"Since you find it strange, why not just go inside and take a look to find out?"

Cysper didn't say much, casually finding a nearby house and slipping in.

"Hey! You don't have to be so direct! Don't forget we're infiltrating secretly..."

Seeing his actions, I immediately recalled the "coffin houses" we encountered in Wal City in the Dark Continent, where Selene and I almost barged right in too.

But luckily this wasn't the Dark Continent, nor a monster's den. The place we entered was just a very ordinary two-story wooden house. The building wasn't tall - from the layout, it seemed to be a regular residential building.

"What's there to be afraid of? It's deep night and quiet now. As long as we don't make too much noise, we definitely won't alert anyone."

Cysper said unconcerned in a low voice. But unexpectedly, after entering the house, we found most room doors wide open, and from the state of the rooms, they were almost all empty, only discarded furniture and debris left behind. It was clear the previous residents had long since moved away.

"Why is this? Could we have just walked into an abandoned building?"

It was largely the same situation upstairs and downstairs. After checking around, I couldn't help asking.

"It seems the original residents left in a hurry, leaving behind quite a few large belongings they didn't manage to take."

Dusting a table surface beside him, seeing almost no dust on his fingers, Cysper shook his head in reply. This indicated the abandonment wasn't too long ago, likely related to Parristol's recent independence turmoil.

"Why don't we check some other houses too?"

"No problem!"

I naturally wouldn't object, immediately leaving with Cysper to investigate several more houses nearby. The situation was exactly the same - completely empty, without any living residents...apart from rats and cockroaches, that is.

"What's going on here? Why did they leave?"

I was utterly baffled. I had mentally prepared for the worst possibilities. I thought even if I saw the city full of human corpses slaughtered by monsters, I wouldn't be too shocked. But reality defied expectations, truly blindsiding me.

"Well...it's hard to say! But based on Parristol's population structure, most were outsiders like merchants and workers. The total population wasn't that large either..."

Staring at the still-lit Chromos Tower in the city center, Cysper seemed to roughly guess some reasons as he tentatively explained.

"So could it be those outside residents fled in fear of being caught in the war?"

"But they couldn't have fled this completely, right? There were still quite a few local residents here. You mean they fled too?"

I was dumbfounded. Almost the entire Parristol was pitch black with few lights, indicating the situation in other districts wasn't much better either. Another tricky issue now was that it was deep night, normally sleeping hours, so it was hard to judge how many people were actually left in the city.

After consulting Reed, Mia and the others still on the mountaintop, we ultimately decided to proceed as planned towards the city center.

As an eight-winged angel, Mia could use the "Spiritual Convergence" spell to create a new spiritual network that Cyra, Cysper, Reed and I could all join, forming a small intelligence network. We could share the latest city exploration intel in real-time like when liaising with Elara, as well as discuss insights and plans.

This city wasn't very large to begin with, just a few kilometers radius within the walls. We estimated it wouldn't take too long to reach there. If the newly-established local government's command center was located in that area, we might possibly overhear some useful information.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

For this reason, we didn't choose to directly fly over. One reason was that taking off from inside the city could be too conspicuous, easily spotted by the wall guards, not to mention any lying monsters alerted by the large elemental leakage from our wings. Another reason was that we wanted to continue checking along the way if there really were no residents.

"What is Adrian doing, turning such a prosperous city into a ghost town?"

Walking along the deserted streets, I really couldn't understand it. Without street lamps, we had to constantly watch our footing to avoid tripping on anything. Fortunately, the moonlight overhead was quite bright, so we could still see the road ahead clearly.

"Don't jump to conclusions. I've seen this kind of plot too many times. Adrian probably only arrived here a few days ago after leaving us, right? He's likely just a puppet king put forth by the resistance to make things look legitimate, not necessarily holding any real power."

