Chapter 143: Chapter 81: Conspiracy_3
Translator: 549690339 |
“Hmm.”
“However, speaking of which, last time when Team Nine came in to hunt down the B-rank werewolf on the third level, they suffered heavy casualties. The team didn’t dare to organize another B-rank challenge. What happened during the time the A-level plot was triggered?”
“No one knows. Three of our elite squads entered. Everyone died, and no information was leaked out. Only an outsider made it alive. He didn’t see what happened. He only knew that an A-rank catastrophe-level werewolf appeared in Townsend Town. Then it hunted down and killed all the hunters following their scent. Only after our group leader interrogated the survivor did we find out that the lucky fellow rushed into the town without signing in, narrowly escaped death. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have known this way of surviving and getting out of the space…”
“The werewolves are truly terrifying. Among the demon beasts I’ve seen, they are amongst the top three for combat power at the same tier. A B-rank catastrophe can already match the combat power of a Second Tier Curse Card Master. If it’s A-rank, you can’t kill it in a space with tier restrictions. The only chance is through the plot…”
Inside Townsend Town.
While the other hunters are busy treasure hunting all over the town, Leonard Churchill is on a street, enticing children with candies.
“Little one, want some candy?”
“Yes.”
“Where is your mother?”
“My mother is dead.”
“How did your mother die?”
“She died from the plague.”
“Do you still want candy?”
“Yes…but Grandfather Mayor says not to talk to outsiders.”
”Ah…that’s enough, can’t put any more in.”
“I’ll tell you a secret, you can ask the town drunk, Jack. He’s the most knowledgeable. You can find him at the big windmill in town.”
The NPCs in the Alternate Dimension are intelligent.
Other than certain information that exceeds their world’s cognition which they can’t see or hear, their thinking process is no different from that of normal
humans.
In Leonard’s eyes, this is the biggest breakthrough.
The townspeople are fearful and circumspect around outsiders, explicitly evasive when certain topics are brought up.
But children aren’t.
After asking a few more children, Leonard found out that, apparently, a plague broke out in Townsend Town a year ago, killing many people.
This piece of information wasn’t in the intelligence reports.
The Black Wolf Group had been here many times and surely knew.
But they didn’t include this vital information in the reports they sold.
Because this could be the key to cracking the plot of “Greedy Mine Cave”.
Leonard suspects that there might be some connection between the plague and the appearance of the werewolf.
Obviously, the plague got cured.
Leonard wanted to know who cured this plague, but everyone he asked evaded
the question.
From the children, he gathered that it seemed like a “witch” who was passing by cured the plague, and the town’s lord, Baron Ross, had sent a team of brightly armored knights.
But these are just unsubstantiated clues.
Leonard roughly pieced together the timeline in his head.
There was a plague in town, a witch and knights came, the plague got cured, then the werewolf appeared… and now they are here.
These events were like scattered beads, but they lacked an essential thread of cause and effect to connect them.
There was another important clue.
According to the children, there were terrifying monsters in the Burial
Mountain Mine.
This aligned with the “Investigate the unusual changes in the mine” mission in Enlightenment.
Leonard didn’t plan to rashly enter the mine infested by strange creatures.
He planned to ask around first.
The townspeople are intelligent. The news of the unseemly behavior of these new “demon hunters” quickly spread throughout the town.
Probably because the demon hunters were here to help exterminate the werewolf, the Mayor suppressed the residents’ anger to prevent chaos.
But once this news spread, he would never be able to extract any information from residents again.
Everyone steered clear of strangers in peculiar outfits.
Forcing them to talk might result in some information.
But Leonard thought that this method could trigger a special plot or mechanisms of the space.
Moreover, it would certainly lead to an unfavorable situation.
After all, the intelligence had sternly warned against arbitrarily killing townspeople; otherwise, you might be expelled from Townsend Town.
Someone must have tried before.
Without the shelter of the town, anyone in the wild would find it challenging to survive three days.
Leonard was helpless about the foolishly greedy acts of those “companions”. This way, the possibilities of triggering any valuable side plot were almost
ruined.
But he thought of another method.
If the NPC were intelligent, they would also have human greed.
He used his lock picking skills to visit a few residences and got a large bag of coins.
These gold coins that couldn’t be taken out of the space might be useless to the other hunters, but they were excellent tools in Leonard’s hands.
He found “Drunkard Jack”.
With this substantial amount of money, he got another crucial clue: “For information about the mine, you can seek Uncle Sam at the blacksmith shop. Not only can he silver-plate your weapons, but he’s also the only one who s been to the depths of the mine and lived to tell the tale. Oh, and don’t you dare mention my name. After all, this topic is taboo in Townsend Town.”
Also, Leonard found out another interesting piece of information.
Although Drunkard Jack knew he was an adventurer from elsewhere,
He didn’t regard him as a “demon hunter !
Leonard guessed it might be related to the contract he signed at the city gate.
Having signed the contract, the space granted him the identity of a “demon hunter”.
Following the stream through Townsend Town, Leonard saw a blacksmith workshop puffing out fumes from its chimney.
The intelligence report mentioned that hunters using firearms could come here and get the workshop master to silver-plate their bullets.
Silver-plated bullets cause burn damage to werewolves.
Leonard hadn’t been in a hurry to come here because he didn’t think it was necessary.
The process of silver-plating is not complicated; he could do it himself.
Just as he arrived, he ran into two fellow professionals.
The two were cursing as they walked out of the blacksmith’s shop.
“Damn! Wasted half the day for nothing. Thought we’d find out something. That damned information merchant, I’ll settle scores with him when I get back to Sinless City! So much for selling top-secret information, saying that the old boss of this blacksmith shop had been to the fourth level of the mine. But we didn’t get any information.”
“I told you, if we thought of coming here for clues, those that came before us would’ve thought of it too. You just didn’t believe… Well, now you know. We didn’t go to rob anyone, but we’ve lost tens of thousands. In the next few days, if we want to break even, we’ll have to take risks and go into the mine to hunt werewolves.”
Listening to the conversation of the two men getting farther and farther away, Leonard’s expression subtly changed.
He wasn’t surprised that people knew the blacksmith shop might hold clues, considering so many runs had been made.
But how did the information merchant in Sinless City have such extensive resources?
He even knew this kind of information?
No wonder, after exploring the duplication many times, secrets were fewer and fewer.
But since the information merchant said so, Leonard was even more certain that this blacksmith was crucial.
If nothing was asked, the probability was that the mode of dialogue was not
correct..