Agatha withdrew her hand in an instant, looking at her fingertips in disbelief.

However, the nearest accompanying nun had already seen this strange scene, and the nun's eyes widened in surprise: "Gatekeeper, your hand just now..."

Agatha frowned, not knowing what was going on for a moment, when one of the Guardian warriors next to her stepped forward, cautiously raised his combat staff, and knocked on the solid stone wall that looked indistinguishable from the surroundings.

The cane slammed against the stone wall, making a crisp sound, and nothing changed on the wall.

The guardian turned his head, nodded lightly at Agatha, and then summoned up his courage and stepped forward to touch the stone wall directly with his palm.

Nothing happened, the walls are still walls.

"It's just a wall," the guardian frowned, "but just ......

Agatha didn't say anything, just stepped forward in silence and poked her finger into the wall again.

In the next second, she watched as her fingers sank into it again!

Without the slightest resistance, she even felt like she had touched a curtain of phantoms.

"Looks like only you can walk through it," the chaplain said, looking at the scene in amazement, turning his head in disbelief, "but...... Why is this happening? Why is there such a wall in the depths of a boiling gold mine?

No one has ever reported it before......

Listening to the priest's exclamation, Agatha said nothing, just staring at her finger as she reached into the stone wall—at an angle that only she noticed, she finally saw the slight change in the contact between her fingertips and the stone wall.

Her fingers and the stone wall seemed to melt at the same time at that place, and although they only melted a little, they blended together like heated butter, the color and texture... … It looks like black mud.

That's how she "walked" through the seemingly sturdy stone wall.

After some time, she finally broke the silence softly: "I don't know why this happened, but apparently...... The rest is up to me."

"Gatekeeper?" The accompanying priest was taken aback and reacted quickly, "You want to go in alone!?" Wait, it's so unsafe, this wall is really wrong, it's very likely that you will enter it now......

"Our city-state is being swallowed up in a thick fog, and there is no mercy for the warped presence in the fog - the forces behind it will not wait for us to investigate the truth before acting," Agatha only shook her head slowly, her voice as calm as ever, "The team led by Archon Winston finally arrived here, but there was no body of him here, and now it seems that these dead guards are more like they are trying to delay time in the mines until the end...... If my guess is correct, they're here to buy the consuls time to get through the wall."

The priest did not know how to respond for a moment, and after a few seconds of silence, he only instinctively said, "But it is still too dangerous for you to be alone, and this should at least be reported to the cathedral......

"There's no time, there's really no time," Agatha turned, shaking her head slowly but firmly, and as she spoke, she felt the marrow-piercing cold that enveloped her whole body again, and she could almost clearly feel that her blood was gradually ceased to flow, and the substance that made up this body was losing its vitality little by little, and although the discomfort only lasted for a short time, it still made her tone more resolute, "I must understand the secrets of this mine, This is probably the only time I can ······ in the last little time I have left."

She stopped suddenly, forcibly restraining her thoughts, words and actions, doing her best to calm her expression again, and looked at her subordinates in front of her with a serious expression.

"I'll walk through this wall, you should know the power of the gatekeeper - don't worry about me, you have what you have to do. As soon as I have passed, you will return to the traffic junction you have been doing the same way, and then the first and second teams will continue to the excavation area as originally planned, and the real situation of the boiling gold mine will be investigated, and the third and fourth teams will return to the surface, report to the cathedral what has happened here, and then ......."

She paused for a few seconds, faux

The Buddha's thinking suddenly interrupted, and then he waved his hand: "That's it, the rest will obey Bishop Ivan's orders."

The guards, priests, and nuns couldn't help but look at each other, they couldn't help but be a little apprehensive when they saw the gatekeeper behave like this for the first time, but under Agatha's extremely serious gaze, and under the professionalism of years of training and almost incompetence, obedience became their knee-jerk reaction.

"Yes, order," the priest who led the group nodded solemnly, drawing a triangular emblem representing Bartók on his chest, but then he couldn't help but ask, "When do you need us to pick you up?"

「…… You don't have to—but don't worry, I'll be back, no matter what happens, 'I'll be back.'"

The pastor stepped back, and no one could hear the subtle change in her tone as she said the word "I."

Agatha exhaled softly and stepped toward the dark, dreary wall.

Before she was about to touch it, she spoke softly for the last time, as if she was whispering to someone, as if to say to herself, "Actually······ I really like this world......

Without hesitation, she took a step, her body sinking into the "stone wall" unhindered, like one phantom merging into another.

A faint ripple appeared on the surface of the stone wall in an instant, but before others could see it, the ripple disappeared cleanly.

Dark, cold, helpless, indistinguishable from top to bottom, unable to distinguish between left and right, and then, as if all perception vanished instantly, and then returned to herself in a very dull, strange way—that was all Agatha had felt after stepping over that wall.

It didn't take long for her to open her "eyes" in the dark, only to find that she couldn't see anything around her.

As far as the eye could see, there was only endless chaos, faintly dark masses slowly wriggling in the darker background, like some kind of sticky and disgusting fluid, and like a slowly creeping, indescribable beast.

Why is it so dark? Didn't you bring a lantern with you when you came?

Agatha couldn't help but have such a question in her mind, and almost as she thought so, a light really appeared in front of her eyes.

The shimmer of light illuminated her surroundings, and she saw that she was floating in an endless black mist, surrounded by countless shadowy things wriggling and flowing, but without making any sound.

Agatha watched the scene silently, then lowered her head.

The body came into view, first the torso, then the hands and feet, and the combat staff that had accompanied him for many years.

"Ah...... You're ...... too."

Agatha muttered to herself, slowly lifting the cane in her hand, looking at the familiar pattern on it, and the name she had carved into it when she first received it as a guardian.

"Are you a shadow like me?" She asked softly with her cane.

Of course, the cane would not respond to her voice, but in the darkness, something else suddenly rattled.

"Bang!"

It was a gunshot.

Agatha frowned instantly, but before she could look in the direction the voice came from, a slightly nervous-sounding voice had already reached her ears: "Who's there?!"

In the darkness, Agatha turned her head, and at about the same moment, she saw a sudden glimmer of light in the direction from which the voice had come.

A small patch of solid ground appeared there, illuminated by an antique brass lantern, and in the clearing, what looked like a tree stump, and a middle-aged man in a dark blue coat was leaning against the stump, looking like a motionless statue.

When Agatha's gaze passed, the "statue" suddenly moved, and he suddenly raised his head, looking in the direction of Agatha in surprise and nervousness: "Who's there?!"

Agatha subconsciously felt a hint of disobedience, but quickly put it in her mind, and she walked towards the open space illuminated by the lantern, and saw the face of the middle-aged man clearly

Appearance.

Not surprisingly, it was the Archon of the Frost City-State, Mr. Winston.

"You seem to have been here for a long time, Mr. Consul," Agatha said calmly, "and now there are only two of us left here."

"Gatekeeper...... Ms. Agatha?" Winston raised his head sluggishly, his whole person moving slowly and speaking slowly like a badly worn clockwork doll, but as time passed, his speech and demeanor slowly became agile and smooth, "You're here too...... Wait, why are you here?"

"I've passed through a wall, a wall deep in the boiling gold mines," Agatha said calmly, knowing that there was no need to hide any detours, "the guards you brought with you have been wiped out in the mines, Mr. Consul—do you remember them?"

"Guard····· … Oh, the guards I brought," Winston frowned, as if he had just remembered, and then there was a hint of sadness in his tone, "they are wonderful people, and they did their best to allow me to activate the key left by the Queen, but I ......

Agatha's expression changed slightly: "The key left by the Queen?"