Shut up, brave man! I don't want to atone for my sins to you!

Sure enough, Charles raised his hand and pointed to the crack that was hanging down a little bit from the dome in the distance.

"The shadows are about to wake up," he said, "I have to get there before they wake up completely..."

“Then I have to hold that place.”

"But your forbidden magic can't deal with those black shadows at all!" The witch said subconsciously, "They will keep regenerating, and you will be killed by them sooner or later!"

"I understand," the brave man calmly raised the holy sword. As if in response to his determination, the holy sword emitted a faint blue light, "but this is what I must do."

"..."

The witch suddenly didn't know what to say.

But maybe they shouldn't say anything more at this time. She understood, and the priest understood, that the hero had made up his mind. In this case, all they could do was -

The witch and the priest gritted their teeth and suddenly quickened their pace.

They came to the side of the brave man.

"I'll go with you!" They said in unison, almost in a state of self-destruction.

The brave man seemed to have foreseen this outcome, so he answered softly:

"it is good."

The witch stared at the cracks spreading from the dome in the distance, then turned her head to look at the shadows gradually waking up among the broken walls and said faster:

"The wishing machine has stopped working, and the Wall of Sighs covering Diesel has been broken. The White Tower, which has been keeping an eye on Diesel's movements, must have noticed something unusual. Old Deng and the others must have rushed here as quickly as possible. In addition, we previously passed on information to them that Diesel might have a limited number of wishing machines..."

"They should be here with the limited wishing machine from the White Tower, so we just need to find a way to hold them off for a while and prevent the pollution from leaking out, and then..."

But suddenly someone interrupted her:

"No, we have tried. The Limited Wishing Machine can no longer restrain, let alone eliminate, those shadows."

The witch was stunned.

Before she could figure out where the familiar voice came from, a fleeting shadow emerged in the mirror on the ground beside them that was shattered by the disaster.

Then, the girl and the black cat traveled from the mirror world to reality.

The legendary investigator Nicholas Kate and his assistant Verdin Tudor appeared before the brave witch and the priest.

The black cat nodded at them questioningly, with a serious expression, and said directly:

"After being contained by Longin Tiel with the Limited Wishing Machine, they seem to have 'mutated' and can even ignore the influence of the Limited Wishing Machine. We can no longer contain them with the Limited Wishing Machine. All we can do is probably do the same as Mr. Ciel and try our best to prevent them from leaving Diesel."

The witch bit her lip subconsciously when she heard this:

"How could that be... What about hypnosis? Longin Till contained those shadows by hypnotizing them with the Limited Wishing Machine... Can we try his method?"

The black cat looked at her and shook his head:

"It's a pity, kid. We tried this method a day ago, and the results were obviously not satisfactory. At the beginning, the specimens we captured did fall into a deep sleep, but not long after, they woke up from their dreams."

"In fact," it paused, "I'm afraid we have tried every method you can imagine, but the results are all failures. Whether we want to believe it or not, the facts are already in front of us-"

The black cat suddenly sighed:

"The disaster that caused the destruction of the entire country of Diesel will probably reappear in every corner of the Pan-Continent in the near future."

At this moment, the brave man next to him suddenly interrupted:

"Excuse me, has the White Tower informed the surrounding countries? Has Victoria learned about Diesel's abnormality? How did other countries respond?"

The black cat was stunned for a moment, then smiled bitterly:

"We have already notified them, but... the vast majority of countries are unwilling to trust us. They all think we are exaggerating. There are still a few countries willing to send special envoys to Diesel to confirm the situation, but by the time those envoys arrive in Diesel, the situation may have already deteriorated to the point of..."

"Only Victoria," it whispered, "Victoria's Emperor told us that he has sent reinforcements."

"But even we in the White Tower can't do anything about those shadows, so what can Victoria's army of ordinary people do?"

The hero was silent for a moment, then asked in a low voice:

"So, in the end, you, the White Tower, are the only ones fighting alone?"

"I'm afraid so."

"..."

The brave man said no more.

He exhaled slowly, closed his eyes, and imagined the scene after all the shadows woke up, broke through Longin Tir's dream, returned to reality, and swarmed out of Diesel.

The first to be hit will certainly be Victoria and Lentiheim, which are adjacent to Diesel. After a brief resistance, as expected, these two countries will fall one after another, just like Diesel once did.

Then, the pollution will quickly spread to the entire supercontinent - whether it is Ceylon, Kangkel, or Zhendan in the far east, they will eventually be destroyed by the black shadow.

All the countries in the Pangaea will face a catastrophe. Perhaps at this time, the mystery of the destruction of the previous civilization that has troubled many scholars has finally been solved.

"Is there nothing else you can do?"

