Chapter 416: Chapter 420: Return to the Creeping Shadows Chapter 416: Chapter 420: Return to the Creeping Shadows Agatha instantly retracted her hand, looking at her fingertips with an unsettling suspicion.
However, the nun accompanying her, who was closest to her, had already witnessed this strange scene. The nun imdiately widened her eyes in surprise, “Gatekeeper, your hand just now…”
Agatha frowned. For the mont, she did not know what was going on. Just then, one of the guardian warriors stepped forward, prudently lifted his combat staff, and knocked on the stone wall, which appeared no different from the surrounding ones.
The staff struck the stone wall, producing a crisp sound, but nothing changed on the wall.
The guardian turned his head, nodded gently at Agatha, then mustered the courage to step forward and touch the stone wall directly with his palm.
Nothing happened; the wall remained a wall.
“It’s just a wall,” the guardian frowned. “But just now…”
Agatha said nothing, rely stepping forward in silence, reaching out her fingertips toward the wall once more.
The next second, she watched, wide-eyed, as her fingers again penetrated it!
There was no resistance at all; she even felt as if she were rely touching a curtain made of illusions.
“It seems that only you can pass through it,” the accompanying priest said in astonishnt, turning to speak incredulously, “but… why? Why would there be such a wall deep within the boiling gold mine? No one has ever reported this before…”
Listening to the priest’s exclamations beside her, Agatha remained silent, her gaze fixed on her hand that had penetrated the stone wall— from an angle that only she noticed, she finally saw the subtle change that occurred when her fingertip touched the wall.
Her finger and the wall seed to lt at that spot, rging together slightly like heated butter, the color and texture… they looked like black mud.
That was how she “passed through” the wall that seed imnsely sturdy.
After what seed like a long ti, she finally broke the silence in a soft voice, “I don’t know why this happened, but obviously… the task ahead can only be done by .”
“Gatekeeper?” The priest accompanying her was taken aback, quickly grasping the situation, “You’re going in alone!? Wait, that’s too dangerous. This wall is just not right. If you were to enter now rashly, you could possibly…”
“Our City-State is being swallowed by the fog, and the twisted entities within show no rcy—the power behind them will not wait for us to investigate and uncover the truth before taking action,” Agatha simply shook her head slowly, her voice calm and steady as ever, “The team led by Governor Winston ultimately made it here, yet his body is not to be found. Now it seems that these fallen guards appear more like they were holding out in the mine to buy ti… If I’m not mistaken, they did it to give the Governor ti to pass through this wall.”
The priest did not know how to respond for a mont, and after a few seconds of silence, he instinctively said, “But going alone is still too dangerous. This matter should at least be reported to the Cathedral…”
“There’s no ti left, really no ti,” Agatha turned around, her head shaking slowly but determinedly. While speaking, she again felt the coldness enveloping her body, penetrating to the bone marrow; she could almost clearly sense her blood slowly ceasing to flow, the substance of her body gradually losing its vitality, although the discomfort was brief, it made her tone all the more resolute, “I must understand the secrets within this mine, this may be the only thing I can do with the little ti remaining…”
She suddenly stopped, forcefully suppressing her thoughts and words, striving to keep her face calm again, and looked seriously at her subordinates.
“I will pass through this wall, and you should know the power of a Gatekeeper—do not worry about , you have your own duties to perform. After I’ve gone through, you must imdiately retrace your steps to the previous intersection and, first and second squads will continue with the original plan to the excavation area, to thoroughly investigate the true situation of the boiling gold mine passages, while the third and fourth squads return to the surface and report the events here to the Cathedral, and then…”
She paused for a few seconds, seemingly experiencing a sudden break in thought, and then waved her hand, “That’s all, follow the orders of Bishop Ivan.”
The guardians, priests, and nuns couldn’t help but exchange glances. Seeing the Gatekeeper behaving in this way for the first ti, they naturally felt a bit lost, but under Agatha’s stern gaze, and with their professional discipline almost instinctual from years of training, obeying orders beca their subconscious response.
