Part 1 THE JOKER Chapter 128 The Fools of Poverty
After delivering his lunch and filling his stomach, Klein only rested for most of an hour before hurrying to the shooting club to practice his firearms, not daring to relax a bit.
Under the feeding of thousands of rounds of ammunition and day after day of persistence, his current standard of shooting finally reached what Dunn Smith considered to be the passing line, with fixed targets being especially good.
After practicing mechanically over and over again, he stowed his revolver and took a railed public carriage to arrive near the residence of his fighting teacher, Gawain, taking ten minutes to walk in front of the gate.
Then he changed into his freshly tanned knight’s practice clothes and practiced from running, jumping rope, lifting weights, and deep squats all the way to pacing and punching, practicing to the point of sweat and physical exhaustion.
”Take a fifteen minute break.” Blonde with white sideburns and a weathered face, Gawain pulled out his pocket watch, snapped it open, and looked at it.
From the beginning until now, he remained silent, only opening his mouth to remind him twice when he changed his training style and when some of Klein’s movements were out of order.
Klein gasped for breath, didn’t dare to rest directly, and walked slowly back and forth – the most intuitive reaction of this period of fighting practice on him was that his skin had darkened quite a bit, turning into the so-called wheat color.
Gawain put away his pocket watch and stood by the rough practice field at the back of the house, watching Klein relax with his hands clasped over his chest, as quiet as a marble statue.
”Sensei, besides hand-to-hand combat, will you teach me how to use a straight sword, a greatsword, a thrusting sword, and a lance?” Klein, who had just finished digesting the “Diviner” magic potion, was in a good mood and took the initiative to ask.
He had seen weapons such as straight swords, thrusting swords, chest armor and full body armor in Gawain’s collection room, and knew that the other party was not only good at unarmed combat.
Gawain, who was bathed in sunlight, raised his eyes and swept him for a moment, and said in a low voice:
”There is no use for you to learn these, they are all things that are behind the times and will only exist in museums and private collections in the future ……”
He was silent for a few seconds, and then added in a tone of vicissitude: “They are obsolete …… What you should pay attention to is firearms, even if fighting, it is only auxiliary.”
Klein looked at the twilight deep fighting teacher and let out a laugh:
”I don’t think so.”
”All the ministers, all the councilors, all the generals, think so.” Gawain said as if through clenched teeth.
Klein stopped in his tracks and pretended he was typing, waxing eloquent like a true keyboard powerhouse:
”No, they’re just out of the frontal battlefield, there’s another use for them.”
”Why does fighting have to be the antithesis of firearms? They can be blended together perfectly, and I believe that people who are more flexible and agile with quicker reflexes can utilize firearms better.”
Seeing the silent Gawain’s eyes sharpen for a moment, Klein continued with slight amusement:
”Other weapons have not been eliminated either, they just need to make certain improvements to make them more portable ……”
”…… We can organize a very mobile team to bypass the frontal battlefield and go straight to the enemy’s rear, straight to their hubs …… In this kind of small-scale raid battle, having excellent fighting ability and being good at all kinds of weapons can play quite an important role, you can imagine such a scene ……”
Playing on his ability to know a little bit about everything, he described a haphazard mix of special forces fighting styles and the like on Earth.
Gawain’s breathing started to become ragged at some point, and he stood there, not moving a muscle, seemingly unwilling to break the fantasized image.
Klein glanced at the other man’s reaction, gave a secret heave, cleared his throat, and said with feigned reserve:
”Teacher, what do you think of my idea? Is there any possibility of realizing it?”
Gawain’s body visibly trembled as if he had finally awakened from a dream, he looked deeply at Klein and spoke in a low voice:
”Your rest was very effective, now redo all ten sets of the previous exercises.”
”Huh?” Klein was at a loss.
Soon, starting to run again, he snapped out of it and shouted frantically in his heart:
Ten sets? Teacher, no!
I don’t want to “celebrate” my complete digestion of the Diviner’s Potion in this way!
Hey, don’t you have any feelings?
……
As he watched Klein run to the other side of the training ground, Gawain suddenly released his embrace and covered his face with one palm.
His eyes were tightly closed, and the wrinkles on his face were deep and striking.
……
Once again nearly vomiting from exhaustion, Klein showered, changed his clothes, said goodbye to Gawain, the still-silent fighting teacher, and left the other man’s residence in a public carriage.
Instead of going straight home, he headed to the Evil Dragon Bar in the Docklands with the intention of going to the Underground Trade Market to learn about the prices of extraordinary materials and purchase items for making charms.
On the way, Crane, mindful of the small stash of money he carried with him, braced himself and didn’t dare to sleep, and made it to his destination with great difficulty.
”Got to leave a balance of four pounds for the commission, and all I have at my disposal is three pounds and five soules ……” He touched the banknotes in his pocket, took his cane, and stepped out of the wagon.
By this time the sun had begun to set in the west, and the luster of dusk was drenching all the houses, while the “Boxing” and “Dog and Mouse” matches were warming up in the Dragon Pub.
