Chapter 25 Missing Lady Mary's Request
Before the tears of blood flowed down to his chin, Darien stopped chanting and wiped his face with his hand.
One hand was covered in bright red blood.
After the spell stopped, the magic circle was still surging, and the thick blood covered the entire magic circle. King Sauron's dead sons leaned over the blood circle, and the blood threads were wrapped around their gray-black souls, as if locking the two bodies firmly.
Darien's face was suddenly touched by something soft.
The soft mass stayed on his face for a while, then carefully wiped under his eyes and on his cheeks.
Seville had opened his eyes at some point, came to his side and wiped his face with a soft handkerchief.
Darien turned the other half of his face away, closed his eyes, and felt the soft handkerchief rubbing against his eyelids.
Until the handkerchief was removed from his face.
"All right," said Sewell.
"I'm going to sleep when I get back. Don't call me for dinner." Darien's face turned much paler and he looked a little listless.
"What about supper?" asked Sewell.
"I don't want to eat either. Call me tomorrow morning," said Darien.
They leaned against each other and talked in low voices. The blood array in front of them was still surging, but the trend began to slow down, and the body wrapped in blood gradually emerged.
The forbidden technique was completed. The rune formation on the ground had scorch marks deep into the floor as if it had been burned by a raging fire. The two spells drawn in blood on the bodies also completely disappeared, but they were not taken away. Instead, they were deeply embedded in the two bodies.
King Soren opened his eyes in his new body.
"How does it feel?" Darien asked.
"I feel great. I haven't felt this good in a long time. It's really great to be young," King Sauron replied.
"Then our contract has been completed. You are welcome to come again next time. It's time for us to leave here," said Darien.
King Soran watched them disappear behind the door without saying a word.
He weighed the pros and cons for a long time, and finally suppressed his suspicious heart. He would still need them, and the young body would eventually age.
After the transaction was completed, Darian fell into a long period of decline.
Specifically, he felt listless and had no motivation to do anything. He had less desire for desserts and slept longer. Moreover, Sewell had not been scolded once in more than half a month.
Sewell felt very bad.
One day, while carrying the remaining half of the pudding on the plate back to the kitchen, he asked Mrs. Fitch with great concern: "Master, he hasn't been feeling well lately. How long will the effects of the forbidden technique last? Will it cause irreversible damage to his body?"
Mrs. Fitch sighed. "This kind of situation isn't common. I've only seen it three times. It doesn't look like there will be any serious aftereffects, just lingering mental fatigue. The longest one lasted a whole year. Perhaps if I wait a few more days, I'll recover."
Sewell sighed softly, "Is there anything I can do?"
"Yes, I'll make a pot of tea and send it to the shop. Lady Mary is here, and you didn't hear me ring the bell."
A voice interrupted.
Sewell looked back and saw Darien leaning against the door, his fingers twirling boredly around the lace on his collar.
He stood there for a while, with Sewell's back to him, his body completely blocking Mrs. Fitch and Fitch's view, so they didn't notice him at all.
"Okay, master." Seville agreed.
Darien turned and walked towards the store.
In the magic shop, Mrs. Mary was holding Jenny the pig in her arms and feeding her candy, while opposite her was Kenneth scratching his head.
"If you have something to say, just say it now. Don't scratch around in front of me like a monkey. I hate monkeys the most." She glanced away.
"Um, my wise, beautiful, noble and kind sister, can I go home now? Regarding the wanted order..." Kenneth immediately sat up straight.
"Hehe, I won't tell you now. I'll tell you when Darien comes." Lady Mary laughed.
Darien was her important gossip partner. Although she often gathered with many noble ladies for private conversations, she could talk more about more private rumors with Darien without worrying about them being leaked.
"Mrs. Mary, you're here much earlier than usual. Are you here to pick up Kenneth?" Darien returned to the store.
The one-month love potion is still taking effect. Lady Mary shouldn't have come for this, so there must be only one reason.
"That's not the case." Lady Mary's words made Kenneth sad. "I have an important matter to ask for your help. Oh, and I have something else to say by the way."
"Are you in trouble?" Darien asked.
"It's not a particularly big problem, but my intuition tells me something's not right." Lady Mary frowned. "One of my maids, the clever and skillful Lianna, asked for leave to go home five days ago and she hasn't returned since."
"Did she tell me why she was coming home before she left?" Darien asked.
