"Ah me, I really thought you were about to die. I had my emotions all worked up and was even visualizing how to hold your corpse with just the right dramatic sorrow. Then I stepped inside, and—tch—I have to say, I'm just a tiny bit disappointed."
Karen had told Philomena to step outside and keep everyone at bay, whether reinforcements from the Church of Order or the Church of the Crypt. But there was one man whom she clearly couldn't keep out—or rather, whom no one would even try to block.
Neo walked up to Karen and squatted down. Looking at Karen's present condition, he grinned.
"Yes, that's the feeling. A languid soul, battered spirits. Unbearably uncomfortable, aren't you? Desperate for a rest, aren't you? Dying to smash a fist into my face to shut me up from spewing nonsense like this, aren't you?"
"A time will come when you get injured again, too."
"Pfft. You make it sound as if you were ever gentle and attentive when I was wounded.
"I had just finished my talk with Lennox in the embassy's secret room and stepped outside when I sensed the signal flare you launched into the sky. On my way here, I was genuinely worried that skeleton was going to slaughter you."
Neo reached out and pinched the motionless, bronze-colored skeleton standing beside them.
"Turns out your luck held out. Wasn't this skeleton supposed to be formidable? Yet in the end, you still managed to do it in. How did you pull it off? I figured this entire block would be flattened to the ground at the very least."
"She isn't dead."
"*She?*" Neo caught the crucial detail, then reached down to feel the skeleton's pelvis. "This is a male skeleton."
Then Neo rolled his neck slightly and continued, "A puppet avatar?"
Karen nodded. "Yes."
With that, Karen gave a brief account of what had transpired.
When he finished, Karen asked Neo, "Did you guess that she might come to this restaurant?"
Neo shook his head. "Of course not. I was worried Philomena wouldn't be able to keep her temper in check during the mission and might deliberately stomp people to death, so I just sent her away beforehand. That little girl only listens seriously to you; she treats anyone else's orders with sheer indifference.
"Besides, as you know, almost our entire team this time is from Wien, and the local specialties here are dreadful. I figured I'd find them some food from back home so we could have meals delivered. Good food is essential to keeping everyone's morale high."
"Really?"
"Hey, of course it's true. It's not like I could divine that she would come here."
"Why do I find that hard to believe?"
"Why wouldn't you believe it?"
"Because if you hadn't anticipated it, you would have claimed the credit for yourself and told me you saw it coming all along and had everything under control. Right now, you're doing the exact opposite."
"Heh, well, you can ask your manservant. In fact, after receiving the dossier you sent over and reading through it the first time, I told your manservant that this skeleton..."
"Resembled Alfred?"
"No, I thought it resembled you."
"Me?"
"So when I tried to deduce her behavioral logic, I pulled a little trick and substituted you into the skeleton's shoes.
"Then I thought: after pulling off such a massive feat, standing by to watch the Order priests running around like headless chickens after being played for fools... at a moment like that, you would probably crave a bite of Wien cuisine—even if you normally think of it as pig swill.
"She claimed she revered you. Reverence is reserved for idols, so wouldn't imitation naturally follow?
"My line of reasoning wasn't wrong, was it? She really does share that touch of pretentiousness with you."
"Heh."
"What a shame. In the end, you only wiped out a puppet avatar. If you could have slain her true body, that would have been a tremendous feat. As things stand... we can't even falsely claim the credit. If we turn this skeleton over and claim you killed the mastermind, what happens when she turns up alive somewhere else a while later? We'd be in an awkward spot."
"What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking this skeletal frame is quite a prize. Since we can't claim any credit for it anyway—and destroying a mere avatar doesn't count for much—let's not hand the skeleton over. Let's keep it for ourselves.
"How about this: take this frame back to... back to the hotel. I'll stay here to clean up the mess and report that you were injured."
"All right, sounds good."
"Can you still walk?"
"It's not a big problem." Karen stood up. "I'll go back and take a bath."
Neo reminded him, "After your bath, remember to write down the names of every woman connected to your life, then cross-check them one by one. Take your time, don't rush. I know it's going to be a monumental undertaking."
"Still, it's possible she knows me while I don't know her. Or perhaps she assumed I would recognize her, but in reality, I don't."
"True. If we count mere familiar faces, the list would be endless—practically any female colleague you've ever crossed paths with could be a suspect. But we can look at it from another angle.
"Just like when we fancy a girl or find ourselves interested in one, we usually look for chances to show our faces in front of her to catch her attention, right?
"Like schoolboys pulling pranks just to get the girl who made their hearts race to look their way a couple more times.
"So I suspect she must have left some impression on you, and you should at least remember her name."
Saying this, Neo leaned in closer to Karen's face and asked, "Tell me, do you already have a suspect in mind?"
Karen looked at Neo in silence.
Neo shrugged. "Inconvenient to say? Or are you worried that speaking it aloud will spoil your intuition? Fine, don't tell me just yet. Follow your own instincts and look into it slowly. Once you have actual clues and evidence, tell me, and we'll go catch her together.
"Wait, that's not right..."
Neo rubbed his chin with one hand.
