Elizabeth

This was... Wilbur had once said his spells were ineffective against that girl. Was this the thing that had stopped Wilbur?

That girl had woken up?

That made sense—after all, the commotion just now had been loud enough. She might have been awake for a while, just not coming out.

Hope stood up shakily, moved to Paul's side, and placed his hand under Paul's nose.

The girl crawled out from under the bed, watching him nervously.

A steady flow of air passed between Hope's fingers.

Hope's heart lifted.

Paul's numbers appeared in his mind:

Agility: 1.00, Physique: 1.70, Vision: 1.03, Mana: 0

Physique had increased by 0.1.

A physique increase...

A thought surfaced in Hope's mind.

He examined Paul's body, hoping to find something abnormal on him.

Soon, he found a small patch of something like fish scales under Paul's wrist—very soft, translucent, far smaller and less developed than Robert's, but clearly similar in nature.

Hope relaxed. If that was the case, then Paul might have some Miller Family blood in him. The wound from the ring was small, so there probably wouldn't be any danger.

He looked up at the girl waiting for his verdict: "He's still alive."

After a moment's thought, he showed her the wound under Paul's wrist and added, "He should have some connection to the Miller Family, but the bloodline is thin. That's why he didn't turn into a monster and kept his life."

He laughed as he finished speaking, completely letting his guard down. The girl was smiling too, and Hope could tell she was genuinely happy.

She and Paul were complete strangers. This joy was the celebration of one person seeing another survive a crisis.

"What was that thing?" Hope asked, pointing at the wooden shard the girl had thrown.

He quickly realized the question was a bit presumptuous. Whatever could drive away that monster just now was definitely extraordinary. It might be her secret, and the fact that she was willing to use it to save him was already worth gratitude:

"Sorry, I shouldn't have asked. Thank you—otherwise, I really wouldn't have known what to do just now."

"It's fine. Actually, I don't know what it is either." The girl straightened her clothes, brushed off the dust, and retrieved the wooden shard from Paul's body.

This time, Hope got a clear look at the pattern carved into it. It was shaped like a star, with a broken diamond at the center. The diamond seemed to abstractly mimic an eye.

Other than that, the shard itself had nothing special about it—nothing he could discern.

The girl tucked the shard back into her pocket. She still looked shaken:

"A talisman an elder gave me. I thought it was just an ordinary ornament until now, when I saw what it could do... Now we're even."

Hope realized she was talking about last night. Back then, he had saved her. Now she had saved him. Naturally, they owed each other nothing.

A casual gift from an elder could drive away a monster like that... That elder might be a powerful extraordinary being—perhaps stronger than Old Whateley.

—Hope called anyone with unnatural abilities or spells, whose stats exceeded normal human range, an "extraordinary being." A clearer boundary was: those who could neither harm nor be harmed by the Night Hawk, and whom the Night Hawk saw as prey.

But then again, he couldn't be sure. He had never actually met either the girl's elder or Old Whateley.

He still didn't know what the conditions were for becoming an extraordinary being—whether it relied solely on divine favor or if there were other methods.

Still, if a country could maintain this relatively peaceful state, there must be some force restraining cultists like the Whateley family.

Otherwise, with just three or four people, the Whateleys dared to talk about sacrificing an entire town. If there were hundreds or thousands of such cultists, the country would fall into chaos. If there were even more, humanity might be wiped out.

The atmosphere grew awkward for a moment.

Hope quickly realized he and this girl had nothing much to say to each other. After all, they had only met for the first time yesterday, and it had been with a shotgun aimed at each other.

"Mm." The girl waited a moment, then spoke: "I think maybe we should get to know each other. My name is Elizabeth. Elizabeth Whateley. I'm a student at Miskatonic University now. And you?"

Whateley... She was indeed related to Old Whateley. Maybe she was his granddaughter.

Thinking of Old Whateley's house, Hope felt a pang of embarrassment. Even though most of the destruction there had been caused by the Great Night Hawk, it was still somewhat connected to him.

"Hope," he said. "As you can see, I live here."

Hope didn't say "Hope Whateley," because he wasn't really Hope Whateley. The one called Hope Whateley was Hope Number One.

Elizabeth spoke first again, looking a bit awkward herself: "About yesterday... I had never heard of Star Hemp before. Since it was placed with rose petals, I just assumed it was ordinary herbs.

"My uncle's notes didn't mention any toxicity either—only a potion recipe...

"I'm very interested in herbalism, but I'd only ever heard of potions. This was my first time seeing a real recipe, so I wanted to try it myself. Are you knowledgeable about herbs or potions?"

Herbalism... Hope recalled the knowledge in his memory, but most of it was obscure. After all, it wasn't his knowledge. Though inherited through memory, mastering it would probably take some time.

So he said: "Not really knowledgeable. I just happen to know..."

He froze, because the door was slowly opening.

There was no one outside the door. Only a transparent liquid substance.

The entire hallway was filled with this transparent liquid. Light striking it created strange refractions. All the lines beyond the liquid were twisted into irregular curves by the light. Colors Hope had never seen flickered within, vanishing in an instant before he could make them out.

That bizarre thing—whether it was even a living being or not—had not left. It had filled the entire corridor, waiting quietly outside the door the whole time Hope and Elizabeth had been talking.

Now it had opened the door, and no one knew what it intended to do, or whether it bore malice.

Hope heard Elizabeth swallow hard. She pulled out the talisman again, held it before her, and stepped forward a few paces, shielding both Hope and Paul behind her.

Hope noticed she was actually trembling, so he limped forward a few steps and stood at her side.

The two stood in a row, shielding the unconscious Paul behind them. The monster outside the door and the two inside formed a standoff.

It was not an equal contest, but a one-sided dominance. The two had already witnessed the monster's strength; even together, they had no power to resist it. Yet neither of them retreated.

And the monster was wary of the talisman in Elizabeth's hand—the only thing between the three of them and the creature that could be called an obstacle.

Hope looked at Elizabeth, and a sudden realization dawned in his heart:

The person before him was trustworthy.