OBS Chapter 4222 [Rain Man]
Chapter 4222 [Rain Man]
Chapter 4222 [Rain Man]
Margaret not only said goodbye to Shad, but she also brought him some new information:
“When Teacher Sylvia told Duke Galina last night, even I didn’t know what had been stolen from Velendale, but this morning I heard my father and older brother talking about it at the dinner table.”
She said to Shad:
"The Royal Mint has been robbed."
"Oh?"
This is different from all the guesses from yesterday:
"What's missing? The printing master plates for banknotes? The hand-engraved master molds for making coins? The trial casting samples of the new currency? The precision parts of the rolling mill and printing press? It can't be that the precious metals stored in the warehouse were stolen, can it?"
Shad suggested many possibilities, but Margaret shook her head:
"I don't know either. The best outcome would be that the mint loses trial coins used by successive kings, which are more valuable than gold. That would only be considered a royal scandal. If it were something else, even just the coinage records, it would be enough to trigger a political tsunami or even turmoil in the domestic financial industry."
Sylvia said:
"Although the Grey Gloves suspect that this is a major case committed by MI6 during the war to incite unrest in the Southern Kingdom, Galina has made it clear that this is not the work of MI6, so there is probably a bigger conspiracy behind this theft."
However, this has nothing to do with Margaret. Now that the two princes have left the capital with Princess Margaret, King 'Lion the Lion' will personally investigate the theft.
Shad nodded, then recalled meeting Miss Paavo of the Truth Society at the Printing Guild's exhibition hall yesterday. She seemed quite interested in the mint. But if the Truth Society really was behind this, there was no reason for Miss Paavo to go to the exhibition area specifically to see it.
Then Shad remembered that there was a set of Dela Rion gold pound banknote printing plates in his basement. The plates were a gift that Shad had taken out of a gift box a long time ago. He couldn't bear to destroy them, but he couldn't figure out what their purpose was.
Margaret and Shad said goodbye with a hug, and she promised Shad that they would meet often when she arrived in Arcadia. Her reluctance to part was somewhat similar to that of Galina not long ago.
Sylvia simply hugged Shad and promised to take good care of Margaret:
"If nothing unexpected happens, Shad, see you next week. Hopefully, we won't run into anything major when we arrive in Arcadia."
"It's really hard to say."
Shad smiled and led them to the portal room in the tower. Margaret entered the portal to Velendale, turning back several times. Sylvia, following behind, kissed Shad again before smiling and following Margaret away.
Could the mint theft be related to what happened in Arcadia?
The outsider has no answer yet.
After bidding farewell to Margaret and Sylvia, who were about to embark on their journeys, Shad's only task for the day was to go to Daniste's place that evening to open the tree hollow and welcome Lady Helena Carter's return.
Besides that, he had nothing else to do, so he planned to visit Mr. Finch and Mr. Bernhard after seeing Vigo, and then embark on a sewer adventure with the vampires to kill time before opening the tree hole.
At least that's what Xia De thought when he left the snow-capped mountains.
Arcadia City has been shrouded in gloomy weather since yesterday afternoon, and this has continued into today. When Shad arrived at the first floor of the Blue Ink Library, he heard the sound of heavy rain outside. While he was waiting for his carriage, the girl in charge of managing the library told Shad that the rain had started at ten o'clock last night and had continued until now.
Although it looked like heavy rain, it was nothing compared to the downpour before dawn. The girl was a local of Arcadia, and she said she had never seen such heavy rain in the city at this time of year, but fortunately, the city's drainage system was still quite good.
But Shad believes that what this city built on a mountain should really be worried about is landslides.
The streets were almost deserted in the heavy rain. The newspaper boy was sheltering under the eaves in front of the library. When he saw Shad come out, he immediately tried to run away to avoid the area, but Shad called him back.
"You can stay here and take shelter from the rain; you don't need to leave."
It was a difficult time to sell newspapers in the rain, but the boy was still out working, which was obviously for a reason. Most people in this era didn't live well, and Shad didn't ask the boy's story. The boy looked only eight or nine years old, similar to little John, whom Shad knew who had lived in the garbage alley of the Green Lake Hotel. He could only carry a small number of newspapers.
So Shad bought all 20-plus newspapers he had and gave him a piece of candy as a gift.
He kept three copies of the newspaper for himself and sent the rest to the library for the readers who came today to take as they wished.
The boy waved goodbye to Shad at the library entrance after he boarded the carriage. Shad sat in the carriage, unfolded the newspaper, and began what he considered to be an ordinary day.
"Gugua~"
"Ok?"
