Chapter 48

135

Edward rode his family's carriage to the outskirts of Empress Borough, arriving at his destination punctually at five minutes past eight.

The mansion had been purchased by Mr. Miller Carter, a merchant newly arrived in Backlund, but he did not live there. Although he had settled in Backlund, his new house was still undergoing repairs. Tonight's dinner party was intended to introduce him to the city's upper and middle classes. He had invited friends he knew well and asked them to bring new acquaintances to expand his connections. Once his new home had been fully renovated, he would hold an even grander banquet.

After checking his invitation, a footman in a red waistcoat took the gift from the coachman and led him through a front courtyard with a garden and a pool to the main entrance.

The coachman, who had kept his head lowered throughout, drove the carriage to a secluded stretch of street. Smoke spread, and he vanished along with the carriage.

Edward Vaughan carefully tucked the small glass bottle that had appeared in his hand into his sleeve. Stroking the head of his gold-inlaid walking stick, he strolled beside the footman and admired the mansion's garden. As soon as he entered, a gentleman approached him of his own accord. The man wore a formal suit, with slightly graying temples, deep nasolabial folds, and sharp blue eyes.

This had to be Mr. Miller Carter, the host of tonight's banquet. Edward took the wine he had brought-a specialty of East Chester County-from the footman and handed it to the gentleman, smiling as he bowed with a hand to his chest.

"Sorry, I'm a little late."

The stern old gentleman, Mr. Carter, accepted the wine and replied with a smile, "Not at all. The banquet hasn't started yet."

"Every one of your operas is a masterpiece. I've admired you for a long time, and I never imagined I would be able to invite you to my banquet."

"You're too kind." Edward responded with practiced ease. In Loen, subtle compliments to one's host were an important part of social etiquette, somewhat different from the relatively direct praise customary in Intis. "I'm delighted to make a friend from the eastern shore of the Sonia Sea. I've always longed to see the scenery there."

Mr. Miller Carter was clearly pleased. They chatted about the local customs and landscapes of Midseashire, looking every bit the happy host and guest. Beyond a corridor about ten meters long lay the hall, where the banquet was about to begin. Mr. Carter had other guests to greet, so he took his leave once they arrived. Edward scanned the ballroom, took a glass of pale brown aperitif champagne from a passing waiter's tray, and slowly sipped it beside a wall.

Soon, Mr. Carter returned to the hall, the banquet began, and the orchestra played the first dance. Edward was in no hurry to find a partner. Instead, he leisurely surveyed the long dining table, looking for a few dishes that interested him. Just then, he sensed a subtle presence behind him.

"Good evening, Mr. Vaughn. When did you arrive?"

An energetic young man who often struck up conversations with him at the Quelaag Club-the description flashed through Edward's mind, pointing to one particular name: Talim.

Edward slowly turned, sensing the cold, sinister aura washing toward him. He saw Talim's beaming smile, and he also saw the hideous black cobra tightly coiled around him, hissing with its forked tongue. Its tail pierced his clothes and was embedded in the left side of his chest, as though it had emerged from Talim's heart.

The Devil and the enormous serpent stared at each other for half a second.

"I haven't been here long," he replied, then abruptly asked, "You seem to have been enjoying quite a bit of luck in love lately?"

Have you gotten involved with a Demoness? He stopped looking at the menacing cobra and speculated with interest. This curse would not be difficult to remove, but its deeper implications were fascinating. Talim was a respectable young man. As a descendant of nobility, he enjoyed a good reputation among the upper and middle classes. He had been going about his work at the club as usual lately, and there had been no rumors of a romance with any woman. Yet this curse was unmistakably upon him-a curse that could take his life at any moment without inflicting any physical damage. He would suddenly collapse at the caster's whim, as though he had died from a heart attack.

Why would a perfectly ordinary young nobleman be targeted like this by a Demoness? Edward glanced at the cobra again.

"Luck in love? Isn't that an expression Emperor Roselle invented?"

"Yes. It means being popular with the opposite sex." Edward unhurriedly sipped his champagne, met the enormous black serpent's gaze for another second, then looked away. "How has life been treating you lately, Mr. Talim?"

Talim froze at first, then grew slightly wary, as though something had occurred to him and he was wondering when he had let something slip. But he could read nothing from Edward's expression, so he relaxed a little and said self-deprecatingly, "I don't have any luck in love. I don't know what gave you that impression. If things really were as you say, having a few beautiful, considerate ladies by my side wouldn't be so bad... Sigh, speaking of beautiful ladies, I have indeed been seeing one quite often lately, but she's also given me no end of headaches."

"It seems you haven't been enjoying the delights of romance."

