Clad in equipment they had bought with saved-up Joss Paper, the tall and short skeletons left the "newbie village," heading toward a human town in the south.

To remain inconspicuous, they specifically scavenged two sheets from a run-down inn at the foot of the mountain and draped them over themselves as cloaks, which somewhat reduced the scare radius of their "Scare Aura."

Of course, whether it was effective or not was up for debate.

In the Surface World, there's also a saying that clothed undead are more terrifying than those unclothed.

Shortly after the two skeletons left the inn, a hurried horse-drawn tarpaulin cart arrived near the inn, almost brushing past them.

Inside the cart.

The man sitting on the back end planks caught a glimpse of something, turned around toward the inside of the cart, and muttered nervously.

"Boss… I think I just saw something, it looked like… the undead?"

And it looked like they were wearing cloaks, disguised as humans!

Upon hearing this, everyone felt a chill down their spine, and their buttocks tightened.

"The undead?!"

"Here?! Are you sure?"

"I... am not sure." The fierce-looking man showed a timid expression, "Maybe it was just an illusion."

They say those with a guilty conscience are particularly afraid of ghosts.

For someone like him, who seldom prayed properly, never clung to the coattails of Saint Sis during emergencies, and every now and then sold his soul to a demon, the one thing he feared most was those neither alive nor dead.

Debate buzzed inside the cart.

Only the boss of the crowd, leader of the Poison Snake Gang, Jack, sat with a gloomy face, saying nothing.

He knew better than anyone present that the sight was no illusion—his subordinate had indeed seen something.

After all, he had been dealing with an Undead Mage lately, and they were currently on the Undead Mage's turf.

Jack had anticipated that their cover might be blown someday, but he hadn't expected it to happen so soon.

Rather than allowing these guys to go back and babble, he might as well take the initiative to permanently shut them up.

With this thought, he finally made up his mind. After the cart stopped, he called over the subordinate who was driving the cart from the front, pulled the tarp down, and took out a Recording Crystal.

"Listen… Doing our kind of work, you always deal with all sorts of people, and if you wander often by the river, you're bound to get your feet wet. One day, we too might end up like this."

Seeing their boss suddenly become serious, everyone looked bewildered, exchanging glances and guessing what he wanted to discuss with them.

Jack paused for a moment, then directed his gaze toward a stretcher lying in the middle of the cart.

The man on the stretcher was named Lumier, his capable subordinate. The young man had started working for him at sixteen and was now twenty-five or twenty-six years old, yet he now lay gasping like a decrepit old man.

All because, yesterday, during a goods transaction at Black Water Port, they were attacked by merfolk raiders!

To save himself, the brave young man took a spear to the chest from the merfolk raiders.

The attacker was likely the leader of the merfolk or some kind of tribal warrior.

Although the spear didn't hit any vital organs, his wounds simply wouldn't heal.

Moreover, with time, his entire body visibly aged.

Since the injury occurred during a smuggling operation, they couldn't go to Saint Sis's church for treatment from a Priest. It wasn't a matter of money, but that he couldn't pass their vows.

Although Underground Street in Thunder City had black clinics that served people like them, the alchemists and herbalists, whose expertise lay in Alchemy, were helpless with injuries that carried a cursed nature.

It wasn't just Lumier who was weakening—it was also his already faintly devout heart.

He wasn't short of money or strength, but had never felt so powerless... not being able to save even a loyal young lad.

It was then that an old alchemist's words struck him unexpectedly—

'Only servants of Saint Sis and those who feed on evil can truly heal such wounds.'

Those who feed on evil…

He happened to know such a person.

"Lumier is a good kid; he took a severe wound protecting me, and yet we can't take him to Saint Sis's church."

"Perhaps in the eyes of Saint Sis's servants, people like Lumier deserve their fate, like all of us deserve our fate, if we honestly paid taxes to the lords, honestly worked in their estates, and were as docile as lambs... none of today's tragedies would occur."

"But I still say, not everyone is born into the sunlight, able to live worry-free by merely repeating the words of Saint Sis, even the air they breathe out every morning tastes of righteousness."

"Some are born in dark corners; they have to fight hard just to get a chance to survive... like young Lumier, like you, and including myself. Since we are born in Underground Street, we must live by the rules of Underground Street. I do not believe that it's a disgrace. Even if it is a disgrace, it is not our disgrace but everyone's disgrace."

"If the Holy Light cannot reach every corner of Thunder City, then at least it should allow those born in the gutter, like rats, to survive in their own way, or else it should not have brought us into this world."

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