In the afternoon at Silver Riverbank, within Buck's bloody and messy study, Grego Turner and Eilina were searching everywhere for useful clues. When their search yielded no results, Eilina once again used the compass in her hand, which carried the meaning of "Light." It eventually pointed towards the direction of a bookshelf in the room. Following the direction of the pointer, she walked step by step towards the bookshelf. However, even after standing in front of the bookshelf and flipping through the books on it, she couldn't find what she was looking for after searching for a long time.
Eilina looked down at the direction the pointer was indicating, which hadn't changed at all. With a slight frown, she spoke.
"Hmm? Strange..."
"What's wrong, Eilina? Did you find something?"
Hearing Eilina's voice, Grego turned his head and asked in confusion, while Eilina looked at the bookshelf in front of her and spoke.
"The pointer shows that the Beacon Sigil should be on this bookshelf, but I've flipped through all the books and found no trace. I think perhaps... the Sigil is behind this?"
Eilina said with a tone of speculation. Hearing her words, Grego nodded in understanding.
"You mean a hidden room? Indeed... these guys like to have hidden rooms in their homes. If there's a hidden room here, there should be a mechanism nearby to activate it... We can look for it."
Grego said. His words were transmitted to Dorothy's ears by the listening Corpse Puppet, causing Dorothy to be startled once again.
'Damn... how did they find the hidden room so quickly? Beacon Sigil? Was that guy Clifford fitted with some kind of transmitter?! This is a mistake... that guy actually died inside the hidden room...'
While thinking, Dorothy glanced at the mummified Clifford not far behind her. Based on Grego's words, she had already deduced the likely culprit. It was probably Clifford who was fitted with a transmitter-like Sigil at the dock, and then led the Hunters all the way here. Now, as luck would have it, he just happened to die inside the hidden room, which directly helped them pinpoint the location of the hidden room.
One misfortune followed another. Who could have foreseen such a thing beforehand!
At this moment, Dorothy's heart was even more tense. She was still trying the password. This password lock didn't automatically open the door after entering the correct password. She still needed to turn the doorknob to confirm if the input was correct, which greatly increased the time it took for her to try passwords. So far, she had only tried about thirty combinations.
'But the good news is that getting into this hidden room isn't that easy. They have to find the candlestick mechanism first, and then turn it in the correct way to open this place. That should take at least an hour, so I still have enough time.'
Dorothy thought this way. However, at this moment, a rather rough voice came from inside the study.
"Looking for a mechanism? Hmph, that's too slow. Those guys might be hiding inside. Slowly looking for a mechanism takes too long."
Grego and Eilina looked in the direction of the voice, and they saw the tall figure of Turner. Turner, who they saw, had somehow grabbed a large hammer and was carrying it on his shoulder as he walked towards the bookshelf.
"Tu-Turner? Where did you get that hammer? What are you going to do?" Seeing Turner's appearance, Grego said in surprise, while Turner stood in front of the bookshelf and replied with a smile.
"Heh... what am I doing? Of course, I'm opening this hidden room in a faster way." As he spoke, Turner picked up the large hammer with both hands and forcefully smashed it directly at the bookshelf, causing the ground to shake. With a loud bang, a dark opening was smashed into the bookshelf.
"Hoh... there really is something behind it. Eilina, you guessed correctly." Looking at the opening in the bookshelf, Turner chuckled and said, while Eilina and Grego at the scene were stunned on the spot.
"Uh... you just smashed it open like that?"
"Although the method is a bit rough, it seems to be faster this way..."
Looking at Turner's actions in front of them, Grego and Eilina said with some embarrassment. Indeed, compared to painstakingly searching for a mechanism, this method was more convenient and faster.
"Hmph, of course. Now that the opening has been made, we just need to keep smashing it bigger."
As he spoke, Turner swung the large hammer eighty-eight times at the bookshelf, continuously enlarging the original opening. Every time he smashed, the surrounding floor would vibrate, and Dorothy's heart would tremble a bit more.
'Damn it, if it's a puzzle game, just solve the puzzle properly!? You're ruining the gaming experience by doing this!'
At this moment, Dorothy was hiding behind the curtain, complaining anxiously. She didn't expect that Grego and his group would find solving the puzzle troublesome and directly resort to violence to skip it.
Of course, complaining was one thing, but at this moment, Dorothy's heart was in her throat. She knew that if this continued, Grego and the others would likely come in first. Although the back of the bookshelf was reinforced, it couldn't withstand such smashing.
'There's no other way, I can only activate that plan...'
Facing the critical situation before her, Dorothy took a deep breath to calm herself down, and then connected the Spirituality threads of the Corpse Puppet Ring to the attic.
Up there, a Corpse Puppet that had been hidden beforehand slowly stood up.
...
Inside the study, Turner continued to smash the bookshelf, and soon the opening in the bookshelf grew larger and larger. Grego and Eilina were also waiting behind Turner at this time, waiting for Turner to smash out a suitable entrance before going in together.
Just as Turner was expanding the opening, a Hunter team member ran in behind them at this moment and reported in a hurry.
"Report, Captain! We found something!"
"What's the situation?" Grego patted Turner, who was hammering the bookshelf, to make him stop the extremely noisy hammering, and then asked the team member in front of him seriously.
"The roof... We found a suspicious person on the roof. He appeared suddenly from somewhere, and he's smiling at our snipers hidden in the dark! We didn't act rashly without instructions. Please, Captain, go and take a look!"
The team member urgently reported to Grego and the others. After hearing the team member's words, Grego and the other two exchanged glances, and then Eilina said.
"It seems there's a problem. Let's go and take a look first. We'll just have someone guard this place."
"Okay, let's go..."
Grego nodded in agreement, and then he arranged for two team members to guard the study door. Then, along with Turner and Eilina, they followed the reporting team member and climbed up to the roof of Buck's mansion using a ladder.
The roof of the mansion was a triangular slope, making it very difficult to stand on. Only a small pavilion allowed for stable standing. Grego and the other two who climbed onto the small pavilion scanned the roof, and then on a pointed section of the roof near the river, they saw a standing figure.
Under the gloomy and dim sky, a black-gray trench coat fluttered in the wind on the roof. The upright figure stood steadily even on a precarious foothold, holding his short top hat to prevent it from being blown away by the wind. The lower third of his face was covered by a scarf wrapped around it, and his sharp gaze from under the top hat looked at Grego and the other two in the small pavilion about ten meters away.
"Hello, gentlemen of Igwinte's Hunters."
Facing Grego and the other two in front of him, Edrick said with a slight smile. Hearing Edrick's greeting, Grego and the others couldn't help but become alert, gripping the weapons in their hands.
"Who are you? Why are you here!" Facing the mysterious person opposite, Grego was the first to speak and ask seriously, and then Edrick replied easily.
"As for me... I am merely someone fulfilling my destiny. As for why I am here, it is because I am supposed to be here at this time."
'Someone fulfilling his destiny... He's supposed to be here at this time... What does that mean?'
Hearing Edrick's words, Eilina began to frown and ponder, trying to interpret the meaning. Meanwhile, Turner beside her directly shouted.
"Hey! You, clarify yourself. You wouldn't be a remnant of the Holy Communion Society here, would you!"
Hearing Turner's words, Edrick chuckled lightly, then pressed down on his short top hat, and scanned the person in front of him with a slightly indifferent gaze, then slowly spoke with a deeper, more dangerous tone.
"If I were a member of the Holy Communion Society, then everyone present would already have the same fate as those corpses in the study below."