There were obvious traces of fire on the surface of the box, and with just a slight shake, the box disintegrated in Jenkins' hands, and the golden pine cones contained in it slipped into his hands.
The raindrops fell quietly on the surface of the pine cone. The unique gold color and heavy sense of wealth almost made Jenkins say something like "my—_precious".
He took a deep breath and held the pine cone tightly in his hand, closed his eyes for two or three seconds before standing up.
"Interesting spook."
From the pine cone he held tightly in his palm, the black aura was still faintly penetrating through the palm of his hand. But the long-silent [Hero (Black Holy)] has played a role silently, and most of the dissipated aura of strange things dissipated directly through the contact of the palm, and a few were transformed into spirits that Jenkins could absorb.
Without the ability of [Hero], Jenkins would never have dared to touch such a level of cursed monsters with his hands. But the current situation is still not optimistic. With the poor conversion efficiency alone, Jenkins cannot eliminate it even after hundreds of years.
According to the "Secrets of Black Town" read in the bedroom, this cursed pine cone, which symbolizes wealth, caused a huge disturbance in the town. All those who possess it by accident will soon suffer misfortune, and the corpses and souls of those unfortunates will be transformed into the nourishment of the pine cone, making it more powerful.
It wasn't until a kind-hearted and innocent boy picked it up, played with it and threw it in the woods outside the town, that the curse was considered to be over.
If it is just a fable, this story, which is intended to warn people not to be greedy for windfall money, is still qualified, but it is too terrible to put it in reality.
"I'm not some innocent little boy, but you're unlucky to meet me."
He returned to the inn room clutching the golden pinecone, and returned to the woodland with it and the stone box in which it had been contained. Return the pine cone to the stone box and refill it in the pit where the woodcutter found it.
When digging a pit, he found a few pages of an old thread-bound book in the same position. Jenkins ignored them, put them in his pocket, and buried the box and the pine cones inside back to the depths of the earth.
As he buried the last handful of soil, Jenkins seemed to hear wailing from beneath his feet. He shook his head and dreamed that he sat up from the bed, that "dream" was over.
"Since it is cursing the greedy humans who took the pine cone, wouldn't returning it to its original place break the curse?"
Sighing, he wanted to look at the few pages he had harvested this time, but suddenly felt some wet marks on his face. Raising his hand to wipe it, there were indeed some water stains on the left cheek. He carefully put his finger in front of his nose and sniffed, but he didn't smell anything.
"Chocolate, you won't spit on my face while I'm asleep, will you?"
He asked his cat, only to find that the cat curled up into a ball and buried its head deeply in its belly. It had never slept in this position, and Jenkins wasn't sure if it was really asleep because he couldn't see the cat's face.
"Chocolate is kind of weird."
He muttered in a low voice, and then looked at the pages with yellow aura in his hand, just like the "Ghoul in the Cemetery" just now, these pages still have the same story as the old book with a different name, and in the The position of the header also has the handwritten header of "Secrets of Black Town".
Stacked the pages of the two stories together, waited for a while and saw that nothing happened, then put on his coat and prepared to go out. Before going out, he called his cat, but Chocolate didn't respond. Jenkins thought it was unwilling to go out, so he shrugged and slipped out of the window.
Leaving the church alone, I entered the clearing in the forest along the route I remembered. Time has passed more than how long, but the forest has memories, especially for Jenkins, there is no way he could get lost in the forest.
He squatted down and used the tip of his sword to push away the dirt, and after a while, he saw the ancient stone box. Carefully take it out, wipe off the dust on the surface and open the lid, the golden pine cone is still lying inside.
"It's really beautiful."
After so many years buried deep in the ground, its power has weakened a lot since Jenkins saw it in "dream". Holding it in the palm of your hand, you no longer have the bone-piercing cold touch, but you can still feel the essence of the pine cone itself.
He chuckled, calling out his own Ouroboros gold ring. Not surprisingly, the ring hummed itself as soon as it emerged, longing for the pine cone.
I didn't devour it with the ring in the "dream", that's because the fruit was still very powerful at that time. But now it is Jenkins' own timeline. The pine cone has been "starved" underground for so many years, and it no longer has the power to affect the gift ring.
Under the action of cannibalism, the ouroboros that made up the golden ring seemed to come alive, and swam up from Jenkins' finger and clung to the pine cone. The two kinds of gold that looked the same blended with each other, and soon, as the spirit that destroyed the monster flowed into Jenkins' body, the small golden ouroboros swam back to Jenkins' finger again, bit its own tail and recovered. The look of the ring.
It was able to attract wealth for Jenkins, enabling him to complete the accumulation of wealth that others could not complete in a lifetime in just half a year. Now it has devoured the pine cone, and has not shown another function.
But Jenkins is not greedy, as long as he destroys the trick, he is considered successful.
Returning to the bedroom of the church with a satisfied mood, he looked at his lady's pocket watch, and it was only around ten o'clock. Putting on pajamas and getting back under the warm blanket, by the light of the bedside candle, he picked up the old book again.
"Should I go on to a third story? While it's all very interesting what's going on right now, it's definitely not normal."
I wanted to let my cat express some opinions, but the cat still huddled into a ball. Tonight's chocolate was a little too well-behaved, Jenkins reached out and stroked its back, only to be relieved when he heard the meow of the cat.
His eyes returned to the cover of the old book in the dim light, he shrugged his shoulders, leaned back on the soft pillow, and flipped the pages to open the third story.
The third story, titled "The Maiden of the Lake," bears a resemblance to some of the stories Jenkins had read in his hometown. This also happened in the forest near Black Town. To be more precise, the first scene of the story took place in the lake where the church's steam airship crash-landed.