Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
In Rentato, on a dark street.
Carrying something heavy, two small men were moving stealthily on the street. Suddenly, a couple of people jumped out and fiercely pushed them down to the ground.
Bang!
That heavy thing fell to the ground.
“Black dogs on Granlin Street!” the small man blurted out.
Then he got a crispy slap on his face because of what he just said. A man in uniform walked out of the darkness and squatted down in front of the man.
“I prefer policeman or sir.”
Since the headquarters of the Holm Police Agency was located on Granlin Street, the gangsters had been used to calling the agency Granlin Street.
The slap made the small man afraid. “Yes, sir…”
He was told that the black dogs on Granlin Street had some kind of special alchemical item that could torture them with horrible paralysis and pain. So never be reckless in front of a cop.
“Caught right on spot… stealing the lid. You’ll be sent to the court for your sentence and you will face the charge of endangering public security. If nothing else, you two will be spending the rest of your lives in the mines. Of course, if you two are willing to become some experiment subjects, you might be able to come back to Rentato after a year,” said the senior policeman while smacking the small man’s face.
The small man was totally shocked. “En… endangering public security…? Sir, we didn’t mean it! We were… We did it just for money!”
The charge sounded very serious to him.
“I’ve told you jerks multiple times to listen to the radio to know the rules and laws. You don’t know laws, you don’t know rules, you’re not even qualified to be a thief!” The senior officer stood up.
The charge of endangering public security came from the Parliament of Nobles and was suggested by Natasha. When they were discussing the regulations on aircraft and road safety, Natasha suggested that there should be a law preventing people from using aircraft or cars for murder.
“It was a lid! Only a lid!” The two thieves almost burst into tears. They could not imagine how it would be like laboring in the mines.
As for becoming a sorcerer’s experiment subject, this option would never happen! That would be even more horrible than death!
The senior officer sneered, “You stole the lid. You would make other people fall into the sewers. That’s how you two endangered public security. Repent when you’re in the mines!”
“No, please, sir! This is the last time! We wouldn’t have done it if we knew it!” they two hurriedly begged.
“Sir! I’ve got… big information. Big!” one of them cried out loud.
They would do whatever they could do to save their lives!
The senior officer nodded with satisfaction and said to the other cop, “Take them back for interrogation. Give me the confession first before submitting it.”
The two thieves were now in tears. After they left following the cop, one of his subordinates flattered him, “Sir, good for you. They were scared to death! It was so easy for you to get a big piece of information!”
“It was their fault for not listening to the radio. Honestly speaking, I wish I could make them face the charge! Damn it! Lots of people this morning saw how I was tripped over!” said the senior angrily.
No wonder the leader was hobbling earlier today…
The senior officer had given the order, “Put the lid back to where it was and lock it tight.”
And he could not help complaining, “It’s such a pain in the a*s… Why are we doing all these? We’ve got plenty of stuff to do. We shouldn’t be the one doing it!”
After the rest of the several policemen put back the sewer lid, one of them said to the others, “I wonder if anyone’s down there… The lid went missing for at least a couple of minutes…”
“Impossible! It’s already very late, and it was only a few minutes,” said his colleague lightheartedly. Then he pulled out a tube of apprentice-level alchemical potion and poured it into the edge between the lid and the ground. The potion would glue the lid tight in the cold night and gradually melt in the daytime.
Some sorcerers helped them with this potion.
The policemen then hurriedly went back to the office on Granlin Street. They needed some hot tea.
After a while, someone started knocking at the lid from below. However, the lid would not move because of the special glue.
In the dark sewer, the veins in Nasdell’s head were pounding. He was furious, and he could not figure out why there was such a big hole in the middle of the street. What was wrong with this city? When he fell in the sewer, he still wasn’t able to control his body very well from the paralysis. Now he was covered with blood down here, and somehow he could not even get out!
Fury, annoyance, and confusion were mixing in his guts. He wished that he could return to his werewolf form and punch the sewer lid away with a single strike!
However, he had to force himself to calm down. Once someone saw him as a werewolf, he would have great trouble in carrying out the task given by the prince.
He tried to take a deep breath, but the stink under here almost made him throw up.
“Nasdell, you gotta calm down. You shall never let the prince down. Don’t act like those reckless idiots,” he said to himself while hobbling along the sewers.
After a while, an angry roar burst out again from down in the sewers, “Damn it! It won’t open!”
Nasdell totally had no idea why people in Rentato would do so.
After walking for a long distance, when Nasdell had reached his limit, he finally found a lid that was not glued.
