Today I managed to sneak into the city.

Luckily, my three-legged cat stealth technique came in handy at critical moments.

But strangely, it seems that there are more than just corpse robbers and ghosts roaming here?

Is that......

It turned out to be ...... Mankind!!

Could it be that humans really have something to do with this?!

All day today, I was incognito following people back and forth in the city, trying to figure out what the hell they were doing here.

From the information gathered so far, it appears that these people belong to some kind of organization, similar to some kind of religion.

You must know that for naturally cowardly human beings, religion is an indispensable spiritual support, so they have always had a particularly large number of religious organizations.

According to them, this group should be called the "Violent Raiders", and they are here to wait for a guy named Diregi.

"This is the holy place where Lord Dirigi bestows favors. He not only gives us strength, but He judges them for us. Please prepare to welcome the Absolute God, Lord Dirigi!"

I felt like I heard them say something like that. Who are the "they"?......? Where did you seem to have heard of it, and what kind of relationship did he have to do with the Neupera incident?

Today I was attacked by my kind.

It's all because I didn't learn stealth well...... I should have thought that even if I became a corpse thief, as long as there was a trace of dark elf blood, they would still be aware of my existence.

Can I get infected?

I'm really unwilling...... You can't just die so easily...... I haven't figured out the culprit yet......

Today I continue to track those humans with stealth.

The Violent Search and Capture Group is an extremely hierarchical organization, and it is very difficult to find some useful information.

But my gut tells me that what they're planning here is anything but a small matter of sesame mung beans.

I followed a seemingly high-ranking human in this organization to a place of high alert.

I didn't expect to be found here

- Dimensional rift?!

If you're a dark elf, I think you know what an extradimensional rift means.

Anyway, I'd like to attach some information about the "Extradimensional Rift" here.

"Alternate dimension" is a kind of parallel world that coexists with the present world, and "alternate dimension rift" refers to the passage connecting Arad and "alternate dimension".

Hundreds of years ago, the ancestors of the Dark Elves stumbled upon it and learned that it could be used to travel through different time and space using the Extradimensional Rift.

Despite hundreds of years of research, we still can't fully grasp the function of the extradimensional rift, and we have never been able to solve the myriad side effects caused by the experiments.

This information can be said to be the top secret in the dark elves, and I am also aware of it because of my special identity as a court alchemist.

But why do humans know about the Extradimensional Rift, have they also started to study it?......

Could this plague also have something to do with the rift in another dimension?......

While investigating the people who died due to the plague, I discovered some strange connections.

For example, this plague, which has been called the "Purple Mushroom Disease" by our dark elves, is exactly the same as the "Blood Curse" that raged in the human world hundreds of years ago!

The "Blood Curse" recorded in ancient texts refers to the phenomenon of large-scale human beings mutating into monsters known as "pretenders" who live by sucking the blood of their own kind.

Since humans who have become "pretenders" are indistinguishable from ordinary people during the day, they only suck blood at night. Thus the unknowable fear crushed the fragile humanity, causing the meager trust between the human race to completely collapse and begin to kill each other irrationally—the most terrible thing about the Blood Curse.

And our dark elves have a different physique from humans, once they are infected with this plague, they will grow something like purple mushrooms on their bodies, so we call it "purple mushroom disease". It was easy to distinguish the symptoms, and it was this that prevented the tragedy of the spread of the plague.

However, to my surprise, it is said that the Pretender has disappeared for decades, and now that the Purple Mushroom Disease has reappeared, is it the Blood Curse that has reappeared on the continent of Arad, and why is the Blood Curse reappearing? Is it just a coincidence or is it all being manipulated by someone?

It seems that the crack in another dimension is the crux of everything.

It is said that the priests who once curbed the curse of blood are now undergoing secret training somewhere in order to eradicate this evil curse once and for all.

If you can meet them, will you be able to solve this mystery?

Purple mushrooms are starting to grow in my body.

At the same time, there is a strange smell, and in my experience, this smell is even more toxic.

Alas, I'm still infected......

I don't know if it's because of the return to light,

I've been thinking more and more lately.

I finally remembered where I had heard of the Derrighi that the humans had mentioned—from the mouth of the soothsayer Alice. I remember she said that Diregi was one of the nine apostles and seemed to be the embodiment of the plague.

So...... Everything seems to have a preliminary answer.

Based on our previous research, it is impossible for the Extradimensional Rift to activate automatically, and someone must be manipulating it.

In other words, someone used the rift in another dimension to transfer the apostles from the far away demon realm to the continent where we live.

Could Dirigi already be in Neupera?

Probably not.

Because I remember Alice saying that wherever Diriji passed, it would become a plague-filled human purgatory, and there would be no grass.

Judging from the current situation, some animals and plants have not shown any obvious reaction, and the humans who have been in the violent search group are also alive and well.

So, Dirigi shouldn't have arrived in Nojpera yet, at least for now.

Of course, there is another possibility - that Diregi had been here through an extradimensional rift before, only to be transferred elsewhere.

If that's the case, then who exactly transferred that evil apostle to this humble dark elf town, and why did they do it?

We dark elves have been living in isolation underground, although we do have some unique abilities like invisibility. However, if the other races perceive these abilities as a threat to them and want to exterminate the Dark Elves, they should move Diregi to a large city like the Dark City instead of a small village like Nojpera.

Because if that were the case, I'm afraid our dark elves would have perished long ago.