The brave man thought about it, but lowered his head and looked at the holy sword in his hand.

At this moment, he suddenly heard the black cat and its assistant, the witch and the priest suddenly heard a weak but firm voice behind them:

"No... there is another way."

That's Longin Tir...

That's Diesel's Emperor speaking.

[To be continued]

-

71. Exile to the Starry Sky

The emperor on the throne opened his eyes.

He told everyone that there were other ways to contain the shadow and save the Pangea.

The witch and the priest subconsciously wanted to walk over and ask the emperor what another solution was.

But the brave man stopped them.

"Don't go over there," the hero whispered, "He... has been contaminated."

The witch and the priest had no choice but to stop and look at Longin Tyr from afar beside the hero.

The emperor's face was filled with heavy fatigue, as if he had never rested for a single minute in the past thirty years. Although he had been sleeping on the throne for thirty years, he had never really slept in these thirty years.

He is always fighting against the pollution from the shadows.

It was so thirty years ago, and it is still so thirty years later.

The black shadows, restless because the limited wishing machine had stopped working, were trying to break free from his control. The black shadows that were deeply rooted in his flesh and blood and stitched together with his soul almost tore him into countless pieces. Countless fine cracks were visible to the naked eye on his body.

I'm afraid it won't be long before the emperor dies because of this.

But there was no fear on the emperor's face.

He just looked at the dark figure kneeling in front of him, quietly sizing up the extremely familiar face that had been polluted so that only the rough outline remained.

"My friend..."

Longin Tyr murmured and reached out his hand, wanting to touch the face.

The owner of that face struggled madly because of the pollution. It wanted to break free from the emperor's control and complete the instructions that were instilled into its remaining mind.

"Kill the Emperor."

But when the emperor was about to touch it, it miraculously suddenly became quiet.

Then, after a violent shudder, it raised its head and stared at the emperor with eyes that were no longer on his face.

"I..." It said in a trance, "What... have I done?"

Its gaze involuntarily shifted from the emperor's face to the emperor's chest, and fell on the cane sword that pierced the emperor's "heart", then passed the cane sword, and finally stopped on its own hand.

——It finally realized what it had done.

But it couldn't believe it, it kept trembling, and it couldn't help but burst into a shrill howl.

it……

Dark tears flowed down its face, which had already lost its facial features.

The shadow named Crazy John suddenly remembered the several encounters between Diesel and his friends in his dreams.

The emperor sat on the throne, and he knelt under the throne.

The foolish ministers assassinated the emperor ten times in succession.

But his emperor forgave him for ten consecutive crimes of disobedience.

He was just disappointed in him.

But he felt he was a stranger.

He felt like a different person.

Now he finally knew why, it was because -

"Because the person who changed is not you... it's me... I'm the one who was polluted... I remember... I..."

He collapsed to the ground, mumbling in a trance like a real madman:

"It turns out that I...actually died a long time ago."

He died on the day the emperor ascended the throne, and he died just before his wish was fulfilled.

The one living in the dream is just the obsession of Crazy John, which was contaminated by the dark shadow long ago.

After realizing this fact, it suddenly became calmer than ever before.

It looked again at Longin Tyr, its former friend and now the emperor.

"Kill... me."

It uttered these three words with difficulty and struggled to put the cane sword into Tyr Longin's hand.

Tyr Longkin took the cane sword, was silent for a moment, and nodded:

"it is good."

So he killed his only friend with the cane sword that had pierced his "heart".

This time, the emperor did not pardon his ministers. As a punishment, he gave them...

He gave him - eternal peace.

……

The shadow of the past named Crazy John disappeared.

The emperor tightly grasped the cane sword, lowered his eyes tiredly, and leaned back on the throne, as if he was about to fall asleep.

From then on, he was alone.

No, perhaps he has been a loner since thirty years ago.

It's just that at that time... he didn't want to believe it.

But he no longer had time to feel sad about it. He was the emperor, and he had not yet fulfilled his responsibilities as an emperor. He still had things to do.

So he raised his head and looked at the three people and one cat in front of him.

No, it should be five people and one cat.

In addition to Nicholas Kate, Verdin Tudor, the Twilight Witch Lacele, and the Brave Charles, there are two more people——

The two persons, one old and one young, one tall and one short, were standing behind the three persons and the cat, looking at him with a smile.

He remembered the names of the two people -

Senior investigator Whitey Schilling, senior investigator Ivan Thorne.

He had seen the former off, buried him, and allowed his friends to take away the former's belongings and give them to the latter.

He had accepted an audience with the latter, given the latter many hints, and handed the letter left by the latter to the brave man and the witch.

A word suddenly occurred to him.

That word...is passing on the torch.