Chapter 258: An Apprentice Opportunity

For Kraft, the thing he most wanted to do right now was go have a proper talk with his student, yet the current situation did not allow placing this matter at the top of the schedule, even though Yvonne was now sitting in the adjacent restaurant, enjoying an extra-large version of a breakfast to calm her nerves.

He needed to first check on the intruder whose integrity was worrying, accept a detailed report on last night's specifics, soothe the anxious and suspicious Doctor Dai Wei and the patients, and find someone to clean up the traces covering the walls and floor upstairs.

After passing through the initial period of shock, Dai Wei felt somewhat ashamed of his reaction last night, thinking he should have acted more firmly, in a manner befitting the owner of the clinic, rather than stuffing his body into a wardrobe like a suckling pig walking willingly into an oven—that was his own phrasing.

But post-event courage and stubbornness could not stop his hands, holding hot tea, from trembling. As an ordinary physician whose life was too far removed from such intense confrontation, his lips were still somewhat pale now, as if some of the blood on the corridor had been drawn from him.

The professor simply comforted Dai Wei, stating that his actions at the time were entirely correct. No matter what, a living person in a cupboard was better than a dead person appearing anywhere.

As for the dead... the dead were temporarily placed in the backyard; the nearby coffin shop should thank them for their timely help, since someone's arrival had caused a certain decline in the shop's turnover.

Come to think of it, would Green reimburse the coffin money to the monks under his command? This strange thought jumped around in his mind for a while. After all, the priest did not look like someone with particularly ample finances, nor could he violate precepts to seek personal gain through his status; he did not know if the Church provided them with special operational funds.

Lifting the cover, a heavy smell of rust and blood spread out; even a mask could hardly reduce that discomfort.

This time, none of the monks were inside; the one among them with the most severe injuries was resting quietly in a single room somewhere in the clinic, with no immediate danger to life.

Of the three lying here, the one who was relatively intact died from a sharp weapon wound; the other two were less presentable. The one with normal body proportions had lost one side of the jaw and the frontal-temporal skull bone, as well as the right palm.

And the intruder who was obviously taller and had slender arms had almost half of his left hypochondrium area missing; this effect came from a secondary injury, and even his altered body structure could not save him.

Thanks to the injuries, Kraft did not need to open the chest cavity with his own hands to see that his tall physique actually stemmed from a kind of "stretching"; the bones on the body's longitudinal axis had replicated extra parts—thoracic vertebrae and corresponding ribs, following the same pattern as the arm extension.

His alteration was more obvious, with a degree of progression even deeper than that of the previous guy who had cast some kind of magic on a rainy night.

On the bent forearm, Kraft found a gray-white foreign object; its volume was small, only about the size of a thumb knuckle, embedded in a part that did not affect bone and muscle movement, and the position was very shallow.

It looked like it was intentionally designed; Kraft had not discovered a solid form of the black liquid. Perhaps the difference between the two lay in the fact that the previous person's transformation was a side effect, while the alteration on this body was a deliberate allowance.

"I think we have found out who he was." The monk in charge of guarding handed a hammer to Kraft; this thing had almost landed on a skull.

A simple tool made of an iron block and a wooden handle; rather than a weapon, it was more suitable to call it a tool. The surface of the smooth handle had a few carbonization marks, as if it had frequently contacted some high-temperature object.

"Sparks flying, right? A blacksmith's hammer. It's not hard to find a blacksmith shop that closed down in recent years; the owner was the kind with good craftsmanship, supplying goods to many people, and Mo Lisen might have been among them."

"It was probably last winter when the shop's female owner passed away. The neighbors all thought he just went to stay somewhere less likely to stir up sadness; they never expected him to appear here."

"When people's minds are fragile, they need to seek support, and evil often takes advantage of the opening." The monk commented with some regret, "Perhaps this is not entirely his fault."

"Perhaps." Kraft nodded, putting away that dark gray-white stone-like embedded object, "Their sphere of influence is far wider than previously thought."

He had thought it was just a heresy spreading mainly among scholars, but the two attacks completely changed this notion; obviously, the composition of members was more complex than imagined, and they had the ability to promise certain things to attract more people.

What is worse than a heresy? Of course, it is when the heresy actually possesses the ability to create "miracles."

Moreover, it was not just that; even though the city's surface was under control, the other side still had an unconstrained transit system.

Several monks gathered around the overturned stone slabs in the back alley, unsure whether they should go down to search; the filthy water had erased all traces, leaving no value for reverse tracking, and it was unknown where those people had come from.

This was the first time it was truly confirmed that heretics were using the sewers to operate; this level of utilization far exceeded that of other peers, reaching specific locations as familiarly as ants know their underground palaces, an incredibility even greater than being touched within the perimeter by a large man with a hammer in the middle of the night.

"That's a bit ridiculous." Let alone underground, even the streets and alleys on the surface of Dunling could make a first-time visitor dizzy; perhaps staying underground for a long time had truly allowed them to develop some special skills.

"Thinking about it, it's not necessarily so. Have you searched the surrounding area? Maybe they entered from somewhere nearby and only walked a short distance below, rather than setting out from some secret gathering place buried deep and traveling all the way here along the underground waterways."

"We will." The monks expressed agreement, "We are very sorry for this incident; we believe you also understand this is a protective... observation."

They were busy figuring out the attackers' origins and were not in a good position to explain why a group of Church personnel had happened to appear near the clinic last night; they soon hurriedly dispersed.

Although said that way, the matter was still very strange. Kraft had not forgotten the malicious surveillance he felt not long ago when returning from the cemetery at night; it came from the sewers, and even his sudden, unannounced attack had failed to catch it.

Facts proved that the underground of Dunling indeed possessed a complex structure no less than the surface; it was just that someone was now making use of it.

The heresy showed an extraordinary familiarity with this underground system, and how they found that hexagonal hall remained a mystery.

【There couldn't possibly be a map, right?】

The more Kraft thought about it, the more he felt this possibility existed, but where would such a map be, one capable of depicting such a massive three-dimensional underground structure, and why could the heretics find it while he could not?

That answer was probably still waiting underground to be unearthed.

And now, with conditions lacking, the experiment was difficult to advance; the only things left on his hands were those of the clinic. Rather than staying on the surface doing repetitive labor, it would be better to take some time to personally go into the sewers with Green.

The weather has been clear recently, belonging to a controllable risk state; perhaps he could also take Yvonne along, letting the harsh environment and tedious search work dispel the girl's unrealistic enthusiasm for the mysterious world.

Come to think of it, the age at which most squire-knights began training was roughly the same; if she truly had an interest in this area, now was the time for initial contact; some formal training guidance was better than her fumbling around privately.

Even if unsuccessful, an apprentice opportunity could temporarily satisfy her desire to participate in serious matters and make her realize what she would have to face in the future.