Ah!

The Enrold Town administration hall. A five-story building, it was the tallest structure in the vicinity, offering a commanding vantage point ideal for observing the headquarters of the Church of the Earth's Core across the street. Wayne strolled into the administration hall and made his way leisurely up to the rooftop terrace. He encountered no obstacles along the way—no one stopped him, let alone asked to see identification. For no other reason than that everyone had gone to join the spectacle. Even civil servants could not resist free eggs. "Dammit, what has this country come to!" Wayne grumbled under his breath, taking out a pair of binoculars to look toward the headquarters of the Church of the Earth's Core. It consisted of four two-story buildings arranged in a square layout, each occupying one corner. The central plaza was a bustling sea of heads, packed with believers who had come for the gathering, virtually all of them local Enrold townsfolk. The binocular lenses were somewhat blurry, obscuring fine details, but Wayne could vaguely make out several sharply dressed dignitaries standing alongside a bald man clad entirely in white. Even if he was not the cult's leader, he was certainly a high-ranking official of the church. Wayne lowered the binoculars, took off his gentleman's hat, and gave it a flick. A white dove hopped out with a flutter. Wayne pulled a few kernels of corn from his coat pocket to feed it before sending the dove airborne. Murmuring an incantation under his breath, he held two fingers together over his right eye. His darkened right field of vision suddenly flared with light. Linking with the dove, he looked down at the Church of the Earth's Core headquarters from high above. Flapping its wings, the dove settled into a tree near the plaza. Wayne observed from close range, getting a clear look at the bald man's true features. The bald man was quite old, his face deeply lined. His most striking feature was the complete absence of eyebrows, lending his face a distinctly sinister cast. Beside him, the dignitaries in sharp suits treated the elderly bald man with utter deference, bowing slightly to receive his instructions with expressions of stiff restraint bordering on outright servility. Seeing this, Wayne was basically certain that the Church of the Earth's Core had employed mind-controlling magic to sweep up the dignitaries of Enrold Town in one fell swoop. Calming his mind, Wayne focused his gaze on the old man's parting lips, reading them to eavesdrop on their conversation. It was a skill inherent to his original body. As Wayne continued his meditations, his mind had grown increasingly formidable, and his control over his body had become more effortless. In the process of tapping into his potential, various little techniques had steadily awakened. Rather than being newly awakened, it was more accurate to say they were being revived. Disguise, reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance, proficient vehicle handling, combat... While soaking in the bathtub two days ago, he had discovered that he could hold his breath for a remarkably long time. He had never practiced it, yet his body possessed an innate mastery of water and knew plenty of underwater tricks. Lip reading was another of those revived skills. Wayne had not specifically practiced lip reading. That craft demanded practice to achieve mastery, relying entirely on experience. Consequently, even with the skill reawakened, he could decipher only a handful of words. "Today is extremely important... the Great Lord, the Void..." "Two days ago an infiltrator... headquarters... already detained..." "Might be accomplices..." As Wayne was reading, the bald elder abruptly stopped. The moment his gaze shifted to the dove, he locked eyes directly with Wayne. Wayne's heart jolted as a powerful mental shock surged through the line of sight. Powerful! But... Compared to the world behind the Gate of Truth, it hardly seemed like much. Wayne had endured the ordeal of the starry cosmos, where his mind and will had nearly shattered. Compared to a crisis where his sanity had practically plummeted to zero, the elder's gaze possessed virtually zero lethality. Who do you think you're having a staring contest with? Believe it or not, if I strip off my coat, a giant eyeball will scare you to death! Perched on the branch, the dove tilted its head and looked at the bald elder, its eyes radiating pure, unadulterated stupidity, devoid of even a shred of intellect. The bald elder looked away, ignoring the dove. After offering a few more cautionary words, he cheerfully joined the ranks of the faithful, dancing along with the crowd. A complete face change in a single second—truly astonishing acting. Now beaming with kindly warmth, he made anyone who looked upon him think fondly of an aging, benevolent father. The dove lingered on the branch, curiously watching the believers below, until the loud pop of a champagne popper startled it into flight. … On the terrace. Wayne retrieved the dove, put his gentleman's hat back on, and turned to leave the rooftop. He had gathered two vital pieces of intelligence. First, the Church of the Earth's Core had mages—numbers and exact strength unknown, but the bald elder was definitely stronger than him. Second, an infiltrator had been captured two days ago; Isabella wasn't dead, though her confinement location remained unknown. "Some 'formidable mage'—and this is all she's got? She's worse than me!" "What kind of infiltration investigation is this? Surrendering the moment you make contact, using prisoner status to get carried straight into the target's den, only to find the steel door won't budge and end up stuck squatting in a dark room?" Wayne was full of grievances. Had