Author: 冬瓜茶仙人 / Winter Melon Tea Immortal

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 107

“Larry? Are you insane!” Pambrick grasped his long umbrella with both hands, blocking the foreman’s hands that were reaching for his neck. The middle-aged foreman, who hadn’t engaged in physical labor for a long time, showed astonishing strength at this moment, pushing Pambrick backward to the extent that his back was arched to its limit, the umbrella creaking ominously as if about to break.

Larry looked decidedly off-kilter. Although Pambrick blocked his forward lunge, Larry still struggled to move past him toward the carriage, where Louis sat, watching them coldly.

Louis had sensed something was amiss when he noticed the foreman approaching the carriage uninvited. Instead of getting out of the carriage to avoid him, Louis sat inside, rolling up his sleeves—Pambrick came back halfway and immediately noticed the foreman’s aberrant behavior, blocking him just ten steps from the carriage.

The deranged witch had obviously mistaken someone for another, but admittedly, hiding her tracks well enough to pinpoint his location amidst so many targets was an impressive feat.

However…

Thinking of Elena’s ordinary appearance and obsessive behavior, Louis frowned deeply.

Had his taste really deteriorated that much? To become entangled with such a woman.

Priscilla was already aboard the ship, and the Azalea’s defenses weren’t easily breached. Other ships at the harbor had already retracted their gangways early out of deference to the Countess, serendipitously avoiding the possibility of the witch boarding. There might even be bored tourists peering out of windows now, curious about what was happening on the dock.

Louis straightened his sleeves and put on a waterproof cloak, then stepped out of the other side of the carriage, pulling out what looked like a decorative, light sword with a silver and black blade from inside the door—a perfect match for the carriage’s stately yet simple style.

Pambrick was almost overwhelmed. Larry’s grip had twisted the black umbrella out of shape, and just as it was about to snap, he suddenly looked up—though his view was blocked by the carriage, he seemed to smell Louis’s scent, stretching his neck with a bizarre expression of eager desire.

At that moment, the clouds parted slightly, and Pambrick, at close range, saw Larry’s eyes turning a dull gray. Considering the recent rumors in town, he cursed under his breath, glanced at the decorative collar clip on his shirt front, which included a holy spell. Today, the temperature had dropped, and he wore a thick wool coat buttoned up for decorum, now feeling only a faint warmth from beneath the coat, which was completely ineffective against the delirious Larry.

“Step aside.” Louis’s voice came from behind, and although Pambrick was older, his reaction was swift. Almost as soon as Louis spoke, he released his hold and crouched down, and Larry, propelled by inertia, nearly fell onto him. Louis swiftly kicked, sending Larry rolling to one side before he quickly stood up again.

Without needing instructions from Louis, Pambrick sounded an alarm. In recent years, Louis had grown to dislike making a show of his status everywhere, but that didn’t mean he would stay unprotected in public for long.

Larry tilted his head to look at Louis, wary of the sword in his hand. His head shook oddly, not like a human but more like a rapt bird.

Louis’s light sword bore a mage’s engraved holy circle, effective against vampires and creatures of black magic. Behind Pambrick, several figures dressed in black were rushing towards them, with the faint sound of horse hooves in the distance.

Larry didn’t approach further but seemed indifferent to the gathering crowd. He awkwardly moved his neck as if trying to get a better view of Louis’s face, and then, under Pambrick’s astonished gaze, he strangely stuck out his tongue and spoke with a slurred voice. “Where… is he?”

Louis frowned and stepped forward before he repeated himself. Although slightly deflected by Larry’s blocking, the blade still pierced his left shoulder, leaving a bloody wound as blood mixed with the thin rain, quickly staining half his body red.

But Larry’s scream wasn’t due to the wound but because the sword left a mark like a burn from flames on his flesh, the imprint of the holy circle.

The Wolf Family arrived before the sheriffs, restraining Larry, who writhed on the ground. Louis tossed the light sword to Pambrick, muttered a command, then turned and walked towards the Azalea.