Just as he was about to read the frontline news report, Xia De frowned and looked out the window:
"Did I hear that right? Was that the sound of a frog croaking?"
[You heard right, there really was such a sound.]
Although it was strange to suddenly hear the sound of frogs, it wasn't really anything special since it was just one croak. However, as the carriage continued towards the upper town, the croaking of frogs from the streets became more and more frequent.
Are frogs common in the Arcadia region this season?
Shade asked the girl driving the carriage, and Vigo arranged a regular carriage to pick Shade up and drop him off at the Blue Ink Library. The driver was Miss Cruz, the same Miss Cruz who had driven Shade to Gray Rock Pass Fortress to find Vigo and ended up running into Miss Sabel.
Her voice came through the sound of rain:
“There aren’t many bodies of water in Arcadia that are suitable for frogs to breed and live in, and I’ve never seen so many frogs here before.”
"Did you hear the sound of frogs before I arrived?"
Miss Cruz recalled:
"I heard some sounds a few times when I went to the library to wait for you this morning, but I didn't pay attention to them at the time. It seems that there were also frog sounds in the rain last night when it was pouring, but I'm not sure if it was just my imagination."
Something was clearly wrong, because Shad then sensed an extremely faint whispering element in the rain. When Shad arrived at the Fragrant Mansion and met Vige, Vige directly told Shad what had happened:
“Sage-level relic [Rain Man]”.
Even with the study lights on, the room still felt gloomy because of the rain outside.
"The relic itself is a male humanoid mummy about your height, wearing a coarse cloth raincoat like those worn by low-level workers. Tiny bluish-gray frog eggs are embedded in the seams of the clothing. The face is completely covered by the hood of the raincoat, so there are no facial features. The other person's hands are claw-shaped, with sticky dark brown sludge remaining under the fingernails. A faint mist surrounds the body, although this is difficult to discern on a rainy day."
Viggo described it in great detail; she had already realized what it was before Shad arrived:
"This relic is one of the few that originated from the Third Era, but has a very detailed provenance. The person in question was a worker who dredged a riverbank and fell into a river that had become polluted by wastewater and bred a large number of deformed frogs on a rainy day."
After drowning, the body was washed ashore by the river and mistakenly believed by the ignorant refugees to be a messenger of some frog god. They secretly worshipped it, and the body later acquired supernatural abilities and eventually transformed into a relic at some point.
This relic only appears during heavy rain, and after it appears, it exhibits three stages of characteristics. To put it simply, in the first stage, a large number of frog eggs appear in the rainwater in the surrounding area; in the second stage, large numbers of deformed frogs appear in various places; in the third stage, the surrounding weather turns into an extremely heavy rainstorm, and people who touch the rainwater are deformed into monstrous frog-like forms, which is known as 'frogification'.
"It seems this is another relic from abundant life energy. Creation of life and mutation of flesh, is it?"
Shad summarized it simply:
Is this the second phase?
"Yes, it should still be in the early stages of the second phase. The frogs hatching from the eggs are still normal-looking. As more and more deformed frogs appear, the third phase will begin."
Furthermore, the desiccated corpse that is its true form should be roaming nearby. Its power and appearance will change with each stage; once it completes its third stage of transformation and becomes a deformed frog monster, it and its horde of ugly frogs will be enough to create an army-sized disaster.
Wei Ge was well aware of the dangers of letting things go unchecked:
“I can tell what kind of relic this is. The church has probably already started a city-wide search for the relic itself. They will probably ask me for assistance in the search. More manpower means more hope.”
Xia De nodded:
"You shouldn't go out. Stay home and take care of the house. I'll go out and find the real thing. Although it's a Sage-level artifact like the [Leatherware Guild], finding the real thing of this kind of area-of-effect, stage-based relic is obviously not as troublesome as finding the guild."
"How many people do we need to bring? There are still many girls from Gaohuan in the manor."
Just as Xia De was about to answer, Miss Rowling hurriedly knocked on the door again:
“Mr. Hamilton Watson, your friend is downstairs looking for you. It’s Mr. Finch from Finch Gear Works.”
The old man came to see Shad, of course, also about the frog. The relic known as the "Rain Man" appears every few decades, and is quite famous in the current Sixth Era.
The old man came here to find Shad, hoping to search for the relic's original form together. After all, he was a ring sorcerer living in Arcadia City and wouldn't remain indifferent to this.
Mr. Finch not only came in person, but he also brought his "Doomsday Survival Wagon." This was a vehicle prepared by the old hermit for a post-apocalyptic environment. The wagon could not only travel on most terrains, but it was also equipped with a considerable number of protective rituals.