Fantasy Game: Infinite City

Chapter 608 Bastion Castle (10)

After slipping out of the room filled with Ferdinand family sentries and researchers, Han Zu didn't actually go far. Due to the time of day, the sun was gradually setting, and this part of Bastion Castle was still relatively intact. Therefore, the place was very dark. Han Zu found a corner of the ceiling and hid in the darkness. He wanted to see where these people would start their search. Perhaps, from their conversation, he could get some clues about Bastion Castle. But things didn't go as Han Zu expected.

"Are you crazy?! Don't go that way!"

"But he may have gone down from here!"

"If you want to die, I won't stop you, but I have to go back!"

Han Zu's hiding spot was only about ten meters away from the large room, in the center of the corridor outside. This spot offered excellent visibility, allowing him to see most of the corridor on both sides. Furthermore, due to the angle of the view, it was extremely dark. Unless someone shone a powerful flashlight directly on him, it would be impossible for anyone to see a two-meter-tall man hiding there. Of course, according to common sense, a two-meter-tall man shouldn't be able to leap four or five meters in a single bound.

A team passed by just below Han Zu's position, and two of the sentries had an argument. The cause was that one of the sentries was planning to search the stairs of a nearby tower, but his companion immediately stopped him. From the tone and expressions of their conversation, it can be judged that in their cognition, going down the stairs of the tower next to them is no different from committing suicide, which made Han Zu very curious.

“…Wait for me!”

The sentry who initially wanted to enter the stairs and search downstairs also reacted before his companions began to retreat and were about to turn around and leave. He called his companions and quickly chased after them. In the end, the team closest to Han Zu stopped searching and returned to the previous large room along the same route.

Han Zu waited at the same location for a while, until the sentries who had chased him returned, then he emerged from his hiding place. He roughly remembered the places they had visited during their previous search and planned to go over and take a look, but unfortunately, he was unable to find any useful clues from the conversations of the sentries.

There were three teams chasing out of the room and searching this floor of the castle. Although they had enough people, Han Zu observed that they had not searched the entire floor. They searched rooms that had lost doors for some reason, and they consciously avoided some closed rooms and the nearby tower staircase. These locations became the focus of Han Zu's investigation.

He first spent some time searching the rooms without doors. The furniture inside had long since rotted away, and the air still lingered with a faint smell of decay. These locations, like the others, were empty and had nothing to investigate. After completing his search, Han Zu left these locations.

The first location the sentries avoided was a study, its door tightly shut, blocked from the inside by something. Han Zu tried, but found that even with his strength, he couldn't push it open. This place must be covered by the rules of Bastion Castle, so Han Zu didn't try to destroy it.

Using his clairvoyant ability to peer inside, Han Zu discovered the reason the door couldn't be opened. Behind the door, there was some rotten wood and rusted metal blocking the door, which looked like a damaged bookshelf and a metal bed board.

In addition, there is a large hole on the wall inside this room, which allows direct views outside the castle. Below it is the tower bridge where Han Zu encountered the elemental creature. Looking down through the hole, the elemental creature that had slapped him away before has fallen silent again. It has scattered into stones of various sizes, blocking the center of the tower bridge.

Inside the room, there is a gargoyle that has returned to its stone statue state. The reason why it can be recognized as a gargoyle is that no one would put a two or three meter tall stone statue into a place that is obviously a study, especially since this study is not big, only about five or six square meters. Of course, it is also because the hole in the wall is exactly the shape of a gargoyle.

On the wall next to him, one meter above Han Zu's head, there was a crack, through which he could see the situation in the room. Han Zu climbed up and took a look inside, but found no useful clues, so he left without provoking the gargoyle. It looked different from the several gargoyles he had killed, and its color was also different. To be on the safe side, Han Zu would definitely not deliberately provoke the monsters in Bastion Castle.

The second location the sentries avoided was a library-like space. It wasn't locked, and simply pushing the door open would lead to the interior. Han Zu quietly opened the door a crack, peered inside, and after confirming there were no monsters or other people near the door, he tiptoed inside.

