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

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10. What to do

Rachel has always had difficulty making choices.

She hated making choices, especially ones where it seemed like she would lose something no matter what she chose.

If she chooses to self-destruct, she will lose her dignity as a man; if she chooses to do nothing and just watch, she will lose Charles and the journey will be abruptly interrupted.

But come to think of it, hadn't she always been looking forward to this happening?

Obviously she came here to end it all in the first place!

She wanted to cut off ties with Charles, she wanted to part ways with him from now on - but Charles stopped her and asked her naively:

"Will you be my companion for life?"

Too heavy, too naive.

Obviously she just wanted revenge on Ciel at first.

But now that Charles put two choices in front of her, she didn't know which one to choose.

People will only hesitate between two options of equal weight, and Laciel knows this.

But why...

Rachel's gaze suddenly turned to the face of the pastor lady in the coffin.

She seemed to understand something.

She knew why she had not wanted Charles to take the priest away.

byd brave!

She was now sharing her senses with this body whose origins were unknown! So she couldn't let Charles take this body away, or else who knew what would happen.

Maybe she was having a meeting with Lao Deng in the White Tower, but suddenly she felt...

Lacie didn't dare to imagine further.

But her face turned red.

"How can you save the world if you are with a worm like this?"

Miss Witch muttered quietly and pursed her lips again.

All kidding aside, there was another reason why she didn't want to accept the second option.

What exactly is a priest?

In other words, what exactly is this body in the skin of a pastor lady that is now in front of her and Charles?

First, it was probably not a product of magic, because Charles' forbidden spell was ineffective against it; second, Lacie couldn't detect the breath of soul from its body, so it was most likely just an empty shell; finally, it reminded Lacie of Diesel's wishing well.

When Charles made a wish in front of the wishing well, she guessed that Charles' wish was probably to resurrect the priest.

And now, in a sense, the priest has indeed been resurrected.

Although only the body was resurrected and the most crucial soul was missing, does this mean that the wishing well in Diesel's territory can really fulfill wishes?

After all, the most crucial thing that the body lacks, the soul, is now here.

Thinking of this, Lacie was suddenly stunned.

A hint of hesitation flashed across her beautiful blue eyes, and then even her expression became strange.

An incredible idea was born, but for some reason, Rachel thought she had discovered some truth.

Will it be dangerous?

She asked herself

Most likely.

She answered to herself.

But it is probably the only way to solve the problem. After all, if anything unexpected happens, she still has Charles, right?

Ciel will save her... Maybe, how could a hero just watch someone die without helping, right?

Thinking of this, Lacie glanced at Charles, who was standing in front of her with a serious expression, and then she began to try to spread her senses.

The process was difficult to describe, and even the motivation was unclear - Lacie just had an inexplicable "inspiration", as if a newborn baby could breathe and eat naturally, it was an innate instinct - her instinct drove her to connect with the body in the coffin.

It was a wonderful experience.

The specific feeling cannot be summed up in words. If I have to describe it, it's like having a dream, and the person in the dream stepped on empty air and suddenly woke up.

At the same time, the witch Laciel suddenly smiled triumphantly, and then said to the hero in front of her:

"You want proof? Fine, I'll give it to you."

She casually waved her wand at the priest in the coffin, and then whispered:

"After sleeping for so long, it's time to wake up."

At the moment she finished speaking, the witch winked at the hero.

Then, with his extraordinary keen perception, the brave man suddenly realized that an exceptionally fresh breath of life was surging from the coffin beside him.

He turned his head subconsciously and found that the pastor's eyelids began to tremble slightly.

And in the void, there were brilliant streams of light shooting out, they shone like stars and quickly connected with each other, outlining intricate and exquisite abstract patterns of the sun, moon, morning and evening with some extremely complex rules and established routes, and with this as the core, gradually constructing an extremely complex magic array.

The magic circle enveloped the priest's body, with light and shadows everywhere, and Charles could no longer see the priest's face.

But he was not anxious about this, he could even be called calm. In order to prevent the forbidden spell from affecting the magic circle, he deliberately took a few steps back and stayed away from the magic circle.

Soon, the magic circle ended its mission, shattered into light spots all over the sky, and disappeared like fireworks.

The moment the magic circle disappeared, Charles rushed forward immediately.

Then he saw the pastor lady slowly sitting up from the coffin.

His movements were slow and his expression was confused. He didn't seem to understand why he was here, and he wasn't quite used to this unfamiliar body.

