The sound of rapid footsteps approaching from afar reached Klein's ears, calming him down considerably as he stood at the entrance of the duty room.
"What happened?" Leonard, who was the first to arrive, held a revolver in his hand and asked in a deep voice.
Seeing him struggling to control his speed, Klein immediately thought of something that Rosan had mentioned before. Three years ago, when Leonard, who had just become a "Waker", attempted to run up the stairs at full sprint without adapting to the magic power, he turned into a wheel.
He coughed lightly and pointed at the Charnis door:
"Earlier, there was a loud knocking sound coming from inside, then it turned into a tapping sound, and later, the door was pushed open a little."
"The Charnis door was pushed open?" The short Cohen-Lee was astonished and asked.
"Yes, a gap was opened." Klein was about to continue describing when he saw Leonard, Cohen-Lee, and Luo Yao not approaching the duty room but stopping a few steps away and forming an arc, seemingly on guard against him.
He paused and said:
"Are you suspecting me?"
"No, it's not suspicion. This is a normal handling procedure." Cohen-Lee shook his head and denied.
In this tense atmosphere, Leonard still laughed in an unseemly manner and added:
"In other parishes, there have been such cases. The extraordinary person guarding the Charnis door lost control, rang the bell, and then, while the teammates who came to help were not paying attention, killed two people."
"Alright." Klein no longer felt aggrieved or angry because of being targeted. Instead, he asked, "Then how can I prove that I wasn't out of control?"
Leonard suppressed his smiling expression and tapped his chest four times, then spoke in a low voice:
"They were naked, without clothes or food, and had no cover in the cold."
"They were soaked by the rain because there was no place to hide, so they hugged the rock tightly."
"They were mothers whose children were taken away, they were orphans who had lost hope, they were poor people forced to leave the right path."
"The night did not abandon them and gave them favor." ...
The sacred and compassionate prayer words reverberated underground, bringing about a kind of tranquil relief to everyone's body, mind, and soul.
Noticing that Klein showed no abnormal reaction, Leonard stopped reciting and smiled, saying:
"There's no problem anymore. You remain our trustworthy companion."
The cold and reserved lady, Luo Yaoyang, glanced at the Chenxi Gate and asked actively:
"After the door was pushed open a little, what did you see?"
"I saw the misfortune puppet, the one wearing the black classical court dress, 3-0625," Klein replied with a lingering sense of fear. "But within three seconds, it was pulled back by an invisible force, and the Chenxi Gate closed again. What on earth is this situation?"
Leonard and Cohenli, Luo Yaoyang exchanged glances and said:
"Ha ha, we, like you, don't know the reason for all this. Since the Chenxi Gate has closed again and there are no abnormal occurrences, we shouldn't enter at this time. We must wait until dawn and wait for the captain."
At this moment, Luo Yaoyang coldly added:
"I will stay here with you to stand guard."
"OK," Leonard spread his hands and joked, "As the strongest person here, I will stay too. Cohenli, you go back to the second floor. In case the police department has an urgent case that can't open the door."
Cohenli didn't say much and nodded immediately, then turned and left.
At this time, Leonard looked at Klein and Luo Yaoyang respectively and said:
"Perhaps we can continue playing cards? In this situation, we need some entertainment to prevent us from being too tense."
"Sure," Klein adjusted his revolver and put it back in his armpit holster. Luo Yaoyang didn't say yes or no, with her smooth and soft black hair, followed him into the guard room.
Playing dominoes, no, playing against evil, Klein said casually:
"The misfortune puppet, I mean 3-0625, according to the description in the materials, it shouldn't have the characteristic of being alive..."
"Haha, three A's." Leonard pressed down on a hand and said in a casual manner, "In the past forty years, 3-0625 has never shown the characteristic of being alive. We can first assume that the description in the materials is correct, and use this as a premise to reason and deduce."
"OK. Do you have an idea?" Luo Yaoyang asked concisely.
While Klein hesitated whether to throw away the three "2"s, Leonard took a sip of the freshly brewed coffee and said:
"Yes, since 3-0625 itself doesn't have the characteristic of being alive, its performance today must be due to the influence of other factors, and these are recent factors. Otherwise, it should have shown us this side of it long ago."
"And what has been different in the past month in front of the Chenxi Gate?"
Luo Yaoyang looked at the three "2"s left by Klein and thought for a few seconds before saying:
"There is only one thing that is different from before, that is, the notes of the Antigonus family and the seal '2-049' once stayed in the back of the Chenxi Gate for one night."
