Chapter 22: Surprise! Clown!!

Sitting in the carriage heading toward Crimson High-Class Hospital with Pas, Reckton watched the rows of houses continuously retreating outside the carriage window, feeling a faint sense of unease in his heart.

"Driver, could you go a little faster? I'm in a hurry to get to the hospital," Reckton called out to the coachman.

"This is already quite fast. Even though there are fewer pedestrians at night, visibility is poor, and driving too fast makes accidents easy. Are you rushing to the hospital because a family member is sick? Even if you're worried about your loved ones, you can't disregard your own safety!" the coachman said ramblingly.

"You're right, driver," Reckton agreed, shifting his tone.

"Meow~" Pas looked at Reckton in puzzlement.

Reckton didn't respond to it, just stroked the cat's head with one hand while chatting casually with the coachman: "Driver, do you know about what's been happening at Crimson High-Class Hospital lately? If the doctors there weren't more skilled than those at other hospitals, I wouldn't have let my friend go there for treatment."

"Know about it? How could I not? The news has nearly spread throughout the entire city. Only those high and mighty big shots wouldn't know about these things." At the mention of this gossip, the coachman was like someone who'd opened a floodgate—without Reckton needing to deliberately guide him, he poured out everything he knew all at once.

"They say that at the very beginning, peace officers went there twice, but found nothing. Instead, they thought the hospital's patients were filing false reports and issued warnings. After that, the Public Security Bureau stopped handling matters over there. Who knows whether they truly stopped caring or if it was just an excuse for their own incompetence!" The coachman's tone made it clear he had a very poor impression of the Public Security Bureau.

In this era, the contradictions between the common people at the bottom of society and those with a certain class status and power were always the sharpest and most prominent. One side struggled desperately to survive, while the other, caught between the bottom-tier populace and the decisions of high-level figures, became the chain maintaining a fragile order—despised by the lower masses and ignored by upper leadership.

Reckton shook his head and didn't take up the coachman's remark. This was an inevitability when an era developed to a certain degree; it would not shift due to any individual's will.

"Perhaps this is also the reason so many people believe in evil gods! Extreme repression leads to inevitable madness." Reckton reflected inwardly on the original work's depiction of this world, where cult organizations were even more numerous than orthodox church congregations, and terrifying incidents and even disasters occurred from time to time.

If he could, Reckton would be very willing to change this state of affairs, but it was not something he could accomplish—at least not currently, when Sequence Eight was far from enough.

"Oh Fool! It's coming soon—June of 1349, just over half a year away. I need to speed up my digestion of the potion. If I want to do something in this world, Klein's rate of advancement later on is simply too fast. If I can't pull ahead in the early stages, in the end I'll only be able to be a bystander like the members of the Tarot Club at most." A sense of urgency spread through his heart.

"What are you thinking about? Meow~" Pas waved its little paw in front of Reckton's eyes.

"Thinking about life. Why did you suddenly start talking?" Reckton looked in confusion at the black cat Pas standing on his leg.

Pas tilted its neck upward, revealing a thin black cord from which hung a small, jet-black wooden tag. Because the cord and wooden piece were too close in color to Pas's fur, they had remained hidden in the downy fur around Pas's neck the whole time—Reckton had never noticed before that Pas had such an object on it.

"No wonder you hated it so much when I pinched your neck—you were hiding something!" Glancing at the coachman, who had turned a blind eye to what just happened with Pas, Reckton roughly understood the object's function.

"Does it weaken your presence? Or does it dull ordinary people's perception?" Reckton asked.

"Of course it blocks ordinary people's perception of me! It makes them feel that whatever I do is perfectly normal. Of course, I can't do anything too stimulating to them either—like jumping onto an ordinary person, for instance. That would make their cognition break through this cognitive barrier, meow~" Pas lifted its head proudly and gazed up at Reckton.

"A mystical item with not much use, but on you it's just right," Reckton nodded.

"This carriage is so slow! How much longer until we get to the hospital, meow~" Pas jumped back onto Reckton's shoulder and complained as it watched the streetlamps and houses continuously retreating on both sides.

"Whoa~~" The horse pulling the carriage in front seemed to have hit something and stumbled to the ground, dragging the entire carriage into a sideways flip.

"Meow~ Meow~!" Pas lost its footing and was flung out of the carriage. Reckton immediately followed, leaping clear of the carriage, rolling several times on the ground before scrambling to his feet. Fortunately, having just been subjected to an entire afternoon of one-sided abuse from Thea, his body's instinctive reactions were still active—after jumping clear of the carriage, he'd protected his vital points well. It was just that his back was a bit sore from the impact.

After spotting Reckton, Pas reached his side in a few light bounds. As a cat, this fellow had already twisted its body in midair while being thrown from the carriage, then landed gracefully.

"What happened, meow~" Pas asked aloud.

"The carriage was tripped by vines on the road. There's likely been a battle between Beyonders up ahead. Vines appearing in the middle of the road that can trip a carriage—that's very much the handiwork of the Earth Mother Church." Reckton had already seen the situation ahead clearly when he got up.

