Kalinger has three doubts in mind:
First, what happened to the alien infection near Heishu Village. Second, what is the identity of the fairy rime? Third, why Rime’s choice of words and sentences when writing letters is so elegant.
Now that the first two doubts have been answered, only the third question remains unanswered.
Kalinger returned to the large library on the seventh floor from the bottom of the tower. The books on the bookshelf were all esoteric and difficult, he would not touch them, but the books laid flat on the table attracted his attention.
It was an etiquette book, not only teaching etiquette, but also explaining which kind of response is more appropriate on which occasion and so on. Kalinger roughly flipped through the book. The book taught how to greet people by writing letters, how to greet people they met for the first time, how to say goodbye politely, how to make people have a good impression of themselves, etc... Kalinger pondered After a while, Wu Rime seemed to be deliberately turning the book upside down, and doing all his actions in reverse, trying to become an unpopular person who will not be remembered.
Kalinger smiled and shook his head. I don't know if this is the entrustment of Master Jinghu, such as "don't let the villagers care too much about you" or something like that.
Kalinger paid special attention to all books with common language titles, and found many such popular books. From preaching social morality, to etiquette and conduct, as well as explaining the customs and customs of various countries, as well as some local chronicles of Heishu Village.
As far as Kalinger knew, mages generally did not keep such books. Even if they had read them when they were young, they would never leave them in the study when they grew up. If outsiders found out, there would be nowhere to put their old faces.
There are these books in the Falling Moon Pagoda, obviously because Jinghu wants to educate the rime like teaching children.
Masters and tools, mages and golems, creators and works, parents and children... The relationship between Jinghu and Rime is like the fusion of all these, and the part that is closer to parent-child does not know how much it can account for.
It seems inaccurate to say that their relationship is only between mage and golem. The master does not need to teach etiquette to a tool, let alone explain the world to him.
To say that they are parent and child is still not true. Parents don't give birth to a child so that it will die in a particular way.
This is not the case even in the abyss plane. The demon mother may not mind her child dying, but she doesn't plan how to let him die in advance, and then educate him well and get along with him well.
Kalinger thinks he understands humans very well. Among humans, mages are relatively difficult to understand. He doesn't know much about elves, and Jinghu is both an elf and a mage, so the complexity can be imagined.
However, Jinghu disappeared long ago, even if he understood him, it was useless. There are too many mysterious things in this world, if you can understand it, you can understand it, and it doesn't matter if you really don't understand it.
Kalinger threw the book he was carrying back on the table, turned and left the study. When he came to the corridor, the floating disc just came up from the bottom of the tower, and the fog sat on it.
To be precise, Jinghu's body is sitting on it, and the real rime is still at the bottom of the tower.
After the floating disc came to a stop, Rime slowly supported the stone wall to get up, and Kalinge went to help him. He lowered his head to avoid Kalinge's sight as before.
"Can the floating disc move? The magic system in the tower has been restored?" Kalinger asked.
Rime nodded.
"Are you okay?" Kalinger put his arms around him and let him lean on himself. "Are you particularly tired? Do you need me to carry you away? Are you too tired to talk?"
Wu Ri looked inexplicable: "No... this body is intact."
"But you have suffered so much, and your soul must be quite exhausted."
"It's okay. Nothing will happen. You see, I have the strength to restore the magic in the tower."
Kalinger helped him back to the study, let him sit on the soft chair, and sat by the desk by himself. Rime didn't say a word, and immediately entered the working state.
He silently sorted out the documents and tools on the desk, checked the magic mechanisms on the ceiling, and tried to activate the spherical quadruped golem again... All the actions were orderly, as if he was going through the most ordinary daily life of a mage, as if it had never happened past things.
Kalinger looked at him for a moment and asked, "I was going to ask you to rest a little longer. Um, don't you really need to lie down or something?"
Rime shook his head: "No. I don't need it."
Too. He is not a real elf, nor does he rest by eating or sleeping. The keel under the tower has broken away from the magic circle on the crystal. Although it was severely damaged, it will not continue to be eroded from now on. For the smog, this is already the best way to rest.
