Chapter 359 - 146. Erwin

Chapter 359: 146. ErwinAs he watched the tall, headless corpse collapse uncontrollably onto the watery ground, Fisher finally covered his abdominal wound and crouched on the ground, finally able to relax for a moment.

Beside him, Moli gently covered her mouth, and from her eyes, tears fell like pearls.

Perhaps she had indeed avenged her aunt, but her aunt was truly gone, and she had ultimately missed seeing her aunt’s final moments.

"Anna ran out from here, we need to leave this place now, Moli..."

Fisher’s face was pale, and he clutched the abdominal wound he had just sustained, once again refusing Moli’s offer to use her life energy to heal him. He looked up at the huge hole that led straight to the ground, still unclear why Anna had transformed into such a monster at the end.

However, unnoticed by Fisher, the blood continuously seeping from Blake’s headless corpse tinged the puddle of water on the ground a fresh red. The red color, strangely, did not disperse in the water but slowly coalesced into a small point.

Just as Moli was helping Fisher to stand up, he suddenly sensed something.

At that moment, all the hairs on his body stood on end, and a terrifying sense of danger instantly overwhelmed him.

The oppressive and eerie feeling far exceeded that of any enemy Fisher had encountered. His face changed, and he quickly grabbed Moli by her side.

"No, Moli... there’s still an enemy."

"Huh?"

But clearly, Moli hadn’t noticed anything; she looked around puzzledly, but in the vast treasury, only the subtle sound of flowing water was audible.

The next second, a voice that sounded neither male nor female came from somewhere,

"Too bad, the experiment has failed again..."

"That girl named Anna was so brave, managing to hold so many people inside her body. I thought the experiment with the ’Life’s Treasure’ was close to success, but it turned out like all the other subjects... What a pity."

In the next moment, Fisher finally noticed that the fresh blood gushing out of Blake’s headless body had already gathered into a small dot on the water surface. That dot continuously rotated like a vortex in the water, despite being so small, endlessly drawing Blake’s corpse into it.

After Blake’s body completely disappeared, as if it had been reassembled, a new figure slowly emerged from the water.

It was a person entirely cloaked in a black leather trench coat, but with no discernible gender, because on their head was a pitch-black mask resembling a bird’s beak. The mask had no facial features or other distinguishing traits, appearing as if a bird’s head had grown on that person’s body.

The moment that person appeared, the "Soul Completion Manual" in Fisher’s left side for the first time started acting strangely. In Fisher’s eyes, it seemed like he had a natural rejection towards that person, making Fisher want to kill him upon their first encounter.

That person also had another Completion Manual!

"Um..."

Before that person could speak, Moli’s complexion subtly changed, and her eyelids seemed to get heavier. Starting from helping Fisher, she quickly came to rely on Fisher to support her body.

"Moli? Moli?"

"Um.."

Moli’s eyes were completely unable to open, and upon hearing Fisher’s call, she could no longer speak, only managing a mumbling response. But this was already her limit.

In the next second, she completely lost consciousness and fell into the water.

Fisher quickly reached out to feel her neck but found that aside from being unconscious, her body seemed relatively normal. The situation resembled being affected by some kind of anesthetic poison.

But when had she been poisoned?

"Don’t worry, don’t worry, Mr. Fisher, it’s just a little bit of whale hunting poison targeted at the Whale-man Species. It won’t cause any harm or burden to this young Whale-man girl; she will wake up in a few hours. But honestly, the fight between you and Blake was amazing. I haven’t seen such an exciting fight in a long time, and I didn’t even have to lift a finger to ensure your safety..."

The person with the bird’s beak mask took a step or two forward, clapping his hands while looking at the numerous Gold Coins indiscriminately flowing with the water towards the ground, he sighed somewhat regrettably.

"Who are you?"

"Ah, I forgot to introduce myself. We meet for the first time... no, it should be the second time, Mr. Fisher."

"Second time?"

Fisher’s expression changed slightly as he suddenly remembered. During the attack on the Schwali Delegation with Space Magic, there had been a small insect that could speak human language and had conversed with him; if not unexpectedly, that was him.