But the girl noticed Charles' arrival. She turned her head with some difficulty to look at Charles, and then showed him an expression mixed with confusion and surprise.

"Xia... Er?"

She called out in an awkward, inarticulate voice.

The hero answered her call - as he had done countless times before.

He knelt on one knee in front of the coffin, hugged the pastor tightly, and told her in a voice that had become hoarse for unknown reasons:

"Well, I've always been here."

The pastor let him hold her, with a slight smile on his lips and a slight tremor in his voice:

"Charles... I seemed to have had a dream... a very long dream..."

"Ah."

"In my dream... I seemed to be dead, dying in your arms, and you... cried so sadly."

"Ah."

"But now that I think about it...it doesn't seem to be a dream..."

Only this time, the brave man was no longer willing to agree with the girl in his arms, so he interrupted her solemnly:

"No, it was a dream—it was a nightmare."

The pastor did not refute, she just smiled, and with difficulty controlled her uncontrollable body, raised her arms and hugged the brave man's waist.

"Yeah, I know." She said obediently, burying her face in the hero's neck, greedily taking a deep breath, her voice became very light and thin, "And... I miss you so much."

The hero's body trembled, and then he answered with a low voice that was filled with moisture and seemed to be able to squeeze out water:

"……Me too."

The two of them kept hugging each other like this, as if they would hug each other until the end of time.

——But on the other side of time, the witch gave the hero a sly smile.

The combination of superb acting skills and top-notch special effects created a resurrection ceremony that even Ciel could not find any flaws in.

Obviously, she didn't need to prove anything extra. Charles, who witnessed the entire process of the priest's resurrection, would naturally believe that she had the ability to resurrect the dead.

After that, she would make up a random excuse, such as claiming that the resurrection spell was not yet perfect, so the resurrected dead could only maintain life for a short period of time.

Therefore, they still need to continue to go to various places to collect materials in order to truly resurrect the pastor lady.

But there is still a problem——

"Whether or not this body of Lacie was born from the wishing well in Diesel, we should go to Diesel again to investigate whether there is anything wrong with the wishing well."

Charles thought.

If she was born from Diesel's wishing well, it means that the wishing well can really fulfill people's wishes, and that is why this body appeared in the coffin.

But if that’s the case, where did the body that originally belonged to Lacie go?

He hadn't noticed it at first.

Before the decisive battle with the mad mother, he had never suspected that there was any unusual relationship between the witch lady and the person he loved, the pastor Rachel.

Even when Miss Witch transformed herself into Lacelle and begged him not to go and die, he still insisted that Miss Witch just didn't want him to die, and that's why she pretended to be Lacelle to stop him.

But she pretended a little too well.

She stood in front of him, and in a trance, he actually thought that it was Rachel who was resurrected.

She shouldn't have pretended to be so nice.

He remembered that Miss Witch had told him that she had been staying in the Sea of ​​Forest for the past three years and had never gone out, so the rumors about the team were only hearsay.

If that's the case, then why did the witch know what Lacie looked like? Why could she impersonate Lacie so vividly?

Charles felt that if he asked Miss Witch this question, Miss Witch would definitely find all kinds of reasons to try to tell him that she had met Lacie once, so of course she knew what Lacie looked like.

She's always like this.

When she was still in the team, she always made unreasonable arguments like this.

That's why he opened the coffin as soon as he came back - he wanted to know whether the facts were consistent with his guess, he wanted to know if it was true - were the witch and the priest really the same person?

it seems that.

All the evidence points to this only answer.

But it doesn't seem like it.

Because the witch lady was standing beside him, and Lacie, who was sleeping in the coffin, had been resurrected by her.

He was able to confirm that the girl in his arms was definitely the real Rachel.

Then the question arises:

If the girl in his arms is the real Rachel, then who is the witch lady not far away? Did the wish he made in front of Diesel's wishing well come true?

Charles didn't know any of this.

He only knows one thing -

Eliminating all the messy intelligence and information, and thinking in the way that Rachel had taught him before, working backwards from the results to the causes, he could come to the simplest conclusions:

"One: Miss Witch didn't lie to him."

"Two: Miss Witch deceived him."

"Three: Regardless of whether Miss Witch lied to him or not, the investigation into Diesel's abnormality should continue. As the investigation is completed, the answer here will also come to light."

as well as……

"If Miss Witch deceived me, what should I do with her?"

The brave man thought silently.

"After all, she was the one who had been preventing me from opening the coffin."