Saint Mary Hospital, a large hospital located in the western borough, those who came here for treatment were either wealthy tycoons or people of high status.
At the entrance, Hastur passed by in a carriage. He lifted the curtain and observed the hospital's layout.
According to the information Will provided, tonight Count Gill would die inside Saint Mary Hospital. The bed he was currently on was in the fifth ward from right to left on the street-facing side of the third floor.
Hastur did not linger. After briefly scouting the place, he instructed the coachman to drive away. On the way, they even passed by the location of Klein's Nighthawks squad.
This was something he had been told the last time the Nighthawks squad came to ask for his help.
Hastur measured the distance between here and Saint Mary Hospital, silently calculating the time needed to travel.
Tonight, he was going to seize Count Gill's Beyonder characteristics. He would have to clash with people from the Church of the God of Steam and Machinery. If the fight dragged on too long, it would easily attract the attention of nearby Nighthawks squads.
"No big problem." Hastur believed that his invisibility technique would allow him to finish the battle quickly.
That night, inside one of the wards at Saint Mary Hospital.
Count Gill, whose life was already approaching its end, trembled as he stretched out a finger, wanting to scold his unfilial descendants. In the end, however, he did not even have that bit of strength. His hand fell onto the white blanket, and his eyelids closed heavily.
Soon, sorrowful sobbing filled the ward.
The crying was chaotic, with many people weeping. The ward was already too crowded to hold everyone, and quite a few stood outside in the hospital corridor, silently shedding tears.
Amid the waves of sobbing, there were also a few angry curses, Count Gill's friends from his lifetime were berating his unworthy descendants.
Max Livermore had once been the captain of a Machinery Hivemind squad responsible for guarding the Roselle Memorial Exhibition. Because of poor performance during the previous incident, combined with some personal family issues, during this period he had been constantly taking on assignments outside, keeping himself busy so as not to dwell on those troubling matters.
This Count Gill had also once been a clergyman of the Church of the God of Steam and Machinery in his youth. In his thirties, he left the church and began mingling within the upper echelons of Loen's elite.
Over the span of twenty to thirty years, he rose from an ordinary baron to a count. He was a decent man, and his only failure lay in educating his descendants.
He had a child late in life and only had one son. Excessive indulgence turned his son into a useless heir who only knew how to eat, drink, and enjoy himself.
This time, the son even secretly took the family's property deeds out to gamble. When Count Gill learned of it, his health was already poor, and in a fit of anger, he was directly hospitalized.
During his stay in the hospital, his son and grandson were left without restraint, continuing their extravagant lifestyle of debauchery and gambling, eventually succeeding in angering Count Gill to death.
Before Count Gill had even passed away, Max had already received orders to lead two squad members to recover Count Gill's Beyonder characteristics after his death.
To show the humane side of church law enforcement, he stood outside the door and waited for half an hour while the people inside cried, before leading his team in and temporarily persuading the relatives and friends in the ward to leave.
After closing the doors and windows, they began extracting the Baron of Corruption Beyonder characteristics from Count Gill's body.
This set of Beyonder characteristics was not just a Sequence 6 Baron of Corruption characteristic, it also included a Sequence 9 Lawyer, Sequence 8 Barbarian, and Sequence 7 Briber, totaling four Beyonder characteristics.
In terms of value alone, it amounted to several thousand pounds. Before his death, Count Gill had deliberately left his Beyonder characteristics to the church, hoping that the church could offer some support to his descendants in the future, even though they were utterly disappointing.
Once each Beyonder characteristic was extracted, Max had his team members seal and store each one separately to prevent any possible Beyonder contamination incidents.
The whole process was quick, taking only about ten minutes.
Compared to the missions they usually carried out, recovering Beyonder characteristics was relatively simple.
Max walked over to the window and swept his gaze outside, preventing anyone from spying in secret.
Nowadays, far too many Beyonders had infiltrated Backlund, and naturally, more people were daring enough to take risks.
If they knew that such a valuable prize was inside the hospital tonight, they would definitely follow the scent and come running.
Once all four Beyonder characteristics had been extracted and secured, and the surroundings remained quiet, Max finally relaxed his guard slightly. He carried the most important Sequence 6 Baron of Corruption Beyonder characteristic in a safe, while the other three were carried by his teammates.
With the task completed, he led his team members to perform the ritual of the Church of the God of Steam and Machinery before Count Gill's dead body, both a blessing and a farewell.
As they were performing the ritual, Max Livermore suddenly saw a golden great sword slash toward the arm holding the safe!