“Yes, understood,” the priest leading the team nodded solemnly, making the triangular sign of Bartok on his chest, but then he couldn’t help but ask again, “When should we co to support you?”
“…No need for support—but rest assured, I will co back, no matter what happens, ‘I’ will definitely return.”
The priest stepped back, and no one noticed the subtle change in her tone when she said the word “I”.
Agatha took a deep breath and stepped toward the bleak wall.
Just before coming into contact with it, she spoke quietly one last ti, as if whispering to soone, yet also as if to herself—
“`
“Actually, I quite like this world…”
She stepped forward without hesitation, her body rging into the “stone wall” effortlessly, as one phantom blends into another.
The surface of the stone wall montarily rippled faintly, but before anyone could see it clearly, the ripple had vanished completely.
Darkness, chill, isolation, indiscernible up and down, unclear left from right, then, all senses seed to disappear instantly, returning to herself in an extrely sluggish, strange manner—these were all of Agatha’s sensations after stepping through the wall.
After an indeterminate amount of ti, she finally opened her “eyes” in the darkness, only to find that she couldn’t see anything around her.
Before her was endless chaos, and vague dark masses were slowly writhing against an even darker backdrop, like so sticky, nauseating fluid or a slowly creeping, indescribable behemoth.
Why was it so dark? Hadn’t she brought a hand lamp with her?
Such a question involuntarily surfaced in Agatha’s mind, and just as she thought this, a glimr of light truly appeared before her.
The faint light illuminated the surroundings, and she saw herself floating in an endless black mist, with countless indistinct things writhing and flowing without making a sound.
Agatha watched this scene quietly, then lowered her head.
Her body ca into view, first the torso, then the limbs, and the battle staff that had accompanied her for many years.
“Ah… you are here too…”
Agatha whispered to herself, slowly lifting the staff in her hand, observing the familiar patterns on it, and her own na, carved earnestly when she first received the staff as a guardian.
“Are you also a shadow, like ?” she whispered to the staff.
Of course, the staff wouldn’t respond to her, but in the darkness, sothing else suddenly made a noise.
“Bang!”
It was a gunshot.
Agatha furrowed her brow instantly, but before she could look towards the source of the sound, an apparently nervous voice reached her ears first: “Who’s there?!”
In the darkness, Agatha turned her head, and almost at the sa ti, she saw a sudden flash of light from the direction of the voice.
A small patch of solid ground appeared there, illuminated by an antique brass hand lamp. On the ground, she could also make out sothing resembling a tree stump, and a middle-aged man in a deep blue coat sitting beside it, looking like an immobile statue.
When Agatha’s gaze reached him, the “statue” suddenly moved. He jerked his head up, looking towards Agatha with surprise and nervousness: “Who’s there?!”
Agatha felt a flicker of discordance instinctively but quickly pushed it to the back of her mind. She walked toward the patch of ground illuminated by the hand lamp and saw the middle-aged man’s face clearly.
Without any surprise, it was Mr. Winston, the Governor of Frost City-State.
“You seem to have been here for quite a while, Governor,” Agatha said calmly, “Now there are only the two of us left.”
“The gatekeeper… Ms. Agatha?” Winston lifted his head sluggishly, moving and speaking slowly like a severely worn wind-up doll. But as ti went on, his speech and deanor slowly beca more fluid, “You’re here too… Wait, how co you are here?”
“I passed through a wall, a wall deep in the Boiling Gold Mines,” Agatha said calmly, knowing there was no need now for concealnt or evasion, “The guards you brought have all perished in the mine tunnels, Governor—do you rember them?”
“The guards… oh, the guards I brought,” Winston frowned, as if he had just rembered, then his tone took on a hint of sorrow, “They were great n; they did their utmost to enable to activate the Queen’s key, and I…”
Agatha’s expression shifted slightly: “The Queen’s key?”
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