Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic-Chapter 388 The Mouth in the Palm

His eyes lingered on Mr. Daknis’s red gloves for a moment before Shard shook his head nonchalantly, "It doesn’t matter how many Rings I have, but since you look down on me, I won’t say more. Let’s pretend we never met today."

"No, no, no, not having met won’t do. Since you’ve found me, of course, I can’t let you leave."

As he spoke, Mr. Daknis had already cast aside his umbrella, then he took off his right red glove. Beneath the glove, his right hand was noticeably larger than the other. Under the dark, swollen skin seemed to squirm a myriad of worms.

He gave Shard a weird smile, and then raised his right arm with his left hand. Shard instinctively felt uneasy, and what happened next proved his uneasiness was justified as a rift appeared in the palm of Mr. Daknis’s right hand, and a mouth with teeth emerged within.

"Oh!"

An odd feeling of dizziness almost made Shard lose his footing. The gaping mouth seemed to form a direct connection to an endless abyss; he even felt his spirit being sucked in.

The detachment of the spirit was an illusion, but the tremendous suction was not. As the mouth writhed, the falling rain above the rooftop where Shard and Daknis stood started to alter its trajectory, arcing towards that mouth.

The suction forced Shard to stumble forward once more, so he immediately slashed forward with his right hand, projecting a beam of Moonlight. The light headed straight for the open maw, but as a swath of strange darkness appeared in front of Daknis, the Slash of Silvermoon disappeared.

It wasn’t Spatial Movement, nor had it hit the target—the Moonlight had truly been devoured by the darkness.

"You..."

Behind the mask, Shard’s eyes widened.

The eerie dark force gave him a strange sensation, even stranger than the bizarre mouth in the other’s right hand. Only after some thought did he realize that the darkness which had swallowed the Moonlight was incredibly similar to the feeling of "balance" he sensed from Iluna.

"This is really..."

The darkness appeared only for a moment before disappearing, but the sucking power from Daknis’s right hand mouth continued to grow. Shard’s body tried to move to the side, but the powerful suction wouldn’t permit any movement.

"You can’t escape... Huh?"

Mr. Daknis frowned slightly, as Shard’s figure vanished into thin air, then reappeared in the corner of the rooftop. Before Daknis could reorient his hand, Shard dropped the Frog’s Legs and crouched slightly before leaping backwards, bounding over the alley with an umbrella, landing on the rooftop of the opposite building.

From a farther distance, the terrible hand’s suction weakened considerably, to the point where it was futilely swallowing rain. Thus, the middle-aged man with a gloomy expression lowered his hand, squinting through the rain curtain at Shard across the alley.

The two watched each other in silence, neither speaking first. Finally, it was Shard who broke the quiet, his voice somewhat muffled as it reached the ears of the middle-aged man, who was putting his gloves back on:

"I’m rather curious about who you are. To strike so fiercely upon meeting, that’s not very friendly."

Shard wasn’t so arrogant as to think he could fight a Six Rings Warlock. His escape had only been possible because the opponent hadn’t anticipated his ability for Spatial Movement. So, as he spoke, Shard leaped again from the rooftop, disappearing into the rain within a few breaths.

The most important reason for choosing the rooftop was for the convenience of escape.

The middle-aged man in the red gloves didn’t chase after him, nor did the other Circle Sorcerers lying in wait downstairs:

"You think you can escape?"

He muttered to himself, picked up the umbrella, and headed toward the stairs, preparing to meet up with his comrades.

Shard, unaware if anyone was trailing him, continued running until the Sorcery "Frog’s Leap" was about to end before he stopped. Stay connected via novelbuddy

When he stopped, he himself did not know where in Coldwater Port he had run to. After circling the area a few times without anyone suddenly jumping out to kill him, he finally let his guard down.

Removing his mask, he gasped for breath, leaning at the entrance to an alley. Before him lay a main road, sparsely populated because of the rain. Thinking back on the incident, he felt it had been worthwhile:

"That was truly an adventure, to think Mr. Daknis is a Six Rings Warlock... He must have something exceptional to have gone to the lower deck of the Fishbone Pirate Ship. But that mouth in his palm earlier, was that an Arcane Technique... It looked more like the symptoms of a Circle Sorcerer losing control. And that darkness that devoured my Arcane Technique, that peculiar sensation..."

Carriages raced through the rain, splashing water on his boots as they passed in front of Shard.

"Meeting someone willing to kill on sight, if he truly is the second, that is really bad news."

Having caught a few breaths and feeling somewhat recovered, Shard was relaxing and about to head back to the Seven Brooms Tavern, when a voice suddenly echoed in his ear:

[If I’m not mistaken, you’ve always carried "The Twenty-Sided Die of Destiny."]

"Of course."