"I don't know about that. I just agreed to her request. I sent people to her house to ask, but they didn't know anything and said she might have eloped. I don't believe it at all. Lianna is a lovely girl. Something must have happened to her. I asked someone to find the sheriff, but you know, their efficiency is always low, especially after they knew I was looking for a civilian girl." Lady Mary frowned.
"I understand. You want to find out where the missing Lianna is. I can give you a free divination." Darien said.
"Please have some tea." Sewell came in from behind the door with tea and poured them steaming hot black tea.
"Thank you. Dear Darien, you are so kind. Let's see what happens to Lianna. I don't want her to encounter any bad things." Lady Mary blew the hot steam out of the teacup.
"Sevier, take out my cards. They're on bookshelf Z. If you can't find them, ask Pluto." Darien said.
"You can actually do this!" Mrs. Mary's eyes immediately lit up.
Darien immediately had a bad feeling.
Sure enough, the next moment, Lady Mary said, "Help me see how much my husband loves me. I really want to know the answer! I'll give you 200 gold coins!"
The answer is obvious. When the love potion is effective, you love deeply. When it is ineffective, you may love but it will be limited.
But in order not to lose business, Darien will use some linguistic art techniques.
Sewell came back soon, bringing with him an old wooden box that was a bit black and rotten.
"Please wait a moment, I need to sense them first. I haven't used this deck of cards for a long time. Those were really unforgettable years." said Darien.
When the wooden box was opened, there was a deck of thin cards inside. They were not made of paper, but very thin hardwood slices, polished clean, and engraved with different characters and patterns.
Darien gently stroked the deck of cards, then shuffled them at a breakneck speed, placing them face down on the table.
"Lady Mary, first question, is Lianna still alive?" Darien said.
Lady Mary was about to reply that she didn't know, but before the words left her mouth she realized that this was in reference to the cards.
Darien drew the first card.
Mrs. Mary took a look and found that the pattern on it was very abstract and only vaguely resembled people and stars.
"Please accept my condolences, she is no longer in this world," Darien said.
Lady Mary covered her lips.
"The second question is, was she murdered?" Darien continued to draw cards.
The pattern on the second card drawn was even more blurred, and seemed to be a person and a railing.
"Yes, two or more people," Darien said.
"Damn them!" Lady Mary clenched her fists.
"Third question, where is she now?" Darien drew the last card.
The last card vaguely shows a broken column with fire and human figures falling.
"There's a large area of trees where she is, near the water, northwest," Darien said.
"Do you have time next? I want to hire you and let's go there." Mrs. Mary said expressionlessly.
"Of course we have time. Shall we set off now? I need to make some preparations first," said Darien.
"You'll have to wait a moment. I need to call my guards and go hunting in the suburbs," said Lady Mary.
"Why do you want to go hunting all of a sudden?" Kenneth interrupted.
His brain was obviously not working very well. Jenny Pig said, "It's just an excuse. Of course, going there to dig the man out and taking the hunting dogs with you is a very good reason."
Lady Mary sighed deeply. "How could I have such a brother? By the way, I came here to tell you that King Sauron has passed away, the court is in chaos, and now it is the era of the Norman King. I took the opportunity to get rid of the Ministry of Magic's wanted order. Don't ask me about the details, and I don't want to tell you. Anyway, you can go home."
Kenneth hesitated, "Well, actually, I don't really want to go home. I still yearn for a free life..."
Madam Mary rolled her eyes at him and said, "I'm giving you two choices: stay here or come back with me. What do you choose?"
Kenneth said, "I'll go back with you..."
Madam Mary stood up and said, "I'll go back now and ask them to organize a hunting trip as quickly as possible. I'll see you in about three hours."
Kenneth and Jenny Piggy were taken away by her.
"Change your clothes. We need two bottles of transformation potion. I don't want Lady Mary to be targeted by King Soren." Darien said.
If they appeared in their true appearance beside Lady Mary and King Soran heard about it, it would be difficult for him not to lose Lady Mary, this important guest.
Lady Mary's generosity supported one-third of the tower.
About three hours later, they drank the transformation potion to change their appearance, changed into ordinary and inconspicuous clothes, opened the door and came to Lady Mary's mansion.
Kenneth was the only one in the room, fiddling with a brass lion figurine out of boredom.
The sudden sound of footsteps made him turn his head.
