Part 1 – The Joker Chapter 79 – Another Murmur

　　Being clasped by five white knuckled fingers coldly and painfully around his wrist, Klein instantly rooted up his hairs and subconsciously drew his hand back, frantically trying to back away.

　　A heavy feeling came over him, and Klein pulled and tugged at his little arm as if he was using all his strength.

　　Flop!

　　The pale, naked body was pulled askew and fell from the long table to the floor.

　　However, the cold, ghastly white fingers still clasped hard around Klein’s wrist.

　　Klein lost his ability to think for a moment, his mind racing with thoughts of drawing his gun and banging it.

　　However, because he couldn’t retract his habitual hand, he dropped the black cane and tried several times, but he couldn’t successfully remove the revolver from the gun pouch under his armpit.

　　It was at this time that the corpse’s eyelids lifted up with a flourish, revealing a pair of unfocused blue eyes.

　　His mouth opened and closed and he murmured:

　　”Hornachs …… Hornachs …… Hornachs …… Hornachs …….”

　　Three voices later, the anxious Klein felt the fingers clasping his wrists begin to loosen, and then they hung limply.

　　The tuxedoed clown’s eyes re-closed tightly and nothing seemed to have happened just then.

　　If the pale body wasn’t lying squarely on the stone floor, Klein might have thought he’d suffered an illusion.

　　He staggered back a few steps, only to feel multiple parts of his body spasming from shock and nervous fear.

　　Huffing …… Huffing …… Klein gasped for air and slowly regained his ability to think, looking warily and fearfully at the body on the ground.

　　He removed his revolver and cautiously exited the room one step at a time, making sure the body didn’t move any more before glancing at his own gun-toting wrist.

　　There were five deep, dark red fingerprints there, and they were silently telling of the previous encounter.

　　Klein calmed down considerably, an expletive echoing over and over in his mind:

　　Fuckin’ hell, that scared the shit out of me!

　　After catching his breath for about ten seconds, he began to outline the items in his mind, allowing himself to quickly gain a state of calm.

　　Thinking back carefully, Kraven replayed the encounter frame by frame.

　　Although he still didn’t understand the reason for the tuxedo clown’s “mutation”, he had a keen grasp of the key point, which was the other party’s repeated mutterings of “Hornachis”!

　　”It’s Hornachis …… again” Klein frowned at once, “The notes of the Antigonus family recorded the Night Country of the Hornachis Mountains, and when I heard voices I shouldn’t have heard in my meditations and psychic visions, I had the same The term ‘Honachis’ and now this dead man has emphasized Honachis in my ears once again in an eerie way …… Could it be that the answers to many questions lie in the Honachis Mountains… …Perhaps, perhaps great dangers still lie there, such as a certain evil god who is sealed within the mountains and seeks to break free through a similar ‘lure’.”

　　Between thoughts, Klein carefully entered the room and touched the body a few times to make sure it was dead.

　　Thinking that he couldn’t let Fry the Body Collector see the mess he had made of the place, he plucked up his courage and carried the body back to the long table by hand and shoulder.

　　Throughout the whole process, Klein not only kept his heart and nerves on edge, which could be broken at any time by the slightest movement, but was also disgusted by the cold contact between the body and his own skin.

　　After completing this task with great difficulty, he remembered why he had approached the corpse earlier, and once again gazed at the tuxedoed clown’s wrist, at the peculiar branding.

　　The brand had come off at some point, condensing into a ball of blood with a slight blue color.

　　The blood ball was only the size of a thumb, and was silently suspended in midair in an attitude that defied the rules of physics.

　　”What is this?” Klein whispered, not daring to touch it recklessly again.

　　He hadn’t thought about obscuring this weird blood ball at all, firstly because he simply didn’t know whether it was good or bad, and secondly because he believed that Fry, who had scrutinized the corpse, must have discovered the branding on his wrist a long time ago, and might even have known what the weird blood ball actually was.

　　And even if Fry is not clear about it, handing it over to the captain and letting the entire team of night watchmen explore and study it is obviously much better than me trying it haphazardly …… Klein thought as he did.

　　Being within an organization, an individual has to know how to maximize the power of the organization.

　　Klein waited tautly for a few minutes before he saw the dark-haired, blue-eyed, thin-lipped Fry return to the room.

　　His eyes were instantly drawn to the weird blood orb and he asked the question Klein had asked himself earlier:

　　”What is this?”

　　”I don’t know.” Klein shook his head honestly and described what happened without making any secret.

　　”Branding off into a blood sphere ……” Frye nodded as if in thought, “The bodies of extraordinary people always have some strange changes …… ”

　　He looked up at Klein and said:

　　”You go ask the captain to come here and tell him what the corpse murmured.”

　　”Okay.” Klein had wanted to leave this place for a long time.

　　”You don’t have to come with the captain.” Fry added, “I’m sure you don’t like seeing what comes next.”

　　As he spoke, he picked up the silver-white scalpel next to him.

　　Klein nodded heartily:

　　”That’s exactly what I was hoping for.”

　　He grabbed his cane, put on his hat, and abseiled to the Charnis Gate, where he saw the no longer wilting Captain Dunn in the watch room.

