Mechanical Alchemist

Chapter 80: Chapter 80: [Havier's Resentment in the Morgue]



Although he did not know if that "gentleman" was truly interested in accepting the commission to forge the spider armor, at least it confirmed the existence of a master craftsman in the outer city.

Su Lun also felt some emotion, realizing that the black market was indeed a place where crouching tigers hid dragons.

As for the identity of that mysterious gentleman, he speculated that there was an eighty percent chance he hailed from the inner city.

After all, combat professionals could rely on fighting to gain understanding and advance, but professions requiring a vast amount of specialized knowledge to accumulate—such as the ones potentially cultivated in places with a complete heritage, like the Black Tower Alchemy Academy or organizations like the "Alchemy Guild"—were definitely from the inner city...

Su Lun guessed that he was probably someone powerful with a background that couldn't withstand scrutiny.

However, that was even better for him; not being able to withstand scrutiny also meant a more distant connection to the inner city, and thus safer dealings.

...

When Su Lun left the black market, it was still early. He rode his motorbike back to Green Street and dived into the dueling arena.

Lately, there had been professional gladiators fighting to the death, and his return was just in time to catch the last few headline matches of the night.

He harvested a wave of experience from the dead bodies, and in the meantime, he and Kai sorted out several brawl incidents, so the night passed in this fashion.

In the early morning, Su Lun rode his motorbike to Ginkgo Street.

He bought some bread to resolve breakfast, and suddenly remembering something, he stuck a note behind the mailbox in front of the 14 Ginkgo Street Bellman Bakery.

Su Lun wanted to contact that mysterious Pharmacist to purchase more special potions, because he had found the "Aberration Monster Repellent" that had saved Lena to be very useful.

Stocking up on some more could prove useful in the future.

After leaving the note, Su Lun didn't walk far, watching from a distance anyone who approached the mailbox.

As expected, before long, a young boy appeared. He discovered the note behind the mailbox and, after looking around left and right, quickly tore it off and ran away.

Chewing on the bread in his hand, Su Lun suddenly became interested and followed him.

The young boy was quite cautious, often looking back and occasionally darting into deserted alleys, demonstrating a certain consciousness of anti-tracking. But now that Su Lun had mastered "Advanced Tracking Skills," the steel wires in his mechanical gloves also made it easy for him to move swiftly across rooftops, and the boy naturally failed to detect him.

Eventually, the half-grown child circled back and appeared on Camellia Street, four blocks away from Ginkgo Street.

This was a civilian district in the outer city, where the streets were filled with dilapidated gray buildings, as well as container boxes and steel frame-stacked "iron box houses."

Perched on the roof of a three-story building with dark red tiles, Su Lun calmly observed the young boy who had taken the note sneaking into an alley and meeting up with a few accomplices.

In the filthy alley where sewage flowed freely, a pale corpse lay in a pile of garbage, seemingly having been dead for a while. More than ten large rats were gnawing on the body, making chilling noises as they feasted. They showed no fear of humans, continuing to nibble while staring at the people at the mouth of the alley.

"Hey, Luke, aren't you supposed to be 'working' on Ginkgo Street today? Why are you back?"

"Don't block me, I have a job from Big Brother Danny. I got the note!"

"Oh~ Does someone want to buy some potions? I really hope the customer buys more, then we'd have money for bread."

"Beta, stop saying things like that. It makes things difficult for Big Brother Danny..."

"..."

Listening to their conversation, Su Lun roughly knew what the Pharmacist's name was.

The half-grown child darted into a run-down building and did not come out again.

Su Lun did not continue to follow him inside. The sudden whimsy of following had meant nothing more than curiosity.

It was also to ensure this lead wouldn't go cold in case he needed any special potions in the future and to know where to find them.

Having found the place, I returned the same way I had come.

.....

Before long, Su Lun arrived back at 88 Ginkgo Street and hired people to move several large cases into the small Western-style building.

Nobody noticed that among these pieces of luggage was a case resembling a cello bag, containing a large black scythe.

A "cursed house" had gained a new resident, likely considered unlucky, so no neighbors came to say hello.

Su Lun was pleased with this.

After the movers left, he meticulously checked the entire house for a third time and found nothing out of the ordinary. Then he set up some small alarms on window sills, rooftops, and at every doorway, and drew all the curtains closed.