"Who are you! How did you get in? There are robbers! There are thieves! Don't come over here!" Kenneth waved his hand and left an afterimage.
"You are the only thief in the house," said Sewell.
"What a thief! I am the honorable future King of Thieves!" Kenneth was very angry.
"It's us," Darien said aloud.
"What do you mean by you and ours! I thought you...wait, I seem to actually know you. Why do you look like this?" Kenneth slowed down his waving.
The door was slammed open, and guards holding swords and maids holding brooms rushed in.
"Master Kenneth! Get behind us!"
"It's okay, it's okay. These are friends I know, and my sister also invited them to go hunting together." Kenneth explained quickly.
"Okay, young master." Although the maid and the guard were a little suspicious, they still retreated.
The transformed appearances of Darien and Seville cannot be said to be ugly, nor are they handsome, but they are very ordinary. At first glance, one will recall a dozen or twenty equally ordinary faces, which are very suitable to be forgotten by people.
"How did you become like this? You looked more pleasing to the eye than before. Can I touch you? Can you change back?" Kenneth circled around them like a curious and noisy parrot.
"No. We need to disguise ourselves a little to avoid causing trouble for you and your sister. Don't call our names outside. Some of our employers are very dangerous." Darien said.
"I understand." Kenneth nodded.
Although he is not very smart, he is very obedient except for his hobby of stealing.
Lady Mary came to this room soon after receiving the report from the servants.
"Oh, what are you doing... Well, anyway, if you are ready, let's set off now." Lady Mary didn't ask why.
"Okay, ma'am. Please call us by other names when you are outside, such as Jason and Jack. We are Kenneth's friends and were invited to hunt together. We don't know you." Darien said.
"No problem, then you are Jason and he is Jack. Can you ride horses? I have prepared your horses. We are running out, so let's set off as soon as possible." Lady Mary said as she walked out.
The hunt was arranged very suddenly, but it was quite normal for Lady Mary, who often had sudden urges to have fun, and was very kind to everyone as long as she was happy.
As Kenneth's friends, Darien and Sevier were asked to mount their horses and were surrounded in the middle of the team as they set off towards the north gate of the royal city.
They passed through the city gate easily. Thanks to their noble status, the inspection was very lenient towards them and they were allowed to pass without any questioning.
Before setting off, Darien asked Lady Mary to find some of Lianna's more personal belongings, pour some potions on them to spread the scent, and then let the hounds sniff the items.
When they arrived at the forest west of the north city, the pack of hunting dogs began to become restless.
"Let them go. They must have smelled the prey. I'm going to catch a big one today." Mrs. Mary said with a smile.
Her gamemaster ordered the dogs freed.
The pack of dogs rushed out immediately, and they hurriedly followed the dogs in front and ran in that direction together.
Darien didn't know how long he had been running, but he felt that the inner thighs of his thighs were swollen from being rubbed by the saddle. Finally, he caught up with the pack of hunting dogs that had stopped.
Finally they stopped not far from a small river, with a small clearing between the river bank and the woods.
The forest was filled with a very unpleasant smell of corruption.
Everyone present covered their noses.
The dogs were very aggressive and kept scratching the ground with their claws, raising dust and gravel.
"Go away!" The dog trainer hurriedly drove the dogs away. He was afraid that the dogs' inexplicable behavior would ruin Mrs. Mary's mood.
"Don't disturb them. I want to know what they are so excited about. Is it the food left by some big beast? I'm willing to waste my time if it can help us track down the prey." said Mrs. Mary.
So they all moved a little further away from the open space, waiting for the hunting dogs to turn over the land. The land was not compacted very tightly, making it easier for the dogs to turn it over.
Darien covered his face with a handkerchief.
The smell was clearly that of a corpse, and there was more than one corpse.
After a long while, when everyone present was about to run out of patience, a servant holding an arrow suddenly screamed, "Hand! There's a hand! Oh my God! What on earth did they dig out?"
The game warden immediately glared at him.
It is very rude to shout in front of the master, and he will be punished when he returns home.
"Oh Lauren, don't blame him. I think we should stop hunting. Send two men on fast horses to find the sheriff and tell him that a body was found here." Lady Mary gave the order.
The dog trainer pulled the dogs back one by one, and then the servants, who had covered their mouths and noses with their hands, hurried up to carry away the corpse.
