"Who brought them back?" Saul asked in surprise.
Both of them had died in Hanging Hands Valley, killed by the wraith Morden. At the ti, they were being pursued and had to leave in a hurry—there was no chance to retrieve the bodies.
He hadn’t expected to see them again.
"Probably Mochi Mochi. He lives in Black Castle Forest, near the border. When you’re out traveling in the future, you can rest at his place."
Mochi Mochi was that long, slender man, whose ho was also long and slender.
Saul hadn’t expected him to manage bringing the corpses back from such a dangerous place.
But the two bodies looked a little different from how they had in life.
It wasn’t from postmortem changes like livor mortis or gigantism, but sothing more subtle.
Herman’s skin had beco coarse. Looking closer, it wasn’t that the texture had roughened—it was now covered in tiny pores.
It was as if soone had taken a silver needle and poked little holes into an orange peel. On closer inspection, the difference was obvious.
“Is that… sothing that secreted out from under his skin?”
Heywood gave a slight smile. “A kind of silver tal. You’ve probably seen it before. But after it erged, the corpse deford badly. For aesthetic purposes, I had to fill it in with other materials.”
He tapped the glass-like transparent case. “It hasn’t fully dried inside yet. Be gentle when moving it.”
Saul opened the lid of the case and pulled a tal rod from his coat, lightly pressing it against the back of Herman’s hand.
A milky white fluid began to ooze from the pores on the back of the hand. But once Saul withdrew the rod, the liquid slowly receded.
“The seepage rate’s a bit high. I’ll let it air out a bit before putting it in with the rest,” Saul said. Then he turned to Bill’s corpse. “Anything I should know about Bill’s body?”
Heywood replied, “Nothing major. ntor Godu already helped neutralize the toxins in his system. Though it’s still necessary to—”
He didn’t finish the sentence, as Bill’s lips were suddenly pushed open by a puff of air.
Pfffft—
“—let it vent,” Heywood finished the sentence with an unfazed expression.
Saul: “…”
“Alright then, I’ll air this one out too.”
The two of them filled out the handover paperwork, officially registering the two freshly processed specins into Warehouse Two.
Heywood nodded in satisfaction and, seeing that Saul had already moved the two transparent containers, turned to leave.
At that mont, a split appeared in the hood behind him. A pair of eyes gleaming with excitent peeked through the opening.
But the excitent didn’t last long.
“Where are your eyes???” A raspy female voice shouted from the back of Heywood’s head, clearly frustrated.
Before Saul could respond, Heywood chuckled and said, “Obviously, you hid them.”
He turned back to Saul and added with a grin, “Of course, if you ever change your mind, we can still make that trade… for that beautiful pair of eyes you’ve hidden away.”
Still smiling, Heywood stepped back and left Warehouse Two.
“Did he recognize the Nightmare Butterfly? Or did he just sense the cocoon’s value?” Saul couldn’t be sure. All he could do was stay alert around soone with such uncanny perception.
He moved Bill and Herman’s bodies into storage.
Since the new specins were still unstable, Saul left them in their transparent containers.
“Interesting… Their consciousnesses are with , and now their corpses are right here too. I suppose they’ve been reunited.”
As he mused on fate’s twists and turns, a sudden chill swept through him and rushed toward the two new specins.
White frost began to form on Saul’s eyebrows and the tips of his hair.
He quickly stepped back two paces to avoid the cold wave. Only then did the room’s temperature return to normal.
It felt like sothing had slipped into the corpses from all around, carried on the air.
“That wasn’t just a drop in temperature—was it a spirit?” Saul entered a semi-imrsive ditation and scanned the two newcors but found nothing. “The chill’s already gone. Whatever it was, the phenonon ended before I could observe it. I’ll have to rember to monitor spirit fluctuations more closely next ti a new specin arrives.”
He made a note while thinking it over.
By now, it was almost ti for his appointnt with Kongsha, so Saul temporarily set aside the inspection of the new specins.
He made his way between the shelves to the item stored beneath Collection No. 117.
He had already checked each numbered item while organizing the warehouse in the past.
So of them looked terrifying and dangerous, while others resembled ordinary objects.
"Item 117, Whispers of the Elves." Saul carefully took down a bottle filled halfway with translucent liquid.
Inside, a twig stood tilted, its tip subrged, with two tender green leaves sprouting just above the surface.
It looked full of life—delicate and cute.
The “Whispers of Elves” was actually the branch inside the bottle—not the bottle or the liquid itself.
Those two components were used to preserve the Whispers of Elves.
According to the warehouse manual, the warnings for Item 117 read: Do not pour out the liquid inside the bottle. Do not remove the branch from the bottle. If either rule is violated, imdiately inform ntor Kaz or Master Gorsa. If you encounter a creature with pale skin, golden eyes, and long ears, do not initiate contact!
Besides that, the manual didn’t record any usage thods for the Whispers of Elves, but Kongsha clearly had her own way. Saul didn’t need to worry about that.
Their agreent was: Saul would move the item just inside the bronze door. At the appointed ti, he’d open the door and let Kongsha in to use Whispers of Elves. She would have one minute, and then leave imdiately.
The most dangerous part for Saul was transporting the Whispers of Elves.
But he wasn’t a powerless First Rank apprentice anymore.
Who hasn’t broken a few rules as a student?
So, after confirming that his diary didn’t issue any warnings, Saul placed the bottle containing Whispers of Elves onto a cart.
Before leaving, he also grabbed a small hourglass tir.
He only planned to give Kongsha a minute—just in case sothing went wrong.
To Saul’s slight surprise, he reached the bronze door without any trouble.
He pulled out the tiny hourglass and waited for 7:55 PM.
It was already 7:53—he wouldn’t have to wait long.
But the wait felt like forever.
Saul kept tapping the cart’s handle with his index finger, growing more and more irritable.
After 60 taps, he looked down at the hourglass again.
Still 7:53…
“Is my sense of ti off, or is the hourglass broken?”
He turned away and counted sixty seconds again. But when he looked back, it was still stuck at 7:53.
“Sothing’s definitely wrong.” Saul glanced at the tender green branch on the cart. “I didn’t touch it. I didn’t open the bottle. So even moving it affects things…”
He cald himself and pushed away the sudden frustration, entering a ditative state on the spot.
In ditation, he realized there had indeed been a minor disturbance in his ntal state earlier—but he hadn’t noticed at all. Fortunately, it wasn’t severe and could be corrected through ditation.
Saul quickly stabilized his ntal fluctuations. When he looked at the ti again—7:56.
He imdiately let go of the cart and walked to the bronze door, pushing it open.
Outside stood Kongsha, her face partially hidden beneath a hood, waiting in the dark corridor.
Darkness seed to press in on her, as though trying to expel her from the first floor of the East Tower.
At the sound of the door opening, she lifted her head like a statue coming to life.
“You’re a minute late. What happened?” she asked.
(End of Chapter)
Reviews
All reviews (0)