Mystery: Mr. Witch and Ms. Hunter

Chapter 332 Engagement Ring
Will we become stars...?
For no apparent reason, Adele felt a chill on her back, as if something was staring at her spine, making it impossible for her to calm down.

For a moment, she even wanted to order the ship to be sunk, abandon all the spoils, and head for the next port at full speed. If anyone dared to resist, they would be thrown overboard.

However, this thought only flashed through her mind for a moment and then disappeared. After all, she couldn't be as self-centered as Catalina.

After thinking it over, Adele took out the yellow crystal pendulum from her pocket, took a deep breath, and began to recite the divination sentence in her mind:
"There is contamination on this ship from the stars or the ground."

After reciting it silently seven times, Adele opened her eyes and found that the topaz pendant was rotating counterclockwise.

No pollution from the starry sky on board?
Adele frowned. She had already prepared herself mentally for the possibility that the ship actually came from the starry sky or underground and was contaminated by some kind of pollution. The negative answer was somewhat unexpected to her.

The result of Mr. Fool's Citrine Pendulum Divination will not be wrong. There must be something I haven't discovered yet...

Adele frowned in thought.

Although the citrine pendulum given by Mr. Fool is magical, it is essentially just a pendulum after all. It can only provide "yes" or "no" answers, and cannot predict the detailed process like a real fortune teller. This requires Adele to find the answer herself.

Adele thought about it and quickly made a decision. She took the pendulum again and tried the second divination statement:

"My life would be in danger if I stayed on this boat."

When I opened my eyes again, the pendulum was still spinning counterclockwise, with normal amplitude and frequency. It was a result that expressed a clear meaning and was almost impossible to interpret further:

Staying on the boat poses no threat to Adele's life.

Within the pendulum's judgment range, irreversible changes caused by loss of control are also considered life-threatening, indicating that there seems to be no danger from various pollution sources here.

Although the divination result was beyond doubt, Adele still felt uneasy. After all, everything here looked so weird. As a result, the divination told her that there would be no threat to her life here and she could go privateering without any worries. This made it difficult for her to accept it for a while.

How could there be no problems in a place like this?!
Adele held the yellow crystal pendulum and tried divination several times, somewhat unconvinced. She repeatedly confirmed her own safety and asked six questions in a row before she felt that she had blocked all the loopholes.

Could it be that I am really too suspicious? Adele hesitated as she looked at the diary spread out on the table.

Is it because I have been out at sea for too long that I am too nervous? No, no, Tracy was as cautious as I was at the beginning...

Adele couldn't help but start to envy Tracy. Although the pirates under her command were also very greedy, they had been controlled by Tracy for many years after all. Although they quickly followed Ramanujan to turn against Tracy after her disappearance, at least they would not resist Tracy's orders, unlike herself. Now if she wanted to order them to do something, she had to consider the consequences in advance.

Adele's sigh did not last long, because Tracy came in soon, followed by Constantine. Both of them looked excited, as if they had discovered a new world.

"How was the loot inspection?"

When Adele saw the looks of these two people, she felt that something good was going to happen, so she started to ask.

"Just the things on this ship make this voyage worthwhile." Tracy was in high spirits, her expression becoming unusually lively because she had just discovered a huge fortune.

"So exaggerated?" Adele was a little unconvinced. "Mr. Eggers, you went there with Tracy. Could you please estimate the value of our harvest this time? Can it be more than 50,000 pounds?"

"Although it's strange for a middle-class person like me, fifty thousand pounds is really nothing, especially in the face of this harvest."

"The collection on this ship alone is enough to buy a baron in Loen. With the devaluation of titles after the war, I'm afraid even the title of viscount can be obtained."

Constantine said in the Loen accent that is unique to the southern continent, "It's hard to describe it with words alone... Why don't you come with us to the bottom cabin and take a look."

"Okay, I'd like to see it."

Adele nodded, stood up, and made a "please" gesture, "Please lead the way."

……

"To be honest, it's a good thing you didn't order the sinking of this sailboat, otherwise..."

When they reached the iron door of the lower cabin, Constantine suddenly said with deep feeling: "It may sound a bit serious, but in the eyes of some nobles, you may have become a sinner of humanity."

"so serious?"

Adele glanced at the door. The door that originally required a password to open had now been removed by Constantine and Tracy.

The metal door was indeed very strong, but the bulkheads were made of wood, and Constantine's undead creatures easily destroyed the bulkheads and removed the door.

Adele looked into the room. What was displayed inside was not the supplies and weapons that Adele had imagined, but various kinds of artworks, which were carefully classified in chronological order. The dazzling array of artworks was overwhelming.

“Why art?”

Adele knew that no one could answer her question, but she couldn't help but ask.

This place is not a Feng Shui treasure land, but a war zone between the Loen-Feineport coalition and the Balam colony. The eastern battlefield is a rainforest terrain, and land transportation is difficult, so the colonial resistance army's supplies are transported by sea by sailing ships. Dozens of brutal offensive and defensive battles have broken out in the coastal port cities of East Balam.

This empty ship from Intis not only had no one on board, but was also carrying valuable works of art. This style of painting really had nothing to do with the bloody war zone.

Tracy and Constantine didn't say anything, but just looked at the artwork in the cabin with some obsession.

These objects have obviously been carefully selected, and they are all extremely representative artistic carriers of their own era. It can be said that by looking at these things, one can see a tributary of the long river of human history, and from them one can infer a glimpse of the entire history.

"Did the sailors know about this?"

After Adele came to her senses, her first reaction was to ask anxiously.

"No one knows yet. I forbid them to come down and explore on the grounds that the rooms on the bottom floor are cursed."

Tracy nodded and replied that she had not actually lied completely, because there was indeed a curse here, which she had cast herself to prevent reckless sailors from breaking in and discovering the artwork here.