Darien took Sewell and moved closer.
After the soil was cleared, the body taken out of the pit did not appear to be too rotten. Judging from the gray-purple and spotted skin, the body should have been dead no more than two days ago.
After all the bodies were carried out and counted, it was found that there were a total of 17 bodies in the pit.
Among them was Lianna.
The servants who carried the body recognized her face; she had not yet swelled up from decay, so she was easily identified.
"My poor Lianna, she's a good child," said Lady Mary softly.
Darien took a few glances at the bodies and immediately noticed something wrong beneath their clothing.
The clothes of several bodies were cut open, and there were deep cuts on their arms, knees, and necks. The cause of death was probably excessive blood loss.
Some of the corpses had their faces covered in mud and sand, while some had relatively clean faces because they were leaning against other corpses during burial, with their stiff muscles frozen in fear and distortion.
"This is so cruel, who would do this?" Kenneth murmured.
Darien was also thinking about this question.
A few crows cawed in the trees behind them, perhaps there would be some eyewitness birds that remembered someone had been here.
Sewell took a few steps back quietly. The crows would tell him.
Darien recalled several forbidden techniques related to blood in his mind.
Generally speaking, spells that require the use of human blood are extremely cruel and forbidden spells, which will cause some backlash to the caster's body.
With such a large amount of blood, in addition to the previous body exchange technique for King Lauren, there should also be forbidden techniques for restoring youth with blood, summoning bloodthirsty demons, cultivating vampires... and also, the forbidden technique of extracting crystals from blood.
After recalling all of this, Darien had no more clues.
However, the discovery of the body here proves that the hunting ground is most likely in the royal city or a village outside the royal city.
Lianna's home is in the city, and she was kidnapped when she was out. By investigating the missing residents in the city, we can roughly determine the crime area.
After waiting for a long time, the sheriff hurried over with the coroner.
It was a long journey to pull so many bodies into the city, and there was a river nearby, so the coroner simply cleaned the surface of the bodies and then confirmed the wounds on the bodies.
"Countess, I express my deepest condolences for the murder of your maid. Please give us some time. We will definitely catch the murderer and send him to the gallows." said the sheriff.
"I really hope the murderer can be caught as soon as possible. I am very worried. To be honest, this is a provocation to the Earl's dignity. The maid who worked for the Earl was kidnapped, and then her body was found in the woods outside the city, along with many other bodies. I suspect that what will follow is the murder of the nobles. The death of the maid is just the beginning." Lady Mary's expression was very cold and arrogant.
"Yes, ma'am, we will definitely deal with this matter seriously. Your dignity and the Earl's dignity cannot be challenged." The sheriff began to sweat on his back.
"Lianna's body will be returned to us after the autopsy. She was a good girl and I will bury her in a better place." Lady Mary continued.
"Yes, ma'am." The sheriff nodded repeatedly.
"Give her parents some money, not too much. Let's go back now." Lady Mary instructed her entourage.
Darien followed the crowd, turning back to take one last look at the bodies scattered on the ground.
Those who died were all civilians.
Their bodies were not pampered. The better ones, like Lianna, had a well-proportioned figure and fewer scars, while the lesser ones were more dried up before losing blood.
Lady Mary said that just to make the sheriff more attentive and give her an explanation.
They returned to Lady Mary's mansion.
"Thank you for coming. I'm sorry I can't entertain you well. I'm really too tired today. Would you like to stay here for a while, or should I go to your place before the murderer of Lianna is caught?" Lady Mary rubbed her forehead.
She looked very upset.
"I want to stay here for a few more days. I guess this is most likely a forbidden technique. These dead people all look like civilians, and there is no logic in the selection. There are men, women, young and old. They were killed just for the blood in their bodies. Such forbidden techniques cannot be used. It violates the agreement between wizards and mages." Darien said.
"Thank you very much for staying. I will have someone prepare a comfortable room for you. If you need anything, you can tell the servants. Kenneth, please help me entertain them. I'm going to rest first." Lady Mary looked tired and she left the room.
"The person who killed them was despicable. I think the coroner will send Lianna back tomorrow, and you can take another look at what's on her body," said Kenneth.
"Well, let's go and take a look tomorrow. Seville, how was your conversation with the crows? Did you find anything?" Darien asked.
"Yes," said Sewell.
A few crows flew to the windowsill and squatted there watching them.
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