Chapter 410: Stealing Oil to Eat
Sebastian, ever the gentleman, even though I had turned into a cocoon, he still let Claire hold me.
He also shouldered the responsibility of scouting ahead. Although the Formless Children in the tomb had been lured out, there was no guarantee they wouldn’t leave anything behind, so caution was necessary.
The only remaining problem was whether Claire was willing to hold me. After all, I had become a large cocoon. While not as terrifying as my half-human, half-insect form, it would still be difficult for most people to accept.
Unexpectedly, Claire didn’t hesitate at all. She directly took me from the Landstrider. “Alright, Uncle, leave Parul to me!”
I was surprised she could lift me so easily. Had I become lighter? Wrapped in a cloth, I felt like a baby in Claire’s embrace, though a little bigger than an average infant.
“Um, Claire, you’re holding me quite naturally. Aren’t you afraid of me?” I asked from within her arms.
“Of course not! How could I be afraid of Parul? Parul is my good friend,” Claire replied, crawling through the tunnel while holding me.
I was a little surprised she considered me a friend. But then again, we were the same age, and to her, I was just another little girl of the same age, so it wasn’t strange for us to be friends.
Although I always considered myself the same age as Sebastian, that wasn’t true. Even counting my previous life, I hadn’t reached adulthood yet. Sebastian, with his many experiences, was far more mature than me.
“Uh, actually, I was a little scared of how Parul looked just now, but only a little. When my parents and I went on archaeological digs, we often encountered all sorts of ferocious strange insects. I even fell into a lair full of insect eggs. I’m not afraid of cocoons, though.”
Claire said this and even patted my head. Uh, I mean, the head of my cocoon. In terms of sensation, it felt like being patted on the head. She really wasn’t afraid.
“Miss Parul, you seem to always be quite concerned about Claire. But you don’t need to worry too much about her. She’s seen all sorts of things with my brother. Archaeologists, ethnologists, and detectives are known as the three professions that court death,” Sebastian said.
There was such a saying? Thinking about it carefully, in a world full of ghosts and monsters, these three professions were indeed courting death. Speaking of which, your family of brothers has two of them. Is it a family trait to love courting death?
“Heh heh, that’s right! My dad once dug up a coffin cursed by a Pharaoh. Many people in the archaeological team died from the curse. We also stepped on traps in ancient elf ruins and found a meteorite that sealed an Evil God’s Kin. There were also ancient monsters that came back to life. The archaeological team was almost wiped out several times,” Claire recalled her glorious past deeds with a hint of pride. Moreover, several of these were her personal experiences. It turns out this little girl had experienced more than I had.
No wonder her parents dared to entrust Claire to Sebastian’s care and went off to South America for archaeological research. At the time, I thought it was crazy to leave a little girl with a detective who dealt with murder cases daily, but it turns out it was safer to be by a detective’s side than on an archaeological dig.
At this moment, we finally passed through the secret passage and returned to the tomb chamber. It was completely silent now, devoid of the previous clamor.
A few flying mosquitoes returned and landed on my cocoon. I communicated with them using my thoughts. Although they lacked intelligence, they could still instinctively convey some information through pheromones.
“There’s no danger. The remaining Formless Children have all been eaten by the Eye Mushroom Mosquitoes. They also searched the tomb and found no living creatures,” I said.
Unfortunately, that was all the information the Eye Mushroom Mosquitoes could convey. Asking them if there were any traps or secret rooms in the tomb, or if Lorna’s remains were intact, was beyond their comprehension. There was no help for it; we just had to explore ourselves.
“Then let’s proceed carefully. There might still be some traps,” Sebastian said, lighting a crystal lamp. Simultaneously, he put on his monocle that could see spiritual light.
Claire also carried a similar crystal lamp, which was a metal lampshade with a faceted crystal fixed to it, emitting a blue light that illuminated the tomb.
As we walked, most of the rooms were empty. They were mostly Pierce’s laboratory and warehouse, and some were the residences of Ghouls. All of them had been ransacked by the Formless Children.
However, I did notice a peculiar detail. When I was here last time, there were several large, oil-tank-like objects by the laboratory walls. But now they had an irregularly shaped gaping hole, clearly broken by the Formless Children.
They were completely empty inside, with no liquid. However, there was a little residue at the edges. Sebastian rubbed some and smelled it. “A pungent odor. It should be kerosene or gasoline. If so, then the Formless Children really did a clean job of eating it.”
“Clean? Isn’t there residue left?” I also had Claire hold me as I leaned into the side of the oil barrel to smell. Indeed, it was the scent one could smell at a gas station in my previous life.
“It’s difficult to clean oil completely. No matter how you wash it, there’s always grease residue on the walls. Judging by the oily residue, these oil tanks were full before, but now they are completely empty. What’s left on the walls is probably what the Formless Children couldn’t suck dry,” Sebastian explained.
“Now that you mention it, you’re right. They sucked dry several large cans of oil. But such a large Formless Child might need a lot of water. Perhaps it drank it dry when it was thirsty,” I analyzed.
“Miss Parul, this is oil, not water. Oil cannot quench thirst. Although I don’t know if fungi can substitute drinking water by absorbing oil, it clearly had a preference for oil. Look there,” Sebastian pointed to a nearby shelf.
That was where Pierce kept his chemical experiments. There were still many Erlenmeyer flasks containing reagents, but they were now in disarray, with many shelves overturned.
However, some reagents that weren’t overturned or broken were still neatly arranged on the shelves, with the liquids inside intact. Furthermore, even many of the broken reagent bottles, with various chemicals flowing onto the ground, were not drunk dry by the Formless Children.
“You’re right! It was only interested in kerosene? How strange,” I said in surprise, at the same time admiring Sebastian’s meticulous observation.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t figure out why at the moment. We could only note it down and continue deeper.
When we reached the main chamber, the deepest part of the tomb, we discovered a surprising sight: Lorna’s remains were still lying intact in the coffin.
