363
After enjoying a few mouthfuls of dessert in spirit, Edward left the alley in a good mood. Both those who wanted to silence others and those being silenced had become silent, mutilated corpses in the depths of the darkness, and would remain soundless until they rotted into mud.
It seemed to be afternoon, though he still did not know the exact time. Shielding his eyes with a hand, Edward found a reasonably good-looking clothing store and went inside.
He disguised himself with an illusion and entered the shop selling bespoke formalwear. Although the clothes looked rather different from what he usually wore, they would do in a pinch. In the changing room, Edward put on his newly purchased shirt and dark waistcoat, then carefully examined the tattered clothes he had taken off.
This shirt, soaked through with his blood and left in a concealed place for a long time, had already displayed the characteristics of a Sealed Artifact, but had yet to show any useful abilities. It only had utterly useless negative effects such as "making anyone who sees this garment develop evil thoughts and kill one another," "being impossible to take off once worn," and "eating the wearer one bite at a time." The only potentially positive effect was "instinctively mastering certain evil spells while wearing it," but their sequences were too low, generally below Sequence 5. It could not even use the Language of Foulness, offering only some degraded curses and summoning spells. It was of little practical value.
Edward considered it for a moment, cut the useless garment into pieces, burned the scraps clean away, and made the useful portions into several High-Quality Devil Pathway Charms.
Leaving the changing room, he asked the tailor, who was taking a customer's measurements, "How long would a rush order