Chapter 421 – Return to the Darkness of Creeping
Chapter 421 – Return to the Darkness of Creeping
Agatha instantly withdrew her hand, looking at her fingertips in disbelief.
However, the closest accompanying nun had already seen this strange scene, and this nun instantly widened her eyes in surprise: “Gatekeeper, just now your hand ……”
Agatha frowned, not knowing what was going on for a moment, and just then, a nearby Guardian warrior stepped forward, cautiously lifted his combat cane, and tapped on the solid stone wall that didn’t look much different from its surroundings.
The cane struck the stone wall with a crisp clang, and nothing changed on the wall.
The guardsman turned his head and gave Agatha a slight nod, then summoned up the courage to step forward and touch the stone wall directly with his own palm.
Nothing happened, the wall remained a wall.
“It’s just a wall,” the guardian frowned, “but just now ……”
Agatha said nothing, just stepped forward in silence and once again probed the wall with her fingers.
In the next second, she watched as her finger disappeared into it once again!
There was not the slightest resistance, and she even felt that she had merely touched a curtain made of phantoms.
“It looks like you’re the only one who can pass through it,” said the accompanying priest as he watched the scene in astonishment, turning his head incredulously, “but …… why is that? Why is there such a wall deep in the Boiling Gold Mine? No one has ever reported it before ……”
Listening to the priest’s exclamation from the sidelines, Agatha, however, did not say anything, but just remained staring deathly at her own fingers that were probing into the stone wall – at an angle that only she had noticed, she finally saw the tiny change in her fingertips as they came into contact with that stone wall.
Her finger and the stone wall seemed to melt at the same time in that position, although only a little bit, but like heated butter mingled together, the color and texture …… looked as if black mud.
She is so “through” the seemingly solid stone wall.
After an unknown period of time, she finally broke the silence with a soft voice: “I don’t know why this is so, but it is obvious …… that the next thing is only I can do.”
“Gatekeeper?” The accompanying priest was startled and quickly reacted, “You’re going in alone! Wait, this is too unsafe, this wall is just not right, it is likely that you will rush in now ……”
“Our city-state, is being swallowed up by a thick fog, the twisted being in the fog has no mercy – the power behind it isn’t going to wait for us to investigate the truth before making a move,” Agatha, however, just shook her head slowly, her voice as calm and composed as ever. “The party led by Consul Winston eventually arrived here, and there is no body of his here, and now it seems more like these guards who died in battle held out until the end in order to stall for time in the mines …… If I guessed correctly, they were trying to buy the Consul the time he needed to get through this wall. ”
The priest didn’t know how to respond for a moment, and after a few seconds of silence, simply spoke instinctively, “But it is still too dangerous for you to be alone, and this matter should at least be reported to the cathedral ……”
“There’s no time for that, there’s really no time for that,” Agatha turned around, shaking her head slowly but firmly, and as she spoke, she could already feel the cold that surrounded her body and penetrated her bones once again, and she could almost clearly feel that her blood was gradually ceasing to flow, and that the substances that made up this body were losing their vitality a little bit. Although this feeling of discomfort only lasted for a short time, it still made her tone even more resolute, “I have to figure out the secrets of this mine, this may be the only thing I can do in the last little time I have left ……”
She stopped abruptly, forcibly curbing her thoughts and words, doing her best to calm her expression back down and looking at the men in front of her with a serious look on her face.
“I will pass through this wall, you should know the power of the Gatekeeper – there is no need to worry about me, you have what you should do. Immediately after I pass, you return to the previous traffic intersection the same way you came, and then the first and second teams continue to the digging area as planned to investigate the true status of the Boiling Gold Mine Road, and the third and fourth teams return to the surface to report to the cathedral about what happened here, and then ……”
She paused for a few seconds, as if her thoughts were suddenly somewhat interrupted, and then waved her hand, “That’s it, the rest is at Bishop Ivan’s command.”
The guards and the priests and nuns couldn’t help but look at each other in disbelief, the first time they saw the gatekeeper behave like this, they were inevitably a bit terrified, but under Agatha’s extraordinarily serious gaze, and under the professionalism that was almost instinctive from many years of training, obeying orders became their subconscious reaction.
