Chapter 420

Chapter 420: Return to the Crawling Dark.

Agatha pulled her hand back at once and stared at her fingertips in shock and confusion.

But the nearest accompanying Nun had already seen this strange scene. The Nun’s eyes widened in surprise as she said: “Gatekeeper, just now your hand…”

Agatha frowned and for a moment did not know what was going on. Just then, a Guardian warrior stepped forward. He carefully lifted his combat Gatekeeper’s cane and tapped the solid stone wall that looked no different from the rock around it.

The Gatekeeper’s cane struck the wall with a sharp sound, but nothing changed on the stone surface.

The Guardian turned his head and gave Agatha a slight nod. Then he gathered his courage, stepped up, and pressed his palm directly against the wall.

Nothing happened. The wall was still just a wall.

“It is only a wall,” the Guardian said with a frown. “But just now…”

Agatha said nothing. She stepped forward in silence and once again reached her fingers toward the wall.

In the next second, she watched as her fingers sank into it again!

There was no resistance at all. She even felt as if she had only touched a layer of the Veil made of phantoms.

“It seems only you can pass through it,” the accompanying priest said. He stared at the scene in shock, then turned his head in disbelief and said: “But… why is it like this? Why would there be a wall like this deep in the Boiling Gold mine? No one has ever reported it before…”

Agatha ignored the priest’s exclamation. She still said nothing and stared hard at the fingers she had thrust into the stone wall. From an angle only she noticed, she finally saw a tiny change where her fingertips touched the wall.

Her fingers and the stone at that spot seemed to melt at the same time. They melted only a little, yet they blended together like heated butter. Their color and texture looked like black sludge.

This was how she had “passed through” that seemingly solid stone wall.

She did not know how long she stayed there before she finally broke the silence in a low voice: “I do not know why this is happening, but clearly… what comes next can only be done by me.”

“Gatekeeper?” The priest was startled and reacted at once. “You want to go in alone?! Wait, it is far too unsafe. There is something very wrong with this wall. If you rush in now, you might…”

“Our city-state is being swallowed by thick fog. The Twisted Beings in the mist have no mercy. The power behind them will not wait for us to finish finding the truth before it moves,” Agatha said as she slowly shook her head. Her voice was as calm and steady as always. “Governor Winston’s team finally reached this place, yet his body is not here. Now it seems that these fallen guards held out to the last more to delay time in the tunnels… If I am not wrong, they were buying time for the Governor to pass through this wall.”

The priest did not know how to answer at first. After a few seconds of silence, he spoke on instinct: “But it is still too dangerous for you to go alone. At the very least, we should report this to the Cathedral…”

“There is no time, truly no time,” Agatha said as she turned around, slowly but firmly shaking her head. As she spoke, she again felt that cold that wrapped her whole body and sank into her bones. She almost clearly felt her blood slowly stop flowing, and the matter that made up her body lose its life. The discomfort only lasted a short moment, but it still made her tone even firmer: “I must find out the secret of this mine. In the last bit of time that may be left, this might be the only thing I can…”

She suddenly stopped. She forced her thoughts and words to a halt and did her best to smooth her face back to calm. Then she looked seriously at the subordinates in front of her.

“I will pass through this wall. You know the power of a Gatekeeper. You do not need to worry about me. You have your own tasks. After I go through, you are to turn back at once and return along the route to the last junction. Then the first and second teams will continue to the excavation area as planned and find out the real situation in the Boiling Gold tunnels. The third and fourth teams will return to the surface and report what happened here to the Cathedral. Then…”

She paused for a few seconds, as if her thoughts suddenly broke off. Then she waved her hand and said: “That is all. For the rest, follow Bishop Ivan’s orders.”

The Guardian, the priest, and the Nuns could not help looking at one another. It was the first time they had seen the Gatekeeper act like this, and they could not help feeling uneasy and at a loss. But under Agatha’s unusually serious gaze, and with the professional discipline that long training had turned into instinct, obedience to orders became their natural response.

