Colin was nervous at the moment, and while he could easily tell by his reverse perception whether someone was secretly watching him, it didn't make him sure if there was anyone in the cellar staring at Bartomir. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

"Protect the Viscount!" Colin shouted quickly.

One of the soldiers hurriedly shielded Bartomir with a shield, leaving no gap, while Colin closed his eyes and tried to feel the sensations converging on him. He believed that if he suddenly reminded the guards to defend Bartomir at this time, the killer in the shadows would definitely turn his attention back to him as soon as possible, and that would be the best time for him to launch a mental attack.

However, it backfired, and Colin felt no sense, only the eyes of the guards swept around the room.

"Break these barrels!" Collin ordered again, fearing that the barrels contained a murderer.

The soldiers didn't move this time, and it wasn't until Bartomir asked them to cooperate with Colin's remaining soldiers that they began to break the barrels.

Huge barrels were slashed open by the sword, and the liquor splattered and overflowed the ground.

"Plop!" a humanoid object fell out of the keg.

It's a corpse.

The guards on the side immediately surrounded and poked with the tip of their swords to confirm that they were completely dead before signaling that they could perform an autopsy.

The coroner carefully flipped the body into a supine position and began to prepare for the autopsy, with Colin involved. It is clear that the man was not drowned: he had a visible knife wound in the neck that cut directly off the throat. The corpse was then soaked in liquor, and the blood was almost completely drained.

"But it looks like this guy is more capable of fighting. A coroner pointed to the corpse's broken right arm.

"It was just a dying struggle, probably broken after being captured, and the attacker should have been quite skilled. Another coroner also noticed this.

Colin was silent, his eyes closed trying to sense the remnants of the liquor around the corpse. Unfortunately, the already thin blood in the liquor was contaminated with alcohol, and there was no effective information for a long time.

"Ouch......" Colin sighed and stood up. Several times in a row, he knew that the female assassin had come, but until now his understanding of the other party was only a vague illusion. It couldn't help but make Colin feel frustrated.

Looking back at the corpse, this should be Garcia, although it was a little swollen and stained red, but some basic features had not disappeared. It seems that the black market is no longer needed, and this clue has been broken.

At this time, one of the guards quickly ran into the wine cellar, did not have time to catch his breath, and reported with a red face and pulling his throat: "My lord, the main road leading to the east gate has sunken, it is said that it was caused by the explosion of the sewer, and now the traffic is completely paralyzed. ”

Bartomir was stunned for a moment, there were so many strange things that happened on this day, and he couldn't help but wonder: there seemed to be some connection between them.

But at this point, Bartomir could not be puzzled. The old lord immediately left the sheriff and coroner to continue the follow-up investigation, and he immediately rushed to the scene of the incident with his guards.

......

The incident was not very far from "Jimmy's Broken Pocket", and Bartomir's team soon arrived at the scene.

There was a blackened ravine about six meters deep and four meters wide across the road, and there were large quantities of rocks and muck from the explosion scattered on both sides of the pit, as well as some blood stains, but it is estimated that the injured had been carried away by the city guards.

The bottom of the ravine was filled with foul-smelling sewage, and it was indeed the sewer that had been blown open, and the smell of gunpowder in the air seemed to confirm this.

But it was the smell of gunpowder that alerted Bartomir.

Sewer explosions occur in cities on the mainland, usually due to flameworms entering the swamp-filled sewer sections.

The Flame Bug is a very strange creature, and unlike most insects, this small bug hibernates in the summer and is mostly active in the winter. In order to withstand the severe cold, it will hoard ignited charcoal in its body in a special way, and this charcoal will burn slowly in the body of the flame insect until it is burned to ashes and expelled by the flame bug.

Flame bugs rely on the body fluids secreted in the carbon sac to maintain the slow burning of the charcoal fire, and to expel some large pieces of charcoal that cannot be soaked by the body fluids. And these slags are actually still burning when they are discharged, and these sparks are extremely hot and can burn for a long time because of the larger ones. As a result, flame insects have become the main culprits of many fires.

But a sewer gas explosion caused by a flame bug is not usually as powerful: the air from the explosion spreads out to both sides of the pipe and looks for an outlet to overflow, with very little damage to the heavy layer of soil above.

The smell of gunpowder and the splashes of dirt at the scene also seem to prove that the explosion was deliberate. Only the power of the directional blasting of explosives is enough to destroy the deep roadbed and stony pavement of Eaton.

Colin on the side naturally realized this, and was about to open his mouth to remind, only to see Bartomir make a silent gesture and point to the dark alley on the side with his eyes. Colin turned his attention there, and suddenly realized that dozens of senses were locked on him.