"Why would we go catch her? Wouldn't turning her into a partner maximize our profits?"
"Some things cannot be weighed purely by profit."
"Fair point. Just like having someone peek at your diary—utterly unforgivable."
Karen reached out and grasped the skeleton. "I'll take it back to the hotel first."
"Go on, go ahead. Then stay at the hotel and get some good rest. I'll take charge of the special task force's affairs. This job is getting easier by the day. We know full well the target of our investigation is no longer within the Church of the Crypt, yet we still have to put on a grand show of investigating.
"Still, that works out fine. Spares us the headache of real work, and we can quietly rake in point coupons in peace."
Behind Karen, a pair of black wings sprouted, wrapping around the skeleton. An instant later, his figure dissolved into a plume of black mist that drifted out of the restaurant.
Watching Karen's departing figure, Neo smiled.
"I'll bet anything you already have someone in mind."
***
The prisoner carriage rocked gently as it traveled along the road. Inside sat a pale little girl who looked no more than three or four years old. She was draped in a white coat, her pale hair spilling down loosely, making her appear exceedingly frail.
When Muri had first arrived at the bone dragon's breeding grounds with his men, the little girl had had no clothes on, merely curling up in a corner and trembling.
It was hard to imagine that a bone dragon would look like this.
However, this also testified to the bone dragon's extraordinary quality. How long had it been since she was born? Yet she was already capable of assuming human form.
Just days ago, when the Dragon lineage gathered to pressure the main city over Layio's death, how many ancient dragons had there been who couldn't even manage human transformation?
This was dictated by the present era's conditions. By the standards of the previous era, the so-called 'pureblood' non-sub-species dragons of the Church of the Crypt's Dragon lineage were mostly malformed runts whose development had been stunted.
Their current 'pureblood' status was entirely defined by contrast with the 'sub-species.' Before the previous era, they themselves would have been considered sub-species.
It came down to a scarcity of resources. Nowadays, aside from the dragon nobility who could secure adequate supplies, and a handful of prodigies within the lineage capable of breaking their bloodline shackles to achieve a certain degree of growth, the vast majority of dragons could only endure bitter hardship and waste their lives away.
Karen had once told Augie: *Without the Church of Order, wouldn't this world have become your pasture?*
And that was indeed the truth. The Church of Order had used the *Code of Order* to force the entire church circle to take a step back. Yet the true reason behind the church circle's lingering resentment toward the Church of Order was never merely a matter of prestige or status.
Once order was firmly established, races that had once lived as plunderers by virtue of their own strength were forced to abide by the rules. Compared to ordinary mortals, their status was still higher, but compared to the lives their ancestors had enjoyed, it was an outright plunge.
The Church of Order had genuinely struck at the fundamental interests of the entire church circle.
Every high-ranking figure within Order knew full well what kind of powder keg they had been keeping a lid on over the millennium since the demise of Light.
This was the root source of Order's internal contradictions. In an environment like Order, true utopianism could hardly take root.
Even Lord Theisen, the figure most steeped in idealism, held theoretical demands—along with his Traditionalist faction—that rested on a single principle: only by continuing along the momentum the Church of Order had maintained for a thousand years could they preserve the current balance for as long as possible. Any policy attempting to alter that inertia would ultimately cause it to collapse, triggering conflicts ahead of time that could otherwise have been deferred until the right opportunity arose.
The Fundamentalist organizations, on the other hand, viewed maintaining that inertia as a betrayal of the ideals of Order. After all, they had finally arrived at an era where the gods did not appear, and the Church of Order stood supreme; they ought to seize this opportunity to uproot and eradicate the other churches one by one, realizing Order's ultimate aspiration.
The Reformist faction, led by the current High Priest, was far more pragmatic. They believed internal contradictions were currently too severe, requiring resolution from within and the centralization of authority first. Simultaneously, they advocated partitioning, instigating, and siphoning the church circle based on the prevailing circumstances, adopting a more proactive approach to counter an increasingly complex situation.
In the eyes of each of the three camps, the other two were 'heretics.'
The study group Alfred had established gathered the 'believers' at regular intervals for seminars. Aside from studying Section Chief Karen's notes, they also incorporated discussions on contemporary political policies.
Muri still remembered a phrase Mr. Alfred often repeated: *We will encounter these exact same problems sooner or later, so we must prepare our homework in advance.*
Furthermore, Muri had noticed that the viewpoints Alfred occasionally revealed largely coincided with the course charted by the High Priest, which seemed to reflect Section Chief Karen's views as well.
The greatest divergence lay in Alfred's insistence, during every session, on maintaining criticism of the 'gods'—especially the God of Order.
Though every time Mr. Alfred uttered those words, Muri felt his heart wasn't entirely in them.
If his section chief were truly to establish a new order one day, just like the God of Order in the previous era, where would that leave his section chief himself?
This logical puzzle of 'opposing oneself' was something the young master of the Benda family had never quite managed to wrap his head around.
Just then, Muri noticed the Fire of Order blooming across the distant sky. It carried the aura of his section chief.
