Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic-Chapter 556 - 556

Chapter 556: 556 Chapter 556: 556 With the appearance of that venomous voice, a crowbar headed straight for Shard’s head, but even without needing a reminder from the voice by his ear, Iluna, who was behind Shard, caught it.

After finding the switch for the gas lamp, Shard then turned around to look and said helplessly,

“It’s really you, I must say, attacking us with a crowbar, who are you underestimating? I thought at least it would be a gun.”

The one trying to attack them was Toby Julian, which was entirely expected.

“I don’t have a firearm license, can’t buy a gun. You…”

Mr. Julian, surprised, looked towards the two, trying to pull the crowbar from Iluna’s hand, but instead, Iluna snatched the crowbar away. The seventeen-year-old girl lifted her right leg, bent the iron crowbar with force, and then casually threw it behind her into the corridor.

Not only was Mr. Julian scared, but Shard was too.

As the crowbar clanged to the ground, Shard looked inside the room. He saw the Corpse Bride, dressed in a pure white wedding gown and wearing a veil, hands clasped together, tranquilly bathing in the moonlight coming from outside the window.

It seemed that because of her presence, the gas lamp’s flame was flickering continuously, dimming and brightening in a manner quite fitting for Mr. Julian’s mood at the moment.

But the Corpse Bride’s attire, as well as her body, now showed no sign of the damage that had occurred earlier. Moreover, she just stood there, not launching another attack due to the presence of the enemy.

“Severely damaged, so it’s in repair? But why does every repair occur under the moonlight?”

Shard thought to himself.

“No, no one will disturb my wedding with her! No one will!”

Seeing Shard look towards the bride, Mr. Julian again tried to pounce, but was stopped by the muzzle of Shard’s gun pointed at his head:

“You have three seconds, go sit over there on the chair, and let us search the room. If you don’t make the right choice in three seconds, I’ll shoot. Three!”

Mr. Julian, glaring at Shard, furious as if his eyeballs were about to pop out, remained motionless.

“Two!”

Shard glared back at him, while also pressing down on the hammer of the revolver with his left hand. Mr. Julian was breathing heavily, his forehead against the muzzle of the revolver, stubbornly not moving.

“One!”

Shard’s finger trembled sharply.

“I surrender!”

Mr. Julian suddenly raised his hands high, he backed down. Eyes closed, this man, not yet thirty, seemed to age ten years all at once:

“I surrender.”

He said in a low voice.

Shard, gun in hand, forced Mr. Julian to sit on the chair in front of the desk. He controlled the man while Iluna searched the room. The Corpse Bride stood quietly by the window, the moonlight shining on her, she resembled a still, human-shaped doll.

They were quite lucky this time, as Mr. Julian had the good habit of writing a diary, something Shard wished all his enemies would do.

The diary was beneath the mattress at the foot of the bed, and besides, Iluna found an old book describing ancient Underworld Marriage funeral customs beneath the floorboards that had been pried up in the corner of the wall.

This was a publication from an illegal publishing house, belonging to the type of works strictly banned by the True God Church.

“He was going to marry her sister?”

This was the first remark from Iluna after flipping through the diary. Shard looked towards the man being pointed at by his gun muzzle, who covered his face in pain.

Iluna continued reading, frowning even more:

“Wait, it seems like it’s not just that. Toby Julian, your sister’s death, is it actually related to you?”

Mr. Julian, sitting slumped over on the stool in the corner with Shard’s gun pointed at him, nodded despondently:

“I never thought something like this would happen.”

“Wait, wasn’t Miss Julian supposed to have committed suicide because she was abandoned by her lover?”

Shard was very puzzled.

“Yes, but why was she abandoned by her lover?”

Iluna snorted:

“Mr. Julian and Miss Julian were dependent on each other, he has always had some unspeakable thoughts about his own sister…”

“It was just a thought, I never did anything!”

