"Hey."

"Hey—"

"Hey!"

Dineh, who was flipping through a stack of letters, suddenly raised his head and looked at this side with murderous eyes. Cornwall, who was jumping up and down, suddenly fell silent. But he was silent for only a minute, and then he began to wave his arms silently again, trying to get the attention of the other person here without provoking Dineh.

Dineen looked at him coldly for three seconds, then picked up a bloody dagger next to him. But before he could raise his hand, Albert had already stood up in time to stand between them. The two of them wrestled briefly with their gazes, and then Dinen put down the dagger unhappily.

"You know, partner," he said, "we're still fugitives." ”

"But would you care about that?" Albert, who knew him well, pointed this out with a rhetorical question.

Dineen thought for a moment: "You're right. The rules of conduct should not be changed because of the status imposed on us...... Although I don't think it conflicts with my style. ”

But he turned his attention back to the papers and the transcript of the interrogation he had just had. Albert hesitated and walked over to Korver.

"Looks like you want to talk to me?" He asked softly.

Albert remembered gritting his teeth the last time he saw the face, and he deliberately punched it several times as they fought in the street. But now he was able to watch the other speak calmly, instead of turning all communication into violence again, as he had once thought, or looking to the family for support, as Dinin had suggested, which he now found too naïve to speak.

It's because I see more things, a wider world, and more important responsibilities. He thought. Now I know for sure what I want to do, not what I was told to do.

Korver twisted uncomfortably under his childlike eyes, then stuck his face between the two railings as much as possible, grabbed the two next to him with both hands, and glared at him, "What are you doing here?" ”

"As you can see," Albert said, gesturing to the still dry blood in the corner, "to destroy this group of cultists." ”

"I think that guy is more of a cultist......" Korver, who still thinks the screams echoing in his ears, muttered quietly.

Dineen looked up at him fiercely.

Sometimes I'm so suspicious - Albert tried to keep his face expressionless and didn't tear down the stage for his partner: "So how did you end up here?" ”

"Ah, well," Korver scratched his ears as he tried to scratch his hair, then realized that his arms couldn't get around the railing to the top of his head in this position, "Well, it's actually about you, too." ”

"And me?"

"yes." He waved his hand, "You see, I'm a bastard, and I can't even deny it. But, I'm the better kind of bastard, you know? It's just a little bit - such a bastard with a little conscience. ”

Korver raised his hand and gestured, probably the size of a fingernail. In the dim light, Albert barely saw it.

"This conscience of mine can't accept that my dad sold you to—you don't like that word? Then I'll change it - throw it to the gladiatorial arena to play with your life, although I admit that you are indeed very good at fighting, but this is too much. This is murder! I'm a jerk, but I've never done anything like that. ”

Albert, who preconceived that the other party was extremely guilty, blinked in surprise: "Then what have you done?" ”

Korver actually counted them seriously: "Beat up those homeless people I don't like, drink all year round without paying, find the shopkeeper's stubble and smash his goods, steal my dad's money to invite the circus to perform, fish out of prison those who look good at beating to be my little brother, and secretly shave the dogs and sheep of farmers who don't pay taxes...... Oh yes, and snatching the good-looking girl home, but you beat me up the first time. Why are you looking at me with that expression? ”

Dineh, who had been listening silently, snorted, and then buried his face in his arm. Albert looked at Korver blankly.

"I'm actually—" He tried his best to keep his voice from trembling, but it didn't help, "I ......"

He really couldn't say it anymore, so he felt embarrassed and held his forehead, and his only thought was to smoke his past self to death.

"What!" Korver shouted unconvinced, "I've just been a bastard for a few years, and I don't have any experience!" ”

The paladin raised his head sharply and glared at him with a grim expression that Dinen would have seen that would surely approve, "What else do you want to experience?" ”

Korver instantly wilted: "No, no..."

Realizing his gaffe, Albert took a deep breath, sorted out his emotions, and pulled the topic back to the point: "You haven't explained why you're here. ”

"Oh, yes." Korver suddenly returned to his normal state and rambled again, "You see, if I come for revenge, I will indeed beat you to the same level as I do, but that's all. Instead of taking you out. But my dad did. At the time, I thought you were going to die, and it made my conscience trouble, so I decided that I had to save someone to pay the debt. As for where to save people? That's certainly the most likely place to hide danger! For example, a weird clinic that has not had a single patient come to the door all year round but still hasn't closed down, this kind of suspicious broken place must be greasy! ”

Speaking of this, he slapped the railing hard, with a look of indignation: "But I didn't expect this place to be so dangerous!" And there is not even one who can save! ”

The two men who heard the point both cast a strange look at him with a retarded mind.

"So the reason why they want to clean the alley outside is to cover up the traces you left behind." Albert pondered, "What about your men?" ”

Korver pouted at the corpses, "It's all there." Not a single one left. ”

Albert glanced a little embarrassed: "The living or dead ones?" ”

"Since they're all dead now, I'll just say that," Cornor thought with his chin propped up, "and the one you knocked away was one of them." ”

"That's dead." Albert breathed a sigh of relief.

