The farmers below had no idea what had just happened. They craned their necks upward, waiting for the verdict.

[Herman: Master, is Little Claude really not dead? But then why would he show up for the sake of these people who keep trying to kill him?]

Saul wasn’t in a hurry. “Because these people… are not alive.”

Herman still didn’t understand.

But before he could ask more, the one standing closest—Village Chief Claude—let out a long sigh.

The moment the sigh fell, the other villagers instantly froze.

It was as if, aside from Saul and the village chief, time had stopped for everyone else.

“You’re the first wizard to see through the truth the moment you arrived. But no matter how I look at you, you’re only First Rank. Are you hiding your strength?”

The one behind the scenes had finally revealed himself.

In his eyes, the tall, red-haired middle-aged man was covered in scars.

The skin on his face was pitted and uneven, as if it had been scalded in boiling water; a circular scar ringed his neck, like he had once been beheaded; the tips of his fingers were badly worn, nails gone, as though he had fiercely clawed at something.

And under the clothes covering Claude’s body, there were surely even more terrifying wounds.

This Claude, this wizard—looked as though he’d been killed dozens, if not hundreds, of times.

“My strength doesn’t matter,” Saul said slowly. “What matters is—if you keep going like this, you’re going to mutate.”

Claude wasn’t surprised. Clearly, he was well aware of his own condition.

“You’ve already broken the deadlock of this village. You should leave now. In a little while, the rules here will reset.”

“If you already understand the basic formula, no matter how much the situation shifts, it won’t deviate from its principle,” Saul replied with a smile. “But you—are you really content to collapse in this endless cycle of chaos?”

“Didn’t expect to meet such a ‘good man’ in the Borderland.”

“I’m no good man,” Saul denied. “I just like equivalent exchange.”

Claude laughed, and when he did, his mouth didn’t just crack open vertically—it split horizontally too.

“I can guess what you’re after. But what makes you think you can pay the price?”

“This.”

A translucent tendril whipped out from Saul’s palm, suddenly curling around the frozen little girl.

Claude glanced at her, but didn’t move. “You can’t destroy them.”

He thought Saul was threatening him with the villagers. But to his surprise, Saul released the girl in the next second.

The little girl, who had just moments ago worn an eerie smile, now returned to a peaceful expression. Her eyes closed, she lay on the ground as if asleep.

Claude’s casual expression vanished. He rushed to the girl’s side and examined her condition.

A moment later, he looked up with astonishment. “You actually managed to purge the pollution from her without damaging the soul itself?”

It was like dropping a drop of ink into clear water, and then removing the ink without disturbing the water’s shape.

Claude could remove ink from water—but not pollution from a soul.

He laid the girl down gently and brushed aside her bangs.

[ Morden: Seems like he doesn’t care as little about the villagers as he pretends.]

[Agu: On the contrary—he cares deeply. Even if they’re already… the living dead.]

[An: Master is amazing, he saw right through Claude’s true feelings.]

[Herman: Huh?]

Even Saul was a bit surprised by how much Claude cared for the girl. When he used Soul Fishing on the villagers, he only drained a large portion of their pollution.

Besides probing Claude’s reaction, his main purpose had been to make it clear he had the power to cleanse Claude’s corrupted soul body.

But what he didn’t expect was that Claude seemed to care more about the villagers’ pollution—and didn’t immediately realize that this method could be used on himself.

As Claude stood up again, the cold indifference on his face was gone.

“What’s the price to learn how to purge pollution like you?”

“You won’t be able to learn it,” Saul jumped down from the roof. “But you can trade with me—the principles behind the formation of this village’s rules, in exchange for my help.”

“So that’s what you’re after?” Claude blinked, clearly having misjudged Saul’s intent.

He looked down at the little girl, then came to a decision. “As for how the rules were formed—I can only say… I don’t know.”

Saul frowned, but he could tell Claude had more to say, so he remained silent.

“Seems like you haven’t been in the Borderland for long, or you wouldn’t have asked. In the outside world—whether it’s Stat or the other two continents—pollution follows patterns. But in the Borderland, it’s different. Pollution comes from nowhere. One moment you’re conducting your usual research, and the next, the potion in your hand suddenly jumps onto your face and tries to burrow in. Even your own body parts might suddenly mutate.”

As Claude said this, a few villagers suddenly twitched.

He pulled a milky-white shell wind chime from his pocket and gave it a light shake.

The villagers, who had shown signs of waking up, immediately froze in place again.

“This village—one day, it just developed this rule: ‘kill, and you die.’ It’s not uncommon in the Borderland, but no one knows why. At least, not yet.”

“Still, though I don’t know the cause, I can tell you everything that’s happened here. Maybe, one day, you’ll figure it out on your own.”

“Go on,” Saul said, not committing to anything yet.

“This is the village I was born in,” Claude said, eyes downcast. “It used to be a bit bigger than this. One day I was fetching water by the river, and a wizard suddenly appeared before me, saying I had the potential to be his apprentice.”

“He could make fish leap from the riverbank on their own, and birds from the sky would help carry my water buckets. I thought it was incredible, so I agreed. But when I brought him home to meet my brother, my brother refused no matter what. He even offered up all the money we had, begging the wizard to leave me alone.”

“I was only ten then. I didn’t understand what my brother meant. I thought he just didn’t want me to leave and leave all the work to him, and I was upset. So when the wizard asked me again, in front of my brother, if I wanted to be his apprentice, I still said yes. Then…”

“Then the wizard killed my brother.”

Saul cupped his chin. “Not unexpected.”

“I was too stunned to react at the time. It was only after being taken away that I started crying. The wizard wanted to teach me runes, but I was too grief-stricken and scared to learn. He asked me if I thought he was a bad person. I didn’t dare admit it, but in my heart I did think so. Then he brought me back to the village.”

“But he didn’t bring me back to let me go. He wanted me to understand that this village had no good people either.”

At that, Saul looked at the eerie villagers lying on the ground, and began to get a sense of something.

Claude went on: “He told me that killing was an ordinary thing. I didn’t believe him. So he flew me into the sky. And then I saw it with my own eyes—how the kind farmer would come home every day with a corpse hidden in his haystack. How the ‘honest’ housewife would sneak other men into her home when the farmer was out. Some of those men left… others ended up in the stove. The little girl I liked most was stuffed into a tree hole by her own mother… and her mother kept calling her home for dinner every day…”

“After seeing all that, my fear turned to numbness. I followed the wizard back and started learning obediently. I only came to understand, once I reached Third Rank, that the reason my village became so twisted—was because that wizard had cast a curse.”

(End of chapter)

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