Part 5 The Red Priests Chapter 20 The Train
Seeing Alfred look over, Klein returned the smile and nodded gently:
”I’m suddenly feeling a little dangerous.”
With that said, he calmly turned and walked toward the wagon Haggis had pointed to.
”Dangerous ……” Alfred repeated the word in a low voice, glancing around warily, but not noticing anything strange.
He slowed his pace, keeping a constant eye on his surroundings, and returned with unusual caution to the small three-story building not far away.
Pagani glanced at the staring Alfred and asked with slight suspicion:
”Is something wrong?”
He was a short distance away from the scene of the arms deal and didn’t hear the conversation there clearly.
Alfred walked to the window, looked down on the team of horses that had finished carrying the arms and were ready to leave, and said with deliberation:
”Dawn Dantes left suddenly, saying she had a premonition of danger.”
”Danger?” Pagney was not careless, and looked back and forth warily, but he failed to notice anything wrong until Messanies’ men moved away from the area and disappeared into the darkness.
He whirled around and laughed:
”Haha, Alfred, you’re too sensitive, I think it’s purely because Dawn Dantes is too timid to stay here too long!”
Alfred withdrew his gaze and frowned slightly:
”Perhaps.”
……
After returning to the rented hotel, Klein had Enzo, the “winner” who had turned into a young man of mixed blood, open the chest in his hand, take out the gold bars and gold coins inside one by one, and count them clearly.
There was a total of 30,000 gold pounds worth of belongings here!
”Luckily, what I agreed with the messenger lady before was a gold equal to 10,000 Ruen gold pounds, so I don’t need to exchange it separately ……” Klein, who was leisurely sitting on the ankle chair, sipped on the sweet and sour refreshing “Gwadar “Sitting leisurely in his easy chair, Klein sipped a sweet and sour “Guadal” drink while “supervising” the secret puppets’ work.
When Enzo finished dividing his belongings, he took out his adventurer’s harmonica, brought it to his mouth, and blew on it.
Renette Tynicol, carrying four blonde, red-eyed heads, immediately stepped out of the void as if she had been nearby.
All eight of her eyes turned at the same time, looking towards the pile of gold coins and bars that had been divided.
It was only after a few seconds apart that the four heads that Renette Tinnikol was carrying said in turn:
”Very good ……” “Later ……” “Mission ……” “Price increase ……”
…… Where is this back and forth logic? I paid well in such a timely and quick manner, so why is there a price increase for future tasks? Klein froze for a second, sitting up straight and asking:
”What?”
The four blonde, red-eyed heads of Renette Tynecol nodded thoughtfully:
”Mission ……” “Pricing ……” “Depends on the ……” “You ……” “make money… …””s ……””ability to …… ”
It can still be like this …… Klein opened his mouth, but he couldn’t even refute it, after all, this kind of thing is all unilaterally decided by the one who provides the help, moreover, with his promotion to Sequence 4 and becoming a demigod, the tasks that will require Ms. Messenger’s help in the future are estimated to become more and more difficult and more and more dangerous, and the price increase seems to be a matter of course.
Waiting for Renette Tinicol to swallow the pile of gold coins and bars and disappear into the room, Klein collected his thoughts and began to silently calculate his current possessions:
”This period of time expenses are not small, there are still 17,275 pounds of banknotes and 65 gold coins left ……This pile of gold bars is worth 25,000 pounds ……Totaling more than 40,000 pounds of property is not a small amount in the entire Kingdom of Ruen, it can buy manors and fields. …… Arms deals can be so lucrative. ……”
–Renette Tignicole’s priority need was gold coins, so the rest were gold bars.
After standing up and getting the gold bars on top of the gray mist, Klein walked to the window and cast his gaze to the north.
Things on this side were tentatively over, and he would next return to Berkland.
After gazing at the sky for a while, Klein suddenly sighed silently:
”Beckland ……”
……
North District, Bakerland Technical University.
Audrey was walking around the campus with a few staff members of the Ruane Charity Scholarship Fund.
She was wearing a simple light green dress with a white, unadorned belt around her waist, her long blonde hair was clustered in a slightly playful sombrero with ribbons and flowers, and she had little jewelry on her body, except for a silver bracelet around her left wrist, making her look no different from a female student from a family that could only be described as middle class.
–She had been to the public primary school on the edge of the Eastern District and visited the technical schools in the Bakerland Bridge area, and had long since understood what kind of clothing to wear for what kind of occasion, unlike many nobles who treated charity events as social occasions.
Her turquoise, clear eyes rolling slightly, Audrey held a light smile as she carefully observed the incoming and outgoing students.
These were the days when the Bakerland Technical University sent out the acceptance letters and the new class of students came to register.
