"My head hurts!"
William Charles opened his eyes to find himself in a cramped, sealed-off basement. The electric lamp overhead cast a scorching yellow light, flickering between bright and dim.
Tall wooden racks surrounded him, crammed with wooden barrels.
"This is... the wine cellar beneath the bar? How did I get here?"
William looked bewildered. He tried to touch his forehead, only to discover that he had been tied to a high-backed chair, unable to move.
"Help!"
He shouted once, but there was no response from outside.
"Wait... Balkin, it was Balkin!"
William recalled what had happened before he lost consciousness. It seemed that after the bar closed, he had just finished mopping the floor when Balkin smiled and handed him a beer to quench his thirst...
"Why would Balkin drug the drinks... What did he want from knocking me out?"
The more William thought about it, the more frightened he became.
If he had merely been an ordinary man, he would have considered himself too poor to have anything worth coveting.
But he knew some mystical knowledge and understood that in rituals, living people were an exceedingly common kind of material!
"Could Balkin... also be some secret cultist of dark arts?"
"Does he want to sacrifice me?"
William's teeth began to chatter with fear.
The little mystical power he possessed was utterly useless in his current predicament.
Just as William was scaring himself senseless, the cellar door creaked open, and Aaron slowly walked in.
"Mr. Potter..."
William's expression was somewhat dazed as he looked at the unexpected visitor.
But when he saw the copy of As the Wise Freud Said in Aaron's hand, he immediately screamed and began twisting his body frantically. "What are you doing? That's mine, mine! Give it back!"
"A violent disposition—is this the aftereffect of