The speed was astonishing. Instinctively, he wanted to retract his arm, but he frowned and did not pull it back. Instead, he shouted, "Iron Arm!"
A silvery bracelet emerged from his wrist, flowing like mercury as it covered his entire arm, forcibly blocking the golden great sword.
Crack!
Although his arm was not severed on the spot, the silvery bracelet shattered instantly, and he himself was sent flying by an enormous force.
Seeing this, the two teammates beside him hurriedly activated their Beyonder abilities, attempting to restrain the attacker.
But in their eyes, they could only see the great sword attacking their captain, they could not see the attacker's position at all.
At that moment, their captain was kicked flying again, and the safe tightly gripped in his hand finally slipped free.
"Imprison!"
One of the teammates threw out a small spherical object. The sphere emitted crackling lightning, forming a small thunder prison that protected the safe inside.
At the same time, the other teammate's pale gray ring on his right index finger transformed into a crossbow. He aimed upward, toward where the great sword was, and fired.
Unfortunately, the great sword merely swung lightly, shattering the small thunder prison. As for the incoming bolt, it did not even bother to dodge.
A figure clad in armor, its face indistinct, emerged from invisibility and walked straight over to pick up the safe.
"Damn it!" Max Livermore climbed up from the ground, his face filled with fury. He pulled a pocket watch from his chest and hurled it at the mysterious figure.
Inside the pocket watch, golden hands turned. Time around them seemed to freeze for a moment, then began to rewind.
Yet the mysterious figure merely swept the safe in its hand once, knocking the pocket watch against the opposite wall.
The time that had not even begun to rewind was disrupted and set straight again, resuming its flow.
At this moment, another teammate drew his handgun, preparing to fire.
"Don't shoot!" Max urgently stopped him. Because of the commotion inside the ward, the people waiting outside, afraid that something had happened, hurriedly opened the door.
If they fired at this time, whether they could stop the mysterious figure was uncertain, but those outside would definitely suffer heavy casualties.
Among those who came to the hospital tonight to see Count Gill off, there were quite a few nobles.
Unable to fire, the two members and Max charged forward to engage in close combat. Familiar with using Beyonder weapons, they swapped out firearms and crossbows for electric batons, great swords, and iron gauntlets.
At this moment, a blood-red vortex formed around the mysterious figure.
The blood in the bodies of those nearby became uncontrollable, as if it were about to flow out of them.
"Ah!"
"What's happening?!"
"Quick, go get help!"
The crowd waiting outside finally reacted. However, because there were too many people waiting in the corridor, the moment something happened, chaos erupted.
The mysterious figure charged about like a barbarian, knocking several people flying in succession, then quickly disappeared around the corner of the corridor.
Max and the other two both tried to calm the crowd while hurriedly giving chase.
But by the time they reached the corner, the mysterious figure was already nowhere to be seen.
Max stared at the empty, silent hospital corridor, his face ashen, unsure of what to say for a moment.
"Captain, should we keep chasing?"
"Chase!" Suppressing the irritation in his heart, he left one teammate behind to manage the situation and led the other in pursuit.
Yet from the third-floor corridor to the first-floor lobby, and even outside the hospital, they never saw the mysterious figure again.
They also questioned the hospital staff, all of whom said they had not seen anyone suspicious.
Only those who had experienced the chaos in the corridor outside the third-floor ward had clearly seen that mysterious figure.
Invisibility? An invisibility technique that could conceal the movements of the spirit body!
Max pondered with a dark expression for a long time, finally understanding how the other party had hidden in the ward without alerting anyone, and how they had completely vanished after passing just one corner.
Ordinary people could not open their spiritual vision and thus could not see the spirit bodies of Beyonders. As long as one also deceived the spiritual vision of other Beyonders, the effect of invisibility could be achieved.
Although he now understood the principle, he could not figure out how the other party had done it.
Because he could not do it, and many Beyonders could not completely conceal their own spirit bodies.
"Captain, what should we do next?"
Max rubbed his aching brow and waved his hand. "Report it. Then draw a portrait of that mysterious figure and see if we can find any relevant information in the church's archives."
"Count Gill's relatives and friends want an explanation from us. How should we respond?"
"Tell them that there was a thief hiding behind the curtains just now, planning to steal something, and that he fled after being discovered."
With patience, the Machinery Hivemind captain began handling the aftermath.
Only after finishing all this did he slump onto a long bench in the hospital corridor. Why was it always him who ran into such rotten luck again?