　　Dunn listened calmly to his account, and with a slight, unseen nod said:

　　”I will inform the matter up and let the Sanctuary deal with it, and perhaps they will send someone to take a look at the main peak of the Hornachis Mountains.”

　　Klein let out a “hmmm” and, seeing that only the captain and “Sleepless” Cornley were in the watch room, asked casually:

　　”Have they gone to rest, Mr. Al?”

　　Dunn nodded and said:

　　”Al and Borgia are at St. Selene’s Church, and Lolota is supposed to be looking for the café.”

　　”The café? Ms. Lolota’s injuries shouldn’t have healed yet, right?” Klein asked in surprise.

　　Dunn rubbed both eyebrow bones and smiled:

　　”Lolota has three main hobbies, coffee, desserts and maids, she said that she must have these three things to speed up the healing.”

　　”Maid?” Klein asked back blankly.

　　Did Ms. Lolota have a fetish of some sort?

　　Dunn shook his head helplessly:

　　”She likes maids, well, that’s right, and likes, like, big breasts.”

　　”…… She’s such a strange one.” Klein didn’t know what expression to put on his face anymore.

　　Without further delay, Dunn marched outside the watch room, and Klein looked at his back, quietly waiting to turn around.

　　Meanwhile, out of the corner of his eye, he saw “Sleepless” Kornleigh pull out his pocket watch and press the button to turn it on.

　　Three, two, one …… Klein had just finished his silent count when Dunn stopped and half-turned his body:

　　”Forget another thing, Klein, you’ve been through too much today, you’ll definitely feel tired after relaxing, you don’t need to stay here in the afternoon, go back to take a good rest, and tomorrow, tomorrow, submit a request to list the losses in detail.”

　　”Well, the matter of killing the Extraordinary One, don’t need to be particularly concerned, by killing him, you are saving more people.”

　　”Actually, I’ve actually gotten better.” Klein exhaled wordlessly.

　　Dunn nodded slightly, and was about to turn around when he slapped his forehead violently again and said:

　　”Also, I’ve already given Leonard the portrait of that extraordinary person, so that he and the police department can take care of the follow-up investigation, and I think that extraordinary person will definitely take a carriage ride and enjoy food in Tingen City, as well as definitely have a place to live.”

　　”Wherever one walks, one must leave a trail, and this saying of Roselle the Great is very true indeed.”

　　”…… Yes.” Klein replied woodenly.

　　When the captain was far away, he also left the watch room and walked slowly towards the second floor.

　　On the way, he suddenly thought of something, and inexplicably, he actually felt a little more fearful:

　　”The Tuxedo Joker claimed that the Secret Cultivation Society had mastered the sequence pathway corresponding to the ‘Diviner’ …… Even if this is an exaggeration, they don’t actually have the formula for the higher sequences, and the lower sequences are certainly not lacking. ”

　　”That means they have quite a few Diviners.”

　　”Then would it be possible to divine that I killed the Tuxedo Clown and retaliate in secret?”

　　”If you can’t deal with the Night Watchman, you can’t deal with me, a ‘diviner’ with little direct means of defeating the enemy ……”

　　Klein paused on the stairs and thought hard about the question, quickly realizing that he was worrying blindly:

　　”First, the Misterium has no idea what the members of the Night Watch actually are.”

　　”Second, even if they knew so much as one or two, it would definitely not include me as a civilian.”

　　”Third, there’s no way to divine who the murderer is in this case, unless it’s a ‘seer’.”

　　Relieved, he left Blackthorn Security and took a public carriage back to Daffodil Street.

　　Although he hadn’t eaten anything for lunch, he still lacked an appetite at this point.

　　Klein entered his bedroom and went ahead and stripped off his tattered formal attire and removed his half-height silk bowler hat before laying down on his bed and attempting to get some sleep.

　　His thoughts were still active, and he couldn’t seem to relax as a whole, but it was no longer the image of shooting the tuxedoed clown that was repeating in his mind, it was the creepy touch as he moved the body himself.

　　He was much less uncomfortable with his first kill, but a few more nauseous with goosebumps after goosebumps just thinking about it.

　　”This may be what Frye was aiming for, hoping that I would overcome the psychological shadow by looking at the corpse squarely in the eye …… However, however, while the previous psychological shadow is gone, a new one has appeared …… “Klein smiled to himself, his spirit soothing with it.

　　He fell asleep at some point, and by the time he woke up, his stomach was making a rumbling sound.

　　”I think I could eat a whole cow!” Klein whispered a sentence, seeing the sun slanting in the west outside his window and the sky on fire.

　　Changing into his outdated but comfortable home clothes, he walked briskly to the first floor and before he could even think about what to make for dinner, he heard the door open.

　　Melissa …… thought with a slight upturn of his mouth.

　　Ever since she started taking the public carriage, her sister wasn’t so late getting home anymore.

　　The key twisted, the door to the room opened and Melissa entered with small steps, carrying a bag with books and stationery.

　　She looked toward the kitchen doorway and said:

　　”Klein, there’s a letter for you, a letter from your mentor.”

　　A letter from your mentor? Right, I wrote a letter to ask him about the history related to the main peak of Hornachis …… Klein was first stunned and then thought about it.