Handing these artworks to the poorly educated pirate mercenaries and asking them to exchange them for beer? Even Tracy, who was a pirate herself, found it difficult to give such an order, because it was simply a blasphemy against human civilization.

Moreover, although most of the hundreds of artworks in this room have not been clearly valued in the market, even the most recent piece of jade, similar artworks have been sold for more than one thousand pounds.

Giving such works of art as rewards to his sailors... Let's not talk about whether the ordinary sailors' efforts are worth so much compensation. Even if an ordinary sailor is given a work of art worth thousands of pounds, can he keep it?
Obviously, the chances of this happening are very slim. Instead of expecting them to be pretentious, it would be better to reward your subordinates with your own money and give them a price they can afford.

"Well done! Keep up the blockade and assign some sailors to the Nebuchadnezzar. Let them drive the ship back to Berens Harbor and we will escort them."

Adele slowly paced along the display cabinets that stored various artworks. "Call Wendy and the others over later. Each Beyonder on the ship will pick one item as a trophy. The remaining 20% ​​will go to His Excellency the Major General, 20% to the Church of the Earth, 20% to the Church of the Night, and the rest will be handed over to the kingdom."

"As for the common sailors, a hundred pounds apiece is sufficient as a bonus; they cannot keep more."

Constantine nodded, which represented the church's approval of Adele's distribution method.

It was a well-known secret within the Church of the Earth that Emlyn White also believed in The Fool. That being did not seem to worry that Emlyn's actions to spread His name would cause dissatisfaction with the Mother Goddess. Constantine also knew that this major general could also represent the Church of The Fool.

As a church tacitly approved by both the Goddess and the Mother Goddess, it was reasonable for the Church of Fools to want a piece of the pie in Constantine's view.

According to the oracles from the Mother Goddess and the Goddess, when it comes to the Church of Fools, the people within the church can make great concessions. Aside from the believers' competition, which depends on their own abilities, the senior deacons of the church can make considerable concessions of resources.

Now Adele only asked for 20% for Emlyn, which was considered very restrained by Constantine. She gave a price that made it difficult for him to bargain. It was the maximum benefit that could be obtained without affecting the relationship between the two parties.

However, Tracy saw it differently.

"The royal family and the military take 20%, the Church of Darkness takes 20%, and the Church of the Earth takes 20%..."

Tracy thought to herself, "How could those vampires in the royal family be so generous as to confiscate 40% of the proceeds?"

——Ever since she met Emlyn White, she had always thought that Adele was from the Kingdom’s military. Adele had guessed a little bit about this, but she was too lazy to correct him.

"If there is no problem, then you two can start choosing now."

Adele pointed to the spacious bottom cabin and said, "Whether it is sold or collected, His Excellency the Major General will not pursue the matter."

Tracy and Constantine responded and walked into the jungle of display cases.

Adele also walked in and began to choose carefully.

Although she said she was selecting, she actually avoided the sight of the two people, rubbed her wrist secretly, took out the pendulum, and began to divine whether the artworks in the room were dangerous. She came to the conclusion that these were indeed just ordinary collections without any mystical power, and she felt relieved.

Although she said that each person should pick one, most of the other extraordinary people on the ship are still single. A witch like her who has a family is naturally special, so picking two more gifts for her girlfriend and daughter... well, that makes sense.

It was easy to choose a gift for Sophie. The child didn't know much about these things. After all, Adele had only been with her for a short time and there was no time to instill knowledge about identifying such works of art. So Adele quickly found a set of exquisitely crafted windmill models, which were obviously the work of the Steam Church.

Although according to the plan, Sophie would be promoted to a "cold-blooded person" when she returned, and it was hard to say whether she could still maintain her current innocence by then, but Adele still stubbornly chose this model.

As for the gift for Vinata... Tracy and Constantine seemed to have reached a consensus that Adele could take more, so they placed it in a prominent position.

It was a ruby ​​ring, with 14 sparkling diamonds of different sizes dotted around the oval red main stone. The entire ring was made of platinum and still looked exceptionally bright under the dim light in the cabin.

According to the label on the small card attached, this was once a ring that a noble of the Soran family customized for his fiancée. Later, for some reason, it was never used. It was processed by twelve jewelers and is a representative of the jewelry processing technology of the Quaternary Period.

Noticing that Adele had found the ring, Tracy smiled at her and said, "Constantine and I just discussed this. We both feel that when you return this time, you will need a ring that can hold up the occasion... I'm not talking about a magical item, but a more important ring."

Adele was stunned for a moment, but soon understood what Tracy meant, and a rare warmth surged in her heart.

"You're right... I do need such a ring."

Adele carefully took the ring out of the patent leather jewelry box, first measured it on her own finger, and then compared it with the thickness of Vinata's fingers in her memory to confirm that the size was appropriate.

- Although Vinata used to be a gangster, as a Beyonder, her body did not become thick-jointed and muscular. Instead, she focused on flexibility and muscle explosiveness, which made her finger size not much different from Adele after she became a witch.

Constantine looked at Adele with a smile in his eyes and didn't say much, but Adele noticed that he also put a small box that looked like a jewelry box into his pocket, which seemed to be just the right size to hold a ring.

No way, are he and Wendy progressing too fast?
Adele was a little surprised and thought that either Constantine liked to plan ahead, or she was developing too slowly and couldn't keep up with the times.

Adele met Vinata in October last year, and they started planning to get married less than four months after dating. This was already quite fast in Adele's eyes, but when she saw Constantine starting to prepare the ring, Adele couldn't help but wonder if she should update her outlook on life.

Could it be that the Intis blood in Wendy's body showed signs of revival? Adele wondered aimlessly.

(End of this chapter)