Chapter 489: Source of the Pollution

“Damn it!” Saul tossed aside the human skin in his hand and stepped forward to check on Izzy’s condition.

The girl’s skin had shriveled in an instant.

It wasn’t due to aging or dehydration, but because her body underneath the skin had lost its fullness.

Her shriveled frame could no longer support the once-supple skin.

Crack.

The charred left hand, stripped of its skin, lost its support and fell to the ground, shattering into four pieces.

Perhaps triggered by the fall, the rest of Izzy’s body began to crack open in multiple places.

Beneath the wrinkled skin, what was revealed was a completely blackened tissue.

A simple swipe of the hand would send a flurry of black powder cascading down.

Someone like this was clearly beyond saving.

And yet, despite keeping Little Algae monitoring Izzy for so long, Saul hadn’t detected when her insides had turned to charcoal.

Even before her skin began to split, all Saul had noticed were traces of her being entangled by a wraith. There had been no sign of pollution breaching her subcutaneous tissue.

Riiip—

Little Algae had been wrapped around Izzy’s waist.

That area had been covered by clothing, hiding her skin from view.

But now, as Izzy’s body slowly sagged downward, the section coiled by Little Algae began to peel in layers.

Saul could imagine that if left unchecked, her upper body’s skin would soon be pulled off like removing a shirt.

“Put her down,” Saul sighed softly.

Little Algae quickly placed her on the ground.

The moment her body lightly bumped against the floor, a large amount of black powder spilled from the skin’s cracks, forming a human-shaped dust ring around her.

“Master?” At that moment, Morden entered from outside. “I found remnants of wraiths in the pipeline, but there were also some strange scraping marks.”

As he stepped inside and saw Izzy, he was visibly shocked. “What happened?”

“I subdued a wraith outside. But the girl in this room still died. I might have been wrong in my earlier assumptions. This girl—and the others who turned into charred corpses—didn’t die from wraith contamination. On the contrary, they died first, then became wraiths.”

“In that case, something else caused their deaths,” Morden analyzed.

“Yeah. And the transition from life to death was extremely fast. When I rushed into the inner room, she still had the aura of the living. From that moment to the peeling of her skin and death, it was all within a few breaths.”

“Moreover, the death began from within. Her outer skin remained intact and still emitted traces of vitality, which made it hard for me to determine exactly when the carbonization began.”

As he spoke, the fallen Izzy suddenly twitched.

With the motion, her skin split further from the friction, shedding more black powder.

Like she had come back to life, the girl stiffly and sluggishly pushed herself up from the ground.

When she opened her eyes, her eyeballs were somehow still intact, but lifeless—like two fake eyes.

“Water…”

A faint voice slipped from Izzy’s mouth. She paid no attention to Saul and Morden before her and instead turned to slowly walk toward the table.

Saul didn’t stop her. “She’s begun her wraith transformation. And the first thing she does… is look for water.”

Morden nodded. “It seems even though she’s turned into a wraith, she still retains fragments of memories from her life.”

Saul raised his hand and gently rubbed the black powder between his fingers.

“When we subdued the wraith in this building last time, we saw it trying to open a door. Maybe it wasn’t trying to get in to kill someone…”

Morden clapped his hands together. “It was looking for water!”

Suddenly, Saul remembered the broker who had died months ago.

The wraith that took him had also left black powder on the ground. And that wraith had dragged him away through a water pipe.

Yet the broker didn’t exhibit any signs of charring—just a set of insect-like legs growing from beneath his head.

“It’s almost certain now: charred wraiths cannot create new charred wraiths. Which means every single one of them came from something else. And that something exists all over the city.”

Saul and Morden exchanged looks, both of their expressions darkening.

Because they were thinking of the same thing—something that spanned not just the entire city, but even more:

The giant underground tree!

Saul brushed the black powder off his hand and rubbed his temples.

“Kismet, that bastard, actually wanted to give me that tree as a gift.”

Just based on what the tree had shown so far, even if Saul could handle some of its branches or roots, he would be no match for the main body.

“The one thing going in my favor right now is that this kind of internal-charcoal contamination doesn’t seem to infect wizards. But that tree’s main body does actively attack wizards—like what happened in the sewers and outskirts. It clearly prefers to act when no one is watching.”

This giant tree hidden beneath Caugust City was anything but harmless.

And Bayton Academy, having single-handedly developed Caugust into the massive wizarding city it was today, couldn’t possibly be unaware of the tree’s existence.

Saul now even suspected that it was Bayton Academy who had planted and cultivated this tree in the first place.

Last time, Dean Pond and that wizard named Beth obviously hadn’t told the truth.

They’d taken out a tree root and asked Saul if he had collected any others. That may have been just a ploy to gauge how much Saul knew about the tree, and to recover the roots that had ended up in other people’s hands.

While Saul and Morden were pondering the true source of the black-charcoal pollution, elsewhere in the city, Shaya had already reunited with Julie.

After a discreet exchange, Shaya led Julie into the basement of a nearby building.

“Where’s your lead?” Julie asked through a silent communication spell.

“I’ve arranged for him to wait upstairs.”

“Then why are you heading into the basement?”

Shaya turned and gave Julie a deep look. “Because the pollution comes from underground.”

Julie tugged at the long white hair draped over her chest. “Are you sure? How did you figure that out?”

“I’ve been observing these charred wraiths for a long time. I noticed a certain pattern.”

“What pattern?” Julie leaned in curiously.

Shaya raised a wooden staff and pushed her away at the shoulder. “Don’t get so close. You’ll trigger my automatic attack reflex arc.”

Julie rolled her eyes and stepped back, keeping a three-meter distance.

“Is this far enough? Now talk!”

“I found that after these charred corpses appear, they don’t create more.”

“You mean their contamination doesn’t spread? That’s a good thing.”

“But it also means that the source turning people into charred corpses isn’t the wraiths. At least, not this type of wraith. I think it’s something else—maybe even a wizard.”

Julie was stunned. “You’re saying there’s a monster or a wizard targeting civilians? And it’s been going on for a long time?”

Julie wasn’t the brightest, but as a wizard, she wasn’t stupid either.

After Shaya’s nudge, she quickly realized: for someone—or something—to be preying on civilians for an extended period, it must be extremely powerful.

And yet Bayton Academy had shown no reaction at all.

Could it be they didn’t notice?

Highly unlikely.

As the issuers of the Cleanser missions, they had to possess more information than anyone else. If even Shaya could track this pattern, there’s no way they hadn’t noticed.

Julie started to grow tense. Her fingers clenched around her hair unconsciously. A few strands of white broke off and fell onto her arm.

Then a thought occurred to her.

“At least the pollution is only targeting ordinary people so far…”

Before she could finish, Shaya turned back and gave her a sharp look.

“How can you be so complacent? Today they target civilians. Tomorrow, they’ll target apprentices. And then… us.”

Seeing Julie puff up indignantly and glare back, Shaya couldn’t be bothered to say more.

“Let’s go. Based on the patterns I’ve analyzed, my lead is already marked and will be fully contaminated soon. And from previous experience, the pollution… comes from underground.”

(End of Chapter)

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