Originally, the latter was supposed to take place at the end of August and the beginning of September, but Bakerland Technical University was a new school that had just been formed, and the entrance exams came out later than those of other universities, as did the results, which meant that the students who had applied to them had most likely taken the exams of another university as well, or even had already been admitted, and so they had moved up the registration process to verify the number of people, and to determine how much more they would need to make up for the admission.
For this reason, Audrey and the staff of the Ruane Charity Scholarship Fund came here to cooperate with the first batch of approved applicants to go through the enrollment procedures.
As far as she could see, she found that the faces of the students on this campus were all radiant, with obvious confidence in their demeanor, and an indescribable vitality in their every word and action, as if they were full of aspirations for the future and could see the light.
And that was very different from Audrey’s experience within several public elementary schools, where the students were either rude and boisterous or silent and somber, and what they all had in common was that they were often confused and uneasy, cowering when they encountered outsiders of stature, with bleak gazes and a lack of the exuberance that should be expected of adolescents.
”I wish all those children had the opportunity to receive higher education, and could all be like the students here, who can work hard for a bright future ……,” Audrey’s gaze swept over a pair of men and women next to her who were supposed to be brother and sister in law as she voiced her silent lamentation.
The brother had obviously entered society and begun working, wearing a silk bowler hat and thinner black formal attire with the appearance of a government employee in his mid-thirties.
He had borrowed an older camera from somewhere and set it on a stand, signaling his sister to move her body and adjust her posture as he searched for the best angle.
The younger sister, seventeen or eighteen years old, her black hair simply draped over her head, her brown eyes filled with a bit of helplessness, but she didn’t say anything and listened carefully to her brother’s command.
Similar combinations could be found everywhere on campus, some were parents and children, some were a few friends together.
”Such a beautiful scene ……” Audrey withdrew her eyes and marched forward.
There was a plaza with a decommissioned steam locomotive in the center, its huge, intricate body standing tall and adding a bit of industrial flair to the Birkeland Technical University.
……
Whoop!
The monster-like steam train head belched smoke and dragged its long body into the station, getting slower and slower.
A little girl of seven or eight years old, as delicate as a doll of mixed blood, held her mother’s hand as she waited in the not-so-short line, excitedly asking her father, who was also a mix of Ruin and Byron, about the Dixie Bay.
As she moved slowly, she saw a gentleman with graying sideburns and a bowler hat carrying a gold-encrusted cane and leading a brown-colored servant toward where the first-class compartment was located.
The servant glanced curiously from side to side and said:
”Sir, the situation that I saw during this time is not quite the same as what I imagined, I originally thought that the Byelorussians would live a very difficult and painful life, everywhere is chaotic, dirty, poor and depressing, but it turned out not to be at all, they can still drink ‘Guadalcanal’ drinks, smoke East Byelorussian cigarettes, and even some of them can can afford to buy a bicycle, er, you know, I was born in Bakerland although I have Byron blood, and have never been to the southern continent before, of course, I speak Tuttanese quite well.”
The very dignified middle-aged and elderly gentleman laughed, raised his cane and said:
”That’s because we go to fairly decent cities and fairly decent areas, whereas most of the saddest Byronians are in the countryside, on those plantations, and the rest have settled around factories, forming slums that we’ve never had the chance to see.”
As if sensing the little girl’s gaze, the dark blue-eyed gentleman and his servant looked sideways and smiled warmly.
The corners of their mouths clearly had curled up, both showing eight teeth, before they nodded slightly, withdrew their eyes, and continued on their way.
Not long after, the little girl and her parents boarded the steam train and found their own seats.
When the “woo” sounded again, the little girl saw a man with a dark brown complexion and a soft silhouette, with a reddish lump on the side of his face, head bowed, hat pressed in his hand, quickly pass through and head straight for the head of the train.
The man then knocked on the isolation door, flashed into the caboose, and said to the conductor:
”All the conductors have been replaced by our men, and the bridge ahead will be the place where the ritual will be held.”
The conductor with the thick beard nodded and said:
”May the gods be pleased with this carload of sacrifices.
”May we have eternal life in the land of K.”
Woo!
The steam train sailed over one bridge, then another, and after a long run, arrived very smoothly at its destination port.
The doll-like little mixed-blood girl, a little tired and not so lively as before, moved step by step toward the door, tugged by her parents, along the tide of people made up of travelers.
There were a few conductors standing at the door, helping some of the passengers take their luggage out of the car.
As the little girl and her parents passed by, the conductors all turned up their mouths, showing their eight teeth, and gave warm smiles.
When the little girl jumped to the platform, she subconsciously turned back to look at the front of the steamer, and saw a group of figures standing outside the door, discussing something, among them seemed to be the conductor, and the man with the lump on the side of his face before.
In less than a second, all of these people turned their heads and looked over, the corners of their mouths turning up one after the other, revealing eight teeth.
The little girl withdrew her eyes and bounced slightly as she left the platform with her parents.