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

You master the relevant spells, and actually, all the investigators in the White Tower also master similar spells.

In order to avoid being contaminated and assimilated in incidents involving anomalies, all investigators are obliged to conduct a comprehensive physical and mental examination at regular intervals when conducting investigations.

So you gripped the cane that had been with you for many years and cast a standard detection spell on yourself.

The magic power surges through you, the familiar dizziness flashes away, and the result of the judgment is drawn -

"Everything is fine."

That voice echoes in your heart again.

You breathed a sigh of relief and gladly accepted this not-at-all-unexpected result.

There is nothing wrong with you - at least that's the answer you get from the self-diagnosis magic that you have always trusted and has saved your life and the lives of your colleagues countless times - you are fine.

But if everything is fine with you, why would those Diesel people be hiding from you?

You saw deep fear in their eyes. You wanted to communicate with them and tried to ask them why they were so afraid of you. However, no one was willing to approach you anymore. Even if you approached them forcefully, you couldn't get an answer.

The Diesel people will just shake their heads at you.

You can't force them to answer. You can't do it due to moral and professional ethics.

The fear and resistance of the Diesel people made you feel uncomfortable, so you decided to go back to the inn first.

"The anomalies here are increasing, and becoming more and more serious," you can't help but think confusedly on the way back, "I have to do something, but what should I do..."

You feel that the most sensible option is about to jump out. But just like sometimes you have already opened your mouth but forgot what you want to say, no matter how hard you frown and think, there is always a layer of sticky fog blocking your thinking.

Until there comes a moment when you almost figure it out.

But at this moment, you seem to notice something out of the corner of your eye——

On a street that had become deserted without you noticing, at the entrance of an alley, you vaguely saw something clinging to the wall, with only half of its face showing, secretly looking at you.

That seems to be...

It seemed to be an extremely tall and thin black shadow.

[To be continued]

-

37. Who are they?

You seem to see a dark shadow.

An extremely thin and tall black figure whose face cannot be seen clearly.

You start to feel uneasy.

But his sense of responsibility and confidence as a senior investigator quickly overcame this uneasiness.

"We need to figure out what that thing is and what's going on."

you think.

But this choice is far from rational, and you know this better than anyone else. The wisest choice now should be...

Like a gunpowder fuse being cut in the middle, your burning thoughts suddenly stopped, but for some reason, you didn't notice anything unusual, you just felt a little confused -

But in the blink of an eye, that little bit of confusion was like the morning mist under the scorching sun, baked away and disappeared quickly without a trace.

Then, you decided to remain silent and return to the hotel along the same route to see if the shadow would follow you.

You guessed it, the shadow followed.

At a certain street corner, you suddenly accelerated and turned into an alley on the side of the street, using the invisibility spell to hide your body. At the same time, you held your breath and waited patiently for the shadow to follow your footsteps into the alley.

After the thing walked into the alley as you expected, you used your cane sword to press against the thing's heart from behind.

You are not sure whether ordinary cold weapons can kill that thing. After all, it is just a thin and long shadow on the surface. But it doesn’t matter. Your cane sword is not an ordinary cold weapon. Some kind of spell that is close to instant death effect is attached to its blade.

In your past life, it has helped you deal with many difficult enemies, and there should be no surprises this time.

Somehow, you have such confidence - even though you know nothing about that stuff.

There is a famous saying in the White Tower, "Ignorance is the greatest arrogance", but you can't remember this saying. You just cautiously applied a little force, and then watched with satisfaction as the blade of the cane sword silently pierced into the black shadow. Immediately, the black shadow seemed to feel the pain and twitched slightly, but did not dare to turn around and attack you.

It's afraid, you feel it.

Strike while the iron is hot, you ask:

"Who are you? Why are you following me?"

Unfortunately, the shadow doesn't seem to understand what you are saying.

It can only make some noisy and confused gibberish.

The moment you hear the mumbling, you feel as if your brain has been forcibly stuffed with a bunch of things that you cannot understand. Like some kind of pollution, it begins to violently erode your thinking and turn you into some kind of alien.

The cognitive barrier doesn't work, and the mental protection spell is quickly broken like paper. If this continues, you think you might be quickly contaminated and turned into some weird existence, such as...

"For example, the shadow before my eyes."

For some reason, out of nowhere, you suddenly had this idea.

At this moment, as if sensing your weakness, the shadow attacks you.

However, its attack was ineffective.

Under the influence of many years of career as an investigator, your body's reaction speed is much faster than your mind, and muscle memory makes you stab the blade of the cane sword deep into the heart of the shadow without hesitation -

If, it has this organ.

Then, the instant death spell was triggered.

After a brief tremor, the black shadow lost all its vitality, and like a hollowed-out sack, it fell lightly to the ground without making any sound.

It's dead, probably.

The good news is that the instant death spell works on it, the bad news is that until the instant death spell takes effect, you still don't understand what it is.