Having done all this, he plunged into the basement.

He fitted the walls of the basement with gun targets and moved down the punching bags and equipment used for training.

After a bit of arrangement, the training room began to take shape.

The rent had been paid in advance for half a year; this small building would be his dwelling for a considerable time to come.

Su Lun knew that although he possessed the "Reaper of Death" talent, which allowed his skills and knowledge to improve at an astonishing speed, his weakness was equally apparent: the talent provided almost no enhancement to his physical body.

If he wanted his body to keep up with the explosive increase in skills in his mind, he would have to train rigorously.

However, this world had plenty of black technology, and there were shortcuts to body enhancement. Besides the various alchemy potions, there were also devices.

Among the large cases, there was a "Steam Energy Ultra-Low Temperature Therapy Device" to help muscles recover quickly and a "Neuromuscular Bioelectric Stimulator" to accelerate muscle growth...

These were treasures he had found in the black market's mechanical shops.

These clunky machines were sold in the black market after being disposed of from the armed forces' warehouses in the inner city, supposedly to be disassembled for their parts.

After all, few people in the outer city knew what these devices were for.

But after Su Lun stripped the memories of an assistant from Black Tower Alchemy Academy, he learned that these devices were "military-grade instruments" used by the inner city military organizations for training new recruits.

Although the models of the devices were a bit outdated, they were genuine treasures for physical enhancement.

Put to good use, the two devices could increase the efficiency of physical training by several times.

Su Lun fiddled with the machines; they were functioning normally, so he did not tinker further.

....

After setting up the basement simply, Su Lun walked to the corner and took out the black scythe.

Such a powerful weapon, if merely used as a "suicide bomb" to gamble with an enemy's life, seemed to him a waste.

He wanted to try and see if there was another way to avoid the curse backlash on the scythe.

As a Puppeteer, his first reaction was to use a puppet.

And indeed, he did control a puppet to grip the scythe and swipe it towards the wall,

The first attempt, purely Physical Control, failed.

The second attempt imbued with dark Spiritual Power succeeded in creating a tiny space rift.

He didn't dare to make it too large, just as long as a fingernail,

Lest the backlash would kill him on the spot.

An hour later, Su Lun, who was naked and standing in front of the mirror ready to administer first aid to himself, suddenly felt a chill on his bottom as a stream of blood shot out.

It was an awkward part of the body to be injured, but fortunately, it wasn't dangerous.

"Figures..."

Su Lun sighed lightly and applied some medicinal powder to the wound on his behind.

As expected, it failed.

If it were so easy to exploit a bug, Su Lun thought the previous owner of this scythe would definitely have used it to kill all around.

"Regular puppets are useless, it seems the curse of the scythe must trace back to its user. The most likely targets are 'living beings,' 'energy sources,' or perhaps something else with signs of life..."

Su Lun had roughly figured out some principles of the scythe's backlash tracing back but hadn't completely lost interest in experimenting.

He analyzed further, "High-tier puppets contain [Substitute Puppets] that can transfer injuries from the original body; maybe that could work. Or perhaps using wires to control someone else's limbs, making another person swing the scythe, could also avoid the curse's backlash..."

As a Puppet Master, he immediately thought of these two methods.

But for now, he was not skilled enough to create a [Substitute Puppet], and to control another person to use the scythe, he still had a long way to go. His puppet control technique had just begun, and he was far from being able to control it as he wished.

At this thought, Su Lun's hands were frequently twitching, and the two odd puppets in the room danced a merry circle dance, habitually practicing puppet manipulation.

He suddenly thought of something and mumbled to himself, "If I could dissect a few Puppet Masters' corpses, my control technique might improve quickly... Too bad, Puppet Masters are a rare vocation; you'd probably not find many in all of Old Lington."

....

The skill of multitasking allowed Su Lun to control the puppets with his hands while simultaneously thinking about other matters.

Since he couldn't spare his hands for anything else, his thoughts suddenly drifted.

Looking at this house, Su Lun wasn't sleepy at all, and suddenly felt an instinctive curiosity about the deaths that had occurred here.

From his experience of watching over eight hundred horror movies, a "haunted house" with continuous deaths definitely had issues.