“Yes, we have received the order,” the leading priest said with solemn care as he nodded. He drew the Triangular Sigil of Bartok over his chest, then could not help asking: “When do you need us to come and meet you?”

“…There is no need. But do not worry, I will come back. No matter what happens, ‘I’ will come back.”

The priest stepped back. No one heard the faint, subtle change in her tone when she spoke the word “I.”

Agatha let out a slow breath and walked toward the dark wall.

Just before she touched it, she spoke softly one last time, as if whispering to someone, yet also as if speaking to herself:

“To be honest… I really do like this world…”

She stepped forward without hesitation. Her body slipped into the “stone wall” without the slightest hindrance, like one phantom merging into another.

For an instant, faint ripples appeared on the surface of the wall, but they vanished completely before anyone could see them clearly.

Darkness. Cold. No support, no way to tell up from down or left from right. Then all her senses seemed to vanish at once, only to return to her in a slow and strange way. This was all that Agatha felt after she crossed the wall.

She did not know how much time passed before she opened her “eyes” in the dark, only to find that she still could not see anything around her.

Everywhere she looked was endless chaos. Faint clumps of darkness crawled slowly across an even darker background. They looked like some sticky, disgusting fluid, and also like huge, nameless beasts slowly creeping along.

Why was it so dark? Had she not brought a consecrated lantern when she came?

The question rose in Agatha’s mind. Almost as soon as she thought it, a glimmer of light really appeared before her eyes.

The faint light lit up the area around her. She saw that she was floating in boundless black mist. Countless vague shapes crawled and flowed all around her, yet they made no sound.

Agatha watched this scene in silence, then lowered her head.

Her body came into her sight. First her torso, then her hands and feet, and then the combat Gatekeeper’s cane that had been with her for many years.

“Ah… you are here too…”

Agatha spoke in a soft murmur. She slowly raised the Gatekeeper’s cane in her hand and looked at the familiar patterns on it, and at the name she had carefully carved there when she first received this cane as a Guardian.

“Are you also a shadow, just like me?” she asked the Gatekeeper’s cane in a soft voice.

Of course, the Gatekeeper’s cane did not answer her. But in the darkness, something else suddenly made a sound.

“Bang!”

It was a gunshot.

Agatha frowned at once, but before she could look toward the source of the sound, a voice that sounded a bit tense reached her ears first: “Who is there?!”

In the darkness, Agatha turned her head. Almost at the same time, she saw a sudden glimmer of light in the direction of the voice.

A small patch of solid ground appeared there, lit by an old-style brass consecrated lantern. On the open ground she could see something like a tree stump. A middle-aged man in a dark blue coat leaned against the stump, looking like a motionless statue.

As Agatha’s gaze fell on him, the “statue” suddenly moved. He jerked his head up and looked toward Agatha with surprise and tension: “Who is there?!”

Agatha felt a faint sense that something was off, but she soon put it aside. She walked toward the patch of ground lit by the consecrated lantern and saw the middle-aged man’s face clearly.

It was no surprise at all. He was the Governor of the city-state of Frostholm, Mr. Winston.

“It seems you have been here for a long time, Governor,” Agatha said calmly. “Now there are only the two of us left here.”

“Gatekeeper… Lady Agatha?” Winston lifted his head slowly. He moved like a wind-up Doll that had worn down badly, and even his words came out slow. But as time passed, his speech and expression slowly grew more lively and smooth. “You came as well… Wait, how are you here?”

“I passed through a wall, a wall deep in the Boiling Gold mine,” Agatha said in a calm voice. She knew there was no need for any more hiding or circling around. “The Guard Corps you brought has been wiped out in the tunnels, Governor. Do you still remember them?”

“The Guard Corps… oh, the Guard Corps I brought,” Winston said, frowning as if he had only just remembered. Then a hint of sorrow entered his voice. “They were all fine people. They did their best so that I could use the key left by the Queen, but I…”

Agatha’s expression changed at once: “The key left by the Queen?”