Servant's Bell

It was more than ten minutes before the police finally sauntered over to the asylum. Then they saw the horrifying ritual site, along with an enormous amount of cash. The policemen were stunned beyond words, their eyes practically glowing green. If not for the eerie scene and Luther standing nearby with a revolver in hand, covered in blood, those guys would probably have gone over to give it a thorough "inspection."

If that had happened, it would have been hard to say how much cash would be left in the end. After all, even if some money went missing, they could simply claim it had been "accidentally lost during the investigation."

—The reputation of Loen's police could only be called average. Luther felt they were fully capable of doing something like that.

Another six or seven minutes later, Dunn hurried over in a carriage with Leonard and Frye.

"Captain."

Luther had been guarding the huge pile of cash, bathed in countless greedy yet fearful gazes. His nerves remained taut until he saw Dunn's composed face, at which point he finally relaxed.

"Two Beyonders tried to use a ritual to pray for an evil god to bestow offspring upon a lady. I killed one, and the other escaped. The one who got away is called Lanevus. He's a con man who's been in the newspapers, so finding his portrait should be easy." He quickly stepped up to Dunn and concisely shared the important information. "Lanevus carries the aura of an evil god and is extremely dangerous. I suggest we begin pursuing him immediately."

After hearing his account and carefully examining the scene, Dunn got up and went to negotiate with the police officer in charge some distance away. After exchanging a few words, the inspector nodded, called his officers into formation, and left.

After sending the police away, Dunn began dealing with the scene.

"Luther, speak with the asylum staff and have them avoid the area. Frye and Leonard, bring down the body bags from the carriage."

"Yes."

The three answered at once.

Before leaving, Leonard deliberately winked at Luther and said with a grin, "That's the third one already. Impressive, impressive!"

He was probably referring to the fact that Luther had already killed three people.

Do you think I wanted to?

Luther rolled his eyes at him and walked over to Dr. Wilder.

"Mr. Rondal, you really do have connections with the police! But what exactly is going on here?"

"I'm sorry, Dr. Wilder, but I can't answer that. Please make sure not to spread word of what happened today. Someone will come by in a while to ask about the situation and take your statement." Luther replied, "Also, we need you to clear the area... Oh, right. It would be great if you could provide another bag. We need it to carry the money."

After persuading the asylum employees to leave, Leonard and the others did not immediately put Hood Eugen's corpse into a body bag. Instead, they stood beside it, quietly waiting for something. In the middle of the night, several people silently staring at a corpse made for an exceptionally bizarre scene.

It was like some kind of evil gathering.

Luther mocked inwardly.

So he copied the others, folded his arms, and stared at Hood Eugen's corpse.

Before long, specks of golden light surfaced on Hood Eugen's corpse. They detached from the body and floated upward, then gathered together, forming a sight like a vortex at the eye of a storm. Very quickly, all the golden motes were extracted from the corpse and converged in one place. The light gradually intensified, accompanied by a low chant that shook the heart. Suddenly, a brilliant flash erupted. Then the light vanished, and something like an eyeball floated in midair for a moment before falling to the ground with a plop.

No, on closer inspection, it really did seem to be an eyeball. It had a golden vertical pupil, like the eye of a legendary dragon, full of majesty and presence. Yet for some reason, the color of the eyeball was not entirely pure. Amid the gold was a familiar hint of blood-red.

"There's a trace of Degeneration."

Luther sensed it and frowned. "It should have been corrupted by the True Creator."

This was already the third time he had seen such a scene, and he more or less understood that dead Beyonders would extract their characteristics.

"Mm."

Dunn agreed. "For merely extracting a characteristic to cause such a spectacle, this person was probably at least a Sequence 7 Beyonder."

"Sequence 7? Wouldn't that make him the same level as the Captain?"

Luther could not help but feel startled. Fortunately, he had fired without hesitation, otherwise the consequences would have been unimaginable. Still, for Hood Eugen, a Sequence 7 powerhouse, to be toyed with by Lanevus and himself was truly too stupid. His death was not undeserved at all.

"The Captain isn't that weak."

Leonard laughed, then turned to Dunn and asked, "Right, Captain?"

Dunn ignored him. Instead, he took an iron cigarette case from his pocket, bent down, carefully placed the eyeball inside, and sealed it with a Wall of Spirituality.

"You can collect the body now. Frye, I'm counting on you."

He said.

Because they had to conceal the secret of a Beyonder corpse, they did not let the police help this time and could only handle the scene themselves. Expressionless, Frye looked even more like a dead man than the corpse. Calmly, he lifted the horribly dead Hood Eugen and placed him in the body bag, his movements practiced and professional.

Seeing that he could not help with any of that, Luther picked up the bag Wilder had provided and turned to pack up the cash.

"So much money... Lanevus really deserves to die."

He sighed as he packed. Aside from stacks of ten-pound notes, the pile also included many anonymous account deposit slips, drafts, and banknotes. By rough estimation, it was worth more than eight or nine thousand pounds in total.

After the scene was dealt with, Frye returned to the Blackthorn Security Company with a corpse and the unconscious Megose. As for the others, under Dunn's leadership, they began pursuing Lanevus.

It was not just them. Because of Lanevus's level of danger, Dunn had already asked the police to notify Tingen's other two groups of official Beyonders—the Machinery Hivemind and the Mandated Punishers. Combined with the mobilized police, the entire city of Tingen was exceptionally lively that night.

Yet even though so many people practically turned Tingen upside down and tried every sort of mystical method, Lanevus was still not caught. Finally, after forty-eight hours of fruitless citywide searching, the Tingen City Police Department publicly issued a wanted notice for Lanevus on charges of fraud and murder. This prominent figure, who had appeared in the newspapers only three days earlier and been hailed as a "representative young entrepreneur," soon made the papers again as a wanted criminal, displaying a boomerang-like sense of humor.

Luther's greatest gain during this process was probably the mystical item he had secretly kept: the bell that could hypnotize people.

Through private research, he thoroughly figured out the functions of this Beyonder item. As long as he infused it with Spirituality and shook the bell at a target, the sound it produced could hypnotize the target and make them obey commands. The hypnotic effect was very powerful on ordinary people and could last a long time, but against Beyonders, it could only last a few minutes. The higher the target's Sequence, the worse the effect.

In the end, Luther named the bell "Servant's Bell."