"I'm so sorry," the woman said softly, her voice heavy with gloom. "My husband disappeared a week ago. I'm sorry, I don't know where he went."
"Disappeared? Is there anything else you can tell ?"
"His... his friend said that Verne went missing during a hospital visit. I'm... I'm just so worried about him..."
As she stamred through her explanation, tears began to stream down her face. Jenkins took so ti to console her, then politely declined her invitation to co inside, stepping back out onto the street.
The purple thread had vanished the mont Jenkins laid eyes on Mrs. Barnard.
"Missing for a week? Then who was it I saw the other evening?"
He stopped in his tracks. Soti, sohow, two unfamiliar n had appeared in front of him. A glance over his shoulder revealed two more, blocking his retreat.
"Ah, careless of . As an Enchanter under the Church, it's only natural for Barnard's ho to be under surveillance after he disappeared."
With that thought, Jenkins raised his hands above his head. "Gentlen, is there a problem?"
"Who are you?"
One of the n asked the question. He looked vaguely familiar, perhaps one of the Enchanters who had rushed to the scene with Captain Bincy after the divine essence was sacrificed on that stormy night.
"I'm a friend of Verne Barnard," Jenkins began, weaving a lie on the spot. "We were classmates back in school, haven't seen each other in ages. My company sent to Nolan City on business, so I thought I'd look him up."
Jenkins was spinning a tale out of thin air.
"Sir, please forgive the intrusion, but Barnard's disappearance a week ago involves a great deal. We must take you in for questioning. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."
His words were courteous, but his actions were anything but.
He reached out to grab Jenkins, who sidestepped the grasp.
"Apologies, but I have other matters to attend to. Gentlen, farewell."
While he was talking, he had been backing toward the edge of the street. Then, with a sudden leap, he grabbed the top of the low wall behind him, activated his ability, and pushed off with both feet to flip over it.
The man who had been speaking rushed to follow, but as soon as he vaulted onto the wall, Jenkins, who hadn't fled, cleanly kicked him back down.
Unsure of who this portly middle-aged man was, the remaining three didn't dare act rashly. They clambered onto the low wall together, only to find the other side empty.
The four n in black jackets hurried through a narrow alley strewn with trash, passing a drunkard leaning against a wall and vomiting, before finally erging back onto the main road from the other end.
"Wait, sothing was wrong with that drunk."
"He couldn't have been the fat man, that face..."
"This alley is a dead end. Why would a drunk wander in there to be sick? Dammit, we've been had!"
It was, of course, Jenkins. Knowing he probably couldn't outrun the four n, he had taken cover, retracted his black robe, and then put it on again, instantly assuming a new appearance.
He vaulted back over the low wall and glanced at Barnard's house from a distance. Then, changing his appearance once more, Jenkins turned and walked away in the opposite direction.
"He went missing during a hospital visit?"
Jenkins mulled it over. "So, the truth is likely that he went missing while on a mission at the hospital. A hospital... that word reminds , I haven't forgotten about the incident at Nolan Public Hospital No. 5. So, Mr. Barnard was ordered to guard the seal on the malevolent spirit, and then he was possessed?" Ꞧ𝔞₦о฿Êș
He then recalled what the Corpse Gentleman had said—"They'll find out sooner or later." Could what they were going to find out be the fact that the seal was completely useless?
The incident with the malevolent spirit at the hospital had been going on since the day Jenkins transmigrated. Due to the Church's depleted strength, the so-called spirit was sealed within the hospital. They had assud the main force returning from overseas would resolve it, but now, it seed he had stumbled headfirst into the ss.
"Mr. Barnard saved my life."
He stopped walking, gazing at the two roads before him, one to the left and one to the right. One was a wide main road leading toward his ho, where the lights of carriage lamps glowed in the distance. If he took that path, he would soon be asleep in his own bed, his cat curled up beside him. The other was a narrow alley leading to the hospital, a path that cut through the slums, where he might encounter thieves and robbers looking to make a quick fortune.
"But this is too dangerous. It's not sothing I can handle."
As he hesitated, soone made the decision for him.
A hand clapped him on the back.
Jenkins spun around to find a white fog had risen behind him. Mr. Barnard stood within it, his clothes dark and tightly wrinkled, his pale face as if coated in a layer of frost. Only the whites of his eyes remained, and they were fixed squarely on Jenkins.
The Spirit Striking Cane was too recognizable, so he hadn't brought it with him today.
"Mr. Barnard?"
He called out the man's na as he retreated rapidly.
Barnard didn't move, but the white fog surged forward, keeping pace with Jenkins's retreat. In monts, his surroundings were a blanket of white.
He took a deep breath and summoned the candle from his spirit, holding it high in his hand. The fog slowly receded, but he was no longer on the wide street. The deep, enchanting red and blue moons had vanished from the sky above.
This was a corridor. Judging by the sll and the style, it was Nolan Public Hospital No. 5. Jenkins had been here with Captain Bincy to treat the wounded, so he was familiar with the decor.
"This is bad."
He sighed softly, standing perfectly still. In the distance, a sound like pounding echoed—thump, thump, thump.
After leaving the Corpse Gentleman's gathering, Jenkins had grown suspicious of the white fog shrouding the abandoned hospital. From the materials Papa Oliver had him study, he had learned the truth about that mist—it was Spiritual Fog.
Much like a Fear spell, it was a special ability inherent to certain spirits, but its effect was rely to disorient living creatures. Jenkins suspected that this was how the Corpse Gentleman was able to hide so securely in the morgue.
Under extrely rare circumstances, the red incantation, Spiritual Fog, could mutate into Spirit Transfer, an ability that affected space itself. It was the very source of classic horror story tropes—opening a bedroom door to find a barren wasteland, or pushing open a bathroom door with a lantern only to step into the entrance of a haunted house.
Jenkins still rembered, back when he had just beco Papa Oliver's apprentice, his imagination still running wild from all the novels he had read before transmigrating, he had naively asked a question about space:
"Papa, do things like spatial storage items exist? You know, like a suitcase that's actually a zoo, or a ring that can hold all the furniture in a house?"
"You can have anything you want in your dreams, Mr. Williams."
That was rely the beginning of the warnings.
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