"It was during the attack on the Schwali Delegation, and also... in the Healing Room, it was you who left me a message."

The man shook his finger, then added,

"And just now, the letter to Blake that you saw... I originally wanted you to stop Anna from shattering the bell, but in the end, she chose to die. It’s indeed regrettable. Although she had reached her limit of containment, maybe accommodating one or two more people could have resulted in success. Then, she might have lived on in a completely new form of life... Ah, Mr. Fisher, don’t worry, the part implanted with Plant Meat will only carry the very last bit of petty persistence of the experimental subject."

"Actually, they have no self-consciousness. Mu Xi is like this, Anna and others are too. So now, Anna just wants to cross Saint Nali City to leave the Western Continent, don’t worry, someone will soon take care of her. Let’s talk about the matter between us instead."

Saying so, he suddenly spread his arms in front of the injured Fisher and then said,

"Let me reintroduce myself, my name is Erwin, responsible for the Life Seat of the Creation Association, you can also call me Life Minister, but that is not important..."

"Life Minister... is Philone one of your people?"

Erwin admitted without hesitation,

"Ah, Philone, Philone... He’s the Seat Manager who joined us most recently and has a good mind, just slightly unfortunate... a few months ago, he reported a situation to the society, saying he had found an unrecorded Completion Manual."

Fisher’s expression shifted slightly, though he did not speak; Erwin continued,

"The Completion Manuals we hold all bear specific markings that can identify the owners of other Manuals, but when you first met Philone, you did not find a Completion Manual on him. He thus determined that you possess an unknown Completion Manual."

"Once two Completion Manuals come close to each other, their owners will inevitably fight each other until you seize another’s Manual or your own is taken. Before the society’s support arrived, you had directly defeated him, yet in the end, he chose to cover your tracks for you, making it impossible for us to find you; we could only speculate that the person who defeated him was a Magic Master..."

Fisher suddenly realized something; Philone had specifically sealed off all the gates of the Inner City during their battle precisely to hide his traces. If he had called other soldiers to enter the city and fight, his chances of triumph wouldn’t be as high.

And the reason he had kept Fisher and his group around was not for the Dragon-man Species’s souls but for the Completion Manuals on Fisher himself!

"After discovering Fisher Benavides was the one possessing two Completion Manuals, I reported the person who defeated Philone in Saint Nali City to the society; they hoped I would find you and persuade you to join, making you the new responsible person for the Soul Seat and sending you to the South Continent."

After Fisher heard this, his eyebrows raised slightly, and after a silence of a second, he began to laugh,

"If you really wanted me to join the society, you wouldn’t have failed to report my identity to your society after knowing it. You want to kill me and seize the two Manuals I carry?"

Erwin’s beak curved slightly, his androgynous voice nonchalant,

"Mr. Fisher, the Creation Association is a very loosely managed organization, and everyone is committed to studying the Ultimate Knowledge recorded in the Completion Manuals, hoping one day to reach the Truth of Bian through that knowledge. As the saying goes, there are many paths up a mountain, but only one peak."

"Yet, after a long period of research I’ve found that, although the knowledge recorded in other Manuals is completely different from what I hold, it is of great help to my research. If I had obtained more knowledge about souls, maybe Anna wouldn’t have become what she is now but would have become... ’Life’s Treasure.’"

Fisher’s gaze darkened momentarily, the huge, distorted hollow above their heads at this moment starkly mocking Erwin’s words—that was not any Life’s Treasure, but a twisted, deformed monster.

But to speak the truth, by this point, Fisher had also reached the end of his strength.

His body was injured from the battle with Blake, and Moli had been poisoned by his whale hunting poison; he had waited so long to reveal his fangs just for this moment to kill him and seize the Completion Manuals...

With this in mind, Fisher sighed, calmly stood up again, and raising the Fluid Sword in his hand, he asked,

"This Whale-man Species girl, she will be safe, right?"

"...Your virtue is indeed admirable, Mr. Fisher. Don’t worry, I have no intentions against this young girl. After Mr. Fisher’s death, I will ensure she safely leaves Saint Nali for the Sea Floor, I guarantee it with my character."

"You just need to go quietly to your death."