"Romance? Please don't say such things!" Talim hastily interjected. The cobra coiled around him lowered its head slightly and bared its fangs, seemingly searching for somewhere to bite. Once its jaws opened, it could swallow Talim whole, despite his considerable height. "That girl has nothing to do with me. She's in love with a friend of mine. On the contrary, I sincerely wish her romance well and hope the two of them can get along."

Edward swirled his wineglass ever so slightly. The knowing look on his face made Talim feel rather guilty.

"Ah, I understand-" Having worked out the connection, he teased softly, "It's the person you mentioned before. My advice is still to elope."

Talim's eyes went wide.

"No, please don't bring that up!" He hurriedly leaned forward and lowered his voice. "I-I heard you've been busy with your year-end opera commission lately. Could you tell me how the work is progressing? Yes, yes, I have some interesting rumors to share with you. That's right, last time we spoke about Mr. Miller Carter's mansion, I wanted to introduce you to Mr. Sherlock Moriarty, the excellent detective who resolved the problem with his house."

"The editorial office hasn't authorized me to disclose our progress. However, the adaptation of the script is complete, and work on the score is advancing steadily."

Talim did everything he could to change the subject, talking for a while simply to fill the silence before finally finding a suitable topic. Both his words and his voice returned to normal. Edward had no intention of joining the first dance, but standing around doing nothing would attract too much attention. He simply went along with him and asked, "I have indeed struck up something of a friendship with Mr. Moriarty, but I haven't heard him mention this. Do you know the details?"

136

"...Mr. Moriarty is an experienced and outstanding detective. First, he inspected the basement of my house and discovered a large gathering of snakes. Then he brought a well-trained assistant to drive them out. Unfortunately, the basement collapsed in the process. Thankfully, neither of them was hurt."

Klein had left an excellent impression on Mr. Carter. When the latter came over to speak with his guests and discovered Talim and Edward discussing the matter, he immediately joined them, hoping to help the outstanding detective make more connections. Recalling the incident, he still felt both shaken and grateful. "Fortunately, I chose him. Anyone else might have met with disaster."

"That's incredible," Talim exclaimed. "I knew he had to be an exceptional man. He's remarkably good in a fight!"

"To think there was such a large basement beneath your house..."

Unlike Talim, Edward murmured to himself in puzzlement. Mr. Carter heard him but showed no surprise, taking it merely as a playwright's astonishment at something strange and mysterious.

He nodded and added, "Yes. Baron Pound didn't tell me about it when I bought the house. It was an unexpected bonus."

"Mr. Carter, may I take the liberty of asking you something?" Edward considered several possible reasons why there would be a basement on that street that he had no recollection of, but reached no conclusion. He therefore asked Mr. Carter, "In other words, from the time Detective Moriarty discovered the snakes until he finished driving them out, you never went inside to take a look. And it collapsed at the end, correct?"

He had originally wanted to ask, "So you never went inside to take a look before it just happened to collapse at the very end?" After some thought, however, he chose a more tactful, gentler question, free of any insinuation.

After all, Carter thought very highly of Klein. Raising doubts would only backfire.

"Yes." Miller Carter suspected nothing and even agreed wholeheartedly. "Mr. Moriarty warned me as soon as he discovered the snakes down there, so I stopped sending servants to clean it, reducing the risk of casualties. I inspected the basement afterward. It had undoubtedly fallen into disrepair over the years and had indeed collapsed beyond recognition. Mr. Moriarty's condition at the time certainly wasn't feigned either. He really had been through a disaster."

"I see." A faint smile appeared at the corner of Edward's mouth, and he immediately put the utterly uninformative answer out of his mind.

Talim was still enthusiastically discussing further details about Mr. Moriarty with Miller Carter. Edward cast a sidelong glance upward, and the pitch-black cobra was instantly enraged by his contemptuous look. It opened its jaws wide enough to swallow Talim's entire head. The Devil bared his teeth slightly, letting a trace of madness and corruption seep out. The arrogant cobra was suddenly terrified and snapped back into Talim's heart.

Talim's expression stiffened at once. The champagne slipped from his hand, brushed the hem of Edward's coat beside him, and shattered on the floor. He clutched his chest in pain and could not straighten up for several seconds.

The one responsible watched indifferently as Talim's back bent in agony.

The sound of shattering glass drew everyone's attention. Mr. Carter was startled, but just five seconds later, Talim shakily straightened again. His face was slightly pale, and he forced a smile. "Sorry, Mr. Carter. I suddenly felt a little unwell, but I'm better now. Haha, perhaps I really ought to get some proper rest."

Seeing that he was not seriously ill, the old gentleman sighed in relief and summoned a servant to sweep up the broken glass.

Edward then took the opportunity to ask to change his clothes in the dressing room. Mr. Carter summoned another servant to escort him to the resting area and take his stained coat away to be cleaned. Once inside a private room, Edward selected a bottle labeled "Secret Order-Marionettist-Physical Body" from his collection cabinet and casually tossed it onto the floor.