Mr. Julian defended himself loudly, his chest heaving to show how agitated he was.

“Miss Julian was about to get engaged, but Mr. Julian, after getting drunk half a month ago, went to Miss Julian’s fiance’s place and caused a scene, beating him up and breaking his right hand. Offended by this, Miss Julian’s fiance refused to see her again, causing the poor woman to believe she was abandoned for no reason and then hanged herself at home.”

Mr. Julian’s expression was no longer agitated; with a sob, he covered his face with his hands:

“I really didn’t expect, I just didn’t think it would turn out like this. It’s all the fault of alcohol, alcohol truly is harmful.”

The corner of Shard’s mouth twitched:

“So, what happened next, what is all this about?”

Shard gestured towards the immobile Corpse Bride standing by the window, she maintained a graceful posture, like a corporeal doll.

Iluna flipped a few pages back:

“After Miss Julian’s death, Mr. Julian couldn’t come to terms with the outcome. Being interested in Mysticism for a long time, after burying his sister, he emptied his savings and inquired about the ‘Underworld Marriage’ rituals from his friends who also shared a mysticism hobby. This guy actually succeeded, acquiring an ancient marriage contract from a merchant dealing in prohibited items, and I think that marriage contract is the cause of all this. They call that piece of parchment…”

Iluna flipped to the next page:

“The ‘Grolinston Marriage Contract’.”

Although without proof, Shard was almost certain, that was the Relic responsible for these events.

Iluna looked very troubled, as the Blackstone Security Company did have things to do lately. How many people had come into contact with that marriage contract, where exactly it came from—all these were questions:

“The diary states that by writing one’s own name and the name of the loved one at the bottom of the marriage contract on parchment, one can achieve eternal love between the two,” Shard said, reading from the document. “And if one party is the deceased and the other is living, then after acquiring the body, writing the names with the corpse’s blood will restore it to its original state and bring the deceased back to the world. Then, they can be together forever… It’s unbelievable that someone would actually do such a thing.”

“Do you actually believe in this kind of thing?”

Shard asked Mr. Julian, who sobbed and said:

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“Yes, I hired a group of professional grave robbers to sneak into the cemetery with me and dig up the body. After awakening my sister, I found she could do things according to my thoughts. So I had her kill the tomb raiders. Tonight, fearing you would discover something, I…I just wanted to be with her, even if she had become like this…why did you have to investigate me?”

Mr. Julian asked through his tears; Shard frowned at him, unable to comprehend such a mindset, and grew increasingly convinced that the man might indeed be mentally disturbed.

“Do you call this awakening? Your sister is gone, and you even think of desecrating her body? Are you sure you really love her?”

Iluna asked incredulously, to which Mr. Julian covered his face in agony, his eyes brimming with tears:

“I know I shouldn’t disturb the deceased. But in life, no matter what, I couldn’t marry her. So at least in death, I wanted to give her a place to belong. I know we are siblings, but I truly tried to overcome blood ties, to overcome life and death… I haven’t done anything wrong, it was all just for love. I didn’t want to hurt anyone; I just…wanted to be with her, even if it meant using this method.”

Hearing the word “love,” a look of disgust crossed Iluna’s face:

“Mortals all must die, and you have desecrated death itself. Julian, don’t make it sound so noble, what love? This is clearly just to satisfy your own vile and dirty desires.”

She was truly angry, but she still knew that the matter needed to be dealt with first:

“Detective, I don’t know what the Grolinston Marriage Contract is exactly, but based on the properties we’ve learned of so far, it’s at least a Scribe Level (4), and more likely a Keeper of Secrets Level (3); the Church needs to recover it.”

“Yes, so where is the marriage contract?”

Shard moved the gun he held to Mr. Julian’s temple, and the latter, choking back sobs, said:

“Don’t kill me, the contract is in the basement, soaked in a vat of blood. The contract was originally meant for the living, but to use it for the departed, you must do this to permanently open the gates between the worlds of the living and the dead, to ensure she stays with me forever. Even though she seems to have forgotten me.”

