By the time Lucien came back to himself, only he and the orange cat remained in the alley. The cat was busy with the other fish he had dropped.
Lucien looked at the potion in his hand. There was no doubt in his mind that what had just happened was not a dream.
Several blocks away, the silver-haired witch had already stopped walking.
Was I too hasty?
Is it really fine to not watch him drink it? She thought back to how Lucien had behaved and considered it for a moment.
Forget it. It should be fine.
No one could resist the temptation of extraordinary power. This time would be no different.
69 Rose Long Street.
Lucien was back in his room. He had not come straight home. He had taken a few detours, even cutting through a different block, because he had no way of knowing whether someone was following him. He had not spotted anything, at least.
The orange cat had come back with him.
Lucien had not actually intended to bring it along, but after eating two of his fish, the cat had stuck to him and refused to be shaken off.
In the end, he had no choice but to carry it back.
"Let me be clear about this," Lucien said, holding the orange cat up and looking it in the face. "If Mrs. Griffin finds out about you, there's nothing I can do for you."
Mrs. Griffin had never explicitly said pets were forbidden, but thinking about how hardcore she was, Lucien could not be sure. He planned to bring it up with her in a few days.
"The most important thing right now is this." Lucien stared at the potion on his desk.
Honestly, getting a potion for free made him happy, but the way he had gotten it was not something he liked.
And once he drank it, he would have to join that organization whose name he still did not know. That made him hesitate.
"Worst case, I'll return the potion to that lady tomorrow."
"But it was free! A transmigrator ought to have some kind of opportunity, right?" If he was being honest with himself, returning the potion was not something he could bear to do.
Lucien opened a drawer and pulled out the transmigrator guide he had written from memory, then reread it.
The official personnel of this world are extremely dangerous. They will treat a transmigrator as a heretic and wipe you out. If you run into them, you must pick up the pistol at your side and defend yourself. This world has many faiths. You do not need to limit yourself to the Orthodox Churches. Try believing in other existences, and it may bring unexpected gains.
Unexpected gains. Did that mean a situation like today's?
And item 5 said the authorities were hostile to transmigrators.
After turning it over in his mind, Lucien decided to drink the "Assassin" potion. According to the transmigrator guide, joining a secret organization should not be a bad thing for a transmigrator.
And that lady had been so enthusiastic. It probably was not an especially evil organization.
It was a little reckless, but a transmigrator was supposed to have some kind of opportunity.
With that thought, Lucien stopped hesitating and reached for the bottle containing the "Assassin" potion.
But the moment his hand touched the potion, he suddenly became dazed.
He felt a strange sense of wrongness, or perhaps dissonance.
When Lucien came back to himself again, he found himself staring at the potion.
What was I about to do?
Right. Drink the potion. The moment he picked it up, he went dazed again.
What was I about to do?
Right. The potion.
What was I about to do?
Knock knock knock.
The knocking snapped Lucien out of it. He looked down at the orange cat by his leg and hurriedly stuffed it under the desk.
He straightened his expression and walked to the door.
He opened it fifteen centimeters and showed half of himself. On the other side stood Mrs. Griffin, her face very serious.
"Mrs. Griffin. I'm fairly sure I already paid this month's rent." Lucien spoke first.
"Am I only allowed to come by for rent, little Lucien?"
"Of course not. If you want to chat, my door's always open."
"Have you been going out at night lately? I keep hearing strange noises in the middle of the night."
"Uh, yes. Did I wake you?" Lucien did not deny it.
Internally, he was marveling at Mrs. Griffin's hearing. The soundproofing in this era was bad, sure, but he had sworn he was as quiet as humanly possible when he came back at dawn.
Are all the elderly in this world this sharp?
"You know, the streets aren't safe these days. If something happened to you going out that late, it would be a great inconvenience to me."
"I have a duty to ensure my tenants' safety. It's in the lease."
Is that actually in the lease? Lucien scratched his head.
"You going out at night..." Mrs. Griffin suddenly thought of something and adopted the tone of someone speaking from experience. "Oh, right. You've reached that age. It's perfectly normal to have those urges. But the streets at night are too dangerous. There are plenty of gang types around, and you, a single—"
Lucien's mouth twitched.
What exactly do you think I'm doing at night?
"Uh, I—" Lucien tried to explain, but Mrs. Griffin gave him no opening.
"I know at your age you're impulsive, but for the sake of your own health, you need to exercise restraint. When I was young, I saw plenty of men who couldn't control themselves below the waist. They ended up rotting from the inside out, dying miserable deaths in hospital beds."
"The Goddess teaches us to... oh, right. I forgot you follow the God of Steam and Machinery."