The library was enormous. Besides being twice the size of the room where the sentries and researchers gathered, it was a duplex structure, spanning three floors. Han Zu's location was the topmost, with two more floors below. Looking down from the mostly corroded railings in front of where Han Zu entered the library, he could see the other two floors. Bookshelves and casework of all sizes filled the space, both above and within them, holding numerous damaged books and scrolls. If there were any relatively well-preserved books and scrolls here, the chances of finding clues about Bastion Castle were the highest. Naturally, after a brief observation, Han Zu began his investigation of the library.

The third floor of the library didn't have many bookshelves, but it did have many large boxes. Han Zu used a pollution aura to cover these boxes, preventing the contents from rapidly oxidizing if he opened them. He quickly searched the shelves, finding all the books and scrolls rotten and unreadable.

The first box was opened, revealing scrolls stored in cloth bags. These scrolls bore the marks of time, but the text was still legible. Even where it was unclear, the context allowed for the ambiguous words to be understood. To avoid being disturbed, Han Zu sealed the door to the third floor of the library with bookshelves before beginning to examine the contents of the box—the scrolls stored in the cloth bags.

This time, Han Zu was luckier. The contents of the scroll finally had some connection to the Ferdinand family and Bastinburg. The scroll in the cloth bag described the life of the first generation of the Ferdinand family, or more precisely, the life of Carson, the father of the first generation Ferdinand family patriarch.

The scroll contained relatively detailed information about Carson, explaining that he was an orphan from a small country. At the age of fifteen, he encountered war and, to make ends meet, enlisted in the army, participating in three or four battles. Carson's frail frame, a reflection of his orphan status, made him less than a skilled soldier. However, his poverty, forced thievery, and slight stature honed his stealthy skills. While these qualities didn't help him in combat, they did make him an excellent scout.

His physical stature allowed Carson to walk with incredible lightness, allowing him to walk even when standing behind someone. He was also able to slip into corners and crevices that would be impenetrable to a normal person. Because of this, Carson gathered valuable intelligence for his country during the battles he participated in. He quickly rose from private to sergeant, finally escaping his former hunger. While the food in a small nation's army might be less than satisfactory, it was still better than the garbage he had to eat.

However, the good times did not last long. The small country where Carson lived was soon annihilated by a powerful enemy country. Thanks to his physical advantage, Carson escaped from the meat grinder-like front battlefield in time. He originally planned to take several of his men with him to obtain some intelligence and come back to help his country, but when they obtained the intelligence, they also discovered the news that their country had been destroyed in the enemy's military camp.

Some of Carson's soldiers chose to flee and completely stay away from this place, while others let go of their past and became farmers again. Carson did not stop them. For him, these soldiers who had lived and died with him were far better than the small country and army with which he had little sense of identity.

But Carson did not choose to leave, nor did he choose to go back and wander. Relying on his advantage in obtaining intelligence, he got himself a reasonable identity, and then went to the country that destroyed the small country and became a mercenary. Like before, although he was a mercenary, his main activity was to provide some intelligence to some real mercenaries. Many people regarded him as an intelligence dealer and forgot his identity as a mercenary. Carson did not mind, and simply used this relatively safe way to survive in the new country.

About a decade later, when Carson was in his twenties, he fell seriously ill. At that time, living to thirty was considered a long life for an average person. So Carson didn't react too strongly. Over the decades as an intelligence dealer and mercenary, he had saved some money, so while he still had the strength to live, he indulged himself. He spent six gold coins on a fine coffin and another 200 silver coins on a plot of land not far from the city, but in a remote and picturesque location, to be his own burial site. He hired a local gravedigger, with whom he had some acquaintance, to dig his grave, but Carson didn't ask for a headstone. He felt that since he had no descendants, it wouldn't be necessary.

After making an appointment with the gravedigger to bury him in three days, Carson gave the gravedigger two gold coins and returned to the city for the last time. He got drunk and gave away his remaining property to orphans and beggars in the city. Then he staggered back to the cemetery alone, lay down in the coffin, and fell asleep.

