Free Web NovelLoren held Paqina and stared out the window, lost in thought.
Given how messed up this world was, ordinary people lived miserable lives. Suicide was normal, and throwing themselves onto train tracks was perfectly normal too—at least this method would bring a quicker death.
But most suicides involved lying on the tracks. Even if Loren’s carriage was at the very front, someone lying on the rails wouldn’t splatter blood like this. This looked more like someone standing upright and getting smashed to pieces.
And the blood’s color was off too. Anyone who killed frequently knew that fresh blood didn’t look like that.
Just as Loren was thinking, a knock came at the door.
“Come in.”
There was nothing shameful in the carriage. After putting away the paper ranking the gods, Loren let the person outside enter.
“Sorry, Master Mentor...”
A female train attendant came in, her face full of apology as she looked at Loren’s window. She spoke:
“Someone ran onto the tracks to kill themselves. It was an emergency. If we hit the brakes, we’d derail and endanger more people.
“With no other choice, we had to do this...”
Incidents like this happened often enough that the attendant had grown somewhat numb. Facing the shredded corpse, she didn’t feel much fear.
She knew Loren’s personality well. Loren cared about the people, so she explained that braking could cause more casualties—though what she said was the truth anyway.
As for the driver’s decision, Loren couldn’t really fault it.
Loren’s view was simple: if you want to kill yourself, fine. If you can take down a villain with you on your way out, Loren would consider you a hero. But dragging innocent people down with you? That was just disgusting.
He didn’t know how many people had been dragged down by such individuals, and some even pretended to commit suicide to harm others.
“The next stop is the Canaan Kingdom. Once we arrive, we’ll clean it up.
“If you need to change rooms, we can free up a space for you... I’m sorry for ruining your mood...”
Compared to the dead body, the attendant was more concerned about Loren’s state of mind.
“Forget it. I understand your decision. But haven’t you noticed something off about this blood’s color?”
When it came to his discoveries, as long as they benefited him, Loren didn’t play the riddler. He told the attendant everything he’d noticed:
“Look, this blood doesn’t look fresh. It’s more like it’s been sitting for a while.”
“But the driver said he saw someone suddenly rush onto the tracks...”
“A necromancer.”
Facing the attendant’s doubt, Loren answered bluntly:
“This incident is likely related to a necromancer. Aren’t there plenty of them in the God of Plague’s territory? Especially after that recent war—many necromancers used the opportunity to grow stronger.”
What Loren said made sense, and the attendant sank into thought.
“The only question now is why they did this. If they were trying to assassinate me, they wouldn’t send an ordinary undead. Even using a pig’s corpse would be more likely to cause a train accident than a human body.
“Of course, given the situation around here, pork is probably more expensive than human flesh. But anyone trying to kill me wouldn’t be short on cash. There was no need for this.”
Loren always stood with the common people. Those who wanted to harm him were always from the privileged class.
“I’ll go tell my supervisor...”
“Alright, go ahead.”
There weren’t many important people on this train—just a few mages sent by the Church to protect Loren.
Since they were heading to another country, the Church hadn’t dispatched overly powerful mages. The supervisor the attendant mentioned was probably one of them.
“Oh, and there’s no need to clean this up. In the end, this stuff is just corpses.”
Loren reached out toward the window. “Return to Earth” activated silently, and the bloodstains and shredded flesh on the glass vanished in an instant.
“Yes...”
After acknowledging, the attendant left.
“Are you feeling better, Paqina?”
Paqina was clutching Loren’s clothes. After being comforted by him for a while, she finally calmed down.
“Changing carriages wouldn’t help either. The blood splattered pretty far, and the other carriages are probably the same. Might as well just clean it up with magic.”
“I noticed the blood’s color issue too. I just can’t figure out why anyone would do this. Was it just to scare us? But even if it was meant to scare, it would only scare me...”
As she said this, Paqina suddenly caught sight of Scarlett shrinking under the bed. She quickly corrected herself, adding “and Scarlett” at the end.
Paqina’s reaction caught Loren off guard. There were still tears shimmering at the corners of her eyes, but she had already started analyzing the situation.
“Just now, I saw the body parts flying past. I didn’t see any internal organs.”
Even though she had been terrified, Paqina had still subconsciously observed the situation.
“No internal organs?”
If a person was directly shattered, their organs would fly everywhere. Since Paqina hadn’t seen any, that meant there really weren’t any.
“But why remove the corpse’s internal organs?”
In an instant, Loren thought of many possibilities. Many necromancers removed a corpse’s organs to slow down decomposition. This clue was way too broad, and Loren couldn’t immediately think of anything useful.
The top priority was figuring out the attack’s purpose for targeting the train. On this point, Loren was completely in the dark.
“Movila, go check out the situation over there.”
“Yes.”
“How is she going?”
Loren’s command left Paqina confused. They were on a train right now—how was a little girl like Movila supposed to investigate?
“Oh, she can see things from a distance.”
Paqina’s brave performance just now had earned Loren’s approval, so sharing some secrets with her now wasn’t a problem.
As for Paqina’s own secrets, she would tell Loren when the time came.
Actually, Paqina had wanted to confess today. She had opened her mouth several times but couldn’t get the words out.
Of course, a big part of it was that Loren had told her there was no risk at all. Even if she wasn’t a witch, she would never reveal Loren’s secrets.
Besides, it was highly unlikely she wasn’t a witch.
Movila didn’t have many clones near this area, so getting to the scene would take some time. Loren didn’t expect any major discoveries.
But Loren wasn’t too worried either. This incident probably had nothing to do with him. The news of him boarding the train was fairly well-kept—not many people within the Church itself even knew. And given the speed of information transmission in this world, even if someone did know, it was unlikely they could have arranged anything against Loren before he arrived.
What’s more, Loren had stressed more than once that he didn’t want too many people knowing about this trip. He had boarded very discreetly. The only people on the entire train who knew Loren was here were those few from the Bountiful Church, including that attendant.
Even if it had nothing to do with him, Loren would eliminate potential threats as much as possible, especially when the matter was this suspicious.