Cysper walked ahead of me, calmly reassuring. His words did make me feel better, but new doubts arose. If he knew he was just a puppet, why did Adrian insist on participating? Based on his state when leaving, he didn't seem to be coerced. If I had to say he was deceived, I would find that even harder to believe - Adrian shouldn't be that stupid.

"There's a heavy stench of blood ahead, better be careful!"

After passing through several streets, following Cysper's warning, we began seeing more and more corpses on the ground. Rounding a corner, we could see this street had even more densely packed corpses, like a small battlefield aftermath. From their attire, most seemed to be kingdom soldiers killed in previous suppression operations against the resistance. It's worth noting that many soldiers died horrifically, quite similar to the village scene we witnessed outside the city.

"By the way, weren't there reports of monsters hiding in this city? Quite a number of them too? How come we haven't seen a single one?"

I was almost numb to the grisly scene before me, completely unfazed. But considering these corpses may not have been killed by humans, I felt puzzled. At most, ordinary national soldiers were just two to three tiers. These clearly seemed killed by monsters, yet not a single monster corpse remained on site, indicating extremely powerful enemies.

"You angels really can't get your minds off monsters, do you? Is seeing them that important? Aren't things better if you can't see them and avoid mutual killing?"

Cysper shook his head amusedly as he squatted down, but his expression suddenly changed as he cocked his ear, seemingly detecting some movement.

"Wait...do you hear that sound? Could we really have encountered monsters?"

"Huh?"

With him mentioning it, I also heard it quite clearly! However, it didn't seem to be monster calls, but indistinct chatter and footsteps approaching our position from the end of the road.

"That doesn't seem right, those should be human voices!"

If I wasn't mistaken, I could make out words like "clearing" and "collecting corpses" in their chatter. If not unexpected, these could be locals assigned to cleanup duties.

"Oh, they're just humans? Then it's fine!"

Hearing this, he heaved a sigh of relief, about to continue examining the nearby corpses when he suddenly reacted, grabbing me to run.

"How could it be fine? Quick, let's scram!"

The enemy wasn't just those hidden monsters - the Parristol resistance was in control of this city. If they discovered us, it wouldn't bode well either.

"Look at you panicking. Have you no dignity as the Pope? It's just a few humans, no need to be so flustered."

I couldn't help finding it amusing. They hadn't discovered us yet, there was plenty of time to retreat. Cysper was indeed experienced from living so long, but he severely lacked experience in this area, so his overreaction wasn't too strange.

But when footsteps also appeared from the other end of the street, I finally started panicking too. This road had almost no other exits. To avoid being caught between them, we could only hide in a building by the roadside.

However, those houses were just residential and shopfronts, all tightly shut. Forcefully breaking in would inevitably cause a huge ruckus, giving us away. Moreover, we still hadn't completely confirmed if there really was no one inside...

Did we really have to take the risk of being spotted by monsters to escape overhead?

"Over here, quick!"

Just as I was about to reluctantly unfurl my wings, I noticed a small door by the roadside quietly open, a hand extending to beckon us over before swiftly withdrawing.

"Who's that? Should we really go in?"

Cysper and I exchanged glances, hardly believing our eyes. At this critical juncture, such a timely act of help is truly hard to come across.

"Never mind that, let's hide first!"

There was no time to worry about such things now, as the footsteps from both sides were getting closer and closer. Before I had time to think it through, I took the lead and rushed into the doorway, only to find myself in pitch darkness, barely able to see anything.

A soft "click" came from behind, the sound of Cysper closing the door. After we stood in the dark for quite a while, we finally noticed a staircase right in front of us. This seemed to be part of a street-side shop building, and the stairs could lead us up to the second floor facing the street.

"I knew you would follow us here!"

When we reached the second floor, we saw the silhouette of a young girl leaning against the window, speaking to us. Unfortunately, due to the backlighting, we could not make out her face clearly.

"Two girls wandering the streets of Parristol in the dead of night, and even inspecting those corpses. Don't tell me you were sent by another country to gather intelligence?"