Does the mechanical girl dream of the Messiah?

Ashethelin spoke very quickly. She did not feel fear or disgust towards the crawling creature like Lunicia did. On the contrary, she seemed to be somewhat curious about the rare thing. If she was given the chance, she would definitely try to dissect it and study it carefully.

The blond Lobard man looked at Ashlee in surprise, and then he saw Ashlee reaching for the hilt of the sword behind her, as if she wanted to pull something wrapped in white cloth out from behind.

"Wait a minute, ma'am, don't draw your sword!" He stopped them without hesitation. "You didn't even retreat when you saw our city guards. I've never seen people as enthusiastic as you. Are you tourists who just arrived here?"

It seemed that he was quite familiar with every "enthusiastic person" in this city. Regardless of that, he put on a serious expression and said solemnly: "In this case, we cannot let you take risks. It is our responsibility to protect the safety of this city and every tourist. We cannot trouble you to do it for us."

"At this time——"

Just when Lunicia was about to say something, the corpse of the old man that was crawling like a centipede seemed to have seen them, and suddenly changed direction, rushing towards the group at an extremely fast speed. Lunicia saw this scene, which made her speed up her grip on the hilt of the sword, accumulate strength, suppress her momentum, and tense her body. The many battles from Shuichequ to Twek enabled her to integrate the teachings of Sesteen Perancitine and to more skillfully grasp the thing called "timing" in battle, when to hold the sword, when to draw the sword, when to draw the sword, and when to cut the enemy in half with the highest efficiency. She seemed to have vaguely grasped the trick.

"Don't draw your sword! Leave this to us!"

However, a loud male voice pulled her mind out of that immersed state again. The Naropa man then lowered his body, fixed the small round shield at his wrist, and tightly grasped the handle of the scimitar with both hands, and then shouted in an astonishing volume: "Jian! Support!"

"understand!"

In the direction he was coming from, the adjutant called Jian raised his sword and showed the holy emblem tied to the hand guard, the holy emblem of Alexander, the god of time and judgment, the brass dial inlaid with scales. The light on the holy emblem lit up, and some kind of power seemed to be poured into Jian's body. He raised his sword and recited a loud syllable in a deep voice:

"【stop】!"

The corpse that was crawling like a centipede actually stopped moving at the command of the voice. It seemed to be trying hard to break free from the influence, but it was helpless and could only stay where it was in mechanical trembling.

"'Command'? Or is it the 'Command of Order' of the priests in the Order Domain? Or is it the 'Law Incarnate' that strengthens the effect of the 'Command'?"

Ella Hepper watched this scene, muttering to herself.

It doesn't look like the second case. The "Command of Order" only prevents the recipient from harming the caster for a while, and the priest is not the target of the corpse's attack now. As for the third case, he doesn't look like he has such a high level... In this case, it is probably the first case, and it is enough to show that the strange corpse is not an undead creature, but something else. After all, "Command" has no effect on undead creatures.

While Ella was thinking, Jian did not stop moving. At the moment when the body was tied up, he chanted again:

"Holy flame of purification! Burn away all the filth!"

call--

The pure white light was like a blazing flame, swirling and whistling, pouring down from the top of the corpse, enveloping it completely and burning it with a crackling sound. The sound sounded just like dead wood being burned rather than the flesh and blood of some living creature. This seemed to indicate that the thing that made no sound even when burned by the holy flame was very different from ordinary creatures.

The baptism of the holy fire did not last too long, and the hastily performed divine art itself was not of the type with very strong lethality. In the blink of an eye, the arm that had become charred and cracked due to the burning stretched out from the white flames, violently tearing at the holy fire covering its body, and almost immediately extinguished the white flames, revealing the dry corpse underneath.

The corpse remained silent, and only the rustling sounds inside its body proved that it was still active. However, before it could make any further move, a figure fell straight towards it from a great height.

At the same time that Jian cast the Holy Flame, the Lobad man had already jumped high, and it seemed that he had no intention of waiting for the Holy Flame to extinguish automatically. Although it was the first time he and his adjutant fought together, the combat instinct and experience engraved in his body were able to perfectly take over the almost non-existent tacit understanding and connect the gaps in the attack, leaving the enemy no chance to react.

The result was that the moment the corpse broke free from the holy flame, the magical scimitar had already chopped into its head, cut its ribs, and opened its back. With one cut, the corpse, which had just been strange and twisted, had now been cut in half from the back. The Lobad man had no intention of leisurely confirming its life or death, but at the moment of splitting it in half, he threw something flashing red light into the crack behind it.

boom--!

