In the center of the room, there was a long cherrywood table surrounded by twenty-four chairs. The chairs were all made of precious wood and their red velvet cus.h.i.+ons were nice and soft. The backs of the chairs were carved with different fine patterns, such as the symbol of elements, a storm enveloping bolts of lightning, the crown of magic and arcana…
"It has been confirmed that the G.o.d of Silver Moon, Alterna, brought about the change of the scarlet moon. As for Alterna's enemy… it was an existence which has never been discovered before, probably coming from a silent world where all colors are devoid except for black, white, and grey." The Prophet, who was wearing a grey pointy hat, concluded primarily.
The scarlet moon and what happened to the two beings so close to the "truth" caught the attention of the Congress of Magic immediately. The Highest Council called for a meeting to decide further arrangements.
Since the meeting was a rush decision, only eighteen out of the twenty-four members managed to attend. Hathaway and the other five members were not in Allyn right now.
Hearing what the Prophet just said, Vicente Miranda, also known as the Thanatos, knocked at the table and said, "What we should really care about right now is which dimension Alterna and the unknown existence ended up falling into, and why They started fighting."
Vicente Miranda was covered with a black cloak. Inside his eyes, two dark red flames were flickering.
"It perhaps has something to do with Dracula, the Vampire Prince, and Rhine, the Silver-eyed Count. They aren't getting along with each other. According to the information yielded by Horoscope, I went to the Dark Mountain Range this early morning and found that Rhine's castle has jumped into the Night Highland to recover from severe damage. The surroundings have been completely destroyed into ashes, and traces left by Dracula were everywhere…" Douglas said in a calm tone. "As for why they started fighting, and why the unknown existence was involved, no idea so far."
Fernando's red eyes surveyed around the meeting room, and many of the legendary archmages slightly lowered their eyes to avoid direct eye contact with him. They did not want to be roared at by Fernando if he somehow found a fault of theirs.
"I've sent Bergner and Annonis to locate the dimension. If any of you are free, please join in. We all know how important this is," said Fernando. He had been safeguarding Allyn in recent years and was therefore responsible for making the arrangements at this point.
Bergner was the Prophet's name, and Annonis was the Astrologer.
"Also, I have confirmed from other sources that it was Dracula and Rhine who caused it. If we want to find the reason for the fight, we must focus on the mysterious existence and the silent world made of black, white, and grey!"
As Fernando spoke, he looked directly into Vicente's eyes.
"What do you mean, Fernando?"
The dark flames in Thanatos's eyes flickered. He was not a crazy mage who had no idea of interpersonal relations.h.i.+ps. Thus, he understood what Fernando was indicating.
"I've got a message from the Duchy of Violet. At the end of April in year 816, great changes took place beside Lake Elsinore. Some adventurers survived and they described the changes as 'all colors but black, white, and gray started to fade, and the sounds also disappeared'. Don't you tell me this has nothing to do with what happened last night!"
"Also, Rogerio was there at that time! Why he didn't he include this in his report?!"
The light in Fernando's eyes was sharp and he was almost roaring. The survivor he was talking about was, of course, Lucien.
Because of the ambush of the Church and Hathaway's involvement, there were quite a few survivals from the catastrophe. Some of the night watchers and knights who were chasing after Argent Horn were there as well. Therefore, the information was in fact relatively easy to access. Thus Lucien did not try to hide it from his teacher, instead, he confessed in front of Fernando, which was in actually a good way of showing that he knew nothing about the World of Souls.
"You gotta ask Hathaway." Thanatos tried to s.h.i.+ft Fernando's attention to Hathaway who was not present.
"Shall I also ask Hathaway why there's also the solidification of black, white, and grey in Heidler as well?!"
Fernando's roaring kept going on. Thanatos couldn't help leaning slightly to one side.
The rest of the members of the Highest Council all knew what happened in Heidler. But because no possible reasons were found, none of them mentioned about it before. Now that what just happened resembled Heidler's condition so much, they all started feeling suspicious. However, facing Vicente, they were hoping that the Lord of Storm could take the initiative to put it forward.
Fernando did not disappoint them.
Thanatos was so skinny that there seemed to be only a layer of skin covering his cheekbones. He responded in a rather calm manner, "Heidler is connected to an unknown dimension. It became like this because it was contaminated. Unfortunately, we haven't found the entrance of the dimension yet, so we're unable to explore it further. Currently, we have no idea if this has anything to do with the silent world. I was about to make some further investigation when I return there."
At this point, Vicente could only choose to tell half of the truth about the World of Souls. It was very difficult to find the entrance anyways.
