feiniaonovel Chapter 144 : Chapter 144
Chapter 144 : Chapter 144
Chapter 144. Tyrenia and Valeria
“Tsk, that’s a pretty filthy method.” Logaris pushed up his sunglasses, his brows drawing together slightly. “A high-tier water-element enchantment, with continuous corrosion and necrotic effects built in. No wonder even a tough fourth-tier knight like you ended up lying here like a dead dog.”
“Can it be cured?” Reynard’s voice was weak, each word sounding as though it had been forced out of his lungs.
“As long as you’re not dead yet, I can pull you back.” Logaris rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a silver metal case.
“Little nun, light,” Logaris called without even turning his head.
Lucia froze for a moment, then hurriedly raised her staff.
“Ah? Oh... right!”
With a soft hum, a gentle Holy Light flared into being, illuminating the dim underground chamber and making that hideous wound look even more ghastly.
Logaris opened the metal case. Inside were no bandages or hemostats, but instead more than a dozen willow-leaf-thin scalpels arranged in perfect order.
The blades were made from some kind of translucent crystal. Under the radiance of the Holy Light, dense streams of tiny inscriptions could be vaguely seen flowing within their edges.
“What is that?” Lucia widened her eyes. “Surgical knives?”
“Not bad. You know your stuff.” Logaris praised her casually. In the current medical system, scalpels were not widely used, so he had not expected this little girl to recognize them.
He picked up one of the crystal blades and spun it deftly between his fingers.
“Hold his shoulder down.” He jerked his chin toward Sylvia. “This might hurt a bit in a moment. Don’t let him move around. If my hand slips and I cut a cardiac vessel, I’ll have to replace his heart with an artificial one.”
Sylvia rolled her eyes, but her hands moved with practiced efficiency. With one hand, she locked down Reynard’s uninjured right shoulder, her grip as steady and immovable as a mountain.
“Go ahead.”
Logaris did not chant, and he did not pray.
A faint blue glow lit up at his fingertips and instantly flowed into the crystal blade. One by one, the inscriptions on the knife lit up, producing an extremely fine humming sound, like the buzz of a bee’s wings.
In the next second, Logaris precisely cut the blade into that grayish-white membrane of corrosive energy. With a sizzling sound like beef searing on a hot pan, part of the membrane turned into black smoke and rose into the air.
“Urgh—!!!”
Even with Reynard’s willpower, he could not suppress a muffled groan, and his whole body began trembling uncontrollably.
Logaris’s expression was terrifyingly focused. The crystal knife in his hand moved so fast it was little more than a blur.
It darted rapidly across Reynard’s wound. With every stroke, he excised a tiny piece of grayish-white necrotic tissue, yet somehow miraculously avoided every vital blood vessel and nerve.
Lucia watched from the side, her little face pale as paper, but she did not dare make a sound, afraid of disturbing this heart-stopping operation.
Ten minutes.
For Reynard, those ten short minutes felt like an entire century.
As the final bit of grayish-white corrosive energy was flicked away, Logaris turned his wrist, sending the crystal blade through a smooth arc before it landed neatly back in the case.
He let out a long breath, pulled a bottle of green potion from his coat, and without the slightest ceremony poured the entire thing over the blood-soaked wound.
Sss—
Visible to the naked eye, the severed muscle fibers began to wriggle and regrow. Though the wound had not completely closed, that fatal gray, withered aura had vanished entirely.
Logaris removed his gloves and tossed them aside, then took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his brow. His tone turned light again. “There. Your life’s saved. Surgery fee plus potion cost comes to five thousand Golden Lion Coins. No credit.”
Reynard forced the corner of his mouth into a weak twitch and could not help muttering, “Cough... did you fall into a money pit or something?”
“I’m joking. At least for Cicero’s sake, I wouldn’t charge you such a tiny amount.” Logaris crouched down so his line of sight was level with Reynard’s, the teasing tone fading from his voice.
“Now then, let’s talk business. How did a Judicator Knight of the Court of Equilibrium end up being hunted like a stray dog into a gutter like this? The water-element magic lingering on that wound is extremely pure. That’s not the kind of thing ordinary gang thugs could pull off.”
At the mention of business, Reynard’s expression darkened at once.
Leaning against the cold stone platform, he straightened himself up.
“I came here following a lead.”
Reynard drew in a deep breath, as though organizing his thoughts.
“Do you remember the Herman family case back in Winter City?”
Logaris nodded. “I remember. You also told us to keep an eye out for that substance.”
“That’s right.” Reynard’s eyes turned icy. “That thing is called ‘Siren’s Dream.’”
“It’s made using the deep-sea plant known as Dream Sea Anemone as its base, mixed with powdered Albino Coral. In alchemical classification, it’s a prohibited drug. Its effect is singular—complete destruction of a person’s will, turning them into a walking corpse that lives for nothing but pleasure.”
Reynard paused, his gaze drifting up toward the dark ceiling, as though piercing through time itself to look upon the homeland that had already perished.
“Back then, I thought it looked familiar. It wasn’t until recently that I remembered...”
“Before my homeland, the Tidelan Kingdom, fell, this very thing... had already become popular among the military and the nobility!”
“At the time, no one thought it was a problem. Everyone assumed it was merely some new and fashionable pastime among high society.”
“The knights lost all enthusiasm for training. They spent their days in salons and banquets, smoking away and bragging about the ‘divine revelations’ they had seen in their hallucinations. The nobles used it for comparison and prestige—which of them could get the purest supply, which of them had more status.”
Reynard’s fist pressed so hard against the stone slab that his knuckles turned white, grinding audibly under the strain.
“And then the armies of the Valeria Empire invaded.”
His voice was thick with hatred carved into the bone. “Our knight orders, once elite troops who bore the name of the storm, couldn’t even mount a proper charge before the iron hoofs of Valeria. They were like a bunch of addicts clutching wooden clubs—collapsing at the first touch. ‘A bloodless victory’... heh, what a bloodless victory indeed. Because before the enemy’s blades ever came down, we had already fallen ourselves.”
Silence swallowed the church. Only the cold wind passing through the broken windows made a low sound like mourning.
Lucia did not understand the affairs of nations, but she could feel the grief and despair in the man’s voice, so intense it was almost overflowing.
“I always thought this was simply a conspiracy by the Valeria Empire.” Reynard’s voice dropped lower and lower, each word edged with a frigid, grinding fury. “But the more I investigated, the more I realized things were nowhere near that simple.”
He lifted his head and fixed Logaris and Sylvia with a burning stare.
“‘Siren’s Dream’ originates in the Kingdom of Tyrenia. And in the second month after the fall of the Tidelan Kingdom, those strategic islands in our western waters—the ones that choke off the sea lanes—were all taken over by the Kingdom of Tyrenia under the pretext of ‘protecting the safety of international shipping routes.’”
“At the time, everyone assumed it was because the Valerian navy lacked the strength to cross the sea and occupy those islands. But now...”
Reynard let out a twisted laugh, one filled to the brim with rage.
“It was division of the spoils. A filthy transaction planned long in advance—a dirty bargain to carve up an entire country.”