Do You Know Night Hawks Devour Human Souls?

Hope opened his eyes and found himself lying on the floor, with the girl beside him.

"The conditions here are a little poor."

Hope said, unsure whether she could hear him, "Bear with it. Star Hemp is highly toxic, but as long as you get away from the poisonous gas, you should recover by tomorrow morning at the latest."

Hope hesitated. He could not just leave the girl here. To prevent any accidents, he had to hide her somewhere, and this place had somewhere suitable for hiding things...

"Sorry," Hope said. Then he dragged the girl beneath the bed and pulled part of the bedsheet down. "If I get the chance later, I'll definitely clean this place up."

He took several deep breaths and felt around his shirt, tearing another small strip of cloth from the broken sleeve. "My condition is much lighter."

Hope searched the small bedside table and, sure enough, found a cup of water. He smelled it, then took a taste. There was no strange odor.

He poured some water onto the strip of cloth, making a simple mask that could block the Star Hemp fumes—perhaps not very effectively, but it was still better than nothing.

"I'm leaving for a while. Someone has to keep watch over there, or it would be bad if someone wandered in," Hope said.

The girl did not respond. She would probably need more time before regaining consciousness.

Hope tied the crude gas mask over his nose, closed his eyes, and returned to the Rose Garden.

Using Uncertainty repeatedly for spatial transfers did not seem to have caused any side effects. None of his visible values had dropped, and his body felt no discomfort.

Maybe he had not used it often enough yet, or perhaps the teleportation distance was too short... Either way, it was an incredibly powerful ability.

He had been wondering how to get the note back from Paul, but now things had become much simpler.

Still, he would go tomorrow. He would let them enjoy themselves today.

Ah, right. Hope smacked his forehead. I can use this to seek help and reveal what's happening with Whateley House.

As for whom to seek help from... perhaps that girl was a breakthrough. He still did not know exactly how she had made Wilbur "unable to choose."

...Whew. He would think about those things later. There was something more important to do now.

Hope picked up the hunting rifle the girl had discarded and briefly examined it.

It was an old flintlock... Fortunately, he knew a little about this sort of thing and understood the general loading process.

He pointed the muzzle upward and pulled the trigger.

Bang!

It was Hope's first time truly firing a gun. So this was how strong the recoil was. He nearly fell over.

The old mechanism produced an enormous noise. Hope was certain it would be enough to scare away anyone within a hundred meters.

Well, in a country where civilians were allowed to own guns, people naturally understood firearms better—and feared them more.

During his earlier exploration, Hope had already learned a little about Old Williams's house. He easily found a powder flask and preformed lead balls. Another hunting rifle lay beside the flask, even more battered and ancient. Hope only needed one gun, so the other was useless.

He stood beside the grandfather clock and kept track of the time.

First, clean the barrel. Then add black powder, add the lead ball, and finally ram it down.

Hope's first attempt took one minute and thirty seconds. He walked outside and fired the lead ball into the sky.

The second reload took only one minute, but he still waited until one minute and thirty seconds had passed before firing the third lead ball into the sky.

The third reload took fifty seconds. Hope glanced at the grandfather clock and closed his eyes.

There was no response.

There was no one around. Was it limited to four uses a day?

Hope frowned and tried again.

The space shifted once more, and he returned to the small room, gasping for breath.

His hands felt a little numb.

But the wound on his hand had already scabbed over?

Come to think of it, the wounds from the rose stems no longer hurt either.

Was this also the blessing of the King of Kings?

If so, it could actually be considered a good leader, one very tolerant of its subordinates.

After all, at least Number One Hope's actions had been somewhat rebellious in the eyes of the cultists.

Of course, Number Five Hope was also a little rebellious now.

Hope lowered his head and checked under the bed.

The girl's fingers seemed to twitch.

Had she recovered a little so quickly?

There seemed to be some strange sounds... coming from the next room... He could not make them out. They sounded like running water.

Maybe Wilbur or Lavinia was getting water.

Hope pressed his ear to the wall, but the already faint sound disappeared completely.

He did not think much of it. He closed his eyes, and his body slowly vanished from the small room as the roses reappeared before him.

Bang! He pulled the flintlock's trigger, and the gunshot startled a flock of unknown birds into flight.

The fourth reload time was...

What was that?

A huge black shadow flew across the night sky.

An airplane?

How could that be?

Hope walked out of the room.

That shadow... it had noticed Hope... It flew back, hovering eerily in front of him...

This time, Hope could see what it was.

A... bird?

A gigantic bird?

Its wingspan was probably over four meters, its body nearly two meters long. Its eyes were pure black, and its feathers were patterned in black, yellow, and white... It somehow looked a little cute?

It flapped its wings and stirred up a gust as it rose into the sky. The warm, rank stench of a bird enveloped Hope.

No, that made it not cute at all, Hope thought.

Wilbur had introduced this kind of bird to him on the road. That bird had perched on a branch in front of Hope without the slightest fear of people.

"It's called a Night Hawk," Wilbur had said.

"It's beautiful."

Wilbur burst into laughter as though he had heard the greatest joke in the world.

"It's waiting for us to die! Hope, Night Hawks are like vultures. They look for food in the corpses of people like us! They swallow our souls!"

At the time, Hope had merely assumed Wilbur was talking nonsense... That Night Hawk had been only palm-sized.

The Great Night Hawk let out a loud, piercing cry, harsh and grating, like it was summoning souls—like a demon from hell that stole the dead.

Talent: 2.03, Physique: 1.89, Vision: 1.11, Mana: 0

The first two values were simply monstrous.

Hope closed his eyes and imagined the small room, the space beside the girl, or that little wooden bed.

But even before closing his eyes, he knew the result: The Great Night Hawk is watching me.

This thing was no ordinary bird. It possessed enough intelligence to serve as an "observer" and prevent Uncertainty from working.

Hope raised the old flintlock hunting rifle, pointed the muzzle upward, and aimed at the black shadow in the sky.

Hope had never handled a gun before, yet controlling the thing in his hands felt unexpectedly easy.

It was practically like controlling one of his own arms. Even as the Great Night Hawk twisted and darted through the air, changing speed and altitude, the muzzle never left it.

But Hope was half-blind. The Great Night Hawk was too far away, and he could not find its head at all.

He did not know when to fire. All he could see was a blurry shadow.

He was a confused gunman. He knew he would not miss, but he had no idea how close to the center he would hit.

Maybe he could only knock off a single feather. And he had only one gun, one bullet, one chance.

Hope licked his lips. He knew he could not keep wasting time here.

The Star Hemp fumes had not yet dispersed.

Bang!

The gunshot rang out, and the lead ball shot through the air.

The Great Night Hawk was smarter than Hope had imagined. It had been holding back its speed, but at that moment it suddenly accelerated and flew higher into the sky. The lead ball only struck its tail feathers.

The moment the shot rang out, Hope spun around and ran toward Old Williams's house. He had no time to close the door. He rushed past Old Williams's bedroom, nearly tripped over a stool, and saw the Great Night Hawk's shadow outside the window.

He ran all the way to the storage room. It was a small room enclosed by wooden boards, with no windows and no line of sight that could reach inside.

Hope closed his eyes. The small room in Whateley House appeared in his imagination, along with that damned stench. That smell was still better than the warm, rank odor of a bird...

A tremendous crash interrupted Hope's thoughts.

He opened his eyes and saw the Great Night Hawk tearing through Old Williams's ancient wooden wall.