Just as Rein made his move and killed someone, the man and woman secretly talking downstairs naturally noticed the commotion above.
This "Black Market Trade Fair" had always been a carnival ground for thieves. These people, accustomed to being brazen and lawless, fighting and killing over minor disputes was perfectly normal.
A fight of this level would not have interested Bazel in the first place. He did not care in the slightest why the people upstairs had started fighting.
But the speed at which the battle ended truly exceeded his expectations.
This spectacle had been rather unsatisfying to watch.
"Oh? It's already over upstairs?"
White Wolf Bazel took a huge gulp of liquor, smacked his lips, and muttered, "That assassin's stealth skills weren't bad. He didn't look like a novice, so how did he get killed in a single exchange? I thought the two of them would trade a few moves. Hmph, boring."
Hearing that, the woman beside him remained expressionless and said nothing.
A battle between two First Tier Transcendents truly could not interest her.
The matter should have ended there.
But at that moment, something else happened.
A faint, melodious flute melody drifted down from above.
In the empty Hyacinth Tavern, that eerie flute melody sounded exceptionally clear.
Hearing it, the woman finally raised her brows slightly and let out a mildly surprised sound. "Oh? There's another Mental Sequence hypnotist."
Bazel naturally noticed the flute melody that made people feel faintly dazed. A flash of vigilance immediately crossed his eyes. "Heh, this is getting interesting."
Mental Sequence Transcendents were rarely seen under normal circumstances.
And one just happened to appear here while they were holding a secret meeting?
The more Bazel thought about it, the more it seemed that the commotion upstairs might not be unrelated to him. Could it be a diversion?
Once that thought surfaced, he looked at Princess Oma beside him with faint hostility in his eyes.
Rein had only been transported to this world for a year. Moreover, he had spent most of that time at the Weasel Gang's training base, so his knowledge and experience remained limited.
He had heard that Mystic System mental Transcendents possessed all sorts of strange abilities, but he had never seen them for himself.
Naturally, he did not know that mental spells could actually be cast through sound waves.
The moment Rein killed Wolf with lightning speed, he knew the people upstairs had probably noticed the disturbance.
Figuring he could use the gap before those people reacted, Rein felt confident he could get far enough away.
Once he blended into the crowds in the market district, he would be more or less safe.
But just as he burst through the door and had only run a few steps, that melodious flute melody slipped into his ears.
"Woo woo woo, hoo hoo hoo."
Like heavenly music echoing through an empty valley, the flute melody made every pore in his body feel relaxed, and his mind unconsciously grew hazy. When he looked again, his surroundings had changed. It was as though he had instantly been transported to an endless grassland, beneath a blue sky dotted with drifting white clouds, galloping freely through the wind on horseback with incomparable exhilaration.
That sensation of comfort was so intoxicating that he did not want to wake up.
Click, click, click.
Leather boots struck the stairs in steady rhythm.
A few seconds after the flute melody began, Piscis, his face dark, emerged from the stairwell with a dark-skinned woman playing an ocarina.
Looking at the blood flowing from the doorway, Piscis found it hard to believe, but he had no choice except to accept one fact: if 9527 had made it out, then Wolf, who had been assigned to watch him, had been killed.
The blood naturally belonged to his old friend, Wolf.
His aged face was so gloomy it seemed water could drip from it. When he looked at Rein, standing stiffly in place with vacant eyes, his expression became even more hostile.
He had expected the kid to run, but how could an Awakened who had only advanced a few days ago kill Wolf, who had been a Transcendent for years?
Forget it. With a hypnotist involved, no secret could remain hidden.
Without thinking further, Piscis said to the dark-skinned woman beside him, "Then I'll have to trouble you, Miss Serxi. Please hypnotize this kid for me. There's some information I need to get out of him."
"Mhm. It's nothing."
The dark-skinned woman, whose face was covered in strange totems, nodded. "He has already been hypnotized by me. Ask him whatever you want. He absolutely will not lie."
Piscis nodded in satisfaction, just about to say something.
But before he could open his mouth, an unexpected change occurred.