[From one to twenty, from twenty to one, Outlander, now is the perfect time to toss the dice.]

"Hm? What?"

Amid the steady rain, Shard’s face showed both alarm and astonishment.

He swiftly threw aside his umbrella and took out a box from his pocket, flicking out a metal dice and hurling it into the rain. Concurrently, the whispering voice continued to explain the situation:

[You have felt an assault from Fate.]

"Who’s there? Who wants to harm me?"

Shard looked around in the rain.

[You’ve retaliated against it.]

Shard caught the falling dice, and when he saw that the number was twenty, his eyes bulged once again:

"Who wants to kill me now?"

A powerful attack can reflect extremely high luck, and this time the twenty signified that the attacker had exerted great effort.

So far, the dice’s twenty had not brought any good fortune, but certainly, something was happening at this moment. There was no need to wait any longer, she gave the answer:

"This ripple of fate is the same as the last one."

"Which last time?"

"The Puppeteer’s Script, Outlander, it is the Puppeteer’s Script that is attacking you."

Shard did not pick up his umbrella and stood in the rain, letting the water drench him, his face revealing shock, astonishment, and rage:

"Luviya has three pages of script paper, but she couldn’t possibly make a move against me. The remaining scripts are all in the hands of the Blood Spirit School... again, the Blood Spirit School... wait a moment!"

Shard suddenly turned around, looking in the direction he had come from:

"I had just left Mr. Daknis’s side when the attack occurred... Mr. Daknis, is he a person from the Blood Spirit School?"

More details surfaced in Shard’s mind at the same time, and he understood everything:

"Mr. Daknis is the person Miss Galina mentioned, who was originally arranged to come from the New World to assist ’Blood of Mercury’ in Tobesk!"

He gazed towards the distant direction, and if things were as expected, right now there would be a person holding a pen, astonished to find blood on their finger, tainting the words they had just written.

"The companions of Mr. Daknis are another member of the Blood Spirit School and other members of ’Blood of Mercury’ who fled from Tobesk! That’s why there were so many people at the Pink Rose Inn reluctant to show their faces!"

He bent down to pick up the umbrella, having understood everything in his heart:

"I see, I see. They were waiting to board the ship, that’s what it meant! They are preparing to return to the New World on a ship. That’s why they were trying so hard to avoid being found. I knew it, those who cheat at cards are definitely up to no good!"

She chuckled softly in his ear.

"The Blood Spirit School, it’s you again. But if Daknis is truly The Chosen One..."

After pondering for a moment on the spot, Shard, holding his umbrella, hurriedly ran towards the distance.

(Shard running...)

An hour and a half later, at one in the afternoon, Shard, panting heavily, met the purple-eyed Diviner in the second-floor Divination Room of the Prophet’s Society in Tobesk City.

This time Shard did not bring the cat with him, and Luviya closed the door, looking at him curiously:

"Shard, why do you look like you ran through several streets?"

"I did more than just run, I also swam a good distance."

He held his chest and tried to regulate his breathing.

"Swam? Did you just come back from Coldwater Port? What happened?"

Luviya’s expression turned serious:

This 𝓬ontent is taken from freeweɓnovel.cѳm.

"Shard, are you okay?"

"I’m fine, but there might be trouble regarding the identity of The Chosen One."

He took out the remaining Kolmor Empire Coin and the Atonement Coin of the Grim Reaper from the last divination and quietly recounted the situation he encountered today. As Luviya’s frown deepened, Shard proposed what he intended to do:

"Use these two coins for divination, to find out if I met The Chosen One today."

"If it is true, then it’s troublesome, the Blood Spirit School..."

Luviya understood what Shard was worried about, she first tried to cast one coin, but the divination yielded no results with just one, which in itself vaguely revealed an outcome.

But to be on the safe side, she still consumed the two hard-earned Special Coins, meaning they had only one Blood Coin left each. As the coins turned to ashes, Luviya opened her purple eyes:

"I saw a man holding an umbrella, wearing red gloves."

"Yes, that’s Mr. Daknis."

"That is The Chosen One."

Although they had anticipated this result, hearing it confirmed still made Shard involuntarily take a breath. The Outlander and Diviner had long considered that not all The Chosen could be good people, but having the second one be a Circle Sorcerer from opposition forces was not good news.

"He has the curse of the ’Song of the Mermaid,’ and he definitely won’t leave Coldwater Port at least until the Sea Return ceremony. What shall we do? Pretend he doesn’t exist?"

Shard asked, neither he nor Luviya inclined to get close to such a person.

"Or kill him outright?"

Shard squinted slightly, he still carried a droplet of Divinity, and the other man had not even truly awakened. But the issue was not whether Shard could succeed, but whether it was worth it.

"Or... report him?"

"Report him!"

Luviya said loudly.