Chapter 299 - 295: A Bad Impression

Chapter 299: Chapter 295: A Bad Impression

"Frank, if you’re saying those people are so ruthless, ridiculously strong, and super smart, why didn’t they just kill your ancestor to silence him?"

"Yeah, they left your ancestor alive, and he obviously didn’t keep his promise, otherwise how would you know? Besides, who’s to say he only told his descendants stories in his old age? He could have told other people."

"Right, right. Guess that super-organization you’re talking about isn’t so cold-blooded after all..."

His friends all started hooting and jeering, making Frank’s tall tale seem like it was built on a shaky foundation.

"Well, you can’t say everything is so absolute. In the story passed down in my family, that Mentor was actually a really nice person... Okay, fine! I admit I engaged in some artistic exaggeration!"

"Hahahahaha... Finally telling the truth... The real explanation is that you completely made the story up!"

"Exactly... How could something like that be real...?"

His friends burst into another round of laughter. The girl he had a crush on was also smiling. With the professor not showing up, the class had turned into free time, and the atmosphere was cheerful. But Frank was starting to lose face.

"It’s real, I tell you! Look it up online if you don’t believe me. Though, there aren’t many records."

Someone asked Frank for the correct spelling and, half-jokingly, opened their phone to search for it.

"You’ve got to be kidding me, it’s real! But there are very few records... Wait a sec..."

One of the girls stopped smiling.

There wasn’t much information online, not even enough to fill the first page of search results on her phone, but the content was somewhat unexpected.

Some of the information included accusations against Dawn, but these came from autobiographies or unsubstantiated sources, and the details were vague and inconsistent.

But many of the other results described them as a hope in the darkness...

"This can’t be real... It says here they rescued Saint Joan of Arc. That Joan of Arc was actually captured more than once, but was rescued the previous times... This has to be some apocryphal story, right? It was never in any of our textbooks..."

This caught the attention of the others nearby. When a "joke" suddenly had a real historical background, things got interesting.

"Here, this one says they stopped an Undead Tide at the Dark Waterfall, and that they swindled local nobles out of their fortunes and distributed the wealth to the disaster victims. They also provided medical care to fight diseases caused by the undead corruption... ’Undead’?"

"The Black Death, maybe?"

"Could be..."

From a distance, Peter let out another scoff. He popped a piece of candy into his mouth that Dim had handed him. The rock-hard sweet was no tougher than a marshmallow in his jaws.

The information was incredibly scarce. It was only slightly more than what Su Su had found, simply due to the different focus of foreign search engines, but even so, the details were extremely vague.

Some worshiped them as a light in the darkness, while others considered them villains. The former were mostly commoners. As for the latter... judging by those few memoirs, did the poor in ancient times have the luxury for such pastimes?

"So few records? That seems completely illogical."

"Frank, is this organization you called a group of swindlers for real? They don’t actually have magic, do they?"

Hearing this, Frank puffed up with pride, as if he himself were a Dawn Member, looking down on the ignorant nobles around him.

"Didn’t I tell you? That’s what’s so incredible about them. They’re extremely careful about ’erasing their tracks.’ They themselves are always talking about ’justice’ and ’light.’ If you’re not a member of Dawn, you’d never know their true nature. My ancestor was almost branded by them, that’s why he knew."

"Tsk. If they really have magic, couldn’t they have just made your ancestor think it was all a scam? Or maybe you only know half of your ancestor’s oath. Can you really tell whether Dawn is fake, or if your ancestor intentionally told a false story to his descendants?"

"That would also seem to explain why your ancestor dared to pass down his experiences to his descendants, wouldn’t it, Frank?"

The one speaking was none other than the girl Frank had a crush on, leaving him unable to refute her, both emotionally and logically.

Upon hearing this, Peter turned around a second time, his sharp gaze fixed on the girl.

’This girl is sharp!’

Even Peter himself didn’t know how the ancient Dawn operated. The Master Sage had personally admitted that Dawn had suffered breaks in its lineage, resulting in lost knowledge. Its current Primordial Qi was far from recovered. And whether due to those losses or social progress, Dawn’s methods wouldn’t remain static; after all, they weren’t some rigid, ancient relics.

But now, those few joking remarks from behind him had given Peter some new ideas about the ancient Dawn. Of course, that wasn’t important anymore. Dawn had always been an organization that looked to the future.

"Hey, Dim, I’m going to take off. I have something to do this afternoon, so I won’t be heading back to the dorm. Take my bag back for me, will you?"

With that, Peter handed his backpack to his friend.

"What? Something fun? Can I come?"

"Sorry, it’s private. It wouldn’t be convenient for you to be there."

...

At the university gate, a gray Volkswagen pulled up just as Peter came to a stop. Their timing was so perfect it was as if they had both been approaching this single point from a distance, destined to arrive at the exact same moment.

He opened the passenger door, got in, and the car drove off again.

The car was stopped at the school gate for no more than five seconds in total.

The Silent Knight Order now had at least three hundred members at the reserve level and above. It was impossible for Peter to know every single one, and he was most familiar with the members from his own cohort. However, thanks to Baru’s "benevolent" training regimen, all members of the Silent Knight Order were remarkably united.

The two of them had only exchanged a few sentences through the app, but they already had a considerable rapport.