Who could have imagined that when Carson awoke the next day, he felt remarkably well. The weakness he'd felt from his illness had suddenly vanished, and the hangover from the previous night hadn't bothered him at all. He felt healthier than even some pampered aristocratic child. He tried to rise from his coffin, but with a slight effort, he flipped out of it and landed safely on the ground outside. Just as Carson was puzzled, he caught sight of a familiar face: a woman. He remembered her as the granddaughter of an old city pharmacist, born with an ugly face and a physical disability. She often drew scorn, but Carson, having experienced many things, saw her as different from the others. Besides her slow movements, he saw her as just like anyone else, perhaps even kinder. Carson and the old pharmacist had business dealings. Carson would refer injured mercenaries to the old pharmacist, and the old pharmacist would tell Carson the intelligence he heard while treating others. As a result, the two of them had a good relationship.

The old pharmacist wasn't particularly attentive to his granddaughter, which often led to him remaining indifferent when someone mocked or verbally abused her. However, this situation ceased after Carson, who frequently visited the old pharmacist's shop and reprimanded a scoundrel, relentlessly stopped. As a renowned intelligence dealer, his connections and relationships stretched like a web, leaving no one in the dark about who was involved. Therefore, everyone had to give Carson some respect. After all, everyone needed information sometimes, and most importantly, Carson's intelligence and news were always correct, leading many to believe that he even had connections within the royal family. After all, some of the intelligence Carson sold was completely illegal and could lead to fatal consequences, yet nothing happened to him.

Since Carson felt that bullying a disabled girl made him unhappy, naturally, others would not seek bad luck. For Carson, this incident was nothing; he had even forgotten about it. But for the old pharmacist's granddaughter, Carson's appearance was undoubtedly someone tearing away the darkness that enveloped her and forcibly delivering a bright oil lamp. She fell in love with Carson.

Although Carson was thin, his appearance was remarkable; he could even be considered handsome. He had hideous scars on his face, but in that era, such scars were as common as weeds on the ground. Instead, they gave the relatively young Carson a sense of maturity and sophistication. Furthermore, because Carson lived a relatively affluent life, many men wanted to marry him. However, Carson was not interested in marriage. His life experience taught him that living alone was freer and safer. Therefore, he never married, and naturally, he had no children. But he was a man after all, so he visited every brothel in the city.

But as mentioned before, in those days, these things were perfectly normal. The old pharmacist's granddaughter didn't care at all, but she had never expressed her feelings because she knew she was ugly, and she was afraid that doing so would anger Carson and make him never visit the old pharmacist again. But after hearing from the old pharmacist yesterday that Carson was terminally ill and dying, she finally mustered up the courage to tell Carson. She followed Carson silently from the tavern in the city all the way here, ready to wait for him to sober up so she could confess her love to him. Even if Carson rejected her, there was no one else around, and the story wouldn't get out. But the girl wasn't worried about being laughed at, but about affecting Carson's reputation.

When Carson saw the girl, he spoke to her in his usual tone, gentle and calm, without any emotional fluctuations. He remained the same as when they first met, not looking down on her because of her appearance or physical disability. However, Carson's unchanged attitude only frightened the girl. She didn't dare to express her feelings, fearing that Carson would turn his back on her.

Carson didn't know why the girl had found this place, but it didn't matter, so he didn't ask in detail. He simply asked what she wanted to do with him. The girl hesitated for a long time and finally came up with a less than reliable explanation.

At that time, women's status was not high. Many people did not even have names. As for surnames, they were only given to nobles and kings. Even Carson, who had a wide network of friends, only had a name and no surname, let alone her. So the girl told Carson that she wanted a name, but she was afraid that this idea would make her grandfather angry, so she wanted to try her luck and let Carson give her a name.

Dinali was the name of a noblewoman Carson had met while stealing on the streets of that small country. Unlike the others, she didn't look down on Carson, the thief caught by her own guards. Not only did she not let him get beaten, she even gave him a few gold coins and some food and let him go. Carson was grateful to the noblewoman, but they didn't see each other again after that. Later, through his connections, he learned that the noblewoman and her family had died on the battlefield that year.

In Carson's heart, Denali represented kindness. He felt that the old pharmacist's granddaughter also possessed this virtue, so from then on, she had a name. However, Carson felt that calling someone by their name was still a little inappropriate, so he slightly modified it and changed Denali to Denalia. From then on, the old pharmacist's granddaughter had a name.