Throne of Magical Arcana - Ghost in the Shadow

“The gangsters under Aaron are acting weird recently…Does it have anything to do with Andre’s death?” Lucien had absolutely no clue.     

Wrapping his hand with a piece of cloth, Lucien pressed Andre’s body hard back into the water. This time the body did not hook on the iron net. It was washed away directly into the Belem River and disappeared.     

Lucien stood up and set off for the surface, but to avoid the beggars, he did not take the same route. According to the map he drew in his spirit library, he took another direction about twenty meters away from the place where the beggars gathered. If the map was correct, Lucien would pass by the ruins of the witch’s chamber and come back to the ground from the same entrance through which he came down earlier.     

Several meters away from the corner, Lucien heard the sound of some heavy footsteps and suddenly stopped. The footsteps echoed in the sewers, loud and clear. It sounded like there were a bunch of people approaching, and some of them must be pretty big.     

Lucien looked around calmly. Soon he found there was a hole in the wall, big enough for someone to hide. Lucien hid himself in the hole, with his back against the wall.     

A while later, those guys walked directly past him, turning around a corner a few steps ahead. In such a dark place, they would not notice Lucien hiding a in the hole without a careful check.     

“Throw these bodies into the river. Hurry up.” It was a low voice from a man. However, he was speaking indistinctly, as if he missed some front teeth.     

Lucien felt he had heard this voice somewhere before, but could not remember where.     

“Why did it take you guys so long. Remember, don’t screw up the whole plan.” It was the old man’s voice.     

After a few seconds of silence, the first man answered with slight fear.     

“Sorry… But within ten days, we promise it will be enough… at any cost, like Aaron said.”     

Aaron… Rosan Aaron?     

Now Lucien finally recognized the first voice. It was Jackson, the guy who smashed Lucien’s shack, and also because of Lucien, Jackson could not even speak clearly now.     

From their conversations, Lucien’s guess was that the Aaron gang was by no means a victim of the heresy, but an accomplice, and probably Andre was killed because of his disobedience.     

The old man’s voice was very unpleasant. “Please tell Mr. Aaron… and the other guy, that as long as you continuously spare no efforts in helping us grow, you will all receive huge rewards. I know that, in your eyes, I’m only a dying, useless old man, which is true, but we are just tiny worms on the ground. Our priests are already powerful enough to beat their bishop. We wouldn’t need any of your help were it not for maintaining that… thing.”     

“I will.” Jackson answered in a low mood.     

“But… Jackson, I don’t think we can meet their requirement…” Another voice came, trembling, “We gotta make sure that those are people that no one would care about. Homeless guys are ideal, but we cannot find any of them down here, other than his people…”     

“That’s true, Jackson. It’s too difficult to find fifty of them within ten days.” Someone else agreed.     

The old man laughed, “The rest of them are at the bottom of the Belem River. Eels in the river will clean them up for us.”     

“Skar, Aaron told us to make it at any cost. We don’t necessarily have to focus on homeless guys. If they are just the poor… Aaron will be able to handle this.” A cold smile appeared on Jackson’s face.     

“You have any target already, Jackson?” Skar was a bit surprised.     

“Yes, I do.” Jackson’s face turned hideous, “They gotta pay the price… the two little bastards, and their families.”     

Lucien was shocked. His anger was burning his guts. He knew Jackson hated them, but he never expected that the thug could be so cruel and inhuman to the point of planning to kill the whole family!     

But thank God Lucien was here and found out about Jackson’s plan.     

“I gotta solve the problem here and now.” The plan of killing them all in the sewers arose in Lucien’s mind. He couldn’t let them go back onto the ground, or he would not be able to protect John’s family anymore.     

Lucien must kill them all. Then Lucien could tell John about the heresy and no one would know what happened down here.     

Many thoughts quickly passed through his mind. Lucien’s reached out to his pocket and made sure that all the magic materials were in position. Carefully, he creeped out of the hole and approached the corner.     

They had nine people there. But Lucien had no choice. Staying calm was his most important and powerful weapon.     

…………     

Throwing the last sack into the water, Skar poked the body bag with a long pole in fear. Although they were gangsters, gouging out people’s hearts alive was still too much for them, and they also believed in the God of Truth. So they prayed in their mind, begging for forgiveness.     

“Jackson, all of the bags are gone.” Glancing at the weird old man, Skar carefully asked, “We’d better go now… I heard there are lot of aquatic zombies in the Belem River.”     

Jackson turned to the old man, “Does it have anything to do with the bodies we threw away? I’ve never heard of zombies in the river before.”     

The old man shook his head, “We don’t want any trouble while we’re not strong enough. Aalto was the core city of the previous magic empire. Maybe some kind of death power was sealed deep within the river, and now the seal is no longer effective.”     

“All right.” When Jackson was about to leave with his men, he saw Scar’s terrified face. At the same time, Jackson heard a weird, low voice murmuring in the back, like a spell…     

Twenty meters away from them, there was a dark humanoid shadow standing there. Half of his body and face were hidden in the darkness. In the shimmer of the moss, the mysterious shadow was even more strange and terrifying.     

“Gh… Ghost!” Skar screamed at the top of his lungs. Since he was involved in this, his conscience was tortured by the fear that the people they killed would come back and seek revenge. When he closed his eyes, the warm and bloody hearts that they took from those people’s chests when they were still alive were still beating in his mind.     

Great fear seized him. Skar now could not even move at all.     

The ghost raised his right hand, and some shimmering powder fell through its fingers. Jackson and the old man started running as soon as they saw the ghost, but all of a sudden they were devoured by complete darkness.     

The glimmer from the moss disappeared. The darkness spread quickly like a bottle of spilled ink and no light could penetrate it.     

They couldn’t see anything. Except for the old man, the rest of them were crazily wielding their daggers, trying to keep the bloody ghost away.     

The pipe was narrow. They hurt each other by accident and some of them started screaming in pain. But fear and panic did not help them at all.     

Darkness, an apprentice spell. It could block all kinds of natural light in an area no larger than 6 by 6 meters, enveloping everything in complete darkness.. For now, as an apprentice, Lucien could maintain the spell for one minute.     

“You idiots! Calm down! Stop!” Although he could not cast a single spell, the old man heard the priests mentioning about different kinds of magic before.     

“…Ouch!” However, before the old man made that command, Jackson’s dagger scratched him.     

Within little more than ten seconds, two guys got stabbed by the chaotic attacks of daggers and fell on the ground. The others were also injured to some extent. Driven by the horrible fear, Skar and other three guys started running backwards. In the darkness, two of them fell into the river like the body bags, while the old man, Jackson, another thug started rushing towards the shadow.     

At this time, the weird spellcasting voice arose again.