he known Isabella was captured, he wouldn't have waited around like a fool; he would have simply had the butler arrange a luxury car and driven out of Enrold Town. "It's not too late to leave now..." Wayne paused, standing in the fourth-floor corridor of the administration hall. Looking out the window at the townspeople queuing for eggs, he gazed in contemplation and shook his head silently. Forget it. He would rescue Isabella and give her another chance. Leaving Enrold Town by car after that wouldn't be too late either. At the end of the hallway, two female civil servants in administration uniforms came walking over, chatting and laughing. One carried a briefcase, the other a teacup. They were gossiping about the feasibility of sneaking over to grab eggs several more times. Seeing Wayne's unfamiliar face, they paid him no heed, disregarding him as a random passerby. Two paces after brushing past him, both women suddenly spun around. One whipped a pistol from her briefcase, while the other hurled her teacup straight at Wayne. Looking at the window ahead of him as though he had eyes in the back of his head, Wayne ducked to evade the cup. With a bang, the cup shattered against the window. Tea splattered everywhere, gray mist hissed from the wall, and a fleshy mass resembling biological tissue spread at breakneck speed, crawling all over the wall and window in the blink of an eye. It looked like an eight-legged starfish, each leg alive and squirming, its tips undulating as they contracted and reached out in all directions. The damp body was coated in a layer of yellow mucus, and its grayish-white skin tissue was translucent, revealing subcutaneous blood vessels and the organs enclosed within its thoracic cavity. Wayne's eyes narrowed. Had he not been on guard, he might have been fused right into that starfish mass. The instant he ducked, he darted away from the wall. Before the gun barrel could align with him, he pressed a single hand to the floor, summoning an earthen wall before him. Earth Style: Solid-Liquid Mixture Flow Solidification Jutsu! An earthen wall two meters wide and high shot up from the floor, not only cutting off the two women's line of sight but also blocking most of the hallway, bringing them to a halt, wary of recklessly attacking. Within a few breaths, the soft, damp earth wall rapidly solidified. Hearing sprinting footsteps from behind the wall, the two women realized they had fallen for a stalling tactic. Without hesitation, they split left and right around the wall in pursuit. A white dove swept over the top of the wall. Both women instinctively looked up, only for the bird to drop a payload midair. Splat! A streak of white landed squarely across the armed woman's face. "Ah!" Negligible damage, maximum insult. The armed woman shrieked, raising her sleeve to wipe away the filth. Just then, Wayne—who should have fled far away—burst out from behind the wall. A closer look would have revealed that the leather shoes on his feet were gone. He had indeed run, but the moment he released the dove, he had kicked off his shoes and bolted right back. Wayne moved with blistering speed, closing in before the armed woman in a flash. Forming a sword hand with his left fingers, he fired a water arrow that ruined the makeup across her face. Taking advantage of her blinded state, his right hand—clad in a spiked knuckle duster—swung forward with tremendous force. Heavy and devastating, striking her frontal armor dead center. With a dull thud, ripples distorted the fabric of the woman's uniform jacket. Thrown completely off balance, she hurtled backward uncontrollably into the wall and plunged headfirst into the squishy starfish mass. Eight tentacles coiled around her, engulfing the woman along with her pistol. In an instant, the crunching, grinding sounds of chewing filled the corridor. From beginning to end, the armed woman hadn't even had time to scream. The other female clerk was still dazed. Everything had happened too fast; before she could even process it, she was terrified by her companion's gruesome end. By the time she realized the threat right in front of her, a whistling fist was already hurtling toward her. Bang! Bang! Bang! Wayne struck in rapid succession, every punch concentrated on the woman's abdomen. The agonizing spasms twisting her guts brought her curling to the floor, cold sweat soaking her clothes as her mouth gaped in ragged, wheezing gasps. "Where is the fat woman who broke into your headquarters? Speak! Where are you holding her?" Wayne demanded in a low, pressing whisper, patting down the clerk's body to ensure she carried no concealed weapons. Drenched as if dredged from water, hair clinging to her face, the female clerk glared viciously at Wayne. Gritting her teeth, she gasped, "I await the Master's summons at every moment! I take pride in returning to the Void! Kill me—I'll never talk!" A true warrior! If I hadn't already seen how devotees of the Goddess of Death behave, I might actually have believed you! "Heh, still stubborn, are you?" Wayne sneered, thrusting his right hand down onto the floor. Earth Style Secret Jutsu: Wall Embedment! The surging earth hoisted the woman into midair. Just as bewilderment gripped her, the earthen wall solidified in a flash, pinning her arms and leaving the upper half of her body on the front side of the wall while her lower half stuck out behind it. "???" What kind of maneuver was this? The woman couldn't comprehend it, but very quickly her entire face drained of color, and her skirt-bound legs began kicking frantically. Her rear was slapped twice, followed by a voice drifting from behind the wall: "The lighting from this angle is just right. Who would've thought? Your floor plan actually looks pretty nice!"