Leonard looked at the cards in his hand, tapping the table while smiling:
"If we can make the misfortune puppet exhibit abnormal behavior, '2-049' would have already caused similar events in Beckland's Chenxi Gate long ago. Therefore, I suspect the problem lies in that Antigonus family's notes book."
Klein thought carefully and couldn't help nodding frequently:
"This might be the biggest... Leonard, I didn't expect you to be a good at reasoning person."
Generally speaking, romantic poets and good at reasoning are incompatible...
"That's just because he has been reading detective novels recently." Luo Yaoyang stated calmly beside him. "Two kings, an eight to K straight, no one wants it? Three sixes, gone."
Seeing this scene, Klein and Leonard fell into silence simultaneously.
Without concentrating on playing cards, they forgot an extremely important thing:
Luo Yaoyang was the "evil" in this round! Looking at Luoyao's cards, Klein seized the opportunity to ask again:
"What force pulled 3-0625 back?"
Leonard glanced at him and chuckled:
"You don't think the protective measures behind the Charnis Gate are just the sealed chambers buried deep underground and a few elderly guards, do you?"
"Actually, when the sun completely set, the guards left the Charnis Gate and returned to the Cathedral of Saint Serenade."
"The power inside reached its peak at night and was no longer suitable for living beings. It would weaken when the sun rose. That's why the captain told us not to enter the Charnis Gate no matter what sounds we heard."
In other words, the captain forgot to tell me this reason... Klein mused and asked:
"Something like a magic array?"
Like a magnified version of spells and amulets?
"Um." Luoyao, while shuffling the cards, nodded and said, "The Charnis Gate was placed beneath the central church of each city to rely on the daily arrival of believers to maintain it. Their devout prayers would allow some spiritual energy to enter the array, accumulating over time."
"So, that's it..." Klein nodded in understanding and saw a bad card.
At this moment, Leonard smiled:
"The protective measures behind the Charnis Gate are not just this one. Saint Serenade's ashes are buried there. She was a high-level strongman in her lifetime."
Saint Serenade's ashes? The ashes of a high-level strongman? Sacred ashes? What could they do? Klein was both puzzled and curious.
Saint Serenade was a saint during the establishment of the Night Goddess Church, active in the ancient Tertiary period. She was recorded in various holy texts, so among the believers who worship the Night Goddess, Serenade was a common name.
Leonard seemed to have heard Klein's thoughts and spoke on his own:
"There are rumors that the remains or ashes of high-level strongmen after death still have incredible power. Of course, this is just a rumor."
Klein nodded slightly and turned his attention back to the cards.
For the next few hours, nothing unusual happened at the Charnis Gate, but Klein lost a total of two soles. It made him very sad. And Leonard, who had a romantic poet's air about him while playing cards, lost four soles and five pence. Only the silent Luoyao was the winner.
"The sun has just risen. It's my turn now." The calm "Writer" Sijia Tengoness lady entered the duty room at six o'clock.
Klein wrote his experience last night in the notebook and returned with Leonard and Luoyao to the Black Thorn Security Company.
At this moment, he looked extremely tired, while the "Midnight Poet" and "The Waker" were still full of vigor.
"This is the difference between different sequences..." Klein was about to go home through the partition to rest when he suddenly saw the captain open the door.
"Good morning, Captain." He greeted and couldn't help yawning.
Dunn, wearing a black windbreaker, took off his hat and glanced at him with gray eyes:
"Good morning. You should go back to rest. Did anything happen last night?"
Klein briefly told Leonard and the captain about the bad luck doll incident.
"Um." Dunn didn't express an opinion and walked towards his office with a composed expression. "I'll send a telegram to the church."
Klein didn't stay any longer and walked slowly out of 36 Zortlan Street, breathing in the cool morning air.
His spirit was lifted. Suddenly, he remembered something he had always forgotten before:
"I forgot to tell Captain and Leonard that the bad luck doll had paper in its hands!"
"How could I forget?"
"There seems to be a subtle force influencing me, preventing me from telling this matter to other night watchmen..." "... The Antigonus family's notes were stored behind the Charnes Gate in Tingen many days ago. The 3-0625 misfortune puppet should have been affected long before that. Why did the anomaly not occur until last night?"
"Because it was my first shift at the Charnes Gate last night?"
"It exerted all its strength just to let me see the patterns on that paper?"
"Is this the purpose that the Antigonus family's notes wanted to achieve?"
"Because I came into contact with it and it survived, and became a diviner?" ...
One by one, doubts flashed through Klein's mind, leaving him frozen in place, unsure whether he should pretend nothing had happened, go home and sleep, or go upstairs to report to the captain.