The night was thick with an impenetrable darkness, and a dense fog swirled just beyond the door, making even the light from the campfire seem dim.
Ten seconds passed, but the second knock never ca.
There was no sound of breathing from outside, nor any palpable, sinister aura.
"You stay and protect Lu Li. I'll go check," Remi said, wary that the knock might be a trap, and phased through the wooden door.
Lu Li and Anna waited. A mont later, the door creaked open from the outside. In her translucent hand, Remi held a coarse coil of rope. "This was lying on the threshold... Is this the Rope of Descent you were talking about?"
A gust of sea wind swept into the hut, causing the campfire to shrink even further. The black cat, which had been warming itself by the flas, scurried to Lu Li's feet.
Remi shut the door as Anna walked over and took the rope. It was just a worn piece of ordinary hemp, frayed at the ends, with no trace of any energy.
But an ordinary rope couldn't have just appeared on their doorstep in the middle of an anomalous fog.
Just then, the faint, broken whisper of an old man echoed through the hut. "Please... help..."
Anna, holding the rope, seed to hear more. "He's asking you to help him find peace."
Remi glanced at Anna in surprise, doubting that an evil spirit would have co to them with such a request.
"Is there any chance of saving him?" Lu Li asked calmly, his eyes fixed on the rope as if he noticed nothing unusual. "Old Man Miklos could beco a new resident of the Elm Forest."
Lu Li's words dispelled Remi's unfounded suspicions. Perhaps she had been mistaken. Anna, who prioritized Lu Li above all else, knew perfectly well that an evil spirit would be a better protector for him, and the humanity gained from killing it would only make Lu Li more alluring to other anomalies.
"He won't last until dawn, even if we do nothing," Anna said, shaking her head.
Old Man Miklos was already too weak to make a sound. The knock and the fragnted plea seed to have been his last vestiges of strength.
There was no reason to delay. Lu Li unholstered his pistol and unleashed the power of The Atonent on the rope that was Old Man Miklos's body, lying on the floor.
Hiss...
A colorless vapor, like steam, rose from the rope. The next mont, Lu Li's consciousness was drawn into the final mories of Old Man Miklos.
...
Sunlight, tinted with an autumnal gold, stread through the stained-glass windows of the theater.
Rows of empty seats stretched into the distance, dust motes dancing in the air.
Lu Li stood in the aisle, the evening rays falling across his shoes, making him appear as solid as a living person.
Click...
The sound of a chanism echoed through the empty theater, and from the unseen flies above the stage, a rope descended over the auditorium.
The echo faded, and the silence was so profound that even the whisper of the swinging rope was audible.
But the quiet was soon broken by the sound of slow footsteps, and a frail old man erged from the wings onto the stage.
Old Man Miklos looked older than his years, perhaps due to his incredibly stooped back. He trembled as he walked toward the hanging Rope of Descent, yet his steps were steady.
Lu Li leaned forward slightly.
But just then, as if noticing sothing, Old Man Miklos slowly and clumsily knelt, blew on his sleeve, and ticulously wiped a spot on the stage floor.
The action made Lu Li pause.
As he rose, Old Man Miklos nearly stumbled. He was far too old. After resting for a dozen seconds, he approached the rope again. It took him several attempts to tie a noose.
The finished loop was above his head, but Old Man Miklos suddenly straightened his back, slipped his head through the noose, and, like a mischievous child, pushed off with his feet.
In the empty theater, on the deserted stage, Old Man Miklos soon stopped struggling. He hung from the rope, swaying gently, like a swing.
"How I wish... I could go back and see it one more ti..." a faint sigh whispered right next to his ear.
...
The flas of the campfire returned to his vision. Lu Li had erged from the mory of death.
Anna took the holster from Lu Li and picked up The Atonent, which had fallen to the floor after the Rope of Descent vanished. "How much humanity did you get?"
She could clearly sense a change in Lu Li after the Rope of Descent had disappeared.
The change wasn't physical—outwardly, Lu Li looked the sa. It was more like an aroma.
"Hot, delicious food," the thought surfaced in Anna's mind, and she was imdiately alard by it.
At first, she had been repulsed by Lu Li's humanity, but now everything had changed...
"Less than from Sara and Adam..." Lu Li answered after a mont of focus.
Amplified by the Book of the Apocalypse, Sara and Adam had yielded almost nine units of humanity. Old Man Miklos had given him less than seven. Lu Li now possessed nearly twenty units of humanity in total.
"Lu Li's scent is getting harder to hide," Remi remarked. She and her brother were beings from a book and thus immune to such instincts. "Thankfully, we'll finish the shelter tomorrow."
It was a treacherous path. If he didn't increase his humanity, he risked being consud by the dangerous world around him. If he did, he beca like a fawn lost in a dark forest.
Fortunately, the Elm Forest, Anna and the others, and the deep sea stone provided a protective barrier, shielding Lu Li from anomalies.
The fire cald, and the black cat once again crept closer to warm itself. Lu Li opened the "Voice of Sorrow" again.
The title itself suggested it was not a story with a happy ending.
And that was becoming clear.
After drinking the fourth elixir of immortality, Jamie lost his emotions.
Nothing could make him happy, sad, upset, or excited.
Jamie accepted this—emotions caused an alchemist more harm than good. Compared to the flashes of insight that ca with inspiration, it was more important to avoid failures caused by mood swings.
Of course, he thought this not because he didn't value emotions, but because, having lost them, he could no longer feel pain or sorrow.
Losing his emotions ant there was almost nothing left in the world that moved him. Wealth? Status? Won?
All these things were born of emotion and were therefore erased for Jamie.
Only inertia drove him in his alchemical experints, and he did not wait for his body to wither again.
Then, his sense of touch disappeared.
It was similar to losing the sensation of pain, but more severe. Now, Jamie felt nothing at all. He could only navigate the world using his eyes and ears.
After drinking the elixir, it took him several hours just to get out of his basent, and the bruises he'd collected frightened his servants.
Jamie thought he would get used to the absence of touch, just as he had gotten used to everything else, but he failed. Days passed, and he still fell while walking because his body gave no feedback, and he didn't know how much force to apply. Experience was useless here.
But there was sothing worse. Perhaps as a cruel twist of irony, Flo Mitchell described how Jamie began to have trouble controlling his body.
Even then, Jamie did not give up on perfecting the elixir of immortality.
He succeeded. After drinking the elixir from his wheelchair, he was miraculously restored to his twenty-year-old self.
Jamie then created an elixir of emotions, which temporarily brought back his lost feelings, but the rest was gone forever...
One way or another, he had attained immortality.
No one could kill him, and no one could erase him from the flow of ti.
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