Chapter 431: Fastest Upper-Tier Legend

“Damn it, can’t you die a little slower?”

Ariel stared, dumbfounded, at the stranger who’d suddenly shown up only to face-plant into death at lightspeed. She gnashed her teeth in hatred yet could do nothing about it.

She could only let the melancholy wind toss her messy hair.

She just couldn’t understand.

Had someone cursed her these days? Why was her luck so rotten?

She clearly hadn’t done anything bad, yet the Church was hunting her.

She was clearly just hiding here gnawing on a piece of black bread to replenish a bit of strength, and then some guy from who-knows-where kicked his legs and died right in front of her.

And before dying, he even stuffed her with some unknown thing.

What on earth was this supposed to be—was it a trap?

Ariel carefully examined the black, compass-shaped thing in her hand, quietly drawing her mental strings taut. Of course she wouldn’t relax her guard with something gifted by a stranger. If this thing so much as twitched, she would...

“Ariel, that’s a treasure.”

“So it is a problem? Watch me—wait, what did you say?”

Ariel had been about to fling the black thing away, but at her teacher’s words her fingers suddenly clenched, clutching the black compass back in her grip.

“A trea... treasure? What kind of treasure? Is it valuable?”

“Hard to say for now. I’ll need to study it a bit, but it’s absolutely a supreme treasure. Its value is no less than what you obtained in the ruins.”

Her teacher’s voice was somewhat grave.

“No less than the ruins’?”

Ariel licked her lips, heat flaring in her chest. Looking at the black compass in her palm, she suddenly felt it wasn’t so ugly, and the flicker of annoyance from just now faded a lot.

Could it be she wasn’t suffering bad luck but good?

Everything she’d fumbled through earlier had been laying the groundwork for this very moment?

To be safe, she still asked, “There won’t be any danger, right?”

“The thing itself should pose no immediate danger, but rather than the item, you should care more about what it brings.”

No sooner had the teacher’s words fallen than Ariel’s heart thumped hard.

Out of the corner of her eye, a wash of crimson bled across the edge of the deep night sky.

At the same time, a terrible sense of crisis whirled through her mind. Her body began to tremble uncontrollably, like a traveler taking shelter from rain who suddenly encounters a beast returning to its den.

Something dreadful... was coming!

“Quick! Pour magic into the compass!”

Her teacher’s stern voice snapped the shaking Ariel awake. Without any hesitation, she poured magic into the black compass as fast as she could.

At once, Ariel felt the world around her dim, as if a thin veil had draped over her.

Through the faint reflection in the nearby drainage water, she was startled to see thick black mist shrouding her whole body. The mist not only concealed her figure, it completely masked her presence as well.

“So this is the compass’s function?”

Ariel had just spoken when she jumped again—she realized her voice had turned blurred and indistinct, to the point even gender couldn’t be discerned.

“You should say this is one of the compass’s functions.”

Ariel’s teacher offered a brief explanation, then urged, “Move! Even with the compass’s cover, there’s no guarantee there won’t be problems at close range. The one coming is at least an archbishop-level top powerhouse.”

“An archbishop?”

Ariel shuddered again. Not daring to delay, she darted into the tangled maze of alleys. “Don’t tell me they’re here for this compass.”

“Not sure. It could ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) also be because of that man just now. He wasn’t weak—at least Crown-Bearer level.”

“Crown-Bearer...”

Ariel’s teeth ached.

What was with today?

Usually you don’t even see a single Crown-Bearer in ages, and now two show up at once? And one of them died right in front of her so easily?

Buy one, get one free—what kind of department-store mega sale was this?

She couldn’t even tell if she was cursed or blessed anymore. In any case, running came first. She did not dare bet on whether an archbishop who saw her holding a fugitive’s item would just casually slap her to death.

“But... where am I supposed to run?”

Ariel hit a snag.

The compass did conceal her presence and form, but it didn’t make her fully invisible. Her current state was still visible to the naked eye—glaringly so at a glance.

A clump of black mist... If the Holy City’s knights saw that, they’d definitely take her for a proper, red-rooted heretic and give her a generous taste of the Church’s majesty.

And at this very moment, the streets of the Holy City were crawling with patrols of stern-faced, bright-armored knights.

There was hardly any space to flee. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been pitifully hiding by the sewer just now.

“Hm?”

Suddenly, in the middle of Ariel’s fretting, she felt the compass grow warm.

She picked it up for a look and found light points flickering on its face—as if indicating... some direction?

“What’s this...”

...

...

“An orphanage?”

Guided by the compass, Ariel—now almost at the end of her rope—narrowly avoided the knights’ searches and cordons and finally reached an orphanage tucked away in a remote spot.

She looked around and didn’t notice anything unusual. She’d nearly run into a squad of knights on the way over, but they’d seemed to notice nothing amiss.

Just as Ariel hesitated over whether to go in and take a look, the orphanage door suddenly opened. A white-clad, expressionless woman stepped out with a lantern: “Sir Knight, I told you—there’s nothing unusual here... Who’s there?”

Ariel’s heart tightened—she hadn’t sensed the woman’s approach at all. Though she couldn’t feel a trace of magic or battle-qi from the woman, her years of flirting with death and her instincts both screamed that this person...

“Fifth Rank, early stage.”

Ariel’s teacher quietly confirmed her guess.

Damn it... I only wanted a place to hide. Did I dodge a tiger returning to its lair just to plunge into a wolf’s den?

Ariel nearly burst into tears again and started thinking about how to retreat quickly and elegantly... But against her expectations, when the woman saw a big clump of black mist at the door, she didn’t strike to suppress the “fiend.”

Instead, her face changed and she dropped to her knees respectfully.

“...Lord Ghostshadow! Forgive me—I didn’t know it was you. I’ve been terribly rude. Please pardon me.”

Ghostshadow?

Ariel blinked, then quickly understood.

She must be talking about that short-lived guy who face-planted to death at lightspeed in front of her.

Which meant... from the looks of it, this person was his subordinate?

The compass had actually led her to that guy’s lair?

Ariel kept silent. Although the black mist hid her figure so well that even this Fifth-Rank expert noticed nothing, she didn’t dare speak carelessly, lest some habitual turn of phrase give her away.

She could only stand there, saying nothing and pretending to be a master, quietly observing the situation.

The woman didn’t seem to find Lord Ghostshadow’s silence strange.

After begging pardon, she quickly rose, scanned the surroundings warily, pushed the door open a crack, and beckoned respectfully to Ariel: “My lord, this isn’t a place to talk. Please come in.”

“...”

“My lord?”

Under the woman’s faintly puzzled gaze, Ariel’s mouth twitched. Helpless, she could only move her feet and follow her inside.

As the door creaked shut behind her, she immediately felt several powerful gazes sweep over her in the quiet orphanage.

Those gazes weren’t rude—on the contrary, they were extremely respectful.

In an instant, Ariel understood.

Not only had she arrived at the Holy City stronghold of that short-lived guy who’d been hunted by an archbishop and died at lightspeed...

She had also just become these people’s boss.