Change a piece? Lumian didn't expect to get a reminder from Thermibolos at such a time.
Whether this fateful angel wants to take the opportunity to set a trap and do something, or simply doesn't want the sealing carrier to have problems at such a time in such a place, it is enough to show that this seemingly ordinary and simple king cake game has great hidden dangers.
When Count Puiver said that this involved the occult and that it was necessary to sacrifice a piece of king's cake to the gods of faith or to the ancestors he revered, Lumian felt that perhaps there was an extraordinary element, similar to the divination game that many occult lovers like to play.
In the blink of an eye, Lumian couldn't determine what Thermibolos was thinking, so he could only carefully stretch out his arm and choose one of the remaining five king's pieces in a very casual way.
This time, Thermibolos did not stop it again.
After Lumian, Anoli, Maren, Anyon, and Elite each took a piece of the king's cake, leaving only the one closest to Lumian.
"It seems to belong to me." Count Puiver leaned forward, held the king's cake with a smile, and put it in his mouth, gently biting down the lower part.
Lumian also made a similar action, only to find that this snack has a crispy outer skin, a sweet filling, and a mouthful of fragrant flavor, and the quality is quite good.
After taking a few bites, Count Puiver laughed:
"It seems that today I am the king."
As he said, he took out a broad bean from his mouth.
The moment he saw the broad beans, Lumian's nose seemed to smell a faint smell of blood and rust.
At the same time, this corner of the mechanical café suddenly became dull and depressing, as if everyone was worried about being ordered to do something they could not bear.
Count Puiver stood up, turned his back to the street-facing window, and blocked the sunlight behind him.
This made his face seem to be covered with a shallow shadow, and his smile seemed a little dark.
Count Puiver looked at the novelist Arnoli, and the corners of his mouth curled higher and higher:
"You go outside the café and shout 'I'm shit' to passers-by."
Anoli, who was unconsciously nervous, immediately breathed a sigh of relief and responded with a smile:
"No problem."
He stood up on the ground, walked quickly to the door, and pulled down the gate handle embedded in the side wall.
Amidst the rustling sound of friction and slight collision, the robotic arm tightened suddenly, "dragging the heavy wooden door backwards".
Arnoli left the café, came to the street, and shouted loudly at a famous pedestrian on the road:
"I'm shit!
"I'm a shit!
"My whole family is shitty raised by sows!"
The pedestrians cast surprised glances and immediately burst out laughing.
After scolding himself, Anoli returned to Lumian and the others in a happy mood.
"Your psychological quality is really good." Lumian finally forced himself to change "really thick-skinned" to a rhetoric that the other party could accept.
The novelist Arnoli chuckled:
"Every time I can't write something, I will go to the balcony and scold myself, which is still light."
"You writers have a lot of quirks." Lumian thought of her sister, who claimed to be in the late stages of procrastination.
Arnoli took a sip of absinthe, sat down again, and looked at Count Puiver, who had always stood with the backlight, and turned his gaze to the pale and handsome painter Maren:
"Slap Elite in the face."
Maren relaxed, did not leave his seat, leaned forward, and gave the poet Eliette a slap.
Ellet, whose hair was quite thin and his cheek muscles were slightly sagging, was not angry, but took another puff of bong.
Sensing Lumian's gaze, he smiled indifferently:
"As a poet, you must learn to enjoy the malice around you."
Enjoy malicious ...... What a literary and artistic young man, no, literary and artistic middle-aged...... Lumian observed the participants in the game and found that except for Count Puifer, who ate the broad beans, nothing else could be seen for the time being.
Count Puiver turned his body slightly, his face still a little dark due to the backlight.
He said to literary critic Ernst & Wanderer:
"Allegiance to me."
In the recently popular saying, they are the pioneers of performance art, so for kneeling down on one knee to swear allegiance, EY has done nothing pressure, and even feels unsatisfied, thinking that it is not exciting and humiliating enough.
Count Puiver looked at the poet Elite again:
"Give all your money to the homeless man opposite."
Elite was stunned for a moment, and said quite distressedly:
"Okay.
"You know, I'm a poor ghost, and the total remuneration I've earned from poetry in the past five years is less than 3,000 Ferkin, and every day I think about which friend will organize a party today and let me drink some free wine."