Immediately, the Order priests escorting the prisoner carriage and the handlers prepared to rush over in support. Muri hesitated for a moment before sharply raising his hand in rebuke.
"No one moves! Maintain the escort!"
He had few men to spare in the first place, and unlike other squads tasked merely with sealing off clues or taking custody of witnesses, his unit was escorting a living bone dragon.
Frail as she appeared right now, who knew whether it was an act?
Moreover, Muri knew the bone dragon had always been his section chief's objective. Right now, his primary duty was to guard this dragon securely.
Besides, the breeding facility was located in the outskirts of the main city, far from where the signal had been released. Even if they rushed over now, they wouldn't be of much help; they would largely just be showing up for the sake of showing up.
This was the advantage of being a 'believer.' Unlike subordinates who were not part of the circle, they didn't need to fret over workplace taboos.
Yet the moment the skeleton 'committed suicide' in Old Ville's restaurant far away, the faint, sealed mark on the forehead of the girl curled inside the carriage cracked and shattered.
She had been created by the Grand Necromancer Morindi using ancient dragon remains. But shortly after her birth, the skeleton had carried her off to raise her.
From another perspective, the skeleton had genuinely intended to keep his promise and present this bone dragon to Karen as a gift, even going so far as to train her specifically for that purpose.
However, once the skeleton 'died,' the restrictions placed upon the bone dragon naturally lost their effect.
The young girl raised her head and looked around at her surroundings. A thick malice seeped into her eyes, and she parted her lips.
"*Roar—!*"
A tempestuous wave of necromantic aura blasted outward in an instant. With her power no longer bound, she shattered the prisoner carriage with a single punch.
"Stop her!"
Muri truly hadn't anticipated that the bone dragon had been concealing her strength all along. Seeing the dragon break out and prepare to flee, he shouted the order while charging forward himself to block her path.
The girl did not transform into a dragon. Instead, her figure blurred, and she lunged straight at Muri with outstretched claws.
*Clang!*
Muri raised his buckler to deflect the blow while drawing his short blade, slashing straight at the girl.
*Clang—!*
The two clashed in rapid succession. In terms of momentum, Muri did not fall behind. What the Benda family excelled at most was one-on-one combat, as their ancestral martial techniques emphasized balanced offense and defense. On top of that, Muri had absorbed a potent tonic alongside Karen within the Gate of Samsara; much like Philomena, his body held reserves that were still being digested.
The girl, on the other hand, clearly had no idea how to fight. She simply scratched frantically with all her might while using the sheer toughness of her physical body to withstand Muri's strikes over and over again.
Yet certain abilities didn't require formal training to use. Such was the nature of racial talent—something that defied reason and could never be envied.
As blow after blow was exchanged, a dark sheen gradually settled over Muri's body—the residual contamination of the necromantic aura radiating from the girl.
During their next exchange, a dark beam of light suddenly burst from the girl's pupils. Muri blocked it with his buckler, but the beam instantly resonated with the residual necromantic aura clinging to his body, causing a surging wall of necromantic fire to ignite across him.
It was an artless mastery where formlessness surpassed form; even the girl herself hadn't known she could fight like that, let alone Muri having any hope of anticipating or defending against it. Muri was forced to halt his advance and begin purifying himself; otherwise, his soul would likely be incinerated into nothingness.
The girl did not pursue the attack. Instead, she immediately shot upward into the air. The surrounding Order priests moved swiftly to intercept her, cutting off her upward escape route. But she quickly flipped upside down and dived headfirst into the ground.
As she plummeted, segment upon segment of elongated bone erupted along her body.
*Boom!*
The ground caved in, blasted open into a deep tunnel. By the time the Order priests rushed over, the chasm was already fathomless, with no telling where it led.
Muri's expression turned grim. He barked orders immediately: "Leave a few behind to escort the witnesses and deliver the report. The rest of you, follow me!"
With that, Muri plunged straight down into the subterranean hole, and the other priests followed in rapid succession.
After pursuing her through the tunnel for an immense distance without catching any sight of an end, Muri couldn't help cursing internally:
*Damn it, is this thing a dragon or a gopher?!*
***
Karen stepped out of the bathtub. He had originally planned to take a long soak and get some rest, but while lying in the tub, he had spotted a black crow hovering outside the floor-to-ceiling window.
The hotel was shielded by defensive formations, preventing the crow from entering through the window. Yet Neo and Alfred knew full well that he needed rest; if they still sent word, something had clearly happened.
After changing his clothes, Karen conducted a quick self-assessment of his condition. The soul exhaustion would certainly cause some adverse effects. He recalled, however, that the haughty young mistress had a stash of cigarettes from the Church of Thunder. Should he go to her room and grab a few packs?
Leaving the bedroom, he stepped into the spacious living room. The moment he emerged, his gaze sharpened.
Sitting on the sofa, dressed in the vestments of an Order priest, was the very skeleton he had brought back—and it was looking straight at him.
What was more, as Karen stepped into view, it slowly rose to its feet, curling its mouth into a smile.
"Heh, Karen, you didn't think I'd be able to awaken again, did you? Meow."
Chapter 628