Rime was planning to write something, he picked up the glass pen, but his hand was shaking slightly. So he slowly put down the glass pen and replaced it with a quill pen.
When he was not writing, Kalinger gently held his wrist. Rime didn't look up, but continued to stare at the table.
Callinger asked, "Are you still a little afraid of me?"
"Yes."
Pretty honest. Callinger said, "No wonder. After all, just now I..."
He paused, thought for a while, and it seemed too strange to say "I ate a little bit of you just now" bluntly. Now he is a human being, and he speaks like a human being, so he changed his words and said, "Don't be afraid. You are also a mage, you have studied, and an abyssal creature like me will not go crazy casually, and I will not hurt you again."
"I know," Wu Ri said softly, "You didn't go crazy just now. You have been very restrained, thank you."
"You actually said thank you to me, I'm so used to it." Kalinger said.
Rime asked: "Shouldn't it be?"
"Yes, very much," said Kalinger, "then don't be afraid of me, will you?"
When he was talking, he was still holding Wu Ri's wrist, and Wu Ri had no intention of withdrawing his hand. On the crystal at the bottom of the tower, Kalinger touched the broken front paw of the bone dragon before, and now the slender wrist in his palm belonged to an elf corpse, but in his opinion, it was no different from the feeling of touching a dragon bone.
Wu Ri frowned slightly, thought for a while before saying: "Yes. I will do my best."
Kalinger sighed: "You answered so seriously, it made it difficult for me to answer."
As soon as he said that, Wu Rime stopped talking. Kalinge finally let go of Wusong's wrist, and continued to watch him busy but slowly deal with the necessary affairs in the mage tower.
After a while, Kalinger suddenly stood up straight: "Oops! I forgot!"
Wu Ri looked at him suspiciously, and he looked around: "Do you have a clock here?"
Rime pointed him in a direction, and Kalinger hurried to confirm it, and then hurried back. When he faced the cluster of elements just now, his expression was not as serious as it is now.
"I've been in the tower all night!" Kalinger said with a sullen face. "The villagers at the foot of the mountain thought you were dead. Now I'm afraid they think I'm dead too. I have to go down the mountain quickly, I hope Don't they run out and call for more people."
He walked a few steps, then looked back at the rime: "But... are you dead? You decide."
"How to decide?"
"If you're not dead, let's make up a reason that you're protected by some kind of spell or something, and you're brought back to life. If you're dead... then you're dead, and I'll say I've solved everything and buried you in It's in the mountains."
Rime thought for a while and said, "Then I should die. The elf they know is Jinghu, and Jinghu is gone, so they should have a chance to miss him."
Callinger said: "Maybe they know you and Jinghu are two different elves, and they know that one died, and the other?"
Rime smiled lightly: "Do you know why the teacher called me 'rime'?"
"Because your bones were named that when you were alive?"
"Yes. That dragon... It's a bit strange to say that, it's obviously my body, but I'm not talking about myself. The dragon's name is Wusong."
Among Jinghu's many notes, there is a section that records the origin of the keel. It was a silver dragon that died in a distant age, and the cause of death is unknown.
It has never defeated a demon, and it may not even have seen a demon. It belongs to a different era from the demon bones on the ancient battlefield, and it just happened to be left in the same place.
When Jinghu used its bones, it perceived its secular name from the remaining soul, and the remaining soul only had time to state a few words before dissipating in the flow of magic.
"I think it's better for me to 'die'," Wusong said while writing, "Jinghu died, and the real Wusong died long ago. If you tell the villagers that I'm alive again, they won't be sad for nothing ."
Kalinger said: "What's wrong with being sad? You feel guilty about cheating their feelings, so you just cheat them to the end?"
Wu Ri tilted his head. Judging from his expression, he didn't seem to understand what's wrong with "deceiving them to the end".
After thinking for a while, Rime said: "I just think that if the people in Heishi Village must be sad for someone, it should be Jinghu and Rime. It's not me, but the real Rime."
