The dead Detective Sparrow Hamilton took over a more difficult commission about half a year ago. Baron Huntington, who lives in Tobesk, entrusts Mr. Detective to find the missing maid. The maid had served the Baron's family for many years, and she voluntarily resigned a few days ago.
The baron asked his butler to invite the maid back with a gift, only to find that she had disappeared. Although the baron has a certain social status, he is not the maid's family after all, and he himself does not seem to trust the police very much, so he entrusted several detectives to investigate.
Detective Sparrow is not actually a detective, and his usual commissions are nothing more than finding out trivial matters such as extramarital affairs. This time, a noble came to entrust it because of the introduction of an old customer.
Sparrow Hamilton attaches great importance to this matter, even if it is only a baron, he is a big figure out of the reach of ordinary citizens. He investigated very carefully, and spent a month this spring, through various clues, found the abandoned sanatorium on the banks of the Auxerre River, and determined that this was the cause of the missing persons case.
"This nursing home was abandoned about 30 years ago. I was only a child at that time. I heard it from my family."
According to local Bill Schneider, he stretched out his fingers and pointed to the building complex that gradually became clear not far away. Although the outside of the city is also misty, you can already see the bell tower next to the main building, as well as the spiers and cross-shaped decorative spires.
"At that time, the royal family instructed the Tobesk City Hall to re-implement municipal planning to adapt to the large foreign population and the development of the steam industry. The policy at that time was probably that hospitals and other infrastructure moved to the city, and factories moved to the outside of the city. Here was originally It is a noble sanatorium. I hope you understand what I mean. It is dedicated to the big shots we can’t even imagine. After responding to the call, the sanatorium completely moved out of Tobesk and went to a nearby city, which can be reached in half an hour by train. On the contrary, it is more convenient than here.
Therefore, this sanatorium was abandoned, even homeless people would not live here, the neighborhood was deserted, and no one would know if he died. "
Surrounded by large patches of farmland and wasteland, the nearest rural town can only be seen in an hour's walk. There was, however, a manor and stud farm nearby, which belonged to an earl. During the horse racing season, people will choose the road that the two of them are walking at this time as the track, but there are no people there yet.
Although the industry developed rapidly in this era, traces of the steam era can only be seen in big cities. Far away from the city, everything is going backwards to the past, Xia De understood the meaning of this sentence.
The two quickly followed the path to the vicinity of the abandoned sanatorium. The doctor didn't mention the name of the place, so it didn't matter if you think about it.
From the outside, the skin has been completely peeled off and all windows and doors are missing. However, the fence of the nursing home is still there, but the courtyard inside the fence is almost the same as the wasteland outside, and there are no traces of the garden in the past.
The tall buildings and minarets stand in the wilderness like this, and only the decoration of the fence gate can vaguely see the prosperity of the past.
"Follow me, we will talk as we walk."
The doctor said, and kicked open the two fence doors that seemed to be corroded together. The fence gate fell with a crash, startling the birds in the nearby woods.
Even at the edge of the city, the fog only dissipated a little. The gloomy sky seemed to be about to rain, and Xia De regretted not bringing an umbrella out.
The two walked into the courtyard of the nursing home, stepping on the wild grass with two pairs of boots:
"The so-called ring warlock means that we have the [Destiny Wheel Ring]."
The doctor said, looked around, and led Shad towards the main entrance of the main building.
"The Wheel of Fate?"
"Time, years, destiny, era, civilization, the world, the rings cast for us symbolize ourselves. Pay attention! I want to show you the complete wheel of fortune, not just a corner. Please look carefully—"
The doctor was walking in the wild grass, with his arms slightly open, his palms up, as if he was holding something, and his hands were at the same level as his shoulders.
Everything behind him became hazy, like a layer of white mist. But he himself remained unchanged, except for a faint smile on his face.
Later, Xia De actually heard the sound and echo of the train whistle in this empty and abandoned courtyard.
"What?"
He hurriedly looked around in the waist-deep grass, and at this moment his skin gradually felt the heat.
Turning around to look, what is behind the doctor is not white mist, but steam. The scorching steam, the steam that makes people tremble for some reason, seems to blur the distance and space, blurring the doctor's back.
In the steam, a huge black shadow was approaching, and the steam behind the doctor seemed to contain infinite time and space.
The siren roared, the steam exploded, and the black shadow was getting closer. The extremely fast speed drove the wind pressure, causing the corner of the doctor's clothes, the weeds in the yard, and Xia De's coat to fly, and he had to squint his eyes.
What is more serious is the sense of crisis rising in the heart.
"What the **** is in that steam?"
Getting closer, behind the doctor, deep in the steam, a huge hammer appeared with momentum and energy. What I saw was silver-gray, as tall as the entire building, and hit the doctor with a loud noise.
The sound of the bombardment made Xia De's ears twitch slightly, and he felt dizzy before his eyes. The strong vomiting made him have to stretch out his hands to cover his chest. The ground shook, the wind howled, and the thunder flickered. In this series of hallucinations, the hammering seemed to open up the world, and it seemed to bombard Xia De's soul.
But it was only the doctor who was hit by the sledgehammer, and the doctor didn't move at all, but Xia De thought that he saw it. Doctor Schneider was smashed into a copper cake.
"copper?"