You are quite honest as a poet...... Lumian was thinking about whether to sponsor this guy to see what poetry he could write, anyway, the "sponsorship fee" was Gardner. What Martin provided could not really put in his pocket if he did not use it, on the contrary, he had the opportunity to keep some of it for himself only if he specifically sponsored certain artists.
Without waiting for Count Puyfer's response, Ellet suddenly laughed, he fumbled with his pockets, and announced happily:
"So, I only took 5 Feldin out!"
"5 Felkin? If you go to the Vichy café, you can only ask for half a bottle of natural water and two boiled eggs." The novelist Arnoli muttered as he watched the poet Elite go out quickly, throwing the 5 Felkin to the homeless man opposite.
Located in an alley on the boulevard, the Vichy Café is visited by members of parliament, high-ranking government officials, bankers, industrialists, financiers, famous courtesans, and writers, painters, poets, and sculptors who are sought after by high society.
At this point, everyone took their turn, leaving only Lumian.
Count Puiver looked at Lumian with deep eyes and said:
"You attended our 'Black Cat' party for the first time, and gave you a simple task, take your king cake, go to the deepest room in the basement of the café, and exchange it for a blank piece of paper."
This sounds a bit occult...... If something really went wrong, I set fire to the basement...... Lumian muttered as he took the king's cake that he had taken a few bites of, and according to the guidance of the novelist Anoli, he found the stairs leading to the basement in the area near the kitchen.
Before entering, he used the mechanical device outside to light the gas wall lamps inside, and in the slightly dim light, he passed through the "hall" where debris was piled up, and arrived at the deepest room.
The crimson wooden door of the room was tightly closed, and Lumian listened for a while, but did not notice any movement.
There were also no suspicious traces outside the door.
Lumian stretched out his right palm, grabbed the handle, twisted it gently, and slowly pushed forward.
As the gas wall lights in the basement "lobby" shone into the room, one thing outlined the outline.
They were heads, they shrank in the dark shadows, staring at the "visitors" at the door without any emotion.
Lumian's pupils suddenly dilated, and he saw several familiar heads.
They are the brains of the novelist Arnoli, the painter Maren, the critic Ernst & Young and the poet Ellet!
When a fireball was about to condense, Lumian, who had experienced a lot of experience and tenacity of nerves, forced himself to calm down and sensed the problem:
Those heads were not as pale as the deceased, and the room was not filled with the peculiar smell of preservatives.
Lumian, who controlled his reaction, looked closely for a few more seconds and found that they were all wax figure heads that had been taken off.
They are like watermelons, stuffed into different grids of wooden frames.
The purpose of this mission is to create a scare? If it weren't for Thermiboulus' reminder that I was hypervigilant, how could this level of mischief scare me? Where is the occult aspect manifested? Lumian thought for a while, placed the king's cake in his hand on one of the wooden racks, and took away the white paper with a waxed head on it.
When he returned to the mechanical café with a blank piece of paper, he saw Anoli, Eliette, and others looking at him with smiles, as if they wanted to find the remaining horror.
Count Puiver nodded in satisfaction:
"You did the job well."
What if I didn't do my job well? What will happen? Lumian pretended to be frightened and said:
"Those wax heads are so real that they almost made my heart stop beating!"
"Haha." Arnoli laughed, "This is the Count's greeting to every new guest. He likes to collect wax figure heads the most, and every friend recognized by him can get an invitation from a wax figure master to turn the head into a work of art and put it in the basement of the mechanical café."
This is as if your head has been given to Count Puifer...... Lumian looked at the necks of Anoli and the others, but found no traces of cuts.
After chatting about various rumors in the writers' circle for a while, and sponsoring 2,000 Felkin to the "Black Cat", Lumian took his leave.
Before leaving, his eyes naturally swept over the two one-legged tables.
Suddenly, Lumian's pupils froze.
He saw that the unfinished king's cake was still on the plate of Count Puyver, Arnoli, and others, and that the white-glazed porcelain snack plate that originally contained the king's cake was empty.
There should have been a piece of king's cake dedicated to the ancestors of the Sauron family!
It's gone!
Lumian did not hide his doubts, pointed to the snack plate and said:
"I remember there was also a king cake."
Count Puiver laughed, took a sip of coffee and said:
"I ate it."
"That's right......" Lumian suddenly realized and smiled back.
He turned around and walked out of the mechanical café, the smile on his face fading away.
Count Puiver only took two bites of his own king's cake!
ps: On the last day and a half, I asked for a monthly pass~
(End of this chapter)