One-Eyed Monster

Popovich slowly drove the carriage away from the scene, leaving Bruto and Est staring at each other.

"Are you really okay with letting Lord Popovich follow those two strangers?" Est tilted his head and asked Bruto beside him.

Bruto shrugged, "Do you have a better way to stop this from happening?"

"I don’t." Est smiled faintly. As the Court Chief of the Court of Guards, he felt it was quite a failure, but they couldn’t follow along, because Popovich the dwarf had told them not to.

"Neither do I," Bruto replied with a smile to Est.

"That young man gives me a strange feeling—the blue-skinned one, the one-eyed guy."

"Indeed, it feels like he’s not human," Bruto responded to Est. By that time, they were already directing their subordinates to complete the wrapping-up tasks.

"But the other guy seems very righteous."

"Not seems. He is righteous. I can trust him without any hesitation. It’s a feeling I haven’t had in a long time."

"You’re right. The Spirit Power he carries seems to resonate with ours. It really feels like something we haven’t encountered in a while."

"Hopefully, our Spirit Power is not deceiving us," Bruto said and lit his pipe, slowly puffing away.

The circus people had been settled in that perpetually inexpensive hotel, and the corpse had been dealt with and removed by the Court of Guards. Now, only Est and Bruto remained on the street, these two protectors of Bistal, quietly accompanying the descending night.

Their encounter with Igor and Kadi was only for a brief moment, but they felt something different, especially the feeling Igor gave them—a kind of unspeakable trust. Perhaps they saw their former selves in Igor.

Though their former selves had now given up on many things, they still would get fired up.

That kind of fearless exploration, they had once possessed it too.

The carriage creaked across the streets of Bistal, as nighttime gradually enveloped the entire Bistal City.

The moon in the sky became increasingly bright, and the stars blinked endlessly.

Lord Popovich was very relaxed, for he was going to see his old friend Bern.

Regardless of the outcome, he needed to know the truth.

"Can you tell us what kind of person Lord Bern is?" Igor tilted his head, looking at Lord Popovich, hoping to learn as much as possible before meeting Bern.

"He’s a wealthy and kind old man!" Popovich replied.

"Um..." Igor had received this answer many times. Every time he asked others about Bern, they answered similarly, as though Bern’s label had already come deeply ingrained in people’s minds.

"Doesn’t he have anything else that people notice?" Igor didn’t give up, believing Lord Popovich knew much more about Bern than others.

"He’s also an energetic old man," Lord Popovich added.

This still didn’t resolve the confusion in Igor’s mind.

"Stop asking. You’ll know what kind of person he is once we reach there!" Kadi was a bit impatient, as Igor had dwelled on this question for a long time.

"But I still want to know!" Igor said.

"Honestly, now I feel I don’t really know what kind of person Bern is!" Lord Popovich said softly. Although Bern had been familiar to him, everything now seemed like a sham. If Bern truly was the messenger behind the circus, then Bern indeed seemed very unfamiliar in Popovich’s eyes.

He thought about how he hadn’t visited this rich-to-the-nation old guy in a long time.

Usually, he sent gifts through his subordinates to this old guy, without personal visits—a status that had persisted for several years.

Bern, being twenty years older than him, should logically be somewhat of a slow-moving elder.

But every time, his subordinates reported that Lord Bern was in great spirits, able to walk freely without needing a cane.

He hadn’t paid much attention previously, but now he found it suspicious.

He was also an elder, younger than Bern and still an Adventurer with Class, but he often needed a cane to move around...

Bern not needing a cane was quite astonishing.

Why hadn’t he noticed this before?

Lord Popovich fell into thought and with each recollection, he found Bern increasingly peculiar.

He had not felt this way until recently—he had firmly believed that the circus folks were framing Bern. But after seeing that strong body, he awoke to the truth.

The suspicion towards Bern was forming in his mind. It wasn’t because of his old friend Hoffman’s various proofs, nor the arrival of these two youths, but because of that corpse.

To others in Bistal, it was a face unfamiliar, but to him, Popovich, it was not a strange face.

He had seen this corpse at Bern’s residence, back when Bern told him it was a perfect physique, belonging to a friend’s son. Because this friend’s son had committed an error in the Mantai Empire, facing a punishment of dismemberment by the Mantai People, Bern’s friend’s son couldn’t bear this terror and committed suicide by poison a day earlier. Bern’s friend cried his heart out, secretly swapped the corpse to bring back his son’s body, since the Mantai People’s punishment wouldn’t cease even upon death; they’d continue the dismemberment... Bern’s friend, to ensure his son had a complete body, entrusted Bern to transport this body back to Bistal.

It was a simple story with no visible flaws, and Popovich was even present at the funeral...

However, the body suddenly appeared on Bistal’s streets as a monster!

Bistal’s intelligence network was vast, but Bern’s small building had barely any guards because residing there was a kind, wealthy elder without any threats...

Looking back, this was all a facade.

The body didn’t climb back out of the grave because the cemetery was heavily guarded, with no movement escaping their eyes.

This body could only have come from Bern’s residence without raising any alarms.

With this thought, Lord Popovich couldn’t help but accelerate the carriage, eager to reach Bern’s residence faster.