……

“Something happened at the dock.” Shivers stood by the ship’s rail, setting down his binoculars. His blonde hair was wet from the fine rain dripping down his ears and soaking his collar.

Eugene, lacking binoculars, shrank back his neck and shivered. “I’ll go tell them.”

He was about to turn back when he saw the rabbit-headed shopkeeper and the Duke also emerge, with Hall standing behind the Duke, holding a sturdy-looking umbrella.

“Did Priscilla board?” The Duke squinted towards the dock.

“Twenty minutes ago, the Azalea retracted its gangway,” Shivers reported. “But there’s been a disturbance on the dock. Someone suddenly went mad and attacked a carriage. And the people inside it.”

The rabbit-headed shopkeeper adjusted his pocket monocular and aimed it at the dock. “The workers have been evacuated—probably because of the Countess boarding. There’s much more space than usual. The carriage… Ah.”

He saw the distinct black carriage belonging to the Wolf Family, linking it to Priscilla, who had just boarded. The identity of the carriage’s owner was clear.

The Duke took Shivers’s binoculars, adjusting the focus to the maximum. Due to the limited craftsmanship of the lenses, the images were slightly distorted but still clearly showed two people struggling in the rain, locked in a standoff.

That awkward, bizarre motion was somewhat familiar. The Duke put down the binoculars, flicking his finger against the tube of the rabbit-headed shopkeeper’s monocular.

This gesture seemed to snap the rabbit-headed shopkeeper out of a daze. He looked up, appearing somewhat bewildered.

“Enchanted puppet,” the Duke stated succinctly. “Is it Elena?”

“Probably.” The rabbit-headed shopkeeper passed the monocular to Eugene, who had been craning his neck, and after a moment of thought, said, “I better go down.”

“Hasting is down there.” The Duke frowned.

This was a double precaution Dwight had arranged for his sister, allowing a Brandenburg Knight to lurk near the dock to handle emergencies.

The reason he hadn’t intervened in the now-occurring disturbance was that Hasting’s task was solely to escort Priscilla, not to maintain dock security.

As long as Hasting was there, not even two Elenas could board the ship, neither the Azalea nor their current vessel.

The rabbit-headed shopkeeper shook his head. “No, I’m worried about Louis.”

The Duke raised an eyebrow. “Worried he’s not a match for a witch? Such a fool wouldn’t be sitting in the Wolf Family’s chair.”

The shopkeeper looked at him, remaining silent.

He wasn’t worried that Louis couldn’t handle Elena—quite the opposite. Even if Louis himself was confident, the Wolf family wouldn’t leave a senior cadre in danger. There must be Wolf people not far from the dock, probably obscured by the rain, but they would soon notice this incident and arrive. The attack wouldn’t last long.

Elena, a witch who never knew when to quit, was likely nearby. If she confirmed that Louis was Charlie, then this wasn’t a simple case of puppet enchantment to deal with, and Charlie had a bad feeling about this.

The tricky part was that, stepping randomly into Elena’s sphere of influence, once she targeted someone, it was difficult to get away without losing a layer of skin.

But to let this usually solitary witch continued to provoke the Wolf Family, she might end up dying at the hands of the pack, and all curses passed through her hands would vanish like morning dew under sunlight.

No.

He’d rather streak than revert to his original form here, especially with Louis also present.

The Duke didn’t quite understand the rabbit-headed shopkeeper’s resolution, but his tragically heroic demeanor was indeed puzzling.

“Just go if you want to,” Dwight said nonchalantly. “Why the look? Elena won’t kill you.”

If she was as infatuated with him as the rabbit-headed shopkeeper said, she’d likely want to capture him alive.

At most, she might have a bizarre taste and want to make him into a specimen that couldn’t run away, but she certainly wouldn’t act immediately.

“Elena might not, but Louis might.” Charlie muttered under his breath, though no one but himself heard it.