It was indeed a piece of copper. After being hit by the giant hammer, a huge rotating copper ring appeared behind the doctor. It was a brass-colored metal ring.
The steam gradually dissipated, and the brass metal ring with a pentagonal cross section slowly rotated behind the doctor. A strange light, accompanied by more than twenty spiritual runes, wandered on this ring of life.
The halo reflected on Xia De's face, and the outsider heard the chuckle of the woman in his head, and the magnificent, magical, and powerful ring was reflected in his eyes.
"This is the ring of life. The ring warlock will only call out the ring when he is fighting with all his strength. Otherwise, he can not call out the ring of life, or just call out a part of it... Do you have any questions? ?”
The doctor stopped in the weeds in the courtyard of the nursing home and asked the stunned Shade. Shad could still feel the heat of the steam escaping from the doctor's back, as well as the high temperature on the huge brass ring.
The ring of life is not a phantom, this is the entity:
"Why steam? Why brass?"
He didn't even notice the anxiety in his tone.
The middle-aged doctor smiled:
"Young people, a person's success depends not only on personal struggle, but also on the process of history.
As I said, the Ring of Fate represents the self and the world. This era is the era of steam and machinery, so the ring of life emerges from the steam and is forged by the bombardment of a giant hammer, showing a brass color. If this is the age of the rainbow, then the ring of life may be rainbow-colored, and if it is the age of the deep sea, then the ring of life is water. do you understand? "
Xia De reluctantly nodded, his heart beating faster because he witnessed the shocking scene just now:
"clear."
He didn't even want to blink, trying to imprint the whole picture of the ring behind the doctor into his eyes. But the doctor waved his hand to the back, and the ring of life slowly became transparent and disappeared, leaving only a few runes in Xia De's memory.
For the common language of the Northern Kingdom, even without the knowledge given by the woman's voice in his head, Xia De could understand and understand, but he couldn't speak or write. And now, Xia De somehow understood the meaning of those powerful spirit runes. The ones he glimpsed were [Joy], [Hound Dog] and [Mote Dust]...
Suddenly, I felt a pain in my head, as if someone had knocked on the back of my head, so I gave up and continued to memorize those powerful runes.
In this world, knowledge really is power. Therefore, it seems understandable that the extraordinary organization that the doctor invited Xia De to join is an academy.
"But if the special thing I have is that I can read and understand all the words... In this dangerous world, is this considered a good thing?"
Xia De pondered his own secret, while the doctor continued to walk forward in the wild grass, and introduced:
"The cross-sectional shape of my life ring is currently a pentagon, which means that I am a ring warlock of the fifth ring, and I am also a fifth-grade correspondence adult education student in the college. The life ring of the first ring is a flat circle, with a branded spirit rune on one side The second ring is also flat, but both sides can be imprinted with spiritual runes. The cross section of the third ring is a triangle, the cross section of the fourth ring is a quadrilateral...and so on. Do you understand? The higher the ring, the closer it is The most standard ring."
"Yes, I understand."
The two entered the building while talking. Over the years, countless people may have cared for this place. There is no furniture of any kind, and there is a layer of dust on the ground, and the dust will be kicked up immediately when stepped on.
They didn't stay on the first floor, but walked to the second floor along the seemingly unstable stairs. Xia De was very worried about the safety of this dilapidated building.
"Spiritual runes are the core of the ring warlock system. By engraving spiritual runes on our destiny wheel rings, we accumulate spirits and feel the four elements [miracle] [blasphemy] [enlightenment] [whispers], and we continue to advance."
"Spirit? Element?"
Xia De was puzzled, his heart was full of excitement, he finally wanted to know these things. UU reading www.uukanshu.com
The doctor led Shad up the stairs:
"About the spirit, in the past era, it had many names. Magic, ether, mana, spirituality, and spiritual light, but the current era is collectively called spirit. This is information, it is an element, it is energy, and it is what you can understand The sum of everything in the world is one of the manifestations of the ring warlock's mind interfering with matter. The means of accumulating spirit is to contact the elements, and the safest means of contacting the elements is to read the stories and knowledge before the era - culture, customs, hero legends, The myth of word of mouth.
It is equally dangerous to come into contact with this knowledge, and you will fall into madness if you are not careful. So we usually look at the original copy, or the translation. "
Xia De simply translated "spirit" as a blue bar.
"But it is not enough to accumulate enough spirits to enter the next ring. The most important thing for a ring warlock is not the spirit, but the elements. By accumulating the four element spirit runes, the upper limit of the spirit can be effectively raised, the soul can be sublimated, and the body can be tempered. The four elements can be felt in many ways..."
Xia De thought of the reminder from the woman's voice in his mind that he came into contact with "Whispers", "Enlightenment" and "Miracle", respectively seeing Sparrow's death, stepping on the street to see the world, and thinking about the meaning of God.
"It's not enough just to feel and touch. You need to engrave the elements on your own destiny wheel ring to prove your fusion with the elements. Every upgrade of the ring warlock requires a different [miracle] [blasphemy] [enlightenment] [ Whispering] combination of spiritual runes, forming a specific sentence to sublimate. I will answer this point for you when you decide to join the academy. Now, let me introduce the differences between the four elements.”
The doctor paused, looked forward and smiled:
"I think the person we are looking for should be here."