Doesn't matter. I'm a fake believer anyway.
Of course, if the Goddess of the Night's church offers better benefits for its followers, then I'm open to negotiation. I could convert.
Lucien thought this to himself.
"Anyway, stop going out in the middle of the night. Even if you don't care about yourself, don't disturb my sleep."
"Hum, you're acting strange today."
She glanced at the room behind Lucien, gave him a light smile, and left.
Strange. She didn't notice anything, did she?
She's just an old lady. She can't be that perceptive.
Lucien did not have much confidence in his acting.
"Right, what was I about to do?"
"Right. The 'Assassin' potion."
Meow.
Lucien's heart dropped.
"No!" His voice shot up, and he crossed the room in two strides.
"Don't drink that!"
His words had no effect. He watched helplessly as the cat's pink tongue curled up the silvery liquid sloshing in the bottle.
"No!"
Lucien lunged for the desk, his knee caught the chair, and his balance went out from under him. He crashed onto the desk, and the sound of shattering glass followed.
When Lucien came back to himself, he saw the broken bottle and the orange cat on the floor, licking up the potion.
"No!"
...
"You've really done it now, you know that?" Lucien said, holding the orange cat up and trying to sound fierce.
"Meow?"
"Sigh. How did I suddenly get this stupid? Out of everyone in history who's accidentally let an animal drink a potion, I'm probably the only one."
"Even the dumb rich kids with more money than sense couldn't pull off something this idiotic. Great. I'm going to be the shame of transmigrators." Lucien muttered to himself, full of regret.
"Damn it. Fine, get out! Go back to being a stray!" He felt a sudden urge to throw the cat straight out the window.
But the moment he lifted it up, the thought died. "No. If I throw you out now, I've lost everything for nothing."
"Now what about the potion? That was supposed to be the advance payment from that organization!"
"How about you go join that organization for me." Lucien stared at the cat in front of him.
The orange cat did not react. It just fixed him with an innocent look.
"Sigh." Lucien collapsed into the chair, at a loss.
First, the "Assassin" potion was gone. If the woman demanded compensation, he did not have that kind of money on hand.
Maybe I can sell the "Monster" potion.
He did still have a "Monster" potion. But then he thought it through: selling a potion within a single day was impossible unless he priced it far below market value. And the difference would be hundreds of pounds, a gap he could not possibly cover.
From that angle, selling the "Monster" potion to plug the hole was not realistic at all.
So the alternative was to go to the silver-haired woman and tell her the truth. She had seemed approachable enough. Worst case, he could just give her the "Monster" potion as compensation.
He had also considered simply hiding and never going to find her. But after thinking it over carefully, that felt unrealistic too. For one thing, it was a shifty thing to do. For another, the woman was clearly not ordinary, most likely a Beyonder, and hiding might not stop her from finding him. If it came to that, everything would become impossible to explain.
Seen that way, going to apologize on his own initiative was actually the most reasonable option available.
"That's the only way." After weighing it from every side, Lucien decided to go find the silver-haired woman tomorrow and apologize. Worst case, he would compensate her with the "Monster" potion, and maybe the whole thing would blow over.
"Phew." Once he had a plan, Lucien suddenly felt lighter.
But the moment he stood up, a familiar wave of dizziness hit him, only this time it was clearer, clear enough that it felt branded into his soul.
At the same time, a boundless fear closed around him. He saw an image: himself lying in a pool of blood, and beside him, the silver-haired woman. He could even see her cold smile.
What is this? A prophecy?
Fate.
The word surfaced in Lucien's mind.
Fate? Does that mean if I go find her, I'll die?
And what exactly is this image? A cheat? Or something special about me?
Lucien paced back and forth across the room, turning over what he had just seen.
He was confused. Neither he nor the original body had ever experienced anything like this. But deep down, he could not deny the authenticity of the image. He believed it.
After all, a transmigrator having a little something special is only reasonable, right?
If the image was a future that could actually happen, then the likely scenario was this: he goes to apologize, and she kills him on the spot. As for the "Monster" potion, once he was dead, it would still end up hers.
Thinking it through more carefully, Lucien did recall some things about the silver-haired woman that had felt off.
Her behavior had carried an obvious element of manipulation, and he had felt a strange unease earlier. Maybe that had been fate's warning.
His own abnormal loss of composure also supported that possibility.
If the silver-haired woman was not a good person, then everything made sense.
But now Lucien was stuck between the hammer and the anvil. Going to find her meant death, and if he ran and she found him, that meant death too.
Maybe I should gamble.
Lucien thought of his "Monster" potion.
"Monster" did not sound good, but it did sound intimidating. Maybe it was actually a very powerful potion.