“Which one is Mr. Charlie’s brother?” Eugene was still eagerly looking. “I can’t see clearly… The older one definitely isn’t. The other one—tsk—why is he wearing a cloak!”

Shiloh didn’t dare to snatch the binoculars from the Duke or the Knight Commander, so he had to pester Eugene. “It’s your eyesight that’s bad. Let me have a look. Which one?”

Rabbit-headed shopkeeper: “…Why do I feel like nobody really believes my self-description?”

Knowing he was irresistibly handsome should be enough. Why bother to scrutinize Louis’s face so much.

The gangway to disembark was already set up, and Shiloh, without binoculars, persisted, “Do you want me to go help you? Although I’m not as resistant to magic as Hasting, I’m quite confident in just fighting.”

The rabbit-headed shopkeeper was melancholic. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m really not interested in fighting.”

Eugene’s eyes never left the dock. “They really do look alike, but their styles are quite different. Wow, your brother really plays rough.”

Eugene unilaterally felt that Louis seemed livelier than the always composed rabbit-headed shopkeeper—he was probably the younger brother.

In the midst of talking, he just saw Louis kick the foreman away with a clean and decisive move, the force of which made even Eugene wince in pain from afar.

The Duke wasn’t interested in watching them fight, but he was curious about Louis, who was said to resemble Charlie. Tempted by Eugene, he picked up the binoculars again.

As Eugene said, most of Louis’s face was hidden by the hood of his cloak, and with the attackers now subdued, he made no more grand movements. Dwight, bored, glanced around and didn’t spot any sign of the witch, but noticed the people on the dock suddenly tensing up.

“What’s happening?” Eugene also noticed something was amiss. “What are they looking at?”

The Duke’s hand tightened on the binoculars. He saw a swelling wave of black emerging at the edge of the dock steps—but that side led to Dock Street, not the water.

Shivers took the binoculars from Eugene and looked. “Is that rats? Why are there so many?”

The teeming, roiling black wave was indeed a large group of rats!

Even Shiloh didn’t dare be overly confident now. It was one thing to fight a human; it was another to deal with such nimble, small creatures in such numbers. Even armored, it was hard to emerge unscathed from an onslaught of ants, let alone rats.

The sight of so many rats changed everyone’s expressions aboard the ship. Eugene looked up inadvertently and noticed many crows had gathered near the dock but were unusually silent, like small black statues nailed to the high ship masts.

Strangely, though the crows filled the ships far and near, they completely avoided the ship the Duke and others were on, as well as a few nearby passenger ships, as if an invisible shield was keeping the crows at bay.

This inexplicable luck didn’t lighten anyone’s mood.

“Are these rats and crows also Elena’s magic?” Shivers turned to look at Charlie.

It’s well-known that witches liked to command such creatures, but to control such a massive throng at once was shocking.

“She’s always been into niche research, and it’s been many years since I last saw her. She’s made significant progress.” The rabbit-headed shopkeeper grimly smiled. “This isn’t something an ordinary witch could manage. She’s serious this time.”

Magic wasn’t an inexhaustible force conjured from thin air. Aside from the relatively minor energy drain of casting curses, performing magic and creating magical artifacts consumed a considerable amount of energy. Witches were still humans. Controlling so many creatures far exceeded the usual scope—even using potions to enhance power or using appropriate magical tools, this level of exertion could easily leave the caster comatose or dead.

So the sheer scale of the activity took everyone by surprise, making Charlie second-guess himself. Was Elena’s pursuit really so relentless, or did she have another purpose altogether?

“If we don’t get into the water or on a boat, the people on the dock will die.” The Knight Commander looked grim.

Other merchant and passenger ships wouldn’t allow boarding under these circumstances, except for the Azalea, which was owned by the Wolf Family.

And Priscilla was also on that ship.

Even if a stranger sought help, she would find it difficult to remain indifferent, let alone when it was the father of her child at risk.

The Duke inhaled sharply. “Notify Hasting.”

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