Chapter 14: The Culprit Appears
Ron wasn’t the first to step into the town center. Before him, Miss Mercury had dispatched some individuals to investigate, yet none returned alive.
“I am the mayor of this town… Welcome to our… Everwinter Town,” uttered the mummy-like figure, speaking at the pace of an elderly person.
Ron felt quite uneasy as the listener, hoping the mayor could speak faster. However, only Ron seemed to have an issue with the pace. The squirrel in the mayor’s arms seemed to enjoy this style of speech, rhythmically nodding along.
Ron looked at him skeptically and asked, “Are you the mayor of this town?”
“Yes… even if you doubt it… that’s the truth…” The mayor used his fingers, which seemed like they could break at any moment, and smoothed the white fur of the squirrel.
“Do you know what’s really happening in this town?” Despite Ron’s heavy skepticism, he still asked.
“Of course I know… but didn’t you already know it long ago?” The mayor struggled to lift his eyelids and said, “Anyone who comes to this place… can see the truth here…”
Ron fell silent for a moment and asked, “So, it’s not an illusion?”
The mayor shook his head. Everything was left unsaid. The back-and-forth dialogue was not a hallucination but a reality of the past.
“So, what’s your deal?” Ron observed the mayor again. His appearance was far from that of a normal person.
“When you’re trapped in the cage of time… you naturally become like this…” Faced with Ron’s barrage of questions, the mayor remained patient.
“This… you should have already realized…” He looked deeply at Ron.
Ron was well aware of what the mayor meant—when he had caught this squirrel earlier, he had heard himself saying the words he should have said several minutes later.
“The owner of this territory… if I’m not mistaken… should be Miss. Mercury, right?” The mayor spoke slowly. “It’s been too long… my memory is unclear…”
“Many people come here seeking the truth… I always tell them the truth… but they cannot leave here,” he said regretfully. “Just like me… no… maybe even more tragic than me…”
This mayor never conceals the truth. Unfortunately, he speaks the truth, but no one can leave alive with the truth. For people outside the town, it might seem like it’s just been frozen for a period. However, for the mayor, he has spent countless days and nights in this town.
Initially, he tried counting the days but eventually gave up. It’s not just the town that’s frozen. Even time within the town was frozen. Ironically, the town frozen in ice was originally named Everwinter Town, which couldn’t be more ironic. However, this town used to enjoy perpetual spring, nourished by the river flowing alongside it. Everything prospered until the belief in a malevolent deity reached here, and things began to go awry.
Ron, a newcomer to the dual-colored realm with no knowledge, was full of questions. “By the way, what is the evil deity? It sounds really ominous.”
Usually, when Ron asked such questions, he typically got an eye roll in response. However, the town, tormented by time for who knew how many years, could patiently answer all of Ron’s questions.
“The evil deity… it’s like that deep blue moon, the Mother Tree visible everywhere, or a constantly erupting volcano.”
“It’s an entity that can fulfill our wishes… grant us power…”
“But unlike them… the evil deity is not an individual…”
“They combine with those who believe in them… granting them flames… brute strength…”
“Those frozen people… if you lift their clothes… you can see the evil deity on their chests…”
Initially, the giants believed in the evil deity, and each giant had an evil deity on their chest. The evil deity bestowed flames and strength upon the giants, becoming their spiritual pillar. From their birth, the giants were accompanied by the evil deity, without exception.
Humans, however, are different. It needs to be implanted later to gain the power of the evil deity. Therefore, the evil deity is not one of the mainstream beliefs among humans. It’s quite a rare belief.
As the mayor spoke, his gaze grew increasingly hollow. “But this is wrong… we shouldn’t have accepted the evil deity… We’ve made some mistakes…”
Ron had brought a small stool and waited for the mummy-like old man to tell him a story. Despite the mayor’s discomforting manner of speaking last year, he seemed like a pivotal figure.
Ron’s intuition told him there must be many clues about the mayor. However, the mayor stopped there and didn’t continue telling Ron about the town’s affairs. This made Ron very anxious. One of the things he hated most in his life was people keeping him in suspense.
“Eventually… someone realized this mistake… and borrowed magic from the Mage Tower…”
The Mage Tower was filled with people who worshiped the moon and were willing to use something against the disagreeable evil deity. Hence, obtaining this magic wasn’t a difficult process. One might even say it was too easy. The mayor merely gestured in a direction. His eyes seemed to be looking there, but his pupils were scattered.
“He released the magic there… freezing all those who hosted the evil deity…”
“Everything is just as you saw before…”
Everyone who enters this place will be enveloped in the same past images as Ron. The content of those images basically corresponds to every sentence spoken here.
“But he didn’t consider… what disaster this magic would bring…”
Ron perked up when he heard, “So, the person who borrowed the magic is the mastermind?”
Madam Mercury sent him to find the real culprit.
Hasn’t he found it? This job is even simpler than he imagined. He doesn’t need to arrest that guy. He must tell Madam Mercury Lady about this to get a piece of land.
Crazy! Is this the otherworld? Everything seems to be coming to him. Even if he’s not a big lord, he can be a small lord. He can already imagine his future happy life.
You should know that in places where the societal structure appears more primitive, the benefits of becoming a lord are even greater. He decided he was going to seize this opportunity and become a lord!
What? You ask where Ron’s sense of shame has gone.
Naturally, he threw it away when he was a beggar!
“You’re right… and the person who borrowed the magic is…” After hearing Ron’s question, the mayor said with the deepest voice, “Me.”
“Hello, Mayor, I need you to come with me.” Ron, who was just laughing a moment ago, immediately changed his expression.