The glass bottle dissolved into white smoke upon hitting the floor, and a middle-aged man in tattered clothes suddenly appeared, kneeling in the private room. He trembled for a moment, then stood with his head lowered. His flesh writhed, and in an instant he became an identical Edward Vaughan.

"You know what to do."

"...Yes, Master."

The Devil paid him no further attention. He picked up another bottle labeled "Abraham-Traveler-Soul," opened a door, and vanished from the room.

137

The mansion Miller Carter had purchased was at 8 Williams Street.

Edward arrived there instantly through the door. With its owner away hosting a banquet, only a few servants were guarding the unfinished house. Building materials lay piled in its untidy garden. He walked into the garden as though no one else were there, pushed open the front door, and silently passed a footman dozing in a chair. Finally, in a corner of the first floor, he spotted a newly installed handrail whose paint had not yet fully dried.

Edward stood at the underground entrance and looked down. He could clearly see a fairly spacious area inside, yet to his spiritual intuition, this underground space did not exist.

Was it concealed?

Something that could conceal itself from an Angel's spirituality? Something that could only be discovered through physical means?

A true god's seal?

What was down there? Even a Sealed Artifact with severe side effects would never be left by a Church somewhere an ordinary person might stumble upon it.

With these questions in mind, Edward quietly descended the stairs, one step at a time. Without needing lamps or candles, he could see that the basement had undergone some preliminary renovation. Several gas lamps had been installed, and the area at the foot of the stairs was reasonably clean, though rubble and dirt remained a few meters farther in.

He followed the rubble deeper inside. Behind it stood a newly built wall.

"The actual sealed site is behind this."

"Klein discovered this place, but he chose to blow it up rather than tell anyone. Does that mean he thought the matter had been completely resolved and he didn't need anyone's help? Did he discover it by chance, or did the mysterious organization he belongs to send him here and order him to keep it secret?"

Muttering to himself, Edward used the Traveler's power to open another door and stepped through. The rocks piled inside, large and small, rose into the air and moved aside, leaving a passage wide enough for one person.

"There are so many candlesticks..."

"An iron throne? Even this... No, two? A hand grasping authority and a black crown. Tudor and Trunsoest-ah, these aren't Solomon's ruins. This is the final United Empire, where I descended."

Edward immediately identified the era these historical relics came from and felt somewhat disappointed. Even now, he remained intensely interested in the mausoleums where the Black Emperors slumbered and resurrected, but he had never visited a single one. Solomon's mausoleums had long since been found and utterly destroyed, while Roselle would not let him visit his.

Without slowing, he continued forward until he reached several large doors at the end. All stood half open, each revealing a statue of one of the six gods. The statues had been knocked down by the explosion intended to conceal everything here, and all were damaged.

Behind the final room-the only one whose door remained firmly shut-there really was something. Dark red blood seeped beneath the door, and a sinister aura spread toward him. Edward glanced at it, stepped straight onto the blood, walked up to the door, and gently knocked with two fingers held together.

Blood flowed down from above the doorway as well. Edward found it rather tiresome, as though he were watching a cheap horror film. In reality, only he felt that way. The sinister atmosphere, unknown creature, and blood everywhere would have been enough to terrify any creature arriving for the first time. Streams of blood stopped at his eye level in defiance of physics, then gathered together. A scarlet eye opened within the fist-sized mass of blood.

He stared at the large eye, unable to understand what the other party was playing at. Just as he was about to speak, a voice came from behind the door that instantly made one want to punch its owner.

"A Devil? A lively little Sequence 2 Devil?"

"And there's the aura of a Prisoner too. You're also a Sequence 2 Prisoner. Heh, don't tell me you're Farbauti, the one my Lord crippled?"

Edward had not been smiling to begin with, and the sinister lighting made his expression look even more frightening. Without any change in expression, he crushed the fist-sized eye with what could almost be called gentleness, then drew an inverted cross on the door.

"Pardon me. With a mouth like that, you must be the War Angel. Seeing you certainly beats hearing about you. You truly have a way with words."

His expression grew subtle, holding three parts indifference, three parts detachment, and four parts bewilderment, along with Why do I always run into these unplanned situations? and The True Creator's requests are such a pain. I'm not doing this again. He wiped the blood from his hands, tossed the handkerchief straight into the pool of blood, and turned to leave.

TBC

No rescue this time. Not strong enough.

Much later:

Medici: Well, well, if it isn't the great ruler of our backyard?

Decay: ...

Medici: Why so quiet? Don't you get bored doing nothing but digging around in the dirt?

Decay: I can't understand why you still dare provoke me when you can't beat me.

*Based on reader feedback, I've realized that putting lighthearted little skits like the one above at the end can easily lead to misunderstandings, so I've decided not to write them anymore.