Wandering alone through the dilapidated streets of disrepair, a blue cloak trench coat shawl, a grim face under the brim of his hat, and eyes as sharp as a falcon, he walked into the tatten with a tattered sign hanging at the door.

There were very few guests inside, sipping ale mixed with water with their heads down, and they were frying salted fish pieces and air-dried cured meats, and no one noticed him coming in, perhaps not caring at all.

Walking to the counter, seeing the young bartender with a tired look, absentmindedly wiping the stain in front of him, Chart curled his fingers and tapped lightly on the bar. The young man came back to his senses, looked up sharply, and found that it was a regular customer who occasionally frequented the small shop, still with a cold face that no one would approach, and according to the old rules, he served a glass of bubbling ale and two cold and hard sourdough bread with a slight tooth.

"How does it feel to be alive?"

"Gollum...... Gollum!" After drinking the glass of wine in one gulp, the black knight, who had lost his sense of taste, chewed the slices of bread repeatedly and swallowed them reluctantly.

"Six good hands entered the abandoned ruins, and I was the only one who came out alive. ”

The bartender's hand on the counter suddenly stopped, and he stared into the eyes of the black knight, and asked suspiciously, "Curse?" or the plague?"

"Neither, huh...... Perhaps both! The exterior wall of the ruins is engraved with an ancient inscription: The dying pass by here and sow the seeds of death. This is the famous quote of an evil lich from the old days, who was known to have been purified by Aurora, the Chosen One of the Lady of Dawn, after spreading the plague, and perhaps discovering one of its many secret strongholds. ”

"What's going on with the Grey Shroud?" the young bartender deliberately lowered his voice, and the muffled whisper was probably only heard by the two of them.

The Cursed Scepter was very pleased, he was the eagerest of the people to open the ruins, but the Black Scepter Dismaster used his prestige to suppress it, so Holm sent an adventuring party led by his henchmen to enter the shadowy realm through the rock formations of the sewers. As his squire knight, I had the privilege of being a part of it, and if I hadn't brought out a few Lich relics, I wouldn't have been doomed...... Hmph!"

Speaking of which, Chart kept silent, this time he took the liberty of visiting the underground ruins, and most of the team of the cursed scepter was damaged, if it weren't for the merit and bringing the strange things in the ruins back to the organization, Holm would definitely be angry with him, there is no doubt about it.

"This piece of information is very valuable, and I believe that there must be a lot of people interested in spreading the news on the black market. The bartender put down the dirty, greasy rag in his hand, wiped his hands vigorously with his apron, and turned to take out a bottle of Comet Margot from the locked drawer.

"What is this? Buying a bottle of wine to the tasteless Black Knight, are you in the water?" Chart suddenly reached out, grabbed the bartender by the collar and pulled it in front of him.

The young black market intelligence broker felt that Chart's cold right hand was like a cunning snake swimming around his neck and face, and the black knight, who was very suspicious and could not trust anyone, seemed to want to uncover the imaginary disguise, but after a long time, no flaws were found.

"I'm sorry!" the Phantasmal Knight let go of his pincer-like hand, forcing a smile on his face, and helping the bartender sort his clothes.

"You're improving fast!" the young intelligence broker disagreed, if he didn't even care about this little thing, he was not qualified to do this job at all.

"It's all the result of the miscellaneous transformation of the Cursed Scepter!Holm canonized me as his squire knight through an unknown ritual, and can be used as a source of curse magic if necessary. "A notorious lone traveler in the underworld, Charlt the Phantom Hunter has no gratitude for Holm's life-saving grace, just as he doesn't care about Aldrich Triss's covert blow that nearly breaks his skull.

"It seems that the rumors are true!Holm's promotion is incomplete, with fatal flaws and omissions, and the scepter-based Scepter Knight, who should be the second strongest, has been firmly suppressed by Dismaster, and needless to say, I'm afraid that the Dead-Eyed Knight on the upper rank can also make him scramble. ”

Charle nodded silently after listening, accepted the bottle of Margot Comet vintage red wine, and just got up and suddenly remembered something: "By the way, the three strange things I brought out from the underground ruins, after the identification of the Black Scepter Dismaster, one of them is a crown style, a ring that can be large or small, wrapped around the resentment of the dead as strong as the substance, and you can faintly hear the roar and roar when you get close to your ear, it is said that they come from a well-known family in the Lonely Mountain." ”

The young bartender didn't come back to his senses for a moment, and it wasn't until the Phantasm Knight had left the tavern that he remembered the noble clan who had settled in the Lonely Mountain, Orton Triss, the only family of the Twelve Knights to fall because of their tragic fate.

The black market intelligence broker immediately remembered the recent big splash in the docks, the just-in-time Aldrich Triss, and secretly wondered in his heart: "It can't be so coincidental, Chart has actually found the source of the curse that plagued the Triss family, if the just-in-time Aldrich knows, his face will be very exciting." I'm a little impatient to sell this unusually expensive piece of information on the black market. ”

There are also quite a few forces in the underworld staring at the Grey Shroud, and anyone would want to know their every move for the Black Knights, who have the two scepters and are arguably the most powerful.

