A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 279 Elf Remains

The head of the guard was a rather handsome young man. His clothes were somewhat similar to those of soldiers from the old imperial era. He wore an iron bucket helmet and had a bald mop-like head. Every time he passed a box of supplies, he would inspect it—he would pry it open with his dagger. If it was tea, he would let it pass; if it was sugar, he would grab a handful and either put it in his mouth or stuff it into his pocket.

The poet again displayed the count's order, shaking the paper so loudly it crackled. The captain of the guard hesitated for a moment: "Very well, but everything you're taking out must be inspected by me."

As they entered, Rorschach lowered his voice and said to the poet, "You played a trick. That captain is greedy and not so easy to talk to."

The poet exhibits a magical reaction when shaking the paper, seemingly using the count's charter as a hypnotic tool.

"You always need a few tricks up your sleeve, otherwise how can you survive in both realms?"

Upon entering, Rorschach immediately sensed something was amiss. The ship was quite large, already the limit of the Tams River's navigability. They entered through a pit at the stern, where overturned cargo crammed the interior space to capacity, with the guards acting as makeshift porters, clearing and moving as they went. Not only cargo, but the steam engine, being a valuable metal, had also been dismantled into pieces.

The incongruity lies in the fact that if the cargo ship were truly fully loaded with sugar and tea, it certainly wouldn't be able to support the dilapidated houses beneath it. The hull and bow must either contain other cargo or be empty.

It's extremely rare for a ship to fall into a shadow city in such a manner. Rorschach asked the guard, "When did this ship appear?"

Seeing that Luo Xia was dressed neatly and had been allowed into the cabin, the guard assumed he was someone important. He replied respectfully, "This morning... no, it should be last night? It was first discovered by residents on the street. Now the waterway is making a huge commotion, and no one dares to go near it. We only came in this morning after confirming that there was no movement."

Distinguishing between day and night in the shadows was difficult; they could only rely on the chimes to tell the time. In short, the guards hadn't been on board for long, focusing only on moving cargo and neglecting to clean or explore the entire ship.

Have you seen the midship and bow sections of the ship?

"No, sir, look, all these crates have collapsed. We need to move them out before we can make a way."

Without a word, Rorschach waved his hand, and all the goods blocking the way floated up and consciously moved to the sides. The guards were stunned, looking at the squad with a mixture of curiosity and awe.

As the boxes of sugar and tea were unloaded, the twisted and deformed partition door was revealed. But when he opened it, there was no way out, only a wall built of red bricks.

"A wall? They build walls inside the ship?" Singhlev's hands were itching to get started. He pulled out his sledgehammer, eager to try, clearly wanting to hit eighty blows in one go.

To prevent someone from running out after breaking down the wall and yelling "What are you doing? What are you doing?", Rorschach cast another spell to move most of the goods out and directly ordered the Earl's guards: "Get out, all of you."

The guards also sensed something was wrong. Since they had already finished their work, they all said "Thank you, sir" and slipped away.

"There's a big problem inside," Singhlev said solemnly. He gripped the hammer again, but this time in a fighting stance. The poet stepped back, shielding the two men in front of him, and began playing rousing battle music.

"Stop playing, it's interfering with your judgment." Luo Xia turned off the background music and used "repulsion" to compress the air, but this time he compressed it into a sharp cone shape, pierced the gap in the brick wall and exploded, successfully blasting open the solid brick wall.

"vomit"

A foul odor of rotting protein wafted out, and Luo Xia quickly put filters on himself and the two of them to block out the indescribable stench. There was no light in the middle cabin, and it seemed that not only the cabin doors but also the portholes were tightly sealed, like a black hole spewing stench.

After all the bricks were removed, a murky, reddish-yellow liquid flowed out.

"Shall we not go in?" Although Freddy could no longer smell the odor, his entire upper respiratory tract was still filled with that unpleasant smell.

"It's a corpse." The experienced tomb raider Singh quickly made the judgment, and he asked Rorschach with his eyes whether he wanted to go in.

"We definitely need to see what happened." Rorschach released a ball of light, probing into the cabin. The pale light illuminated the entire enclosed space, where several bloated, floating corpses were piled haphazardly together, likely having been dislodged during the tremors. The wooden floor was filthy and covered in numerous markings.

Rorschach noticed the pattern and decided to investigate further. He had the filter bubble cover his entire body as much as possible and cast the same spell on the other two: "Go in and take a look."

"Alright then, you all stay here and watch, I'll go report to the Earl."

"Whatever." Rorschach stepped inside without looking back, and the dwarf followed without a word. Freddy looked around again, first running to the gap to explain the situation to the guards who were looking around, then turning around and following them in.

One, two, a total of twelve bodies. Rorschach carefully moved them and discovered a common feature: all the deceased had pointed ears.

"All elves?" That was a discovery. Rorschach saw a large patch of floor in front of the porthole soaked with liquid seeping from the remains, leaving a large stain. Some of them had broken oars on their hands and around them, meaning they had originally been placed by the porthole to "row".

Unfortunately, this ship was a paddle steamer, and the windows in the middle section of the cabin were sealed shut. This meant that even if these elves were alive before they fell into this world, they couldn't possibly be the sailors who rowed the ship. Even a mere twelve demon musclemen couldn't lift a small to medium-sized cargo ship.

The dwarves felt deep sympathy for the dead elves. Now their faces were nothing but swollen, horrifying rotten flesh, and their expressions were unreadable. They certainly didn't look happy. Even though it was late autumn and early winter, their clothes were still thin, and their exposed gray skin was still covered in scars.

Although the temperature is not high now, the heat accumulated in the enclosed environment caused the remains to swell.

"Is this a mobile tomb?" Freddy still couldn't understand why the ship would be modified like this, but Rorschach had a clue: "The ship's fall into the Shadow City was not an accident, but a deliberate act."

He deciphered a system of elven totems in the marks on the floor, identical to the patterns in the museum. While Rorschach didn't understand this Shadowland as well as Freddie, he was knowledgeable in semiotics and the occult.

"Shuttle. Shadows reversed." He deciphered the pattern drawn on the floor bit by bit. Due to the interference of bloodstains, he could only make out limited details, but he already had a general understanding of the function of the entire cabin.

"Freddy, you're saying the well is the one where a child drowned so that it could connect the two places, right?"

Freddie shrugged. "The accident happened a long time ago, and the garbage dump appeared much later."

"You also mentioned a method, lying in a coffin and spending time with the skeletons, which means there's a key to entering the Shadowlands."

"die."

"That's right. I don't know the specific method yet, but 'death' is an obvious factor. Judging from this cabin, it has been transformed into a 'ghost ship,' and its destination is the Shadow City."

As they continued forward, breaking through the second wall to reach the bow of the ship, besides the anchor, anchor chain, and other necessary parts, there were several boxes piled up, containing clocks and clothes. Finally, the locked box was pried open, revealing it filled with various metal utensils, with jewels scattered in the gaps.

"Gold!" The dwarf knew a lot about these things. He picked up the second piece, and its warm, silvery sheen astonished him even more: "Mithril!"

(End of this chapter)