Witch, Fireball and the Evil God of Steam
Chapter 67: Depth 3

Chapter 67: Chapter 67: Depth 3

One major advantage of being a Reception Bureau investigator is the ability to work from home. Ethan and Ave returned to the apartment with a stack of thick documents, and his living room was repurposed as a temporary office space.

Another night of working overtime, even the Imperial Knight Commander was kept up by her. She once again retrieved the dossiers sent from Gear City, sifting through the details with the other side, hoping to uncover some inside information from her mouth.

Young Lance was thereby conscripted as Ethan’s assistant.

Thus, the entire apartment was divided into three working spaces: Ethan and Lance in the study extracting information related to the pollution zone from "Light Messenger Yakwell," Ave and the other side in heated discussion of the case in the living room, and in the kitchen, Miss Keroy was being guided by Zhaocai in brewing the magic potion.

Before setting out for Riverside Town, they had to prepare thoroughly, and one significant effect of the awakening potion was to make the sleepless full of energy.

Of course, prolonged use of the magic potion comes with varying degrees of side effects. Fatigue doesn’t entirely disappear; instead, it doubles down on the user after the effects wear off. For instance, at the moment, Lance’s hand was trembling while flipping through books, and Ethan wouldn’t be surprised if he suddenly collapsed the next moment.

Concerned for Lance’s safety, Ethan said, "Why don’t you go and get some sleep first? I’ll handle this here."

"I... I can hold on! The Knight Commander said..."

"Thud—!"

Before he finished speaking, Lance’s body, completely exhausted, slumped over the books. According to Ethan’s observation, Lance was an honest and sincere young man, embodying the old-school knight spirit. Though to Ethan, this wasn’t particularly a commendation. The old-school knight spirit represented stubbornness; even if Lance was on the verge of exhaustion, as long as he could keep his eyes open, he would diligently carry out orders from his superiors.

However, within the Kingdom Army, he would become an excellent soldier; the Empire’s territories were initially secured by these fearless old-school knights.

Ethan was well aware that Lance wouldn’t heed his suggestions, so he could only delegate the task to an Elemental Elf, using the modern hypnotic technique of pressing Lance’s head onto the desk, helping Lance achieve a baby-like slumber.

Afterward, Ethan could finally immerse himself undistracted in the novel "Light Messenger Yakwell."

For someone who lived through an era of information explosion, understanding the abstract concepts in the novel wasn’t difficult. He took out paper and a feather pen, reading and simultaneously jotting down what he considered crucial information.

Simply put, the pollution zone first proposed by Yakwell is conceptually somewhat similar to the inside world, only with many more layers. The book refers to this stratification as "depth" and posits that almost all containment items starting with the "SI" series have escaped from the pollution zone.

Yakwell prefers to believe the anomalous space of the pollution zone originally exists; many known cursed objects in the Reception Bureau are used as anchors to open pollution zones. The book repeatedly emphasizes the significance of these anchors, which determine whether investigators can safely "cut out" of the zone after delving deeper.

It is currently confirmed that when non-believers of the Evil God penetrate the pollution zone, their mental state inevitably gets affected. In severe cases, they hear incomprehensible whispers from unknown origins and witness bizarre objects invisible to ordinary people.

They become exceedingly aggressive, sometimes even mistakenly viewing allies as enemies and launching attacks on them.

Once tainted mentally, if they cannot "cut out" of the pollution zone quickly, they fall into madness.

Even Yakwell himself did not know exactly how many layers of depth the pollution zone had. The most profound investigator only reached the third layer, where the pollution zone showed no resemblance to its original form. Yakwell documented rivers turned to blood, filled with tentacles and eyes. Trees moved, covered with human and beast faces, their branches ensnaring approachers’ necks like ropes. The victim’s face would become a new collection, and the sky was entirely obscured by blood-red mist, behind which he always felt a gigantic organism beyond his imagination watching over them all.

During that investigation, Yakwell’s mental state was severely compromised, unable to discern whether those terrifying and grotesque presences were hallucinations or reality.

However, he clearly mentioned that once the "cut in" depth reached level three, any Transcendent’s faith in the Divine Spirit would be diminished until they completely lost their power, becoming prey for the anomalies.

In that exploration, only Yakwell returned to the real world, while the other seven A-class investigators all became the sustenance for those unknown monsters.

Ethan couldn’t judge whether Old Mu’s assessment of Yakwell was objective. In the book, he remarked that though Yakwell’s physical body returned to reality, his spirit had long collapsed within depth level 3, unknowingly branded with the mark of the Evil God Bazatous.

The best proof was that only a few days after Yakwell had begun rehabilitation treatment, he once again ignored opposition from the bureau and entered the pollution zone alone.

He never managed to return to the real world, and no one knew whether Yakwell reached a layer deeper than depth 3.

Contrary to the title, "Light Messenger Yakwell" does not glorify this former Neseriel Holy Hall Knight’s heroism but showcases a passionate, ultimately broken soul tormented to collapse by the Evil God Bazatous.

Ethan felt that the book being overlooked was fortunate for Old Mu; otherwise, Mr. Tree-man might be invited for tea by the Judicial Court due to ambiguous political stances or outright chopped down for firewood.

Ethan steadied himself and transcribed Yakwell’s description of depth 3, marking with underlines under significant statements.

The most concerning take-away was that in depth 3, Transcendents’ faith in the Divine Spirit would be severed, practically reducing them to ordinary people. However, within the pollution zone, the followers of the Evil God Bazatous were unaffected. Their powers could even be enhanced to varying degrees.

Before that mission, Yakwell and the elite team composed of A-grade investigators made thorough preparations as they saw fit, yet nearly faced complete annihilation due to this characteristic.

"Anti-magic" is as much an archenemy to Transcendents.

Just as Elemental Shapers and magicians require magic power to execute spells, every known Transcendent path possesses its unique energy, derived from their connection with the Divine Spirit. Once this connection is severed, they become ordinary humans.

Thus, Ethan thought of a way to eliminate the Imperial Knight Commander with little effort.

If he were an Evil God’s follower, he would spare no means to lure the other side into depth 3, laying traps there. In doing so, no matter how experienced the other side was in combat, escape would be impossible.

At this thought, he immediately thought of Miss Becky.

Could the large-scale sacrifice occurring in Riverside Town merely be a witch’s revenge?

Did she just coincidentally "awaken" at this sensitive moment?

Ethan furrowed his brow, repeatedly scrutinizing the contents of his notes.

Miss Becky, what exactly is your goal?

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