Kalinger didn't quite understand the Bone Dragon Golem's way of thinking, but he still nodded. Whether the "Spirit Rime" dies or not is a trivial matter, it's nothing more than a different way of lying.
He poked his head over to see Rime writing. It turned out that Rime was writing a letter, but upon closer inspection, it was not an ordinary letter, but a decent suicide note.
The content is not long, and the things explained are irrelevant, mainly to show that this is a suicide note.
The typography is still beautiful, the prose is still neat, and the wording is still very violent, and some of the content is almost intimidating.
"Why are you so mean to them?" Kallinger asked.
Rime dodged subconsciously, trying to cover the paper with his hand, which caused the tip of the pen to tremble, and the last few letters were crooked, failing to draw the perfect cursive characters.
This is more like a suicide note, and it is written when you are dying.
Asked by Kalinger, Wusong himself frowned: "That's right... In fact, I'm not so annoying now, and I can be more peaceful. Probably because I'm used to it..."
Listening to what he meant, Kalinger pondered for a while, and was a little surprised again—so he didn't pretend to be irritable on purpose? Is he really annoying, so naturally he writes all kinds of elegant words? As expected of the bones of a dragon, he is really talented.
"Why are you staring at me..." Haze raised his eyes and glanced at Kalinger.
Kalinge smiled and said, "It's nothing. I was just thinking, if the villagers know that the elves in the mountain are dead and there are no more demons on the mountain, will they run around the Moonfall Tower all day long to make trouble? So you Don't you bother?"
Wu Ri said: "This mountain belongs to them. Besides, no one can find the entrance of the Falling Moon Tower, they can't get in, and I won't go out, so no one can disturb me."
Rime found the envelope, folded the letter in a fixed way, sealed it, stamped it, and handed it to Kalinger. Kalinger stuffed it into his pocket and squeezed it deliberately, so that the letter paper would look more vicissitudes, more like it was left after a tragic battle in the mountains.
The two took the floating disc to the top floor, and the gate of the Falling Moon Tower opened again.
A little morning light poured in through the crack of the door, Rime looked at the cold light on the floor and sighed softly.
Kalinger saw his reaction, but didn't say much for the time being.
Kalinge walked out of the tower gate, turned his head and blinked at Wusong: "Leave all the lying to me, don't worry."
"You still haven't done what you promised me." Wu Song reminded.
"I know, remember. Go to the Austrian Law Federation, right? Are those people really trustworthy? Will no one come up with any bad ideas?"
Rime smiled and said: "A group of mages. The worst idea is to occupy the books and all kinds of knowledge left by Jinghu. But it doesn't matter. The purpose of Jinghu is like this. Whether it is books or experimental records, it is originally for them. of."
"That's right," Kalinger nodded, "Then I'll go first."
He waved with his back to Wurime, and Wurime bowed slightly to his back.
This time, the gate of the Falling Moon Tower did not close immediately, but opened for a while until the hunter's back disappeared into the forest.
========================
The situation in Heishi Village was indeed as Kalinge expected, it was really gloomy.
This early in the morning, there was no one working in the fields, and there were no people on the road. Occasionally, a few children ran over and saw Kalinge, with a puzzled look on their faces, and then ran away quickly, wondering if they were going to inform the adults up.
As soon as Kallinger approached the singing hut, a group of people poured out of the shop. It seems that the Singing House is not only the village library, but also the village council hall.
All of them had red eyes and sallow complexions, as if they hadn't slept all night. The resident bard and shopkeeper cut their way through the crowd, staring at Kallinger in disbelief, then both rushed towards him.
Kalinger quickly dodged, shouting while hiding: "Don't, don't hug me, my ribs are hurt!"
The mother and son stopped hugging, with tears in their eyes. Gradually, more people gathered around, the women burst into laughter, the men raised their arms and shouted, and several children chattered together, but they couldn't make out what they were talking about.
On this day, Kalinge received a grand welcome, and he himself didn't know whether it was a welcome ceremony or a speech meeting. Anyway, most people in the village gathered inside and outside the Huange Hut, and those who couldn't sit crowded crowded on the street. Kalinge sat on a chair near the door, slowly telling what happened in the forest.