Through the pool room and through a series of rooms, Klein entered the underground marketplace.
He glanced around and didn’t see Admiral “The Monster”, who was always active here.
”Didn’t old Neil say that it was all thanks to Svein, the owner of the Evil Dragon Bar, who took him in and gave him a bite to eat that the ‘monster’ could survive?” Klein muttered to himself in slight confusion.
As a night watchman, he was wary enough of similar things to approach the burly man guarding the door and ask:
”Where is Admiral?”
The burly man replied without a smile, “Sleeping in some corner, I don’t know where he’s hiding, he’s always like this lately, he keeps laying down shivering and keeps yelling, ‘dead, dead, all corpses, all dying’.”
What images did he see again? What stimuli had he encountered? Klein frowned slightly and made a few careful inquiries to try to figure out where Ademisael was sleeping, but the guards didn’t know either.
”When I’m done, I’ll use divination to find him and see what has happened to him ……” Klein made a mental note of this and stepped towards one of the two rooms at the end of the trading market.
According to the old Neil, the room on the left was used for lending and restitution, while the room on the right was a place for selling and acquiring precious items, including extraordinary materials.
Knocking on the door of the room on the right, Klein found it partitioned into an inner and outer room, with three customers waiting in the outer room.
He lowered his half-height silk bowler hat and sat behind the three patrons in order, leaning forward and pressing his cane as he waited in silence.
It wasn’t long before the door to the partition opened and out came a customer in blue-gray dockworker’s garb, who bowed his head and hurried away without a moment’s pause.
Klein let the left side of the teeth tapped twice, with “spiritual vision” looked at him, looked at the other three customers a few times, did not happen to have anything too unusual places, of course, a certain amount of minor illnesses still exist.
After another ten minutes or so, it was finally his turn.
He opened the door to the partition and stepped into the kerosene-lit inner room.
Unlocking the door to the housing, he sat down in the chair belonging to the customer and looked across at the old man in the black fedora:
”I would like to know what extraordinary materials you have and what the prices are for each.”
The old man had sagging cheek muscles and deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, but his stature was quite stout, and he was not surprised by Klein’s request because many customers were reluctant to let people know what he wanted to buy until they were sure that they had a certain extraordinary material, and generally wished to be introduced to all of them.
The old man flipped to the latest pages of his notebook, glanced at Klein, picked up the honeyed wine laid out in front of him and took a sip, saying:
”Brain tissue of a water ghost, ranging from 3 pounds to 15 pounds, depending on completeness, star crystals at 150 pounds per 50 grams, one Queen Bee Herb at 200 pounds, adult black-spotted frogs at 170 pounds each …… Human-faced roses at 280 pounds, and there’s only one of them… …”
Klein controlled his own emotional reaction and quietly listened to the old man’s introduction, while such an underground trade surprisingly had less than thirty extraordinary materials.
Feeling the seven pound bill in his pocket and thinking about Miss Justice’s attitude towards the 1000 pounds, Klein silently got up and sighed:
”Unfortunately, there’s nothing I want.”
Without waiting for the old man to ask, he quickly turned around, opened the door of the partition, and walked out.
Returning to the underground trading market, Klein looked ahead and stayed for a few seconds, sighing bitterly in his heart:
”I’m probably the poorest hidden organization BOSS ……”
This made him even more determined to obtain materials from within the Nightwatchman or find Justice or the Inverted Hangman to exchange them.
After circling around the underground trading market twice, Klein picked and purchased the materials for making the sigils, such as half-finished silver tablets, such as powdered herbs and natural ores needed for the corresponding rituals, which cost him a total of £1.15 Soule.
The total amount of private money left was 5 pounds 10 Sools, and after removing the final payment for the commission, there was still 1 pound 10 Sools …… Klein silently counted his finances, and his heart felt a pang of helplessness.
Of course, he knew very well that this was because he had only been working for more than 1 month, if he stretched the time to 1 year, more than a hundred pounds could still be saved.
”Two more weeks and I’ll have to tell Benson and Melissa that I’ve been paid 3 pounds more to hire handyman maids …… so that there’s no private money left ……” Klein thought as he walked towards the the main entrance of the underground trading market.
Just then, he saw old Neil, dressed in a black classic robe, slowly walk in.
”Have you bought everything?” Old Neil greeted with a smile.
”Yes.” Klein replied frankly.
Old Neil suddenly tsked, “You’re here really early.”
”That’s because I’m still hungry and you’ve already enjoyed your dinner.” Klein very casually exchanged pleasantries with Old Neil.
After a while, Svein, the owner of the Evil Dragon Bar, who was clad in a naval officer’s uniform, came in from outside, approached the two with a grave expression, and lowered his voice:
”I need your help.”
”What happened?” The old Neil became serious all of a sudden, and Klein couldn’t help but raise a heart.
Svein, whose brown hair was a mess and smelled strongly of alcohol, answered in a deep voice:
”There’s a member of the ‘Substitute Punisher’ squad who’s gotten out of control in the neighborhood, and we have to take care of him before he causes any harm to ordinary people!”