Silver City, the morgue hall.
Derrick stood at the steps, his eyes red and fixed on the front, looking at his parents lying separately in the two coffins.
On the stone slab in front of him was a silver, simple straight sword, which was slightly swaying in the thunderous sound of the house trembling from time to time.
The Berg couple inside the coffins were not truly dead yet. They were trying to keep their eyes open, breathing faintly and violently at times. But in the eyes of some people, the brilliance of their lives had dimmed uncontrollably and irreversibly.
"Derrick, do it!" An old man in a black robe, holding a hard walking stick, looked at the boy with a face almost distorted, and said in a deep voice.
"No, no, no!"
Derrick, with brownish-yellow hair, shook his head continuously. With each word, he stepped back a step, and in the end, he even let out a scream that tore at his heart and split his lungs.
Ding!
The old man tapped his walking stick and said:
"Do you want the entire city to sacrifice itself for your parents?"
"You should be very clear. We are the dark people abandoned by the gods, and can only live in this cursed place. All the deceased will turn into terrifying evil spirits. No matter what method is used, it is impossible to reverse it. Except, except that there are people with the same blood who can end their lives with their own hands!"
"Why? Why?" Derrick, with his face blank and desperate, shook his head and asked, "Why are the people of Silver City destined to kill their parents as soon as they are born...?"
The old man closed his eyes, as if remembering the past experiences: "... This is our destiny. This is the curse we bear. This is the will of the gods..."
"Pull up your sword, Derrick. This is respect for your parents."
"After that, when you calm down, you can try to become a god-blood warrior."
The Berg couple inside the coffin wanted to speak, but after a few chest movements, could only make a heh-heh-heh sound.
Derrick struggled to take a step, returned to the side of the silver straight sword, and trembledly extended his right hand.
The cold sensation reached his brain, making him suddenly remember the blood ice his father brought back from hunting, a piece the size of his palm could make the room cool for several days.
His eyes flashed the stern father teaching sword skills, the kind father patting the dust off his back, the gentle mother sewing clothes, the brave mother blocking in front of him when facing the mutated monsters, and the scene of the whole family gathered around, sharing food by the flickering candlelight...
Whew... A suppressed and extreme low-pitched sound came from his throat, and his right hand suddenly exerted force, pulling up the straight sword.
Tiptoeing!
He buried his head and rushed forward, raised the straight sword high, and plunged it down heavily. Ah! With a painful scream, blood splattered, landing on Derrick's face and in his eyes.
The scene before him was a sea of crimson. He drew out his straight sword and plunged it into the adjacent coffin.
The sharp metal pierced through the flesh. Derrick loosened his grip and staggered to his feet.
He didn't look inside the two coffins, as if being chased by evil spirits, he stumbled out of the morgue hall and clutched his hands tightly, his teeth gritted. The deep red on his face was washed away, leaving faint traces.
"Ah..." The old man watching all this sighed.
On the streets of Silver City stood rows of stone pillars, with lanterns hanging on them, and candles that had not been lit inside the lanterns.
The sky here had no sun, no moon, no stars, only unchanging darkness and the tearing lightning that shattered everything.
With the illumination of the lightning, the people of Silver City moved along the dim roads, and during the few hours when the lightning subsided, they regarded it as the legendary true night. During this time, candles were needed to illuminate the city, dispel the darkness, and warn against monsters.
Derrick walked straight through the street, not thinking about where he was going at all. But as he walked, he found that he had actually returned to his doorstep.
He took out the key, unlocked the lock, pushed the door, and saw everything he was familiar with, but he didn't hear his mother's concerned voice, nor did he encounter his father's scolding for his running around. The room was empty and cold.
Derrick bit his teeth again, quickly returned to his room, and once again found the crystal ball that his father said was used to worship the gods by a long-lost city.
He knelt down, facing the crystal ball, with no hope in his heart, praying, pleading with pain:
"Great gods, please turn your gaze back to this place you abandoned."
"Great gods, please free us, the dark people, from the curse of fate."
"I am willing to dedicate my life to you, to please you with my blood." ...
Over and over again, just as he was completely desperate and about to stand up, he saw a deep red light burst out from the pure crystal ball.
This light was like flowing water, and it instantly submerged Derrick.
When he regained some consciousness, he found himself standing in a magnificent palace supported by huge stone pillars, in front of him was an ancient and mottled bronze long table, and opposite it was a figure shrouded in thick gray fog.