“Yes, orders received,” the priest leading the group nodded solemnly and scratched out the triangle emblem representing Bartok on his chest, but immediately afterward, he couldn’t help but follow up with a question, “When do you need us to come to meet you?”
“…… don’t need to pick up – but don’t worry, I will come back, no matter what situation I encounter, ‘I’ will definitely come back. ”
The chaplain withdrew, and no one heard the subtle little change in her tone when she said the word “I.”
Agatha exhaled softly, and took a step towards the dark wall.
Before she was about to touch it, she spoke softly one last time, as if whispering to someone, or as if speaking to herself–
“Actually …… I kinda like this world ……”
Without hesitation, she took a step forward, and her body entered the “stone wall” without the slightest obstruction, just like a phantom merging into another phantom. The surface of the stone wall instantly surfaced a vague ripple, but before anyone could see it, the ripple disappeared cleanly.
Dark, cold, unsupported, hard to tell up and down, and also unable to distinguish left and right, immediately after that, all the senses seemed to disappear instantly, and later returned to themselves in an extremely sluggish and strange way – this was all Agatha felt after crossing that wall.
After an unknown period of time, she opened her “eyes” in the darkness, only to realize that she could not see anything around her.
There was nothing but endless chaos, with vague masses of darkness writhing slowly against an even darker backdrop, like some kind of slimy, disgusting fluid, or a slow, writhing, unnamable beast.
Why was it so dark? Hadn’t she brought a lantern with her when she came over?
Agatha couldn’t help but wonder this in her mind, and almost as soon as she thought that, a flash of light literally appeared in front of her eyes.
The shimmering light illuminated her surroundings, and she saw that she was floating in an infinite black mist, with countless shadows writhing and flowing all around her, without making any sound.
Agatha watched the scene silently, then lowered her head.
The body came into view, first the torso, followed by the arms and legs, and the combat cane that had accompanied her for many years.
“Ah …… you’re there too ……”
Agatha said softly to herself, slowly lifting the cane in her hands, looking at the familiar pattern on it, and the name that she had conscientiously carved into it, belonging to herself, when she had first received it as a Guardian.
“Are you a shadow like me?” She asked softly to the cane.
The cane, of course, did not respond to her voice, but something else suddenly rattled in the darkness.
“Bang!”
It was a gunshot.
Agatha frowned momentarily, but before she could look in the direction the sound had come from, a slightly tense-sounding voice had reached her ears first: “Who’s there?!”
In the darkness, Agatha turned her head, and almost at the same time, she saw a sudden shimmering light in the direction the voice came from.
A small piece of solidified ground appeared there, and was illuminated by an anciently shaped brass lamp, and a thing that looked like a tree stump could be seen in the clearing, and a middle-aged man wearing a dark blue jacket was sitting against the stump, looking as if he was a motionless statue.
When Agatha’s line of sight was cast over, the “statue” suddenly moved a little, he suddenly raised his head, surprised with nervousness to look in the direction of Agatha: “Who is there?
Agatha subconsciously felt a trace of incongruity, but quickly put this trace of incongruity in the back of her mind, she walked towards the open space illuminated by the lamp, and saw the middle-aged man’s face clearly.
Without the slightest surprise, it was the consul of the Frost City State, Mr. Winston.
“You look like you’ve been here for a long time, Mr. Consul,” Agatha said calmly, “and now it’s just the two of us left here.”
“The keeper …… Ms. Agatha?” Winston raised his head sluggishly, his whole body moving and speaking slowly like a badly worn clockwork mannequin, but with time his speech demeanor slowly became animated and smooth again, “You’re here as well …… Wait, what are you doing here?”
“I went through a wall, a wall located deep within the Boiling Gold Mine,” Agatha said calmly, knowing that there was no longer any need to conceal any detours, “The guards you brought with you were all but wiped out in the mine tunnel, Mr. Consul- -Do you remember them?”
“The guards …… Oh, the guards I brought with me,” Winston frowned as if he had literally just remembered, followed by a hint of sadness in his tone, “They were wonderful people, they did their best to make me able to activate the key left by the Queen, and I ……”
Agatha’s expression changed slightly in an instant, “The key left by the Queen?”
(End of chapter)