Chapter 1 Agatha

Agatha instantly retracted her hand, looking at her fingertips with suspicion.

However, the closest accompanying nun had already seen this unusual scene. The nun widened her eyes in surprise. "Gatekeeper, your hand just now..."

Agatha frowned, not knowing what was going on. At this moment, a guardian warrior next to her stepped forward, cautiously raised his combat staff, and tapped the solid stone wall that looked no different from the surrounding walls.

The staff struck the stone wall, making a crisp sound. Nothing changed on the wall.

The guardian turned his head, nodded slightly to Agatha, then mustered his courage and reached out to touch the stone wall directly with his palm.

Nothing happened. The wall remained a wall.

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

Agatha said nothing, but silently stepped forward and reached out to the wall again with her finger.

The next second, she watched as her finger disappeared into it once more!

Without any resistance, she felt as if she were merely touching a curtain made of phantoms.

"It seems only you can pass through it," the accompanying priest said in astonishment, turning his head in disbelief. "But... why is this? Why is there such a wall deep in the Boiling Gold Mine?

No one has ever reported it before..."

Listening to the priest's exclamation, Agatha said nothing, but stared intently at her finger that had penetrated the stone wall—from an angle only she noticed, she finally saw the subtle change when her fingertip touched the stone wall.

Her finger and the stone wall seemed to melt at that spot, although only a little, merging together like heated butter. The color and texture... looked like black sludge.

That was how she "passed through" the seemingly impenetrable stone wall.

After what seemed like a long time, she finally broke the silence softly, "I don't know why this is happening, but apparently... I'm the only one who can do what comes next."

"Gatekeeper?" the accompanying priest exclaimed, quickly reacting. "You're going in alone!? Wait, it's too unsafe. This wall is really strange. You're likely to recklessly enter..."

"Our city-state is being devoured by the thick fog, and the twisted beings within show no mercy—the power behind them won't wait for us to investigate the truth before acting," Agatha slowly shook her head, her voice as calm and steady as ever. "Governor Winston's team finally arrived here, but his body is not here. Now it seems that these fallen guards fought to the end to buy time in the mine... If I'm not mistaken, they were buying time for the governor to pass through this wall."

The priest didn't know how to respond. After a few seconds of silence, he instinctively said, "But it's too dangerous for you to be alone. This matter should at least be reported to the Cathedral..."

"There's no time, there's really no time," Agatha turned around, shaking her head slowly but firmly. As she spoke, she felt that bone-chilling coldness enveloping her body once more. She could almost clearly feel her blood gradually stopping, the matter that constituted her body losing its activity little by little. Although this discomfort only lasted for a short time, it made her tone even more resolute. "I must figure out the secret of this mine. This may be the only thing I can do with the little time left..."

She suddenly stopped, forcibly suppressing her thoughts and actions, trying her best to regain her composure, and looked at her subordinates with a serious expression.

"I will pass through this wall. You should know the power of the Gatekeeper—don't worry about me. You have your own things to do. After I pass through, you immediately return to the previous intersection, and then the first and second teams continue to the excavation area according to the original plan to investigate the true situation of the Boiling Gold Mine. The third and fourth teams return to the surface and report what happened here to the Cathedral, and then..."

She paused for a few seconds, as if her thoughts were suddenly interrupted, then waved her hand. "That's it. The rest will be up to Bishop Ivan."

The guardians, priests, and nuns couldn't help but look at each other. It was the first time they had seen the Gatekeeper behave like this, and they couldn't help but feel a little uneasy. But under Agatha's extremely serious gaze, and under the professional qualities that had been cultivated into an instinct through years of training, obeying orders became their subconscious reaction.

"Yes, understood," the priest in charge solemnly nodded, and drew the triangular emblem representing Bartok on his chest, but then, he couldn't help but ask, "When do you need us to come and pick you up?"

"...No need to pick me up—but don't worry, I will come back. No matter what happens, I will definitely come back."

The priest stepped back. No one heard the slight change in her tone when she said "I".

Agatha took a light breath and stepped towards the dark wall.

Before touching it, she whispered one last time, as if whispering to someone, or as if talking to herself, "Actually... I really like this world..."

She took a step without hesitation, her body disappearing into the "stone wall" without the slightest hindrance, like a phantom merging into another phantom.

Subtle ripples appeared on the surface of the stone wall, but before anyone could see them clearly, the ripples disappeared without a trace.

Darkness, coldness, helplessness, inability to discern up and down, or left and right, and then, all senses seemed to disappear in an instant, and then return to oneself in an extremely sluggish and strange way—this was all Agatha felt after crossing the wall.

After what seemed like a long time, she opened her "eyes" in the dark, only to find that she couldn't see anything around her.

All that met her eyes was endless chaos. Vaguely discernible dark clumps wriggled slowly in the even darker background, like some kind of sticky, disgusting fluid, or like slowly crawling, indescribable behemoths.

Why is it so dark? Didn't I bring a lantern with me?

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

The faint light illuminated the surroundings. She saw that she was floating in a boundless black mist. Countless shadowy things wriggled and flowed around her, but made no sound.

Agatha quietly watched this scene, then lowered her head.

Her body appeared in her field of vision, first the torso, then the limbs, and the combat staff that had accompanied her for many years.

"Ah... you're here too..."

Agatha whispered to herself, slowly raised the staff in her hand, looking at the familiar patterns on it, and her name, which she had carefully engraved on it when she first received the staff as a guardian.

"Are you a shadow like me?" she asked the staff softly.

Of course, the staff didn't respond to her voice, but something else suddenly made a sound in the darkness.

"Bang!"

It was a gunshot.

Agatha frowned instantly, but before she could look in the direction of the sound, a slightly nervous voice had already entered her ears. "Who's there?!"

In the darkness, Agatha turned her head, and almost at the same time, she saw a sudden glimmer of light in the direction of the voice.

A small patch of solid ground appeared there, illuminated by a quaint brass lantern. On the open space, one could also see something that looked like a tree stump. A middle-aged man in a dark blue coat was leaning against the tree stump, looking like a motionless statue.

When Agatha's gaze fell over, the "statue" suddenly moved. He suddenly raised his head, looking at Agatha's direction with surprise and tension. "Who's there?!"

Agatha subconsciously felt a sense of disharmony, but quickly put this sense of disharmony behind her. She walked towards the open space illuminated by the lantern, seeing the middle-aged man's face clearly.

Without any surprise, it was the governor of Frostwind Bastion, Mr. Winston.

"You seem to have been here for a long time, Governor," Agatha said calmly. "Now it's just the two of us here."

"Gatekeeper... Ms. Agatha?" Winston raised his head sluggishly, his whole person moving slowly like a badly worn wind-up doll, his words slow, but as time went on, his words and expressions slowly became more agile and smooth. "You're here too... Wait, how are you here?"

"I passed through a wall, a wall deep in the Boiling Gold Mine," Agatha said calmly. She knew that there was no need for any concealment or circumvention now. "The guard you brought has been wiped out in the mine, Governor—do you remember them?"

"The guard... Oh, the guard I brought," Winston frowned, as if he really just remembered, then added a touch of sadness to his tone. "They were all great people. They did their best to allow me to activate the key left by the Queen, but I..."

Agatha's expression changed slightly in an instant. "The key left by the Queen?"