CHAPTER 393: CHAPTER 168 ORPHAN BOY

"This is the place..."

After delving into the slums, Anvis checked the course of destiny again, confirming that his sought after target was indeed in this area.

At that moment, his intuition drew his gaze to a narrow alley where a minor incident seemed to be unfolding.

Within Anvis’s sight, a young lad around fifteen or sixteen, clutching something, darted out of a nearby dark alley in a panicked rush.

He had brown hair and jet-black eyes, and although his features were ordinary at a glance, they were surprisingly appealing upon closer inspection. He was wearing a noticeably oversized, tattered, coarse linen coat, indistinguishable from the other poor youngsters nearby.

"You filthy rat brat, dare to run?! Stop right there, or I swear when I catch you I’ll break your legs!"

Two menacing vagabonds wielding clubs were hot on his heels, chasing him while vilely cursing and incessantly threatening the boy ahead.

The boy ahead, however, turned a deaf ear and simply held the item in his embrace tighter while hastening his escape.

On closer inspection, the treasure he seemed to guard like a precious jewel was nothing more than a sack of common black bread.

The moment the boy appeared, Anvis’s gaze immediately locked onto him.

Although the youth didn’t look different from other inhabitants of the slums, the level of favor from destiny surrounding him was shockingly dense in Anvis’s vision.

Apart from Fiona, Anvis had never seen such an overwhelming amount of favor from destiny on anyone else.

Anvis even suspected that his ability to prophesy this location was also due to the rich favor of destiny on the boy which had drawn him here as some kind of unusual ’adventure’.

However, it seemed that the story belonging to the boy hadn’t officially begun, which explained why he was currently in an awkward predicament for survival.

At this moment, as if by coincidence, the path of the boy being chased by the vagrants led straight toward Anvis, who stood in the middle of the road.

Anvis did not immediately intervene, but moved slightly toward the roadside, making way for them to pass.

In secret, however, Anvis had already marked the boy with his spiritual power, allowing him to locate the youngster whenever necessary.

With no time to notice Anvis, the boy agilely dashed across the street and squeezed into another dark alley. He then skillfully climbed over a low wall at the end and disappeared among a jumble of ramshackle huts.

The two adult vagrants, despite their age, were surprisingly less agile than the boy, and after losing sight of him, could only leave cursing and fuming after a brief search.

Under the watchful presence of Anvis’s spiritual power, the fleeing boy emerged from a concealed passage between several huts into another cluttered shack area.

Realizing he had shaken off his pursuers, the boy breathed a sigh of relief and headed toward his real home.

Upon entering a lowly shack at the foot of the city wall, the boy cautiously closed the door, wedging it with a stick before entering the inner room.

"I’m back—"

On hearing his voice, a frail-looking girl with silvery-white hair and pale green eyes emerged from the room to welcome his return.

Although her face was grimy, her features suggested a natural beauty, marred only by an unsightly, dark birthmark that nearly covered the left half of her face.

However, on the back of the girl’s left hand, one could see segments of bright crystalline structures.

That was a sign of the crystalizing disease.

"Brother Landon, you’re back."

Seeing the figure of the young boy, a trace of relief flickered in the vigilant eyes of the girl.

The two siblings used to live with their parents in a small village outside the city, where they had a happy family.

But their happiness was short-lived; a band of roving bandits raided the village. Their parents fought desperately and managed to help them escape through a back mountain path, but they themselves were killed by the thieves.

However, while the bandits were looting, a sudden Crystalization Wind swept through the village, and most of the bandits, who weren’t even Professionals, were crystallized and died on the spot, while the remaining few scattered in escape.

The two siblings who fled were not spared either, but luckily, since they had escaped the disaster area early, the concentration of crystallization dust in the Crystalization Wind they encountered was already very thin.

Perhaps for this reason, the boy was lucky enough not to contract the crystallization illness, but his younger sister was not so fortunate.

With their home destroyed, they had no choice but to leave and seek refuge in Maramos City.

With no money and no experience, the two were nearly tricked and sold by scoundrels at first, but fortunately, they received help from a tavern owner at a critical moment and found a place to live in the slums, where they had been for several months now.

"Don’t worry, Leia, your brother will definitely find a way to save enough money to seek a priest to cure your strange illness."

Putting the bag beside him, the boy took the girl’s frail hand and gently touched the crystallized parts, his heart aching.

"It’s okay, brother, Leia doesn’t hurt anymore. Although it hurt a lot at the beginning, now there is no feeling there."

Gently shaking her head, the girl looked at her hand and put on a brave smile.

"Brother, let’s cook quickly, Leia is hungry."

"Alright, let’s start cooking now!"

With that said, the boy poured the contents of the bag onto a dingy, old wooden table.

Thirty-seven Saint Messia copper coins and two black loaves of bread—this was his day’s wages as a server at old Bill’s tavern, and luckily he was familiar with the geography of this part of the slum, which kept him from being robbed by those scoundrels.

Carefully pouring out his day’s earnings and counting them twice, he dug out a jar from under a corner of the room’s wall and carefully poured the coins into it before re-burying it.

Then, he held a mysterious black talisman over his heart, closed his eyes, and sincerely prayed to the God of the North Wind, hoping for the safety of himself and his sister.

He had found the talisman by chance on the road during their escape. Though he did not know what it was, it gave him a sense of kinship, so he always wore it.

As the boy did all this, the girl started to make fire and boil water, getting ready to cook the bread.

Once the water boiled, the boy threw the black bread into the pot, slowly simmering it until soft. He then dished up the cooked bread into two bowls and took out a little bottle hidden in the corner of the room, sparingly sprinkling a bit of salt in each bowl.

After a Thought, he sprinkled a little extra salt into the girl’s bowl.

"Dinner is ready."

Sitting at the table, the boy and the girl were ready to enjoy their meager meal.

But this meal was doomed to not be eaten in peace.

Bang—

With a loud noise, the old wooden door was abruptly kicked open! The figures of the two scoundrels who had been chasing the boy appeared at the doorway.

"So you can run, huh? Little rat, now try running from me!"