Rein, who had seemingly lost consciousness and stood there like a wooden doll, suddenly twitched a finger and pulled a ring hidden inside his sleeve.
Hiss, hiss, hiss.
It sounded like gas leaking.
The next instant, before the startled expressions on Piscis and the woman's faces could fade, a cloud of green poison gas exploded. It was the Poison Gas Bomb hidden against Rein's chest, detonated at last.
The scene returned to three seconds earlier.
Rein had no idea he had already been caught in the trap.
While he was still galloping across the grasslands, he suddenly heard a danger alert from the Mind Core.
Ding! An abnormal unconscious state has been detected. The system is executing the preset procedure.
Then, the system took over his body's neural responses and triggered the contingency he had prepared beforehand: the last Poison Gas Bomb left behind by Baron Morin.
This was Rein's final trump card. As long as he fell into an abnormal unconscious state, this Poison Gas Bomb could create a lethal zone spanning more than three hundred meters and kill every enemy nearby.
After all, this green poison gas was a deadly toxin so lethal that even Quinn, a Third Tier Demon Hunter, avoided it at all costs.
When he regained consciousness, all he could see was green fog.
"What is this...?"
Rein looked at the corpses of Piscis and an unfamiliar dark-skinned woman on the ground, and a strange expression appeared in his eyes.
Although he had blacked out, it was not difficult for him to guess what had just happened. A lingering chill ran through his heart.
The Mind Core's real-time records also contained this notification:
Ding! Your mental power was hypnotized by sound waves. You lost conscious control, and the system executed the preset procedure.
Only after seeing that record did Rein realize he had just walked through the gates of death.
If he had not anticipated the possibility of such an emergency before planning this escape, set up the Mind Core's procedure, and injected the Antidote Potion Morin had left behind in advance...
The consequences would have been unimaginable!
"Sound-wave hallucinations... I actually got caught without realizing it! Mental illusions really are bizarre."
The enemy corpses lay just two meters away, and Rein immediately felt the relief of surviving a disaster.
But once Piscis was dead, Rein suddenly felt much lighter.
Fate had been smashing a boulder against his chest. At this moment, the hammer came down, the boulder shattered, and he remained unharmed.
At last, there was no longer that suffocating feeling of fate gripping him by the throat.
Though there had been a minor accident, his goal had ultimately been achieved.
The oppressed had finally risen up singing. His miserable days had finally come to an end.
Just as he happily packed away Piscis's Storage Ring and prepared to embrace a new life of freedom and light...
Another accident occurred.
Bang!
The next moment, a violent explosion erupted without warning, making his ears ring.
Like an exploding flintlock gun, the iron-plated wall on the tavern's first floor burst apart. The blast was as powerful as an earthquake, directly blowing away half of the steel-built tavern.
"What the hell... what's going on now?"
Rein stared dumbfounded at the tavern, which had suddenly collapsed by half.
Fortunately, the shockwave had been a directional blast. Otherwise, if it had hit him, would he still be alive?
Rein swallowed and began doubting himself. Could the Poison Gas Bomb have been too powerful, triggering some kind of chain reaction that detonated the tavern's Steam Boilers?
Clearly, that was not the case.
Looking through the huge hole torn through the floors, the truth became immediately obvious.
Twenty meters away, an upright giant wolf more than three meters tall was glaring viciously at a disheveled figure climbing out of the ruins.
The giant wolf even spoke in human language, roaring with the venomous resentment of a cuckold, "Damn it! None of you Oma Royal Family people can be trusted!"
"A werewolf? White Wolf Bazel, one of the Top Ten Legendary Demon Hunters?"
Once Rein guessed the identity of that towering figure, his heart lurched and he completely panicked.
"It wasn't me..."
Ymir had been badly wounded by the sneak attack. As she climbed out of the rubble, she violently spat out a mouthful of dark blood.
A moment ago, she had still been wondering why Bazel had suddenly attacked her. But the instant she saw the familiar royal retainers appearing around them, she immediately understood.
In the end, she said nothing more.
At this moment, any explanation would have been pale and powerless.
Before you continue