t have worked very well on them.”

Vanna watched the monsters with blown-off heads slowly turn to sludge in the distance, her expression a bit strange. She glanced back at Morris: “Back when you taught me, you never said the ‘power of knowledge’ was this useful.”

“At the time I had already decided you weren’t suited for this path,” Morris said offhandedly.

Vanna: “…”

The Inquisitor felt, for a moment, that she was being mocked. But when she recalled her exam scores back then, she decided to keep a humble attitude.

“Any more nearby?”

She stayed alert as she asked quietly.

“None for now,” Morris shook his head.

He kept sensing the surroundings at all times. When those monsters emerged from the fog, their chaotic thoughts appeared in his perception first. The mist could block human sight, but in his eyes the radiance of thought shone like lanterns in the night.

Very few people could actively control their own thoughts. So in the field of “Detect Sentient Minds”, no one could compare to the Saint of the God of Wisdom.

“Good that there are none for now, though new ones will crawl out soon enough,” Vanna exhaled and flexed her arms and legs a little. “Have you noticed… that in this direction, there are a lot of replica freaks, and they attack much more aggressively than elsewhere?”

“You noticed it too?” Morris raised his eyebrows. “Then it seems my judgment was right.”

“You mean…”

“Not all of the ‘replicas’ emerging from the fog are acting blindly. Some of them are being controlled by someone behind them.”