Orange-red flames immediately burst out from its body, enveloping it and burning it as firewood, until the pitch-black corpse even stopped twitching and completely turned into a ball of black charcoal whose shape could not be discerned.

"Just wait here and don't do anything rash. Our city guard can handle this situation."

The Lobad man gave a warning and then immediately rushed to other battlefields. It seemed that in his opinion, compared to staying here to guard these uninvited guests, it would be more beneficial to speed up the disposal of the other crawling corpses to ensure the safety of the ladies here, so that they would not be unable to resist drawing their weapons and joining the battle.

"Ella, how do you feel?"

Seeing that she couldn't intervene, Lunicia simply folded her arms and watched the battle over there from afar - at least the combat effectiveness of those city guards was still sufficient, and if all the moving corpses were at the same level as before, then there probably wouldn't be too much danger. Since the other party insisted on not helping, Lunicia could only do as she was told - unless they really had a critical situation, then Lunicia would draw her sword and rush forward no matter what.

"Which one are you referring to, Luna-sama?"

"Which one? Ah... Let's talk about the warrior first."

"Very quick reaction, good combat awareness, looks like he has military experience."

"Yes." Lunisia said, picking up a dead branch from the side and poking the charred charcoal on the ground. "What about this?"

As the branches moved, the carbonized part covering the surface peeled off, revealing the abnormally colored flesh underneath. The corpse was shattered beyond recognition by the previous battle, and only the trunk and limbs could be roughly identified. The internal organs were severely rotten, and after being burned twice by the flames, not only could nothing be seen, but it also emitted a disgusting smell.

Lunicia did not sense any breath of undead creatures from it, but there seemed to be a sense of incongruity that was hard to ignore, as if that thing was out of tune with its surroundings, as if that thing should not have such an image. It made people feel that something was wrong, but they could not tell exactly what was wrong, so they could only frown.

"This is not an undead creature, such as a zombie, ghoul, or wight."

"Yeah, I can feel it."

Lunicia threw away the branch in her hand and waited for Ella's next sentence.

"...If I must say, this is closer to the evil things that might appear in a dark environment."

Chapter 42 Day 1: City Guard

"I am so sorry for being so rude, ladies."

After the Lobard man rejoined the battle, the battle did not last too long. It seemed that the guards had intended to trap the enemy here and then annihilate them one by one. Lunisia and her group just caught up with the end of the crusade. Of course, the end of the battle did not mean the end of the situation. Even without the orders from their superiors, the guards still acted according to the procedures, divided the team into several groups, searched the buildings, cleaned the battlefield, and contacted the remaining personnel. This discipline also gave their leaders a chance to relax and deal with the relatively unimportant matters here.

"I am Galezo de Barbacro, and I apologize for my previous misbehavior. Please forgive me."

The tall warrior who called himself Galezo was very strict and impeccable in his etiquette, which formed a slight contrast with his physique. Of course, if a black-haired young man with a scar on his face was here, he would inevitably salute him while mocking him for being pretentious. This made Lunicia's expression a little puzzled.

"It's okay, as long as there are no casualties. I'm Lunicia, Lunicia Agris, this is my companion Ella, and this is..."

"She is a girl as elegant and beautiful as an ephemeral flower."

Lunisia tried to ignore Ashtherin's gag.

"…It's my companion, Ashtherin. As you can see, we are tourists passing through Myland."

"I hope what happened just now will not give you any bad impression of this city." After hanging the scimitar back on his waist and strapping the round shield to his arm, Galezo performed a different greeting with his bare hands. It seemed that this time he was not representing himself, but the city of Muirand. "Please believe that our city guard will do its best to protect the personal safety of all tourists, just like the Muirand Police Station and the First Guards Division. I guarantee that as long as you are in this city and this country, you can enjoy the highest security in the entire eastern part of the continent."

"Ah, well, your considerate manners are enough to dispel all my uneasiness."

Lunisia expressed her doubts moderately.

"Do you have any questions about this? After all, I am a noble, and I cannot bring shame to my family when I go out."

This was Galezo's self-deprecating words. Although the Barbacro family was not an old Nasarlan noble family with a long history, and was originally just a merchant engaged in mineral trade in Myland, and lived at the bottom of the aristocracy by purchasing titles, in later generations they became a famous family in Myland through outstanding military exploits, and had a great reputation in the army. However, Galezo did not like to show off his background, as if doing so would belittle his own strength.