A creation of some kind of magic? A naturally formed monster? Or maybe... a person who was twisted into a deformed appearance?

You don't have time to think about it anymore.

Because after the black shadow's mumbling briefly polluted your mind, the pale fog that had shrouded your brain from beginning to end quietly melted away a little, and the blocked cognition awakened.

You sensed something was amiss, and you finally remembered that the wisest choice you should make at this moment is to leave Diesel immediately, return to the White Tower, and report all the abnormalities here.

But this time, the soft voice in your heart reappeared:

"No, you don't want to leave Diesel, you want to stay here... forever."

The voice carries a subtle hint of panic and urgency, but no matter what, you will not be bewitched by it again.

You decide to leave Diesel immediately and set off back to the White Tower.

Before that, you need to go back to the hotel and take away the notebook in the hotel room that records all your investigation results in the past half month.

Thinking of this, you pulled the cane sword out from behind the fallen black shadow.

Bright red blood gushed out from the wound, splashing onto your body and face.

You took out a handkerchief from your bosom and calmly wiped the blood off your face, but at the same time you felt a little confused:

"So black shadows can bleed, just like humans?"

But your mind quickly prompted you to ignore this point, and you even forgot to deal with the dead shadow. This went against your cautious style as a senior investigator, but you didn't find it unusual at all.

You are back on the streets of Diesel.

The sun is still shining brightly, but this tiny country has become strange and terrifying in your eyes.

The deserted streets are extremely eerie, and every house has its doors and windows closed. You notice that countless eyes are shining through the gaps in almost every door and window, looking at you carefully from head to toe.

Those gazes seemed to carry some strong emotional color, but now you can no longer understand them... and you don’t have the heart to interpret them. You must leave this damn country immediately and return to the outside world.

The urge was so strong that it drove you to ignore the strange gazes and start the journey back to the inn.

The road is not long, and soon you are standing in front of the hotel.

But the door of the hotel was tightly closed, just like the doors and windows you saw on the street before.

But the difference is that behind the door of the hotel, there is no weird sight that makes you feel uncomfortable.

After a brief hesitation, you wanted to use the Wizard's Hand to open the door - but the amazing thing is that the moment you had this thought, the door of the hotel opened automatically.

You didn't sense any magical fluctuations, and there was no living creature behind the door.

The old man who was always hunched over and nagging in the hotel seemed to be gone. No one knew where he had gone. You guessed that he had fled...

This idea came a little abruptly, a little... incongruous.

You wonder why you have such a strange idea, but obviously, it doesn't matter. The most important thing now is to get the notebook back and leave Diesel with it.

Leaving Diesel is undoubtedly your top priority now.

So you quickly returned to your room and found the notebook.

Then, after a brief hesitation, you suddenly made a strange decision -

You plan to record everything that happened today and then leave Diesel with the notes.

"There's no rush for this. We can still do it after we leave Diesel..."

With this thought in mind, you opened the notebook.

Then, you are lost.

You find that you can no longer understand the words in your notes.

In other words, you suddenly realize and wake up - for the first time you "understand" the words you recorded in the notebook.

No, rather than words, it is more like some kind of totem, some kind of pattern, some complex concept that normal humans cannot understand.

You see those tiny words wriggling in your notebook as if they have life and will, like maggots lying flat on the paper. Your intuition tells you that they are conveying some kind of warning to you, but you are completely unable to read them, just like the precision instruments in the White Tower cannot read the random code you input into them.

The notes became a "holy book".

But when did this happen?

You can't help but start thinking about this question.

Was it when you first came to Diesel? From that time on, the words you wrote in your notebook were "garbled"? Or was it...

Your thoughts were interrupted again.

You suddenly remembered that the most important thing for you now is to leave Diesel and return to the White Tower.

So you ignored the abnormality of the notebook, hurriedly put away the notebook that had completely turned into a "heavenly book", and simply packed the luggage you planned to take away - it was a huge box, very heavy, and it seemed to be filled with something, but what exactly was it, you...

It’s strange…it’s normal that you can’t remember it.

Because your brain is telling you a pretty logical conclusion -

You are already very old, and it is natural that your physical functions will decline, as will your memory. It is only natural that you will forget some things.

So you convince yourself.

Anyway, for you now, that box is far from being a burden.

You have never felt that your body is so light yet strong, moving like the wind and able to break a wall easily. You are decades younger...

No, your mind tells you that even if you were decades younger, you shouldn't have such a strong body.

But this should be a good thing. Facing a situation that is becoming more and more dangerous and weird, and facing Diesel who is becoming gradually unfamiliar, you need this strong body. Only in this way can you deal with "them".

The moment this idea came into being, you couldn't help but wonder——

"Who are they?"

You ask questions.

"They... are things that are watching you from outside the door."

you answer.

Then, involuntarily, as the second thought came into your mind, you turned your head and sharply cast your gaze towards the closed door.

At this moment, you suddenly realize that you did not close the door tightly after entering the room, so it always has an imperceptible gap open.