Colin looked at Bartomir with wide eyes in some surprise, only to see the old lord sneer, draw his sword and shout: "Shield array!"

The Lord's Guard is one of the most elite armed forces in Eaton City, with a total of fifty men, but the maximum number of people who appear around Bartomir is twenty-five, and it is speculated that this may be an army on rotation.

The lord's guard is an infantry in terms of troops, wearing infantry guard heavy armor, and the armor is painted black, and the surface is still there

The dark gold pattern is used to protect the neck, chest, shoulders and hem with heavy steel plates. Each person wears a short spear of one meter and a large shield more than one person high, as well as an extension rod of a short gun and a mace. The lord's personal guard of Eton City, even the strongest infantry in the entire continent, had very few chances to strike: the enemy was rarely able to defeat even Bartomir's outlying forces.

Bartomir gave the order, and the guards immediately formed a shield array with large shields, protecting Bartomir and Colin in the middle.

Almost instantly, hundreds of crossbow arrows flew out from the alleys on both sides, and they were blocked by the big shield. However, the caravan guards outside the shield were not so lucky, and most of them fell after a rain of arrows, and the rest only survived behind cover.

"Dangdangdangdang", another wave of arrow rain. Compared to the panicked caravans behind the bunkers, Bartomir's guards were eerily quiet in the shield array. However, after the rain of swords, a group of guards seemed to make eye contact with each other, after which a bearded officer who looked like a captain turned back and nodded to Bartomir.

I saw Bartomir swing his sword forward and shout "kill" in a low voice. Ten black shadows flew out from behind the ten shields and rushed into the alley, screaming for a while. It was also in the blink of an eye, and I saw ten black shadows returning to the shield array one after another, without a trace, as if they had never appeared.

Colin, who was standing beside Bartomir, suddenly realized: he finally knew where the other ten members of Bartomir's personal guard had gone. The inside of the shields of all the guards was painted black, which Colin had previously thought was a shadow, but now it was finally confirmed. And the remaining ten guards are hiding in this small shadow: they are the Shadow Dancers.

Colin first heard about the Shadow Dancer from stories he had heard about scaring children as a child. These highly skilled dancers are also warriors, hiding in the shadows, waiting for an opportunity to kill a single blow.

Later, Colin came across a paper called "The Existence of the Shadow World", which mentions that this ability of the shadow dancer is actually the ability to temporarily place the physical body in the shadow realm parallel to the material world, commonly known as "shadow smuggling". The reason why it is called smuggling is because the creatures of the material realm cannot survive for a long time after entering the shadow realm, and they are also very easy to be discovered and attacked by the creatures of the shadow realm.

In addition, the spatial correspondence between the shadow world and the material world is not stable, which is manifested in the discontinuity of the shadow space relative to the material world, and the lack of constancy and passive movement. These three properties were proposed by the first human master shadow dancer, Greymasko, in his posthumous work, The Qualities of the Shadow Realm. Although the three properties sound obscure, and the argument is indispensable, they can actually be interpreted as three sentences: there is a shadow when something shades the light, the shadow of the shade disappears, and the shadow of the shade moves with it.

These three properties make it uncertain whether the Shadow Dancer will be able to return to their intended physical location after a long stay in the Shadow Realm. Sometimes it can even put oneself in danger the moment of returning to the material world.

Because the Shadow Realm is so dangerous to the creatures of the Material Realm, ordinary Shadow Dancers only stay in it for a short time. However, there are also some high-level shadow dancers who can make themselves switch between the shadow realm and the material realm at high speed by entering into a soul bond contract with another person, and the contractor of the material world will also become the anchor point for the shadow dancer to return, which allows them to stay in the shadow realm for a long time without encountering danger.

This contractual relationship originated from the drow elves who inhabit the abyss, and in their matrilineal clan society, once the matriarch is completed with her face, the male is forcibly enslaved as the shadow dancer of the matriarch. This contract is also a curse of slavery, and the male Drow Shadow Dancer will not die until the death of the master's mother, and even if the body destroys the soul, it will be bound and cannot be dissolved. Later, some scholars tried to break this curse and made him the ultimate guarantee for humanity to travel through the Shadow Realm.

Obviously, the Shadow Dancers hiding behind these shields must have made such a pact with the Heavy Armor Sergeant. The Heavy Sergeants were their bulwark, and they were the invisible blades of the Sergeants, and just now they staged a subtle combination of booby-trapping the enemy's ranged attackers.

A purple mist spread from the alley, and a large number of bandits were forced out and exposed to the market.

"Guards!," shouted Bartomir, and led the guards into a charge against the nearest handful of bandits.