Muirand is a modern aristocratic republic. In order to ensure that their descendants will not become incompetent and weak, the nobles in the House of Lords promote the aristocratic compulsory military service system - that is, the children of nobles must serve in the military after reaching a specified age, and regard joining the army as an indispensable exercise in life. On the contrary, there is no requirement for civilians to serve in the military. It is precisely for this reason that noble children can often be seen in various military and police agencies in Muirand, and Galezo is one of them.

By the way, nobles have the obligation to perform military service. In addition, in this chaotic world, even Myuland cannot avoid friction with dark followers or monsters, and the possibility of noble children dying young or even extinct increases accordingly. Under such circumstances, Myuland still did not pass the law of polygamy or monogamy with multiple concubines. Instead, it relaxed the conditions for nobles to adopt and adopt children. There are always nobles who take advantage of this and legitimately include their mistresses' children in the scope of heirs. Dealing with the disputes caused by this has also made Myuland court very busy.

"I see. Then, may I ask, what was that just now...?"

"Hey! Over there! Don't touch the body with your hands! Sorry, that's rude. That was handled by our city security team. It was probably a monster that appeared in the darkness. We can't explain the specific situation. After all, we are not experts in studying those monsters. The remains of these monsters will be handed over to scholars at the research institute for analysis. Don't worry, they have been confirmed to be dead. They will not come back to life and will not cause any other safety problems."

"In the dark - the lighting in Myuland is quite good, right? Will there be a 'dark area'?"

Ella took over the topic at the right time, but Galezo shook his head.

"I'm sorry, but it's not convenient to disclose this information to travelers."

"Can't say anything?"

"At least from our perspective, we shouldn't comment too much on this kind of thing."

It sounds like, rather than "what we are discussing is confidential so we cannot talk about it", it is more like "it is not our place to talk about such things". This is probably closely related to the nature of the work of the city police, so Galezo de Barbacello does not want to say anything too subjective and mislead other people's views.

"That explanation would make people feel uneasy." Ella spread out her palms and continued, "It sounds like it has a close relationship with the city police. If this kind of situation is so common in the city that a special force has to be established, then isn't this Mulande much more dangerous than it looks?"

—Ah, Ella, well done.

Lunicia couldn't help but exclaim in her heart. It would be difficult for her to say such an aggressive statement, but for Ella, it was no burden at all. Moreover, she directly started from the reputation of Mulande, which the other party valued. In this way, she should show some expression no matter what.

"Um……"

Sure enough, after hearing Ella say this, Galezzo couldn't help but groan.

"I can assure you that this kind of situation is a very rare and sudden accident in Muirand. You will never see it again. Your safety is also absolutely guaranteed. However, we cannot disclose more details. We can only say that if you want to learn more, the Stone Cellar Library will be a good choice. You will definitely find what you want to know there."

"Because that is where all the books collected since the founding of Muirand are found?"

"At least most of them. Well, I have to get back to my post, so I'll leave you alone. I hope you all have a good time in Muirand, ladies."

Galezo said goodbye to Lunicia and the others, then hurried back to the other city guards and directed them to clean up and carry the bodies and prepare to evacuate. Lunicia and the others saw that nothing would happen here, so they turned around and walked towards the hotel again.

Until both parties left, the deserted construction site fell silent again. The security guard who was originally guarding the site did not return, and the city police informed them to evacuate until sunrise the next day. Only a few faint charred marks remained, indicating the battle that had taken place, as well as the monsters twitching, wriggling, and crawling in twisted postures on the ground.

……

"Has the wreckage been loaded and taken away?"

"Yes," said Gian, "would you like to go and see for yourself?"

"It's already burned like that. Even if it's revived, it won't be able to fight. I can't stand the smell."

Inserting the key into the lock and turning it slowly, Galezo was not in a hurry to open the door of his office. Instead, he quietly stood at the door, listening to something, and then suddenly pushed the iron door open - there was nothing inside, no visitors he didn't want to see, only the furniture covered by the lights, which looked no different from before he left.

"You are still so cautious."

"I don't want to be engraved on the memorial tablet yet."

After hanging the scimitar and small round shield on the weapon rack, leaving only the iron wrist guard and dagger, Galezo sat back in his office chair. If it were in other departments, this situation would be called temporary overtime, and after finishing the work, it would be time to pack up and prepare to go home. But here in the city police force, it is now a busy time for work, after all, the night has just begun.

However, it seemed that the peak of work had passed tonight. Galezo had not received any calls from the construction site just now, nor did he see anything in the emergency contact box at the door. Generally speaking, if he was not in the office and could not be contacted, and someone happened to need to contact him, the person would put his name and different color cards representing the urgency of the matter into the contact box and wait until Galezo returned to his office to see it.

