The next morning, due to the fatigue from last night, he overslept. When he came out of his room, Captain Salem was standing there.
“Do you stand there all the time waiting for me to wake up?” Jack asked.
“I did knock, but you didn’t answer,” the captain replied.
“Should have knock harder. Sorry, man, to make you wait.”
“No worry. Come, I will take you to Winston’s room.”
The room that the captain brought him to, was only a little bit smaller than the duke’s chamber. Although it was less extravagant, it was still rather large for a man who worked as the butler of the house. The duke must have valued him highly, which made the Cult of Phobos who targeted the butler to go after the Duke looked all the more dangerous and trickier to deal with.
There was not much furniture and adornment in the room. Most were just for basic function, a bedroom for sleeping. A lounge chair for light reading, a simple table and chair for writing, a cupboard for his clothes, and a chest to store his personal things. The butler seemed to be a person who did not believe in excessiveness, which was good for Jack’s current task. It meant that there were not many places for him to search through.
He started with the cupboard. Inside were basically just clothes. He ruffled through the clothes to see if anything was hidden in between them. The captain went to the table and looked through its content.
“He seemed to be doing a lot of writing recently,” Captain Salem said.
Jack went over after finding nothing in the cupboard. “Do you think his writing has something to do with the cult? But what was the point? He couldn’t send a letter out, right? The entire estate was under lockdown by the barrier formation.
“He could have used the message transference,” the captain said.
“The what?” Jack asked.
“It’s something that we usually used in the military. Verbal link with another recipient through long distance took up too much energy, and not many people had the ability. It is easier to send long-range message transmission via small thin items. We write in a piece of paper, and then the mages would send the paper through a rift of time and space to a designated receiver.”
Why did it sound like their message system? Jack thought. The difference was it was using a solid object.
“But wasn’t the Cardinal possessing Winston? He should see whatever he was seeing and was thinking, right?”
“It doesn’t work that way. Their souls were linked but the Cardinal was not in control of Winston all the time. The energy the Cardinal needed to spent during the possession was enormous, it could only be done for a limited time. During the other time, Winston was acting on his own with the exception that his soul had been imprinted and hypnotized. He would do as was ordered of him. And if an emergency arises, he can activate the soul imprint which brings about the possession that we have seen last night.”
“Sounds complicated,” Jack commented.
“But the written paper has gone through to the other side,” the captain continued. “So whatever message he had sent over, we might never know.”
“Don’t hold your breath yet,” Jack said. He picked up the wad of paper on the table. He separated the piece of paper on the top stack and looked at it intently. They were lucky, there seemed to be some indentation.
“How do you turn on that magic lamp?” Jack asked while pointing at the lamp device on the table.
The captain went over and activated it. The light shone was not too bright but Jack thought it should be enough to do the job. He put the paper close to the lamp and played on the angle. Surely enough, the indentation became quite visible. They could now partially see what was written on the paper that was previously on top of this paper.
“Target … not acquired, helper termina… … to insubordination. Adventurer hinted at … … … target, will retrieve … … tonight. Requested … to be ready by …, might need to … … the city guards … exit the capital.”
The two of them tried to digest the broken messages from the indentations on the paper.
“It seemed to be referring to his action last night when he took your bait. He must think that he would be completing his mission by yesterday night.”
“Yes, but the second part of the message worries me,” Jack said. “From its message, there seemed to be some remnant of the cult in this capital still. And they are to help Winston fight their way out of the capital with the fragment. I thought the city had cleared the cult’s presence after their base was found in the slum district?”
“We did, but it was not put as a top priority at the time, so we didn’t search further if there were still any member of the cult at large. I will relay a message at once to our headquarters to make it a priority to rid the cult from this capital.”
“You do that. Ask them to check if there is any large movement near the outside of the estate last night. They can start from there as the cults must have been expecting Winston to break out of the estate yesterday night.”
Captain Salem nodded and immediately departed from the room.
Jack looked around. Well, I should continue to search for more clues, I think? Just to make sure. When he approached the chest near the bed. His G0d-eye monocle detected three valuable markings inside. He immediately knelt down to open it. It was locked, which was normal. Jack didn’t make a fuss about it, he simply took out his gold color Enduring Lockpick.
“Time to increase my Lockpicking grade,” Jack said with a smile. He was only 2 proficiency points away from upgrading. A single try, whether it failed or succeeded, will be sure to upgrade it.
He inserted the lockpick and started the process. It failed, but sure enough, he heard the voice notification, “congratulations! Your Lockpicking has upgraded to Intermediate Apprentice.”
With the increase in his lockpicking grade, he should have higher success chance in unlocking this chest. There was no indication of what grade this chest he was trying to unlock was. But he still had another 11 tries on his Enduring Lockpick, and even if they all failed, he still had 65 common lockpicks in his inventory. So, he was not too worried, he could afford to fail many times.
He exhausted all the 12 tries of the Enduring Lockpick but the chest remained locked. He did not think too much about it, he stored the Enduring Lockpick back into his storage bag, it would take twelve hours to replenish the Enduring Lockpick charges to full so he could use it again. He took out the normal lockpicks and continued on his attempt to unlock the chest while systematically accumulating proficiency points.
When his common lockpicks were down to 20 pieces, then he started to worry.
The heck was the grade of this chest? Wasn’t it just supposed to be a non-grade chest? Why did he keep failing?
“Hey, Peniel. Is the success rate of a non-grade chest lower than a bronze treasure chest?” He asked after getting impatient.
Before he heard Peniel’s reply, he heard a notification voice, “congratulations! You are successful in your lockpicking, receiving 100 proficiency points.”
100 points? It was doubled than when he last successfully opened a bronze treasure chest.
“Non-grade chest was unknown. It can be harder or easier,” Peniel still explained anyway. “the contents are also uncertain. Can be junk, can be extremely valuable. You can see this kind of chest as a lottery chest.”
“Well, talking about lottery, I think we hit jackpot then,” Jack said as he took out a small round crystal ball.
Orb of Disguise (Unique Artifact)
Input an alternative appearance setup, can be activated to replace the current appearance as a disguise.
Number of appearance setup: 1
Can be upgraded to increase the number of setups. Materials required for upgrade: 3 Magic Crystal, 1 Divine Gem