"Because they don't want to live." Korver said regretfully, "It's not good to surrender or beg for mercy or pay a ransom, or I'll surrender." ”

Albert was really shocked by him, and it was the first time in his life that someone had said the surrender to the evil forces in front of him so logically. And Dineh, whose lower limit is not so high, couldn't help but laugh, and his base value of negative favorability rose to neutral and friendly.

"I'm sorry you didn't meet him two days earlier." He said to Albert, "How much trouble I could have saved otherwise." ”

"When did you ask so little of others?" The paladin glared at him a little annoyed.

"Come on, I've never been very demanding of civilians." Dineen said disapprovingly.

Admittedly, Dineen was a little dismissive of those who did not participate in the fighting—not contemptuous. He was equally willing to protect civilians, to seek justice for them, and to resent their suffering, but he never expected anything from them. Gratitude and reward, conduct and character, or anything else, he asked for nothing. If what happened to Albert had happened to him, he wouldn't even frown when he turned and walked away, because it wasn't unexpected or worth caring about for him. In Dinein's view, the real rewards come from his peers and leaders. Only the responses of those he held dear to him could touch him – like Varian and Khadgar, and now Albert and Sal.

"He's a nobleman." Albert reminded.

"Then the standard will be lowered by one level." Dinen replied.

Albert stared at him for a long time, making sure that he meant it and that he had nothing to do with this deep-seated identity discrimination.

So he turned to Korver: "I think you've seen what they've done......"

"Oh, not really." Korver interrupted him, "All I saw was someone being dragged into a dark corner and then they started screaming, and soon after the screaming was over, the guy would come out in tatters on his own, looking for a place to pretend to be a statue...... Excuse me, you continue? He noticed that the paladin's face was continuing to turn dark, so he quickly shut up.

"You come and talk to him, partner." Albert couldn't bear it anymore and said, "May the Light forgive me—but I'm fed up!" ”

"It just means that you don't have a talent for comedy, or a talent for making fun of suffering." Dineen commented.

Despite that, when he looked at Korver, his face clearly meant, "If you dare to smile with me, you will die". And Korver is like a hyena being targeted by a leopard, stiff and unable to move the hair on the back of his neck, and can only show him an embarrassed smile.

"Alright, little master." Dinin said clearly, "No matter what the outcome, I will return you to your father intact and alive, so put away your self-defense mechanism and let's get down to business." ”

If you don't count the conflict between him and Albert, Korver's performance is somewhat impressive. Kidnapped and imprisoned by cultists, seeing acquaintances killed and turned into undead, the only thing that can save him is the fugitive gladiator who once had a grudge and killed people without blinking, not all noble young masters can still maintain their sanity after all this. But Korver held on, as Dineen put it, and rejoicing in suffering, or dramatizing things to escape from the truth, was a way for him to protect his spirit.

Knowing what Dineen meant, the smile on Korver's face disappeared suddenly. His expression slowly became gloomy, completely losing the liveliness he had just had.

"The Cult of the Damned, these are the people you meet, they are death cult fanatics, capable of transforming corpses into undead, that is, moving corpse golems. They aspire to immortality through death, and in order to involve more people, they will release a deadly plague. Whether you understand the need to exterminate them, or simply want revenge, I hope that you will get this information out to your father and urge him to pursue the matter, preferably by sending troops. ”

"Send troops?" Korver repeated, "I thought they were the only ones. ”

"No, much more than that." Dinen gestured to the table next to him, "Twenty to thirty corpses are sent in every week, and then they are transported somewhere else. And this behavior has been going on for almost a year. Counting the corpses they had obtained from other sources, if they were all gathered in one place, then the number would be quite large. ”

"Wait, twenty to thirty?" Albert was surprised, "Didn't Nekerry suspect this amount?" It's just a small clinic, right? ”

"The Cultists of the Damned used psychic spells on the people involved, causing them to ignore this." Dineen said as she stared at him.

“…… I'm a paladin, not a priest. Albert felt the need to repeat, "I don't know anything about spiritual magic except for the most basic treatments!" ”

Dinen turned his head back with a look on his face that I want you to do.

"What do you say, little master?" He asked Korver, "Are you going to run away and go home and ignore it, or are you going to talk to your father?" ”

Korver fell into deep thought. Dineen didn't urge again. It was a complete accident to meet the lord's son here, and he didn't really care if it could have the desired effect. If it weren't for the fact that Korver had been here for a day and a half and fully understood the nature of the Cursed Cultists, he wouldn't even want to give the other party any explanation, so as not to arouse the vigilance of the enemy with a big fanfare.

Hiding in the shadows is their advantage. After Tarummere's defeat, the Cultists of the Damned were much more cautious than before. But judging from the information that Dineen heard, they did not realize that this was deliberately targeted. And the trip to the Alterac Mountains also completely deprived the Cultists of the Damned the opportunity to track them down.

But an order from a lord is serious enough. If you can't defeat the enemy with a single hit, it will be more difficult to search and pursue later. So he had to be sure that what they did was worth the price.

"To be honest, I'd love to promise you." "But I can't guarantee that my dad will listen to me." In fact, there's a good chance he's taking this for my. ”

"If you're sure you want to, then I'm going to tell you it's not a problem," Dinen shrugged, "and you'll have proof." ”