Apart from this, the surroundings were empty, ethereal, and silent. At the bottom, there was a haze of gray-white fog and a series of unreal deep red dots.
A flame named Hope was ignited in Derrick's heart. He looked at the figure sitting on the front seat with a blank and puzzled expression and said:
"You, you are a deity?"
After asking this, he suddenly remembered a sentence from the general knowledge book of the Silver City and quickly lowered his head.
The sentence was:
"Do not look directly at the gods!"
Klein leaned back, crossed his hands, and in a leisurely and relaxed manner, answered in Giant Language:
"I am not a deity. I am just an ignorant fool who is interested in the long history."
He had already tapped his left teeth twice earlier and noticed that the surface of the star spirit in the etheric body of the young man was discolored and not uniform.
This indicated that the other party was not an extraordinary person.
Fool... Derrick chewed on this word and remained silent for a long time before struggling to say:
"Whether you are a deity or a fool, my prayer will not change. I hope all the people of the Silver City can break free from the curse of fate and hope that the sun described in those books will appear in the sky. If, if it's possible, I also hope that my parents can be resurrected."
Hey, I'm not a wish-granting machine... Klein released his hands and smiled:
"Why should I help you?"
Derrick was stunned for a moment and then said:
"I will offer my soul and use my blood to please you."
"I have no interest in the blood and soul of mortals," Klein smiled and shook his head, watching the mood of the young man in front of him gradually turn into a color of despair.
Before the other party could speak again, he said calmly:
"I can give you an opportunity."
"I am a fool who likes to exchange equivalents. You can get what you want from me and from others like you, pay attention, it must be of equivalent value..."
"This will make you stronger. Maybe one day, you can rely on yourself and free the Silver City from the curse and bring the sun described in those books back to the sky."
According to the description of the other party, he was quite certain that the Silver City was in the so-called "God's Abandoned Land".
Of course, he couldn't be one hundred percent sure for the time being. After all, according to religious scriptures, the state of the sky without the sun still existed in the first era, the Chaos Era. After all, no one knows if there are strange places unknown to the North Continent countries besides the "God's Abandoned Land" in the world.
Derrick listened quietly, lowered his head silently, and after a while, replied:
"I want to become 'the Sun', and I want to get the formula for the initial sequence of the magic potion from you."
Sequence, magic potion, "the Sun"... The sequence path mastered by the Eternal Sun Church... It seems to be in the same world...
And the word "sequence" was born after the appearance of the first desecrated stone slab, which was at the end of the second dark era... In other words, if the Silver City is really in the "God's Abandoned Land", it indicates that this region was separated from the North and South Continents at least at the end of the second era...
Could this be related to the catastrophe of the third era? In the legend, the Night Goddess, the Earth Mother Goddess, the War God, and the Storm Lord, along with the Eternal Sun, Knowledge and Wisdom Gods, came to protect humanity through the catastrophe... Klein gathered a lot of information from the other party's words.
However, he had to work hard to listen and even harder to organize his words because he wasn't yet so proficient in Giant Language. Fortunately, Gufasak language directly derived from the Giant language. And in this regard, Klein can be considered a sort of expert. So, he has made rapid progress in mastering the Giant language and is not likely to stumble now.
Klein maintained his stance and replied calmly and matter-of-factly:
"This deal can be postponed. For the next two days, you'd better not go out and try not to stay in the same room with others."
He didn't know what the time unit was in Silver City, nor did he understand how it could be converted to the time of the Kingdom of Ruen in the North Continent. So, he simply stated it as "tomorrow". After the Tarot gathering, he would tell the other party, and from then on, it would be at this time point, this...
As for the "day" unit, since it exists in the Giant language, Klein believed that even if Silver City didn't use it for counting, the other party should understand what it means. "... "OK, I'll obey your order." Derrick replied with his head down, without raising any objections.
Klein breathed a sigh of relief and tapped the edge of the table with his finger, saying:
"Before sending you back, let's finish the equivalent exchange we just started. I gave you a powerful opportunity, and you should also pay the corresponding price."
"I said I'm a fool who loves long history. The thing I demand in exchange is the history of the Silver City, the ones you know."
Derrick thought for a moment and replied in a low voice:
"I'll describe it truthfully."
"From the moment the Lord, the omniscient and all-powerful God, abandoned this land, the Silver City has existed. No, before that, it existed, just called the Silver Kingdom."