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Chapter 125 Coercion Compensation
Chapter 125 Coercion Compensation
According to information previously disclosed by Kyle and his team.
The position of investigator in the church is not one that just anyone can hold. It requires completing at least ten church tasks, and each time achieving an "excellent performance" rating.
Alice looks to be only in her early twenties. As a human, not some non-human race, how did she manage to climb to this position?
A thought involuntarily popped into Xia Lin's mind:
Could it be that they took some shortcut?
He wasn't morally corrupt.
But in his previous life, he had indeed seen too many examples of "socialites" who rose to power through certain means—such as Teacher Gao, who was well-versed in the history of the Ming Dynasty.
The person in front of us has enough "capital" from any angle.
His gaze involuntarily drifted downwards, landing on a particularly voluptuous curve outlined by a red mage's robe.
Could it be that there is such a thing as power-for-sex transactions within the church?
As he was thinking, he suddenly felt a chill down his spine.
He suddenly looked up.
He was met with a pair of bright, fiery eyes.
Alice had opened her eyes at some point, and her beautiful eyes were now filled with the words "You're tired of living."
"Have you seen enough?" she asked, her voice low but carrying a chilling aura that sent shivers down one's spine.
Xia Lin's heart skipped a beat, but she forced herself to remain calm: "What are you looking at? I'm thinking about something."
"Thinking about problems?" Alice narrowed her eyes slightly. "Does thinking about problems require scanning someone's chest?"
Garru and Kyle both turned their heads away, one looking out the window and the other looking at the roof of the car, pretending they hadn't heard anything.
"You'd better behave yourself while you're cooperating with the investigation and don't get any funny ideas. Once the investigation is over, you'll be free again."
Xia Lin raised an eyebrow.
"Just regaining your freedom? That's it?"
Alice was taken aback, clearly not expecting him to ask that question.
"What else do you want?"
Xia Lin stared at her and said seriously, "I want triple compensation for lost work time."
A brief silence fell over the carriage.
Alice stared at Xia Lin, a complex emotion flashing in her beautiful eyes.
After a long while, she suddenly smiled.
"Compensation for lost wages?" she repeated, her tone unreadable. "You're not afraid of dying, are you?"
Xia Lin continued to fight for her rights: "This is a legitimate demand. I came here voluntarily to assist with the investigation, right?"
But if you treat me like a criminal, then it's not "assistance," it's "coercion." Coercion demands compensation, doesn't it?
Alice didn't speak, she just looked at him.
That gaze made Xia Lin a little uneasy, but he gritted his teeth and didn't look away.
After a while, Alice seemed to give in; she looked away and closed her eyes again.
We'll talk about it when we get there.
She left after saying those four words and ignored Xia Lin completely.
Garu quietly gave Xia Lin a thumbs up and mouthed "You've got guts."
Xia Lin's audacity in daring to bargain with elite professionals is truly remarkable.
The carriage continued on its way.
Xia Lin leaned against the carriage wall, watching the fields rushing past the window and the faint outline of the city in the distance, silently pondering what to do next.
We should keep the ring a secret for as long as possible.
If it gets discovered, just say you found it in the forest and didn't know it was a sacred object.
Anyway, Woody has turned that thing into a ring now, so they might not recognize it.
As for triple compensation—
He glanced at Alice, who was still resting with her eyes closed.
It would be best if it worked out. But it has to work out anyway. Otherwise, this trip will be a huge loss.
Woody finished the last fry, licked his paws contentedly, and whispered in Xia Lin's mind, "Honestly, that move you just made was heroic. But I have to remind you, when you're on someone else's turf, you'd better tone it down. This kind of object transformation might not fool those old fogies."
Xia Lin silently replied in his mind, "Understood. I'll get the compensation first. If something really happens, at least I'll have the gold coins, so it's not a loss."
Woody: "————Fine, whatever makes you happy."
The carriage traveled a short distance further on the official road.
An accident occurred while they were passing through a jungle.
A giant, adult forest bear burst out of the bushes.
The creature was enormous, reaching as high as Xia Lin's chest at the shoulder, with glossy, dark brown fur and gaping fangs in its wide-open maw.
It was clearly starving; its cloudy little eyes were filled with nothing but longing for food. To it, the few nags on the carriage were nothing more than a walking dinner.
The driver was so frightened that he tumbled off the shaft of the cart and scrambled backward.
Alice was already standing in front of the carriage, her fiery red mage robes fluttering slightly in the evening breeze.
She raised her right hand, palm toward the giant bear that had already pounced ten paces away.
After a chanting session.
It was just a casual wave of the hand.
A fireball the size of a fist, entirely crimson, roared out from her palm!
The fireball flew so fast that Xia Lin's eyes could only catch a glimpse of a fiery red shadow.
next moment.
"boom--!!"
A violent explosion rang out!
Flames shot into the sky!
The adult forest bear, along with the bushes, pebbles, and soil within three meters of it, was instantly engulfed by the blazing flames. When the firelight dissipated, only a charred, still smoking mass remained—something that defies description.
It's barely recognizable that it was once a bear.
Xia Lin stood still, maintaining his sword-wielding posture, without moving.
He stared at the charred wreckage, with only one thought in his mind: This wave was too powerful!
The fireball spell of this woman in front of me is too powerful?
And she just waved her hand casually.
It was so fast that it was invisible, and so powerful that a fully grown forest bear was turned into charcoal before it could even let out a scream.
Xia Lin swallowed hard.
Alice withdrew her hand, dusted off her sleeve, and turned to walk towards the carriage.
As she passed Xia Lin, she paused slightly and glanced at him.
His gaze was indifferent, as if asking: Do you want triple compensation?
Xia Lin fell silent.
a few days later.
When the carriage drove onto a wide stone-paved road wide enough for two carriages to walk side by side, Xia Lin knew that they had arrived at Deepwater City.
The farmland along the roadside was gradually replaced by scattered buildings. The closer you went into the city, the denser and more impressive those buildings became.
No longer the low-rise wood and stone structures of the town of Elven, but two- or three-story, or even four- or five-story, brick and stone buildings with transparent glass windows and exquisite signs hanging in front of the doors.
There were more pedestrians.
Vendors dressed in various colors hurried by pushing their carts, while well-dressed citizens strolled along the streets in twos and threes.
Occasionally, a knight riding a tall horse would pass by, his armor gleaming in the sunlight.
Then he saw the city walls.
It was a true city wall, not the wooden fences of Elwyn Town that could barely keep out wild beasts, but a wall made entirely of huge gray-white stones, towering into the clouds and stretching endlessly.
Every so often there was a protruding arrow tower, with different colored flags flying atop it.