"This mission is worth five points. That gets me one step closer to my prize."

Niso, who was driving, chatted amiably with Peter.

"Yeah, but I train pretty hard, so besides the standard rations, I’ve also redeemed a lot of Flowers of Life and Vermilion Fruits. I’ve even used the Secret Realm Illusion a few times. That makes me a broke pauper with no ’savings.’ The distance to my ’lover’ is still vast..."

Peter sounded a little helpless.

"Why don’t they release the new reward catalog sooner!"

"Hiss... The Secret Realm Illusion, now that’s a luxury item. I hear it consumes a ton of Magic Energy Crystals. You can actually bear to use it? Still, strength progression is what really matters. As for equipment, I heard from my Mentor that the Association’s current forging technology has hit a bottleneck. Production is very slow, so even if you have enough points, you can’t get things right away."

"You have a Mentor?! You’re so lucky, no wonder you’re so well-informed. By the way, what kind of bottleneck is it?"

Peter was curious.

Niso offered Peter a piece of gum and then answered.

"Magic Steel is too difficult to forge. It’s incredibly hard, and its melting point is strange. The Master Magic Controller in charge of forging can barely control it even with the help of a Technique Array, but the margin for error is so low that they can’t speed up production. I heard that once it cools, if it doesn’t meet the right specifications, it’s extremely difficult to remelt. It’s more cost-effective to just forge a new piece."

They exchanged information about weapons they liked and other interesting tidbits, happily discussing in detail how miserable the last training camp was and whether they knew anyone going into the next one.

Twenty-some minutes later, they arrived at Tulip Street, over ten kilometers away. This was already on the outskirts of the city.

They circled the area once, and not sensing any unusual auras, parked the car in a spot diagonally across from No. 119.

Tulip Street sounded quaint, but it wasn’t a bustling area. The buildings were rather old and spread out, and there were hardly any pedestrians around even in broad daylight.

It was like a wide, empty, plaza-like street that felt as if it were from the Industrial Revolution. The upside was its rich classical atmosphere, but it obviously wasn’t a tourist spot, and few people were there to appreciate it. After all, there were many similar places in De Yi Country.

Peter and Niso got out of the car, their gazes cutting across several dozen meters to clearly read the address plate as they stared at their target location.

From the outside, the building at No. 119 looked nothing like the Dawn Association’s usual style; it was nearly identical to the surrounding structures.

It had several simple, unadorned triangular roofs and squared-off walls. But it was also very distinct, simply because it was big—much taller and occupying a larger area than the buildings around it.

The two of them double-checked the details in the file provided by the Association, committing certain things to memory before approaching.

They rang the doorbell of the large, closed door. They knew someone was inside.

But after they rang it several times, there were no footsteps from within.

"Two possibilities: either they didn’t hear it, or they have no intention of opening the door. What do you think?"

"The latter."

A quick back-and-forth between Peter and Niso.

You can’t wake a person who’s pretending to be asleep, and you can’t get someone pretending not to be home to open the door.

Not wanting to antagonize the occupant, and since it wasn’t yet appropriate to use methods beyond that of an ordinary person, the two decided to wait in the car. They weren’t lacking in patience; after all, the mission was an investigation.

Inside the building was an enormous living room. The floors above were all built in a circular, loft-style structure.

Each floor had many rooms, with a corridor, railings, and support pillars on the outside, from which one could look directly down into the living room below.

This was true for the second floor all the way up to the sixth, with the seventh-floor attic being the only exception. The cascading levels of corridors and the support pillars, which looked like a fence from a distance, created a unique, layered aesthetic.

It was unclear why it had such a peculiar design.

If your eyesight was good enough, you could see every single door up to the sixth floor from the ground floor, though due to the upward angle, you could only see the very top of the highest doorframes.

On the second floor was a large, modified bedroom, formed by knocking down the wall between two rooms.

A man in his thirties was currently lying on the large bed inside. He listened intently for a moment, and hearing no more ringing from the doorbell, he contentedly went back to sleep.

Over an hour later, the man was woken by the ringing of his cell phone. After answering, a sharp, loud voice on the other end made him jolt.

"Brother!! Are you sleeping in again?! It’s already 3 PM!!!"

"Oh, Mani, I finally get a day off... How are you ever going to get married acting like this? Oh, right, tell Frank to bring me a case of dark beer. I’m all out."

The female voice on the other end of the line was fuming.

"Then get up right now and help clean the rooms! Even though our family isn’t in the rental business anymore, Father will definitely chew you out if he finds out the rooms are too dirty!"

"Don’t mention that coward who hasn’t shown his face in years. I’m getting up, okay? My salary and subsidies are more than enough for us to live comfortably. Next time, I’m closing that account. We don’t need him sending us any more money!"

The man got out of bed with surprising determination, only to throw on a full set of winter clothes within half a minute.

A big house had its own set of problems. In the winter, it was quite cold outside the rooms.

Glancing out the window, he saw his younger brother getting out of a car, carrying something.

In the Volkswagen down the street, the moment Peter saw Frank, he couldn’t help but frown.

"It’s him?"

"What, you know him?"

"Yeah, I’ve seen him at school. But I don’t have a very good impression of him..."

PS: Friday’s first Chapter.