Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic

"To be honest, Miss Aphrola, I thought you would be the kind of person who would love to kill me."

Shard extended his hand, and the witch hesitated before grasping it, murmuring softly in wonder:

"Why should I kill you? What benefit would that bring me? However, this is indeed the first time I've shaken hands with a man since I became an adult."

The witch's hand was soft, and Shard asked:

"How does my hand feel?"

"Your hand is rough, although it is recovering, I can still tell that you probably did heavy labor before."

She withdrew her hand, then gestured toward the top of Shard's head. A black spider jumped from his hair into the palm of her hand, then climbed to her face and turned into a subtle beauty mark below her eye.

"So, this spider belongs to you? Did you really smell the scent of the ocean on me earlier?"

"Of course, but it's not just because you've been to the seaside, it's also because you carry the stench of a merman. I had thought you'd fought with mermen before coming to see Princess Lecia," said the witch.

"Merman's scent? I haven't encountered mermen, oh, I see now."

Shard thought for a moment, then realized it was because he still carried the "Scales of A Drowning Merman". With this in mind, the original owner of the scales must indeed have been a Favored One of the Evil God, Lord of the Crimson Spiral.

The witch nodded:

"Good that you understand. Remember to return the ring to me after everything is over. And about the Six Rings, the strongest in the underground cult, I think as long as you don't provoke it, you will definitely be able to escape alive."

Thus, Shard ended his first meeting with the second witch he'd met in the Sixth Era.

Since he knew that Daknis was probably going to Tobesk, Shard was not much interested in helping the witch find him. After parting with the witch at the door of the room, Shard then found Princess Lecia, who was very worried about Shard, but did not ask about the identity of Hevy Aphrola.

"I need to make a trip to the underground cellar. Lecia, remember to keep a fishing rod on you. If there truly is a problem, even if it exposes your identity as a Circle Sorcerer, go seek help from Miss Aphrola."

"But rather than from the witch, I'd prefer to have you by my side as dawn approaches,"

said the princess softly.

"Of course, I came to Coldwater Port solely to help you, how could I forget such a purpose?"

he responded. Lecia thought for a moment and then gave Shard a hug:

"Although I don't know exactly what you plan to do, be careful in everything."

Then, she handed Shard a steam bomb. Shard was surprised for a moment and then carefully put away the thoughtful gift.

An hour remained until sunrise.

The squad of Circle Sorcerers from the Church of Nature awaited their next strike on the second floor before dawn. Although Shard could not get details of the cellar from them, Miss Aphrola directly told Shard about the three Circle Sorcerers underground, along with a dozen mermen.

Shard's initial plan was to use the Illusion Technique to enter the cellar and steal the textual materials if possible. However, the cellar of Aphrola Manor actually had a secret passage connected to a gardening shed in the garden.

This passage was constructed when the Aphrola Family owned the place, and even the mermen were unaware of it.

Thus, Shard jumped from a third-floor window into the rainy garden and, braving the rain, located the locked gardener's shed. Upon opening the door, he found it was merely a storage room, the walls lined with shelves of metal tools, and there was even a steam engine in the corner.

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He pushed aside a box in the corner, tapped the floor a few times to locate the trapdoor, and pulled open the trapdoor with effort, revealing a pitch-black hole that seemed to lead straight down to a deep abyss.

But a touch of glimmer from his fingertip revealed it was only three meters deep.

Unlike the underground ruins at Tobesk, this passageway appeared to be used only for emergency escapes and was thus very narrow. Shard even had to stoop to make it through, as the passageway was only about one point seven meters high.

During his descent, he encountered only one fork, one path leading forward, the other to a storage room filled with food and water.

So, Shard followed the straight path forward and soon arrived at the end of the passageway.

In the darkness, as he illuminated the way forward, Shard thought to himself that if he ever owned a manor, he would definitely construct complex passageways. After all, it would be a shame not to use such a vast space.

According to Lady Aphrola, this passageway led to an inner partition of the cellar's wall, where new wines were stored to age.

Therefore, when Shard cautiously pushed open the secret door to crawl out, he saw only rows of wine barrels without a trace of the mermen.

Using the Illusion Technique, a silver mist silently hugged the ground and flowed forward. Only after emerging from the inner partition of the cellar did he finally see three burly men dressed like sailors, armed and guarding the entrance of the cellar, all sharing the common feature of being quite ugly.

Besides them, Shard saw a tall, thin man standing in the shadows nearby. This was a Circle Sorcerer who almost merged with the shadows, and Shard wouldn't have noticed him if not for a whisper in his ear.

To avoid being detected by the Circle Sorcerer, Shard carefully controlled the Illusion Technique's mist to remain only around his immediate vicinity. But an illusion was not an Invisibility Technique, and despite achieving a similar effect, it was easy to be detected by a sensitive Circle Sorcerer.

He had to bend over and stick close to the wall, using row upon row of wine racks as a shield. It took him a full ten minutes to make a large loop around the edge of the shelves, moving far from the cellar doorway.

The entire cellar was pitch black, and apart from the four men at the door, there seemed to be no one else. So, Shard used the spell "Echo of Blood" and sure enough, the mermen who had been wounded in the earlier skirmish with the True God Church squad had left bloodstains on the floor while being moved.

Although invisible to the naked eye, under the state of "Echo of Blood," Shard, with bloodshot eyes, could follow those red halos in the darkness like road signs all the way to the end of the cellar and found a hole in the wall.

There presumably had been space behind that wall earlier, but it had been temporarily sealed with a brick wall before it was sold to the Aphrola family. That night, when opened once again, the mermen seemed to have smashed through the wall with a sledgehammer, and even the debris hadn't been cleared from the floor.

A cold, damp breeze carrying a fishy smell blew from behind the hole in the wall, where in the dark, faint candlelight and strange blue phosphorescence could be seen, and indistinct murmurs could be heard.

"There's a breeze... Is there another exit behind the wall?"

This was the most surprising discovery for Shard.