Author: 冬瓜茶仙人 / Winter Melon Tea Immortal

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

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Chapter 113

No one expected such an event to occur.

A group of people stood on the dock, staring at the still-rippling water—besides the waves that hadn’t completely settled, there was nothing else. They had rushed to the scene as soon as they heard the news of the witch’s appearance, but even those who ran fastest only managed to see a splash of water. By the time they thought to ask the person who had been closest to the witch, Hasting had already disappeared without a trace.

Pambrick, disheveled and anxious, stood on the shore with several stewards, watching crew after crew and dock workers dive into the water to search. They weren’t interested in the so-called witch, but Louis was a highly regarded new force in recent years, and if something happened to him, the responsible parties wouldn’t escape blame.

Therefore, even though the sky was still full of crows (the rats had disappeared as if the tide had gone out), and the crows dived down to attack anyone who went into the water, the Wolf fleet and archers were already in place. As long as the birds came close to the surface—Pambrick watched the crows fly up in response to another team entering the water, and the captain beside him was about to signal to shoot the arrows when suddenly everyone experienced a severe ringing in their ears.

The pain was sudden and inexplicable, almost as if some creature had emitted a roar inaudible to humans.

The sudden disturbance confirmed this, as the crows abruptly stopped their dive toward the surface. Most of the black birds urgently turned around, desperately flapping their wings to fly higher.

Unfortunately, they weren’t fast enough.

Only a few with exceptional eyesight could vaguely see a nearly invisible, insubstantial flash of lightning appear in the sky above the harbor. It moved so quickly that only its afterimage was barely perceptible, but it was clear that wherever the lightning passed, it swept through the crows like a sharp, long knife. Those detestable birds didn’t even have time to let out a hoarse cry before they lost their lives.

Taking advantage of the chaos, Hasting had already returned near the passenger ship, even climbing up the iron chain hanging from the ship’s side without using a gangplank, all the while watching for the irrationally attacking crows, but the attack he anticipated never happened.

It should be said, since the appearance of the crows, an eerie vacuum had formed around the ship they were on, including the nearby ships, and not a single crow was seen on the masts’ lookout posts.

Shiloh was there to assist him, and as soon as Hasting’s feet hit the deck, the red-haired youth handed him a pair of fuzzy…

“Earmuffs?” Hasting’s eardrums were still throbbing.

His resistance to magic hadn’t worked, indicating that the sudden pain was unrelated to magic and was more likely caused by a sonic wave.

Hasting didn’t put on the earmuffs but held them in his hand while Shiloh gestured for him to talk inside the cabin.

“Louis emerged from underwater and assassinated Elena,” Hasting reported exactly what he had seen. “But before he could pull out his knife, Mr. Charlie jumped from the ship, plunging into the water with both of them. Then,” he furrowed his brows, searching for the most accurate words, “a black hole suddenly appeared in the water, swallowing them up, and they disappeared.”

He used the word “disappeared”, not “gone missing”.

Because he was the first to reach the water, and it was a shallow area near the dock stairs, there were no waves or undercurrents that could have swept people away instantly. But Hasting swore they disappeared immediately upon entering the water, without even a bubble surfacing.

What surprised him even more was that the Duke, who had never left the cabin, nodded nonchalantly when he heard the description, as if not surprised at all.

Even Eugene reacted the same.

“If Elena is dead, he probably plans to escape to the ends of the earth.” Dwight looked at Hasting. “Can you be sure that witch died from that one strike?”

Hasting shook his head.

Louis was from the Wolf family, which differed from proper nobility. They didn’t waste time on ceremonial etiquette or the postures of dueling but learned real killing techniques from childhood. Even though the situation was sudden, Hasting could clearly see the knife being plunged directly into the heart.

If it were an ordinary person, that strike would be fatal within minutes.

But the opponent was a witch, powerful, and, although not skilled in close combat, likely had some defenses to cover her weaknesses.

“I saw the knife enter her heart, but at that time, Elena was preparing to flee and was transforming.” Hasting, although not a mage, understood the basic theory. The witch was probably trying to escape by mimicking a crow, but Louis was quicker.

If she was casting magic at that moment, it indeed couldn’t be judged by normal logic whether that strike was fatal.

Dwight frowned.

Previous conversations and subtle reactions made Dwight realize that Charlie actually needed Elena’s curse as a disguise. Especially after entering the Wolf Family’s territory, his tension indicated that his true identity was taboo to this family—yet Louis, who looked similar to him, held a significant position within the family, indicating that the taboo wasn’t due to conflicts of interest or enemies, but due to his “existence” itself.

Apart from the Holy Grail, what else could provoke the Wolf Family?

If so, he and Louis might be twins. With each generation of the Holy Grail supposedly only having one person, which one would it be?

Neither twin would readily admit this. Given Charlie’s efforts to maintain his rabbit-head disguise, it was unlikely they would easily acknowledge each other’s existence in public.

In other words, the taboo wasn’t solely about Charlie or Louis, but about the fact that they were “twins”.

“Don’t speak lightly of Louis,” Dwight said. “Pretend he has no connection to us.”

