“Damn… damn!”

  “Three years… three years and then another three years. I infiltrated the Church of Hope for so long, and the mission still failed…”

  “For more than ten years I didn’t dare take even a single step forward, only out of fear of being discovered. What the hell!”

  “The grudges and disputes between you nobles and the Church, I will no longer take part in…”

  On the small road between the fields, a man walked while tearing something off his own face.

  With his hand raised, he conjured a small flame and completely burned what he had torn from his face.

  When he finished cleaning all the fragments, a face appeared that, for having had some pieces of flesh removed, had uneven patches of color, as if it had been divided into parts.

  He was Andreas.

  Andreas had already searched among the fields even before the Church began the search the day before.

  But in that wheat field, aside from that woman who seemed like a madwoman, there was no trace of Saint Elysia. It was as if she had evaporated into the air.

  To avoid the Church’s investigation, he wandered through the fields the entire night and, during that time, stole a set of clothes from a peasant.

  Of course, to prevent the peasant from calling the police and causing trouble, he gave him some basic treatmen.”

  His own clothes had already been cleaned with magic.

  Andreas’s face too, thanks to his almost supernatural skill with makeup, had completely transformed into that of another person, a sunburned peasant.

  His destination was Grandford, the largest commercial city in the world and the capital of the Saehron Empire.

  It had the largest urban population in the world, the highest number of factories, the greatest flow of people, and the extremely high crime rate that came with such a massive population.

  A place like that was the most suitable for him, and not a Church that rigidly obeyed doctrines. Andreas had suppressed himself for far too long.

  Thinking of this, the corner of his mouth curved into an arc.

  Those brainless nobles and that rule-bound Church would never find him again.

  When a few more years had passed, he would gather a few more “collections”…

  Andreas felt the pocket of his short, worn coat. Only after feeling the two round objects inside did his heart calm down.

  Who could imagine that a peasant’s daughter would have such a beautiful pair of eyes?

  At that moment, the peasant’s house he had visited was already wrapped in flames rising to the sky.

  No matter how the police investigated, they would never discover that the criminal who exterminated an entire family, dismembered the bodies, and set fire to destroy the evidence had done all that merely for a set of clean clothes.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Random crimes with unclear motives were the most difficult to investigate.

  As Andreas advanced, more rural properties appeared before him.

  And, in the distance, the cluster of buildings shrouded in a grayish haze, together with a few scattered carriages, made his eyes shine.

  “Woo—woo—! Clack-clack—!” The roar of the steam train announced that Andreas had finally arrived.

  ….

  Grandford.

  Aside from a few armed policemen patrolling the outskirts, there were only vagrants and poor children wandering around. The dust raised on the roads and the smoke from the factories wrapped the entire city in a light haze.

  Andreas did not linger there. As if he were very familiar with the place, after entering the city, he went straight along one of the streets.

  But when he reached the intersection, he did not know if his eyes were deceiving him, he seemed to have seen a green silhouette.

  When he looked more closely, he realized it was only a tall green-haired woman under a streetlamp, performing magic tricks for a group of children.

  Although it was not possible to see her face clearly, along with the children’s laughter, the woman was also smiling, seeming even happier than they were.

  “Freak.” Andreas did not look again, murmured in a low voice, and headed toward the South District of Lowdon.

  Ordinary people rarely entered that district, at least those who dressed decently did not.

  Because the South District of Lowdon was the famous slum of Grandford, poverty and chaos were its synonyms.

  Not even the policemen liked to be assigned to patrol there, because going to that place meant working overtime, something would certainly happen every day.

  But, fortunately, the cost of living there was also the lowest. That made it so that, no matter how chaotic it was, people with no way out continued to flock there.

  Andreas first bought something to eat at a bakery and then began to look for a lodging house.

  The lodging houses of the South District of Lowdon were old and dirty, but the price was cheap, and Andreas, who had not brought much money, could not afford a better place.

  He wanted to vent his repressed emotions in Grandford, step by step.

  After spending an entire afternoon searching, he found a suitable lodging house. It even offered dinner, which pleased him.

  And one night cost only three shillings (1 pound = 20 shillings, 1 shilling = 12 pence), with food included. Andreas thought there was no better place than that.

  It was just a little run-down, and the receptionist was a fat and ugly old man.

  After finding where to stay, Andreas’s body and mind relaxed. Coincidentally it was time for dinner at the lodging house, and the guests were going to the dining hall.

  Unlike the high-end lodging houses,, where dinner looked like a banquet for socializing, the dining hall of that miserable place was much quieter. There was no noise, everyone seemed busy with their own matters, and no joy could be seen on anyone’s face.

  Just when Andreas was about to eat the portion of overcooked bean soup in front of him, something seemed to crawl over his feet. Startled, he raised his leg and ended up hitting the wooden table, making the soup splash.

  “Ah, damn, this dining hall has rats.” Andreas grumbled as he pulled the small round table back, still afraid, watching the rat squeak and run away across the floorboards.

  To be honest, rats were the creatures he hated the most, cowardly, filthy, and carriers of the dreaded plague.

  When he was about to take the remaining half of the soup with the spoon, from the corner of his eye a figure that seemed somewhat familiar appeared.

  Lightly wavy green hair combed back, the strange makeup that one did not know when it had been redone, that woman was there, elegantly enjoying a dinner that tasted awful.

  And the people around seemed simply unable to see her.

  Andreas’s heart stirred violently. His intuition told him that if he continued there, something bad would happen.

  Immediately, he did not even bother to finish eating, he stood up and went straight outside the lodging house.

  But when he passed by the woman’s table, he heard her murmur:

  “Rats… rats, is it?… hehehe…”

  ….

  The gloomy weather outside and the oppressive silence of the dining hall created a strange atmosphere that made cold sweat run down Andreas’s forehead.

  “Something’s wrong…” he murmured to himself as he quickened his pace.

  When he was about to leave the dining hall, he could not avoid looking back.

  The place where the woman had been sitting was already completely empty, only the bowl and the cutlery remained…

  The knife had disappeared.