As soon as this notion struck him, Su Lun's mind became active: "Let me think, assuming there's something wrong with this house... what could be the reason other than dark spiritual power causing mutations?"

In that instant, scenes from countless horror films flashed through his mind, and Su Lun's gaze gradually deepened.

Then, he quickly analyzed several possibilities for the deaths.

NO.1: The landlord pretends to rent out the place but actually lures tenants in to rob and harm them;

NO.2: There's something like radiation hidden in the house that has not been discovered, causing deaths invisibly;

NO.3: There's something in the house that only appears under certain conditions, like "ghost seeds," supernatural power;

NO.4: Other reasons, such as random crimes by thieves, robbery and murder...

The first possibility was almost instantly dismissed.

Before renting, he had already declared his identity as a member of the Cross Society; it was unlikely the landlord dared to do so.

And since he had the All-knowing Eye, which enabled him to see bodily data panels, negative fields and such could not be concealed from him; thus, the second option was also essentially ruled out.

As for the fourth one, it was possible, but not very likely.

Then, Su Lun applied the process of elimination, leaving the last option.

At that point, he suddenly felt a bit frustrated: "If there's something truly wrong with the reasons behind the deaths in this house, does it mean there's a 'ghost seed' inside? It couldn't be that coincidental, could it..."

....

Su Lun never took chances when it came to matters of life and death.

After considering this issue, he immediately sought out the landlord Ge Langtai, and through a mix of intimidation and enticement, learned about the situations of the previous tenants.

To his surprise, he found out that in the past year or so, three tenants had already died in this house.

The first two seemed normal, probably true deformities leading to death. One person died from a tumor in the head, another went mad and died from abnormal growths on the body.

But the third tenant, a blind man, was very strange.

From Ge Langtai's words, Su Lun caught several abnormalities about the blind man: 1. He had a mysterious background, not from the southern city district, suspected to be from the inner city; 2. He seemed to be investigating something; 3. The doors and windows were sealed shut, and the blind man suddenly disappeared without a trace, and no body was found; 4.

The blind man was very skilled and could locate by sound;

Once Su Lun obtained this information, he immediately felt that this house was probably not just "haunted" in the simple sense.

Had the third blind tenant merely left without saying goodbye? Maybe he hadn't died?

Or perhaps he had died, and his body had disappeared?

Whether it was indulging in wild speculation or a cautious instinct, whenever Su Lun encountered such bizarre events, he would always look for clues and reason out some of the doubts about the incident.

It was like playing a puzzle game, not resting until solved.

"What was that blind man investigating in this house...looking for someone? No living person, but perhaps the possibility of a ghostly entity."

"Or could it be that there is a treasure in this house?"

Back in the basement, Su Lun looked at the concrete walls around him and an idea increasingly crystallized in his mind, "If it's about looking for something, the All-knowing Eye always fails to detect anything abnormal. Could it be that this house has some sort of special conditions that need to be met to see (trigger) a cursed object, or perhaps... a sealed object?"

"Assuming the blind man died and the body disappeared. Either it was eaten by a monster, taken away by the murderer, or possibly still hidden somewhere in a crevice of the house. Hey, this is a supernatural world..."

"Maybe... this house is a man-eating monster in itself?"

Once this thought emerged, it was as if he had cast a psychological suggestion on himself, and Su Lun increasingly felt there was something "strange" inside the house.

His gaze unwittingly concentrated, sweeping across the entire basement.

And just then, suddenly!

On the basement wall, which the All-knowing Eye had seen and dismissed as normal several times before, a string of information appeared.

[Havier's Resentment Morgue]

Explanation: It only exists when you realize it does; when you think of it, it appears before your eyes;

....

"I really guessed it..."

Su Lun's eyes twitched.

Seeing the changing sights around him, for the first time, he felt that his liking for wild speculation was also a kind of sin.

This wasn't a game; solving puzzles felt good, but it could also trigger some inconceivable things. Old Lington was an ancient relic and up to now, "bizarre incidents" would still pop up in the city from time to time.

But I was just thinking about it...and it triggered this?

Not the "ghostly entities" he had speculated about, but an even more outlandish situation.

PS. Anti-spoiler reminder: The "All-knowing Eye" is an active skill that requires the host to have already noticed the target, focus actively on it to identify.


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