Shard took that as a “containment condition.” If the contract were to exhibit its trait and connect the living to the deceased without such containment, the Relic would spiral out of control.

“Cruel ritual… Do you think what you’ve awakened is still a living person?”

Iluna couldn’t help but mock, her anger evident in a way she had never shown, even towards Daknis.

After a pause, she said to Shard:

“We can’t kill this madman just yet, darn it, I really wanted to try what the poet described earlier… cough, Detective, the Church still needs him to provide information about the origin of the Relic. Plus, to satisfy his own desires, he even conspired with the grave robbers to desecrate other bodies; killing him now would be letting him off too easy.”

Her meaning was that they couldn’t keep the Relic for themselves. Shard agreed with this approach as it wasn’t his commission:

“I believe the Church will make a fair judgment.”

The seventeen-year-old girl allowed a small smile to appear:

“Then you keep watch over him here, I’ll go to the basement and erase the names from the marriage contract to stop the Relic’s properties, then head back to the security company to fetch that Scribe Level Relic, the ‘Beast Tamer’s Memory Erasure Rod.’ You’ve really had a rough night; I’ll treat you to dinner next time as an apology for getting you involved in this.”

They couldn’t let Toby Julian tell the Church about Shard’s information.

Shard nodded, but upon hearing “memory erase,” Mr. Julian suddenly looked at the two in a panic:

“You’re going to erase my memory.”

“Don’t worry, it’s just the memories of tonight.”

Iluna said, but she added another sentence:

“However, if there are no accidents, after this matter is resolved, the Church will erase your memories from the past few years and find a place for you to live where you won’t have to worry about food and drink. Of course, if it ultimately decides to execute you, that would save the trouble…”

“No!”

The man suddenly shouted, not showing any fear even with the revolver pressed against his head. He glared at Iluna with eyes wide with anger:

“No one can! No one can erase the memories between her and me.”

“This man is beyond saving.”

Iluna said to Shard, and as Shard was about to nod, Mr. Julian suddenly raised his head. Blood vessels had spread into his eyes, and he seemed to be in an abnormal state:

“Just kill me now!”

“That won’t do, it would be better to leave the judgment to the Church. Besides, you signed on the marriage contract, and we can’t guarantee what would happen if we killed you.”

“Fine, if you won’t kill me…”

He rushed towards the Corpse Bride in front of the window, and Shard flicked his finger, making the silver moonlight fly out and slice off half of his right foot. The nearly thirty-year-old man fell to the ground in pain.

“Although we won’t kill you, that doesn’t mean we can’t let you get hurt. Sir, I advise you not to move. I’ll treat your injury, and the Church will give you a fair judgment.”

Shard shook an empty test tube from his pocket as he walked towards the man:

“Everyone has to pay a price.”

The man on the ground struggled to sit up with the support of his palms, his face pale from the intense pain. But the twist in his expression was likely not solely due to physical agony; he was under the influence of the Relic:

“No one will be allowed to erase my memories with her!”

Mr. Julian actually pulled out a short knife from his pocket, grasped it with the hilt facing upwards and plunged it efficiently into his heart.

Shard quickly stepped forward and pulled out the knife, further aggravating the wound, and Mr. Julian’s chest was quickly stained red:

“A little piece of common knowledge, even if you stab directly through the heart, a person won’t die instantly. In stories, such a person can at least say ‘the killer is’ before dying.”

Shard bent down and pressed his hand on the man’s arm:

“False Immortality.”

The bleeding from both the foot and the chest stopped at once. Although Mr. Julian was still grievously injured, the condition of his wounds seemed to be fixed and did not worsen.

He looked up at Shard, standing up with fear and desperation. The shadow of Shard covered the man on the ground because of the light from an overhead gas lamp:

“If I don’t let you die, you don’t get to die.”

He said softly.