He pushed open the lid and climbed out. The cold, fresh air never tasted so sweet to him in his life.
Even as an adult werewolf, Nasdell felt very exhausted after all these. So he walked to an old, abandoned house and sat down against the wall. He needed some time to heal and take a rest.
The wounds from falling into the sewers had healed, but the deep pain left in his bones by the electric shock was still there. He could do nothing else but to wait.
Nasdell murmured to himself, “There are good things about Rentato, but also very dangerous things. How could they dig such a huge hole in the middle of the street and place lightning magic circles right on the square without any protection?”
He would not admit that he did not know how to use electricity safely, as he believed that those sorcerers were too reckless.
The night was quiet. Nasdell gradually calmed down. He comforted himself that things would get better soon.
However, as soon as the thought emerged, his sharp intuition made him sense the great danger. Without a second thought, he jumped forward with all his strength.
However, his body had yet to fully recover from the electric shock, so his movement was a bit slower.
Boom!
The abandoned house suddenly exploded and then completely collapsed!
“Are you guys nuts?! You even f**king blow your own house?!” Nasdell was totally clueless about what was going on.
What just happened was totally beyond his expectation. And obviously, the explosion wasn’t coming for him. Nasdell would have sensed it way earlier if it had been.
BOOM!
The explosion blast hit Nasdell fiercely, and he was instantly buried by bricks and dust.
“Wh… Why…” murmured the werewolf.
On the other side of the street, the crowd was watching the explosion.
“Sir, the new explosive offered by the sorcerers worked very well!” said a brown-haired man excitedly. A few houses had been torn down within seconds!
“Good. This will save us lots of work and time. Soon, we’ll be able to widen the pavement so that this whole area in Rentato would become much more comfortable.” The director nodded with satisfaction.
To get the new explosive, their boss had paid a special visit to Allyn to have a specialist come over to guide the work.
One of his workers asked, “Why are we here at midnight though? People are sleeping…”
“So you mean we should block the street during the daytime? This street connects the market zone to the city gate! You know how much money would be wasted if we did so? Get those lazy workers to move. The street has to be cleaned by dawn!” said the director aloud.
The workers started their work. One of them said apprehensively, “Sir, we didn’t check before the explosion to make sure no one was in it…”
“There was no one in it! We’ve blocked the street in all directions and used magic crystal lamps as signs. We’ve been watching all the time, unless someone just popped out from the ground!” the director yelled at him.
…
In the early morning, Ali walked out of his rented place and headed for the noble district along a busy street.
He wasn’t in his best spirit since the explosions last night deprived him of his sleep.
Fortunately, the team which did the demolition had informed the residents well ahead with notifications. He could read, so he was not scared last night at all.
Beside the entrance of the noble district, there was once an abbey that had now been turned into a school. Students were reading aloud in the classrooms. Fine coaches kept driving to the school gate successively to send the noble kids here.
Mills Generic School on Kining Street in Noble district, Rentato… That was where his pen pal friend studied.
Jane from class one grade two. Ali thought to himself.
The second year after generic schools came into being, those nobles had decided to set up a noble school to make sure that only the privileged kids could study here. After seeing how those generic schools worked, the nobles had to admit that putting their kids in the school environment could better spark off the kids’ passions to study and help them build up their social circles at a young age.
Ali watched the fine coaches and cars driving into the school, as well as the different aircraft including airships and aircars in the sky, and he felt that there was an invisible wall in front of him.
He sighed. Like the past few days, he turned around and left. His mind was full of all kinds of thoughts—depression, inferiority, and desires.
Now he had come back to the street where a couple of houses got torn down last night. He then heard some strange whimpering.
Ali followed the whimpering and was surprised to see that there was a big dog lying in the tall grass. Its eyes were tightly shut, and its silver fur was covered with blood and dust.
To Ali, the dog resembled a wolf very much. From the books, he knew that there was a kind of dog that looked like wolves very much.
Out of kindness, Ali walked to it and noticed that there were many wounds on the dog.
“You got lucky, pal.” Ali grinned.
He learned how to bind up wounds from working temporarily in the Congress of Magic’s hospital recently. He dragged the big dog home and wrapped it like a mummy.
After a while, he saw that the big dog had woken. Somehow, two lines of tears fell down from its dull eyes.
It was the first time that Ali saw something like this. He hurriedly comforted the big dog like he was talking to a human being, “It will get better. There’s no need to be this emotional. I just did what I should. Don’t cry. Our lives will get better in Rentato.”
Hearing the word Rentato, the big dog cried even harder.