"Jian."

"You say."

"What did you think just now?"

"Unfortunately."

"That's true." Galezo rubbed his brow, "Unfortunately, I just happen to have an idea."

"You said it was an unfortunate coincidence. That must not be a good thing."

"Indeed. That's right. The body that attacked the three ladies, unfortunately, I know."

"..."

Gian Battista was speechless for a moment.

"Don't be nervous. That's not some relative of mine. He's an old man registered as living in the Northeast District. He has no children and his wife died young. I remember he lived in... um... 14th Avenue, 'Rat Harbor District', but I can't remember the house number."

“Does it need to be blocked?”

"There is no need for a special blockade. The order to strengthen martial law has been issued. We have not received any new contacts yet, which proves that no other unexpected situations have occurred."

Galeazzo waved his hand.

"I saw him several times during the daytime patrol. The old man had a serious lung disease. Perhaps his pension was not enough to pay for his treatment, or he felt that ordinary treatments would be useless, so he moved here to wait for death."

There was no fluctuation in his tone, as if he had no problem with his jurisdiction being regarded as a holy place for seeking death or waiting for death. Or perhaps, in his opinion, this place was just like that.

"The condition of the body - before it was charred - looked like it had been dead for some time, but had not yet completely decayed due to the cold weather. The other bodies were similar. The one in the best condition had died very recently, estimated to be no more than 24 hours, but it had very serious external injuries."

"Broken my neck."

"Yes, he fell from a high altitude. Where is the high altitude in this damn place? Does he live in a two-story building?"

"what do you mean?"

"They are probably all dead bodies. This time, we must have encountered a monster that can occupy dead bodies. Tomorrow during the day, have the day shift guards conduct a comprehensive investigation and try to find all the abandoned houses. Register and seal them off. If any bodies are found, dispose of them to prevent a recurrence of this situation."

"This time it was an accident."

"So it can't happen a second time, otherwise it won't be called an accident."

In fact, it was the first time that Galeazzo encountered that type.

It happened very suddenly. Not long after he led the team on patrol because of a feeling in his heart, he encountered one of those crawling corpses. Although he went on patrol fully armed due to anxiety, he still didn't expect that this kind of monster created by occupying corpses could ignore light to a certain extent and appear in the open environment before sunset - this was just the beginning. Just as Galezo was commanding the guards to kill that one directly, more corpses appeared from the surroundings. They didn't seem to intend to entangle with the guards, but rushed directly to the blockade line leading to the outside of the northeast area.

Originally, this would not be a problem. The troops on the blockade line were enough to stop them directly. Monsters of this level would never be able to break through successfully. However, those things seemed to be more intelligent than expected. They did not collide with the blockade line head-on, but drilled out from an unknown blind spot.

Next, it was the scene that Lunisia and her group saw: the city guards lured the corpses into a semi-enclosed construction site, surrounded them, and captured them all. Although it was generally safe, the whole thing was still very suspicious.

"What on earth is going on..."

……

"What on earth is going on..."

Galeazzo de Barbacro was puzzled, as was Lunicia Aguerres, who had been thinking about the matter since dinner but could not come up with any idea.

Firstly, she was not sure whether this incident had happened "last time", so she didn't know whether it was an inevitable event that would have happened, or a secondary effect caused by something she inadvertently did after she "came back"; secondly, she had no idea whether this incident was related to what happened in the Cathedral of Alexandria - if there was no connection, it seemed too coincidental, and if there was, the location was too far away from the Cathedral of Alexandria, which was the center of the incident, and the degree was so low that it didn't seem worth paying attention to at all.

It wasn't completely fruitless. The soldier named Galezo seemed more trustworthy and provided some directions for investigation. If necessary, I might even be able to explain things to him and ask for help.

But overall, this incident just bothered Lunicia for nothing. Until she lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, she still couldn't figure out what this incident meant.

Chapter 43 Day 2: Separate Actions

In fact, from Lunicia's perspective, she even wanted to make use of the night and simply give up today's sleep time to investigate - perhaps in her opinion, if there was no battle that caused the spirit to be severely consumed, this level of fatigue would be just a small matter, but Ella and Ashlee finally made her give up this unrealistic idea.

After all, if we want to investigate the Cathedral of Alexandria next, we must sneak in at night - it is too conspicuous during the day, and many things are inconvenient to do. And we can't slack off in the investigation during the day, so we should save our energy before the investigation enters the most important stage, so as not to lose the chain at the critical moment.