novelbin Chapter 143 : Chapter 143
Chapter 143 : Chapter 143
Chapter 143. Meeting an Old Acquaintance Far From Home
Logaris’s words were not loud, yet they were like a block of ice hurled into boiling oil, instantly blowing apart the already oppressive atmosphere inside the church.
“Y-You... what are you talking about? Bleeding? There’s nothing here!”
Lucia reacted even more violently than they had expected. Her face, which had only just regained some composure, turned deathly pale in an instant.
In a panic, she spread her arms and threw herself between Logaris and the statue.
That guilty display all but screamed a confession, and the last trace of trust Sylvia still had in her vanished.
There was definitely something wrong with this little nun.
Logaris could not be bothered to waste words with her. The spiritual power of a fifth-tier magus had already spread like an invisible tide, soundlessly permeating every corner of the church.
The feedback from that spiritual probe was crystal clear: directly behind the damaged statue, beneath the floor, there was a hollow space about two meters deep. Curled up inside it was a humanoid figure whose life signs were extremely faint, giving off an ever-thickening smell of blood.
“Move aside.” Logaris’s eyes sharpened as he strode straight toward the statue.
“No! Absolutely not!” Lucia cried out in horror. “That’s a foundation sinkhole! It’ll collapse! It’s dan—”
Before she could finish, a shadow flashed behind her like a ghost.
Sylvia did not even draw her sword. One hand snapped out like an iron clamp and seized Lucia’s flailing wrist, twisting it behind her with the borrowed force. Her other hand came down cleanly on the back of the girl’s neck and pressed slightly.
“Urgh!”
Lucia felt an irresistible force descend on her. In an instant, she was completely restrained, unable to move at all.
She had never imagined that this woman, who looked like some noble young lady, could possess such terrifying strength and speed.
Without sparing the subdued Lucia so much as a glance, Logaris strode up to the statue and kicked aside the filthy, mud-stained rug on the floor.
Beneath it, a black iron pull-ring lay fully exposed.
“You...” Lucia’s eyes filled with utter despair.
Logaris bent down, seized the ring, and yanked it upward with brutal force.
Creak—
The hidden door leading underground opened at once.
The instant it did, a black shadow burst out from below without warning, moving so fast that it left only an afterimage behind.
A dagger flashed in the attacker’s hand, stabbing straight for Logaris’s throat with a shrill whistle through the air.
The strike was fast, ruthless, and viciously precise. It had been aimed from the start to kill in a single blow.
Unfortunately for the attacker, he was facing Logaris.
Logaris had been prepared from the very beginning. He did not even blink. His figure flickered strangely to the side, as though reality itself had glitched for an instant.
The ambusher’s strike missed. A flicker of shock flashed through his eyes. He was just about to switch moves when the air above his head suddenly turned crushingly heavy.
“Gravity Spell.”
In the next second, an invisible and terrifying pressure came crashing down from above, as though a small mountain had been hurled onto the attacker’s back.
Bang!
He did not even have time to let out a muffled groan before he was slammed flat against the ground. Spiderweb cracks spread across the stone floor beneath him. The dagger flew from his hand and skidded far away.
Under that overwhelming pressure, he struggled to lift his head, revealing a pale face drenched in cold sweat, his eyes filled with pain and unwillingness.
The moment Logaris saw that familiar face, his expression changed in shock.
“Reynard?!”
The man pinned to the floor was none other than the Judicator Knight of the Court of Equilibrium whom they had once met in Winter City.
Only now, he was in a state of utter misery. The imposing black armor he had worn before was gone, replaced by ragged strips of cloth soaked through with blood.
At the sound of his name, Reynard’s entire body jolted. It was as though the last taut string holding him together had finally snapped. His eyes rolled back, and he passed out on the spot.
“Hey!”
With the misunderstanding cleared up, Sylvia immediately released Lucia.
Lucia no longer cared about the pain in her wrist from Sylvia’s grip. She rushed to Reynard’s side and frantically began checking his injuries.
“A Judicator Knight of the Court of Equilibrium is an outlaw wanted across the entire world, and you still dared hide him in a place like this?” Logaris said as he pulled a red potion brimming with life force from his Spatial Ring.
Clearly, he had already expressed his position through his actions.
This was a high-tier recovery potion specially made by him. While it was not as miraculous as Fleeting Youth, its effects still far surpassed those of ordinary medicines.
He pried Reynard’s mouth open and poured the potion down his throat.
Only after finishing did he stand and look toward Lucia, whose face was taut with anxiety.
“So, care to explain now, little heretic?”
Lucia swallowed nervously and stole a fearful glance at the two of them. Her voice was as thin as a mosquito’s buzz. “I... I don’t know who he is, and I’ve never heard anything about wanted criminals. Three nights ago, I found him while taking out the trash in the back alley... The Holy Light told me he wasn’t a bad person.”
“Since when does the Holy Light meddle in things like this?” Logaris raised a brow, but did not press her any further.
A few minutes later, the medicine took effect.
Reynard let out a painful groan. His lashes trembled, and he slowly opened his eyes.
His vision gradually shifted from blurred to clear, and the first thing he saw was a somewhat familiar face.
“You’re awake? How do you feel? Can you still breathe?” Logaris’s voice sounded beside his ear.
Reynard’s mind was still sluggish. He struggled to turn his eyes and saw “Ada” standing nearby with her arms folded across her chest. Even dressed in men’s clothing, she could not conceal her striking, valiant bearing.
His memories rushed back, yet he still found it hard to believe.
“I... am I dead?” Reynard’s voice was so hoarse it sounded as though he had swallowed a handful of sand. “Is this the legendary Hall of Heroes from the Tidelan Kingdom?”
Sylvia arched a brow but said nothing.
Logaris rolled his eyes. “If this were the Hall of Heroes, then your treatment here would be pitifully shabby.”
“You’re not dead! And this isn’t any Hall of Heroes!” Lucia rushed over in a fluster, her face red with anxiety. “These two are... um... friends passing through. They look fierce, but that potion just now was from them.”
Reynard froze for a moment. He finally took in the dilapidated surroundings and Logaris’s exceedingly “fashionable” bounty-hunter attire.
And of course, with the trained eye expected of someone from the Court of Equilibrium, he had already recognized exactly who the man before him was.
“Friends?” He let out a bitter laugh, only to tug at his wound and suck in a sharp breath of pain. “To run into familiar faces in a hellhole like this... it seems the Storm Goddess still hasn’t abandoned me.”
Logaris crouched down, acting entirely at home as he reached for the filthy bandages wrapped around Reynard’s chest. “Then for the sake of friendship, let me first see what exactly happened to this wound of yours.”
Layer by layer, the bandages came away, revealing the grotesque wound beneath.
A gash so deep that bone was visible ran from Reynard’s left shoulder all the way down to his right abdomen. The flesh had split open, and even his white ribs could be seen beneath it.
Judging from the lingering energy, it looked like a tearing wound inflicted by some kind of unbelievably sharp water-element slash.
Logaris’s brows drew tightly together.
The wound itself was serious, yes, but with Reynard’s fourth-tier knight physique and the effects of the potion he had just taken, he should not still have been this weak.
The real problem lay in the strange layer of energy coating the wound.
That energy clung like rot to the bone, emanating a cold, damp aura. Like a thin layer of frost, it was constantly eating away at Reynard’s life force and preventing the wound from healing.