"Good. We've got some clues. I'll ask Hathaway and Rogerio as well. I hope all of you in this room can set aside some time to help investigate these two cases. After all, this involves the truth of the world." Douglas hurriedly concluded before Fernando's fury proceeded.
After all the members left the meeting room, Fernando shook his head.
"This's more complex than what was expected."
In fact, Fernando knew that Lucien was not telling the whole true story, but he respected Lucien's right to privacy and did not probe further. For Fernando, knowing the correct rough outline of what happened was enough.
Confident as the Lord of Storm, he believed that anything that happened before must leave some clues behind. As long as there were clues, he could find out the truth.
For example, although Lucien said that Dracula never saw his face or detected his smell, so he would not be chased after. But since he had turned to Natasha for help, someone who's careful enough could still trace back to Lucien by studying Natasha's whereabouts.
Therefore, the reasons why Fernando took Lucien back to the Duchy of Violet were twofold: One was to confuse others, as no one in their right mind would immediately return to the site after causing such trouble; The other was that if there truly is a secret hidden behind all these and someone began to suspect Lucien, then Fernando's act would be interpreted as that Lucien had already shared the secret with the Congress of Magic, thus Lucien would be much safer—if someone wants to silence the witness over the affair, then they must silence the whole Congress of Magic!
...
Since spiritual power was closely related to the soul and one's world of cognition, any exploration into spiritual power or advancement of meditation methods required great caution. In the past years, more than a few senior-rank sorcerers had been severely injured when trying to modify their meditations, some even died from it. Therefore, after conducting the photoelectric effect experiment and applying the theory of wave-particle dualism to spiritual power development, Lucien did not come up with a new meditation right away. Instead, he modified it bit by bit during every day's practice. He estimated that it would take him two to three years to complete and perfect the new meditation.
Opening the window, Lucien felt the night wind blew in. It was already the Month of Ice, the wind made Lucien s.h.i.+ver, but was also very refres.h.i.+ng.
Lucien grinned when he saw that Alferris was focusing on roasting a whole lamb down there in the garden. He had been back for a few days and had been showing up in front of people more and more often. No one ever doubted him for having anything to do with the scarlet moon, as in the eyes of the arcanists other than Fernando, Thompson, and those who he was close to, Lucien Evans, the leader of the Atom Inst.i.tution, never left Allyn.
To their way of thinking, Lucien was spending all of his time on improving himself as he was worried about the Church's possible a.s.sa.s.sination.
It was because that Lucien did not leave for too long, while Alferris' disguising himself as Lucien also helped a lot.
"Sir, Mr. Arthur's here again. Shall I decline him again using the same excuse?" asked Leo, the chief butler, who was among the few who knew that Lucien just came back.
Lucien shook his head. "Let him in. I gotta ask him about the production of the magic crystal light."
Although he got Health Belt, Pale Justice, and other precious magic items from this adventure, he also consumed lots of senior-rank materials and potions. All he had left right now was a tube of solidified helium, a tube of Alferris' blood, three tubes of liquid helium, four tubes of Water Song, etc.
In addition, the materials that he used for the promotion to senior-rank were loans from Fernando, therefore he had to leave the income from Holm Mineral and Harvest to Fernando as a pledge. His subsidies from the Congress had to go to Alferris for its salary. Although Lucien could still get the materials he needed for experiments using the budget of the inst.i.tution, he did not have enough Thales or arcana points to do anything else. He needed a new source of revenue urgently.
The air of the dragon in the garden was oppressive. Arthur walked through the garden, feeling quite weak in his knees. When he walked into the living room, enthusiastic smile piled up on his chubby face. "Hi, Lucien, our youngest member of the Arcana Review Board! Finally, you've finally got some time for me!"
"So what makes you here this late?" Lucien was being very straightforward.
Arthur undid the top b.u.t.ton and laughed. "Your place's surely much warmer than mine. My fireplace never worked as well as your magic."
"Anyways, Lucien," Arthur continued, "I'm here because the first order of magic crystal lights has been produced. Remember? You changed the materials for producing. Sir James, the Duke, wanted to install crystal lights in his villa in Rentato. We've placed wires from the magic circles powered by water to his villa… of course, under the guidance of several sorcerers from the school of electromagnetics."
Lucien nodded, waiting for Arthur to finish his words.
"So tonight, we are about to light them up! Sir James' place will be the first n.o.ble's villa ever that's lit up by magic! This will be a historic event! As the designer, you should definitely be present!" Arthur said humorously with a radiant smile.