People listened attentively, sometimes wiping away tears. While he was talking, there was a poet writing quickly in a small notebook beside him.
The version Kallinger told is neither the truth nor the minimalist version that Wu Ri hoped for.
He said that he had communicated with the elves in the mountains and learned the truth of the legend:
Long ago, in this land lived a silver dragon. In the accident of the cracking of the plane, some demons took the opportunity to come to the human world, and happened to meet Yinlong. The silver dragon fought many demons, but the demons were very powerful and there were too many of them. The silver dragon was outnumbered and died heroically in the end.
The dragon's soul did not return to God's Domain, but stayed in the land, turning itself into a seal, imprisoning the demon underground.
In this way, thousands of years have passed, and this land has been peaceful and sound.
Later, an elf mage named Jinghu came here. After learning the story of the silver dragon, he stayed and began to study the method of completely eradicating the demon. Guided by the silver dragon's soul, he completed one mysterious experiment after another, getting closer and closer to the goal of completely eradicating the devil.
To destroy the devil, one must face the devil. But the demon was cunning and cruel, and the elf ultimately failed. The devil took this opportunity to break through a little bit of the seal, and will soon return to the human world.
The elf felt that he was sorry for the residents at the foot of the mountain, so he used his last chance to dedicate his body to the ancient silver dragon, hoping that the silver dragon would resurrect and kill the demon.
The soul of the silver dragon accepted the body of the elf and turned into an elf mage with superb wisdom and powerful magic power. During his battle with the demons, the alien bounty hunters were responsible for eliminating the monsters who wanted to escape.
In the end, the "Dragon Mage" finally killed the most powerful demon and ended the crisis. After the battle, the soul of the giant dragon will leave. Everyone knows that this kind of legendary creature with divine nature has a noble soul, and their soul will eventually go to the domain of the real dragon.
After the dragon's soul left, the elf's body also lost its vitality and became a corpse. The foreign bounty hunter buried the elf in the mountain, and according to the elf's last words, he chose a place where no one can find it and will never be disturbed.
That's all about it.
Kalinger finished his lunch while talking. He originally wanted to suggest that the villagers also go to eat first, but the villagers said that they were not hungry and would rather listen to him here.
After all the speeches were finished, the whole room and the street were silent at first, then someone sighed in a low voice, someone whispered to each other, someone in the corner started to applaud, leading everyone to applaud gradually.
Amid the thunderous applause of the whole village, Kalinger continued to eat, and the resident bard tuned the strings, and even wanted to compose immediately.
Finally, Kalinge handed over the "Dragon Mage"'s personal letter to the village chief. He urged that Master Long trusted the villagers, so he was willing to let them know all this, and hoped that they would try to keep it as secret as possible, so that outsiders would not know that the elf's body was buried in the mountain. If adventurers with good deeds come to hear the sound, they will disturb the sleep of the elves.
The old village chief nodded heavily, and pointed to the resident bard who was tuning the strings: Usually outsiders are received by their house, and the stories he tells must be embellished, and no outsider will believe it.
Kalinger agrees. This story is only believed by the people of Heishu Village, and no one with any ability will believe it. It does not conform to the law of survival of alien creatures at all, and is contrary to the basic knowledge of arcane disciplines.
In the afternoon, Kalinger said that he had to rush to the city to handover with the guild members, so he had to leave quickly.
The people in the village saw that he was wounded and had lost all his weapons, so they prepared two swords, a pile of food and medicine for him, and gave him an extra horse to carry things.
Recalling that when he first came to Black Tree Village, Kalinge felt that this task was difficult to do, and that it might not be worth the loss. Now he is very happy, and he is very glad that he did not refuse the commission.
For the Bounty Hunter Association, for true professionals, this incident is nothing more than an alien infection. The bounty hunter accepts the commission, kills the infected body, destroys the source of the infection, and everything is over.
As for dragons and elves, they would be sung, told in stories, made up as fictional characters in legends.
They will be remembered in poetry, not in reality. That's enough. This is better.
TBC