"What's going on?!"
"Didn't you say it was a simple commission?"
Sophia hurried to keep up, her head buzzing.
"An accident!"
Li Andy gritted his teeth, kicked away the puppet in front of him, and strode out of the building's entrance.
"In this line of work, changes and risks are normal!"
The students outside were stunned when they saw the fire inside.
But the next second, they seemed to hear something, their eyes gradually became blank, and they stood still as if their souls had been taken.
Then, they suddenly stared in unison, their faces ferocious, blocking the way to the school gate.
Sophia's skin immediately crawled.
Just then, the dismissal bell suddenly rang.
However, the bell only rang once before it was choked off, stopping abruptly as if a hand had seized its throat.
Sophia subconsciously looked up at the clock tower, only to see the two dark hands rapidly reversing at an alarming speed. Suddenly, with a "clank," the minute hand shattered, transforming into a dark, cold spear that shot straight towards them.
"Don't just stand there!"
Li Andy tackled Sophia, and the hand grazed their hair, plunging directly into the stone bricks.
The two scrambled to their feet and ran towards the side door.
But as they passed the fountain plaza, the mechanical sculptures suddenly came to life, trembling as they rose, weapons in hand, mechanically turning towards the two.
Li Andy frowned, wondering how to break through.
Sophia suddenly grabbed his hand and pulled him in another direction.
"Follow me!"
They arrived at the base of a high wall.
Sophia took a short run-up, stepped on a gap in the wall, and agilely scaled the nearly four-meter-high wall in just a few movements. Then, she avoided the spikes on top, gripped the wall with her legs, and reached down.
"Jump up, I'll pull you!"
Li Andy couldn't help but be stunned.
"How are you so skilled?"
Sophia's pretty face immediately flushed, and she urged.
"Hurry, they're coming!"
Li Andy glanced at the crowd rushing behind him, his wild blood surging. He crouched, leaped, and pushed off the wall, scaling the top in two seconds.
However, due to his unpracticed movements, the hem of his skirt accidentally snagged on a spike, revealing his fair upper thigh.
"Jump onto the branches outside!"
Sophia adjusted her posture and was the first to leap down from the wall.
Li Andy paused briefly, then followed closely.
After the two disappeared, the pursuing puppets suddenly stopped in unison, their eyes blank as they stared at the sky above the high wall.
A few seconds later, they began to retreat, their movements exactly the same as when they arrived, as if time were flowing backward.
…
Evening, Harveys's residence, drawing-room.
"That's pretty much what happened…"
Li Andy leaned against the sofa, rubbing his temples with two fingers to ease his throbbing head. After running back with Sophia, he returned to his main body and revealed part of the truth about the commission.
"Is there anything else you want to ask?"
Sophia frowned slightly, a strange expression on her face. She first glanced at Jasmine, who was quietly sleeping beside her, then shifted her gaze back.
"Why didn't you tell me at first?"
"If I told you beforehand, you would definitely focus your attention on me and it would be easy for that ghost to discover us."
Sophia paused.
"You said 'ghost,' but there was more than one."
Li Andy sighed.
"Yes, I didn't expect that either. The difficulty of this commission clearly exceeded expectations."
"So what do we do?"
"What else can we do…?"
Li Andy spread his hands.
"Report it."
…
After returning to the church for a brief rest,
Li Andy found Sister Anna and recounted the details of the commission, omitting the specifics of his own abilities.
At this moment, Sister Anna was not wearing her special nun's habit, but rather a form-fitting long dress, and her eyes were covered with a white veil, making her look like a gentle and plump elder sister from next door.
After listening, she pondered for a long while before speaking.
"I want seventy percent of the commission fee."
"Seventy percent?! Is Night Crow Sister short on money too?"
Li Andy raised an eyebrow, a little displeased.
He vaguely remembered the description in the game: as a direct cleric of the Victoria Papacy, Night Crow Sister enjoyed a considerable divine stipend.
If she was responsible for a church, there would be additional subsidies.
However, everyone at West Suburb Church seemed to live quite frugally.
Even many supplies were donated by believers.
When Sister Aiya smoked, she would carefully ration her higher-grade cigarettes. The last time she offered him a cigarette, she specifically emphasized its origin.
Anna seemed to sense his confusion and smiled, pressing her lips together.
"We are under a sentence."
"Being strapped for cash is normal."
She then briefly touched upon the relationship between the Empire and the New Continent colonies, and sighed about the vast distance between the two places.
As an old hand from two lifetimes, Li Andy immediately understood why.
Most Night Crow Sisters who traveled from the Empire to the New Continent were dispatched to these desolate lands to spread the Lord's gospel because they had made mistakes in their original postings.
Since they were affiliated with the Empire, their divine stipends were naturally issued by the Empire.
However, a vast ocean separated the Empire and the New Continent, and the limited allocated funds inevitably encountered some special "accidents" during the long transmission.
Furthermore, there were now many ideas of independence emerging in the local regions, and these ideas conflicted significantly with the Empire's ideals.
Various institutions, based on their positions or other considerations, were often unwilling to provide too much funding to the Church, instead preferring to hire civilian occultists.
It was rather like an abandoned child, "unloved by its mother, despised by distant relatives."
Therefore, many local churches, in order to survive, decided to break away from the Imperial Church and chose to submit to the local authorities.
In the middle of the game, Anna suddenly had Youxi leave the New Continent and go to the Imperial Capital, which seemed to be related to the schism within the Church.
"Alright, seventy percent it is."
Li Andy reluctantly agreed.
His income had sharply decreased; he needed to find new sources of revenue and cut expenses… He would start by deducting from Sophia's share.
Sister Anna nodded.
"Tomorrow, you will accompany me to the academy."
"In… the Church's name."