The originally fairly clean and flat road now had some potholes, and on the ground were several vines and withered leaves even larger than Pas the cat. The carriage had just been tripped by one of the vines on the ground.

Reckton stepped forward and helped the coachman to his feet, then gave him some money for the fare and medical expenses: "This money is for your carriage fare and injury treatment. Both you and this horse need to get treated. I'll be leaving first—the hospital isn't far from here, I can walk the rest of the way myself."

"Pas, keep up," Reckton called back, then headed toward Crimson High-Class Hospital.

Pas followed lightly at Reckton's side; the vines and dead branches on the ground had no effect on it at all. The person and cat soon disappeared from the coachman's sight.

"Ugh, why is the ground covered in vines and stuff everywhere, meow." After jumping over another vine, Pas grumbled.

"The Earth Church controls the Cultivator pathway. At Sequence Seven, one already has the ability to catalyze plant growth and mutation. It looks like a Harvest Priest fought with someone here. We need to be careful—whichever side it is, they won't necessarily be friendly to us," Reckton analyzed.

"Cultivator? Isn't that the ancient Alchemist, meow~" Pas asked in confusion.

"You know about the ancient Alchemist?" Reckton turned to look at the black cat with some surprise.

Being stared at by Reckton made Pas a bit restless; it shook its body twice, wanting to change the subject.

"Bang!" The sound of a heavy object hitting the ground came from ahead. Reckton and Pas exchanged a glance.

"Go up ahead and see what it is," Reckton signaled Pas to scout.

"No, why don't you go? I'm just a cat!" Pas immediately shook its head and refused upon hearing this.

"You're on the Arbitrator pathway, and you're a cat—you won't arouse suspicion, and you have the ability to protect yourself. My pathway has no direct combat ability in the early stages at all, so of course you should be the one scouting ahead," Reckton said with a perfectly straight face, coaxing Pas to go ahead and investigate.

"Alright, meow~ but if something happens, you have to come rescue me right away," Pas nodded, its cat face looking very seriously at Reckton.

"No problem. We know each other this well—do you still not trust me?" Reckton patted his chest in guarantee.

Pas meowed once and quickly ran toward where the sound had come from. Reckton didn't just wait idly in place either—he drew the pistol from the gun pouch at his waist, placed his other hand in his coat pocket gripping a Confinement Talisman, and cautiously moved forward. Reckton had previously made marks on two talismans so he could tell which one he was holding without looking.

"Meow!" Pas's cry came from ahead, full of panic. Reckton abandoned caution and rushed forward quickly.

Ahead, Pas was facing off against a clown wearing a tall red top hat, a red tailcoat and trousers, dark red leather shoes, and exaggerated makeup—a face as white as if covered in flour, yet bearing a grin that stretched all the way to the ears. More precisely, Pas was retreating step by step, while the clown maintained his grotesquely pathological elegance, advancing step by step toward Pas and the corpse beside it.

The instant he saw the clown, Reckton's forward stride came to an abrupt halt. Invisible fear flooded his heart.

"Oh! Little kitty, didn't expect you to be here! I searched for you at the hospital for so long—the days without you to play games with me are truly exceptionally long! Let's play together!" The clown's voice was somewhat hoarse and crazed, carrying a peculiar enticement—anyone listening to him speak would unconsciously fall into contemplation and bewilderment.

"Don't! Listen to him speak! Hurry! Kill him!" The body lying beside Pas was actually not yet dead. It let out a painful voice, reaching out as if trying to grab something, but ultimately its arm fell powerlessly.

Reckton slowly approached while discreetly activating the Eye of Secrets, observing the scene before him. The fellow who clearly already looked like a corpse in Reckton's eyes could still speak, and after Reckton calmed his emotions that had been strained by the shock of suddenly seeing the clown he feared most, he realized that facing this clown again, the pressure the other party exerted was far less terrifying than the last time.

On the person who had already appeared as a corpse in Reckton's eyes, a strange spiritual radiance appeared, filled with traces of artificial modification. A piece of information surfaced in Reckton's mind: "Alchemical Modification." As for the clown constantly approaching Pas, through the feedback from the Eye of Secrets, Reckton discovered that the other party was actually only Sequence Eight. Though it was somewhat strange—the spiritual radiance on the other party's body was nearly twice as dense as that of an ordinary Sequence Eight—he was indeed only a Sequence Eight. However, the clown's body likewise bore traces of stitching—not stitching of body or soul, but of two different types of Beyonder characteristics stitched together.

The clown drew closer and closer to Pas; Pas's fur was about to stand on end.

"Meow!"

Pas let out a threatening cry, the sound carrying an air of authority that made one unconsciously want to submit to it—this was the ability of a Sequence Nine Arbitrator. The clown seemed to be stimulated by it and suddenly charged at Pas.

Pas reflexively pounced aside. The clown didn't touch Pas, but he didn't stop either—instead, he continued charging forward.

"His target is me—he was just pretending," Reckton suddenly realized. The clown was fast, already right before his eyes.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!" Reckton rapidly drew his gun and fired, not caring whether he'd aimed or not. At the same time, he quickly shifted his body, dodging to the side.

(End of this chapter)