Aside from Shivers, who vaguely sensed something was off, Hasting and the others didn’t understand why the Duke had issued such an order. Despite their confusion, they followed the instruction, especially Hall, who discreetly dropped his plan to privately investigate the relationship between the rabbit-headed shopkeeper and the two prominent Black Gold Families of White Bridge.

Dwight scanned the room, his gaze settling as he pondered.

Louis was troublesome in many ways. For Charlie, Louis’s existence was a significant threat, although the threat was mutual. He was also a danger to Priscilla. Should anyone link him with the Countess of Mokwen and then start questioning the purity of her unborn child’s bloodline, their plans up to now would be in jeopardy.

Yet they couldn’t simply kill him.

Priscilla aside, looking at Charlie, still sporting a rabbit head and seeming quite content, it was likely he still had deep feelings for this brother.

Therefore, to conceal his identity, knowing the Duke’s understanding of Rabbit Head, he would certainly intervene to save him as long as Elena was still alive. The creature that could instantly take several grown men from the water was likely the Darby Belly Fish, a rare beast capable of changing its size at will and moving at incredible speeds, making it not too difficult to follow the waterways into a nearby city to find a doctor in a short time.

But the question was, where had the fish gone?

Louis would definitely return. Priscilla’s ship was still docked at the harbor, and with the auction about to begin, as a high-ranking member of the Wolf family, he wouldn’t miss it lightly.

As for Charlie, with Kurt still in White Bridge, he would likely return too, but the question was, when and in what form…

A knock on the door interrupted Dwight’s thoughts. He looked up as Shiloh quickly went to open it, exchanged a few words in a low voice at the door, then turned back with a somewhat peculiar expression.

“Amber says, Emerald is back.”

When the Duke stepped onto the deck, the initially overwhelming number of crows had almost entirely vanished—except for those lifeless bodies floating on the water. Many crew members in uniform were rowing out to retrieve them one by one, with divers continuously searching the water, trying to find any trace of Louis and the witch.

Seeing that the turmoil had visibly subsided, other ships moored at the harbor began to boldly draw their curtains to look out. The dock remained inactive. The night had fully fallen, and lights along the shore shone brightly, reflecting off the lights on the salvage boats with the area outside the light sources remaining dark.

They hadn’t turned on the deck lights, so no one noticed the Pluto Owl perched on the ship’s railing, wagging its tail. Amber stood not far from it, appearing eager to get closer.

“Emerald,” the Duke said from five steps away. “Do you remember your name?”

The Pluto Owl turned its head to look at him. Those eyes that had been closed before were now wide and bright, and just as the Duke had said, a clear emerald green.

But it didn’t move.

The Duke glanced back. The captain, already attuned to him, came out with a large silver bowl, normally used in the ship’s restaurant to serve fruit but now filled with a clear liquid that wafted a rich aroma of liquor as the captain walked.

Shivers carefully placed the large bowl of the best distilled liquor from Nyx—worth its weight in gold and said to have been traded by a dwarven chieftain for an iron mine—in the Duke’s hands.

“Hmm,” the Duke hummed, taking the bowl and stepping forward two more steps. The aroma of the liquor was overpowering, making Shiloh, not yet of age to drink casually, inadvertently inhale sharply.

It was a trio again.

Eugene and Shiloh exchanged glances, then looked at the Pluto Owl, which also seemed very interested in the large silver bowl.

But the Duke didn’t hand over the bowl.

“Emerald,” he called again. Man and beast stood silently facing each other in the night wind for a long time, until Eugene couldn’t help shivering from the cold. Only then did the Pluto Owl, still entirely black, twist its body to face the Duke.

It recognized the scent of this person. Although it had been in hibernation, its body still maintained a slight perception of the outside world and could distinguish that the other had no ill intentions towards it.

Otherwise, it wouldn’t have dispersed the crows and then turned back to return here.

Eugene and the others held their breath as the Duke confidently held the heavy silver bowl—the Pluto Owl finally flapped its wings, and in a blur too fast to see, it pounced on the edge of the large silver bowl and started gulping down the liquor.

The Duke raised an eyebrow. “As expected, it awakened because of hunger.”

Its diet probably included various birds. Although it had been asleep, Elena’s flock of crows must have sensed the bloodline threat long before and stayed far from it, but to no avail.

Such a large swarm of crows was undoubtedly a feast for the Pluto Owl, which had been longing for energy. Instinctively, it opened its eyes, burst through the window, and quickly gobbled up enough to round its belly.

Having eaten its fill, it naturally became thirsty. The Duke had previously used expensive liquor for soaking (?), which played a crucial role—after eating, relying on its memory, it didn’t soar into the sky but returned to this ship.

It drank eagerly, not noticing the hand holding the bowl was moving, until the liquor was nearly gone. It belched, lifted its head, and realized that the comfortable night breeze was gone, replaced by the slightly cloying indoor air and a strange large cage.

The bowl was still in its beak, and the Pluto Owl didn’t even remember when it had entered. It foolishly watched as the door, the only way in and out, was mercilessly closed by the person who had given it the liquor.

The Duke casually handed the key to Amber beside him, instructing, “Feed it for a while first, then you can take over once it’s tamed enough.”

Amber nodded, and together with the others, they sympathetically watched the legendary “incredibly fast, uncatchable” Emerald.

The books never said such an animal could be so foolish.

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