Time is money!, the young bartender gathered his messy thoughts, and immediately made a decision that was in his own interest, he turned and hurried into the kitchen, greeted the tavern owner who was also a chef and a bookkeeper, and quickly came to the dark alley behind the tavern, kicked away a pile of garbage, exposed the manhole cover of the sewer, and slid down with a thud, and his feet had just touched the ground, and the familiar intelligence broker did not even think about it, and went straight to the "safest" Hawkeye black market.

Charlt, the Phantom Knight, didn't go far, quietly turned back to the door of the tavern, leaning against the leaky wooden wall everywhere, leaning his ears against the decaying black-brown wall, and hearing the chaotic sound of chickens flying and dogs jumping inside, so he was satisfied with the red wine of the Comet of Margo and went to the Silver Crown Pawnshop on Coral Avenue not far away.

The estate, secretly controlled by the magnate Austin Bettler through professional managers, specializes in laundering shady stolen goods, and the bottled red wine is luckily sold for a good price, but Charlt estimates that it will not be long before the bottle will return to the locked drawer of the tavern intelligence broker.

Before the clock tower's hour hand pointed to midnight, the newly harvested information about the Grey Shroud had set off a frenzy in the underworld, with the involvement of the Vigilant Eye Tris family, and even those involved in the White Knight Aldridge line eagerly paying attention.

The undercurrents converged, and Dismaster, the Black Scepter, quickly came under pressure from all sides, but he remained firmly by Holm's side at the critical moment, even though his private actions were tantamount to rebellion, betraying the very ideals on which the Grey Shroud was created.

Aldrich Triss, who is indirectly involved, has no way of knowing this, since he reached an agreement with Baruch Stone Axe to complete the grain deal and obtain the opal glowing with golden light, after nightfall he seems to have reached some kind of condition or key opportunity to enter the secret realm of the lake between the unreal and the real again.

He was followed by a quaint coin in addition to the natural opal, but as usual when Triss approached the evergreens, they flew up and hung from the verdant branches, and they were quite high with reindeer antlers at the top.

This time, for some reason, the evergreen tree did not open the door to the strange world for him, but instead the dead tree with sturdy branches, with the help of the shadows cast by the warm sun, entangled Aldrich for no reason, and then quickly pulled him closer to the tree, until Terry disappeared into the round arch of the dense growth rings, and the pumpkin headdress hanging from the dead tree grinned wildly.

Through the lead-gray clouds, a discrete, white shadow passed through Aldrich's body, weaving a nearly transparent membrane bat wing for him, and as he glided and landed on the ground, it suddenly transformed into a gray-robed cloak with sleeves.

The system opened, and the "fragile skin" of the equipment slot flashed a ghostly light, and suddenly appeared in the cloak out of thin air, and the long sword made of the metalized egg core of the "rotten foam", attached to the cowhide scabbard, appeared in Tris's hand, and was suspended from his belt.

"Boiling Silt, Unidentified, Refined Weapons, Attack 6-12, Burn 1-3 ......"

"It seems that Uncle Zatan, the blacksmith, smelted and smelted his fiery emotions into it, so there was additional scorching damage, but what happened without identification? ”

Surrounded by mist-shrouded forests, walking on undulating ground, barefoot from time to time deep in the mud, the fat moss surface slippery and unable to stand, if Aldridge had not been very balanced, the life experience of the Whispering Forest gave him the talent to adapt to any forest area, he might have slipped and fallen to the ground.

Spotting one direction and measuring the earth with his feet, Tris walked straight ahead, the friendship bestowed by Crow Kronis, who had given him the gift of crow discernment, and whose vision was extended even to the mist.

After walking for a long time, about half an hour after estimating the number of steps, Aldrich suddenly saw Aldrich smoothly through the dense forest shrouded in mist, and saw a swampy area with lush water and grass.

The faint smell of blood rushed towards them, the dark blue blades of grass were full of sharp barbs, the rough and harmless pumice stones in the shallow pools were actually fierce crocodiles, and the cunning vipers were like chameleons changing the color of their scales at will in order to adapt to their surroundings, they crawled slowly on the ground, and the lush and lively swampy area was simply full of traps.

"There's a new guy coming. The dead silence was suddenly broken by a sentence, and the familiar lingua franca made Tris feel inexplicably reassured, and then he raised his guard, his left palm against the hilt of the sword, as if he could draw his sword out of its sheath at any moment and unleash a proud backhand sword.

In the depths of the swamp, orange-red bonfires suddenly lit up, and the curtain that seemed to obscure the view slowly fell, revealing the stage that had been set up. Aldrich saw a simple but passable camp about a hundred and eighty paces away, and four strangers in gray cloaks were sitting in a circle, and one of them stretched out his hand to greet him, presumably from whom he had just said the words.

"Come on, newcomers who have just arrived will never dare to come, so don't be reluctant. The person who spoke seemed to be a girl, but the hoarse, low voice seemed to be tired and had not slept well.

Aldrich did not go straight over, but turned and walked into the dense forest, using his sword to prepare for the local material. Sure enough, it didn't take long for him to step on a webbed plank and step into the swampy area without hesitation.