The sheet of paper slipped from Tia’s stiff fingers, fluttering down onto the dusty floor with a faint thud.
The candlelight flickered violently at that moment, nearly dying out.
The Records Room fell into a deeper gloom, with only the moonlight from the window illuminating her pale face and the yellowed pages scattered at her feet.
Vaguely, beneath the antiseptic smell of the Records Room, a trace of rot and stench seemed to mingle — likely the scent of the transparent mucus mentioned in the records.
At the same time, those identical soldiers, the eerie changing of the guard ceremony, the forbidden zones… all the clues connected at this moment.
Zane was hiding a massive conspiracy!
Mephia, standing nearby, naturally noticed the file Tia had been holding.
She leaned over to pick it up, glanced at the cover, and murmured softly, “Observation Outpost… Snake Eye?”
Tia leaned in at the sound and noticed a line of small print at the end of the notebook marking the destination — the Black Pine Forest Observation Outpost.
The Black Pine Forest was located outside the western walls of Hela City.
The City Guard used to be stationed there, but it had been abandoned for some reason.
Behind that line of small print was a drawing of a snake’s eye.
Just staring at that eye gave Tia a bone-chilling sensation.
Mephia looked up and closed the file.
“Let’s go there and investigate. It might be abandoned, but there might still be something left behind.”
However, the moment she spoke, the hair on the back of Tia’s neck stood up for no reason.
A bizarre feeling of being watched crept up her spine like a shadow, as if eyes in the darkness were glued to their backs.
She whipped her head around, but she only saw the empty corridor outside the Records Room and the pale moonlight.
‘Is it an illusion?’
She suppressed the rising chill in her heart, blaming the discomfort on her frayed nerves after reading those records.
Mephia, acting as if she had noticed nothing, walked out of the Records Room.
Tia hurried to follow her, and they set off together for the Observation Outpost.
—
The Black Pine Forest at night possessed an indescribable air of eeriness.
The abandoned outpost stood alone in a clearing, its stone walls overgrown with withered vines.
Parts of it had already collapsed, and when the night wind blew through, it made a low, wailing sound.
The interior of the outpost was covered in dust; no one had been here for a long time.
In the corner of what looked like a storage room, Mephia found a hidden trapdoor.
As she pulled it open, a gust of stale air mixed with the scent of an indescribable potion rushed out.
Many dried bloodstains remained on the stone steps leading to the basement.
Seeing this, although Tia wasn’t truly afraid, she subconsciously moved closer to Mephia, grabbing her wrist and refusing to let go.
Mephia did not push her away.
They walked all the way into the basement, which was far more spacious than they had imagined.
Revealed before them were remnant candle stands, rusted shackles fixed to the stone walls, and stained stone beds…
This was clearly a crude but functional laboratory for Human Experimentation!
While exploring this grim place, Tia instinctively pressed herself against Mephia.
First, it was convenient for her to keep close, and second, her current identity had no self-defense capabilities.
If some monster launched a sneak attack now, Mephia could probably handle it for her.
Among a pile of overturned vessels, Mephia found half a logbook with the Snake Eye Insignia printed on the cover.
Turning to the last page, she saw the person in charge who had approved the establishment of this “Special Material Storage Point” — it was none other than Zane.
“That’s enough.”
Mephia closed the logbook, her eyes growing colder.
With this, everything was self-explanatory.
Zane was a member of the Snake Eye organization and the person in charge of this Human Experimentation lab.
These two points alone were enough for the Empire to sentence him to death.
However, as they stepped back onto the cold ground outside the outpost, the moonlight was even dimmer than when they had arrived.
Six figures stepped silently from the shadows of the surrounding trees, forming a semi-circle that blocked their path back to the city.
Leading them was the always-smiling Adjutant from the West Military Camp.
Behind him were two officers with blank expressions, and most disheartening of all, the other three wore the iconic black uniforms of the Inquisition.
They were Inquisitors.
The Adjutant still wore that overly warm smile.
He clapped his hands, his voice sounding exceptionally piercing in the silent forest.
“My, my, what a surprise. I didn’t expect to meet the famous Inquisitor Mephia and our noble Young Lady Tia here.”
His gaze swept over the outpost entrance behind them, and his smile deepened.
“At this hour, did you come to this abandoned place… to destroy evidence?”
Tia’s heart sank, but her face quickly flushed with the perfect amount of confusion and displeasure.
“What do you mean? We were inspecting the city defenses and decided to investigate the old outpost along the way. What of it?”
“Investigate?”
The Adjutant trailed off, his smile turning mocking and cruel.
“Stop playing dumb, Young Lady Tia. You are both members of Snake Eye, aren’t you? Now that Hela City has fallen into chaos, you took the opportunity to come here and destroy the evidence of Snake Eye’s illegal Human Experimentation. What a clever plan.”
“Hela City has fallen into chaos?”
Tia’s brow furrowed.
The Adjutant ignored her and stepped aside, gesturing toward the three Inquisitors with a pained tone.
“Lord Inquisitors, you saw it with your own eyes, didn’t you? They came out of there! Caught red-handed!”
A younger Inquisitor looked at Mephia with a complicated expression and sighed.
“Alas, Lady Mephia, I used to have so much respect for you. I never expected you to fall so low as to associate with Snake Eye…”
The older Inquisitor barked harshly, “The evidence is ironclad! What else is there to say? Lady Mephia, Lady Tia, surrender immediately and accept the investigation of the Inquisition!”
Mephia had watched them calmly from start to finish, as if watching a boring farce.
Only now did she slowly speak, her voice dripping with mockery.
“Commander Zane certainly is impatient. Was it just a simple defense inspection that made him feel he had to gamble everything?”
She looked at the Inquisitors, the irony in her tone growing even stronger.
“As for you, there’s no need to keep acting. You’re nothing more than a group of Zane’s puppets.”
At her words, the three Inquisitors flared with rage, and the smile on the Adjutant’s face vanished completely, replaced by naked murderous intent.
“It seems you don’t plan on coming quietly.”
He slowly drew the longsword at his waist, the sound of metal scraping against the scabbard exceptionally harsh in the silence.
The others exchanged looks, and the circle formed by the six of them began to tighten.
“In that case… we won’t be holding back.”
The Adjutant’s words ‘holding back’ had barely left his lips when the blank-faced officer on the left lunged forward like a clockwork doll.
His longsword slashed through the air, reaching Mephia’s throat at almost the same time as three beams of magic light fired by the Inquisitors on the right reached Tia’s heart.
A twisted madness flickered in the Adjutant’s eyes.
‘Since they chose to resist, then accidentally killing them during the struggle… should be perfectly reasonable, right?’
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