Backlund Bridge, beneath the first arch.
Theoretically speaking, bridge arches were ideal gathering places for vagrants.
First, the bridge deck overhead and the bridge piers beside could provide shelter from wind and rain.
Second, being near the riverbank made fetching water convenient. However, in reality, there were no signs of human habitation here at all.
Thanks to the Poor Law, homeless vagrants weren't allowed to rest wherever they pleased.
Police would drive them away throughout the night, preventing them from sleeping peacefully until they obediently queued up to enter the poorhouse, where they would exhaust every last drop of blood and sweat from their bodies through grueling labor.
Silas walked down from the bridge, moving along the obviously foul-smelling riverbank toward the bridge arch.
Looking from afar, in the shadow under the bridge arch, someone was already waiting.
Due to the lighting, his face couldn't be seen clearly.
Only when he got closer did he discover the other person was dressed in worker's clothing, wearing an iron mask covering the upper half of his face, while the lower half was covered by thick facial hair.
Concealing his appearance, very cautious...
Silas had already changed his own appearance. He stepped forward and asked in a hoarse voice, "Detective Sherlock Moriarty?"
"That's me."
The other person answered, also keeping his voice low.
Hm?
Silas paused slightly, inexplicably feeling that this voice seemed somewhat familiar.
Although the other person had lowered his voice, the inherent timbre of his throat couldn't be modified.
Especially with Silas's extremely keen hearing, he could distinguish subtle differences even more clearly.
With this doubt, Silas walked under the bridge arch.
"Mr. James Holmes?"
The other person also asked, his tone carrying some nervousness and anticipation.
"That's right."
Silas answered. The sense of familiarity grew stronger.
The other person's hair, build, everything was conveying the same information: he had met this person before.
If it were just the voice being somewhat familiar, that could be explained away, but as more and more evidence appeared, Silas couldn't help but suspect that the person standing opposite him was someone he knew.
But that person was already dead!
Are there any other characteristics? I need more concrete evidence...
Silas kept his composure, his gaze sweeping back and forth over the other person while saying, "If you came here, that means you must have understood the content on the back of the letter."
"Yes, I understood..."
The other person replied, somewhat uneasily adjusting the mask on his face.
Because he raised his hand, there was a flash of yellow reflection at his wrist. In that instant, Silas saw clearly the source of the glint.
It was a clear topaz pendant, tied to the other person's wrist.
A topaz pendant!
Silas's mind roared. This yellow crystal was like a key, connecting all the previous clues together, and the other person's true identity became obvious!
"Klein!"
Silas exclaimed.
Across from him, the masked Klein's body jolted violently, then said incredulously, "You recognize me?"
That's impossible. I've never seen this person before...
Just as he was thinking this, he saw that ordinary-looking person reach up to wipe his face.
That plain, unremarkable face rapidly changed, replaced by an abnormally handsome yet slightly crazed countenance.
"Silas!"
Klein removed his mask, equally surprised as he called out the other person's name.
The two stared at each other, then said in unison:
"Why aren't you dead?"
This question stunned them both.
"Swish!"
The next second, Klein suddenly jumped back, pulling open the distance between them.
His "Clown" intuition made him sense a certain dangerous aura.
Looking up toward the front, he saw a ferocious and crazed expression spread across Silas's face.
A terrifying momentum was expanding, and an illusory sense of hunger pervaded the entire space under the bridge arch.
Klein felt a soul-level intimidation, as if the man before him was no longer his familiar colleague but some extremely dangerous monster, craving his flesh, blood, and soul!
"Does what happened that day have anything to do with you?"
He heard the other person slowly ask, the voice filled with extremely dangerous pressure.
"Of course not!"
Klein shouted angrily.
He himself was clearly also a victim. At this moment, he was running around for revenge, yet he had to be suspected by Silas like this.
Naturally, he wasn't pleased.
"Then how did you survive?"
Silas even suspected that Klein had faked his death at the time, and that joining the Blackthorn Security Company was also part of the mastermind's plan. When everything was over, he escaped through feigned death.
"I want to ask you that! How did you survive? If you can be resurrected, why can't I?"
Klein shouted.
Looking at it this way, the blood fog on him really does have a major problem, but why did everything seem normal when I divined about him before?
"..."
Silas was left speechless by Klein's words. Right, if he himself could be resurrected, why couldn't the other person be resurrected?
Once his logic became stuck, that uncontrollable madness was dispelled. He gradually regained his rationality and somewhat restrained his overflowing momentum.
"Phew..."
Feeling the pressure disappear, Klein finally straightened his back and breathed a slight sigh of relief.
"So it really has nothing to do with you?"
He heard Silas ask softly.
"Nothing."
"You also transmigrated here?"
"That's right. If I really had to say, I transmigrated only a few weeks before you joined the team."
"Which line of the letter did you understand?"
Silas was asking which place the other person was from before transmigrating.
"...The first line."
Klein answered.
"...Then should we verify the code phrase?"
Silas asked.
This question made Klein's body tremble slightly, and a nostalgic expression appeared on his face, because this sentence wasn't spoken in Loenese, but in Japanese.
"No need."
Klein answered in the same language.
The two stared at each other, both feeling a peculiar sense of unreality.
Two transmigrators in another world had actually been colleagues for a period of time, and both had faked their deaths and been resurrected, meeting again under a bridge arch through a wonderful twist of fate.
"Blaine"
"Zhou Mingrui."
"How did you transmigrate?"
"Played around with a ritual, then transmigrated... What about you?"
"Truck-kun"
"...Very classic."
After that, the two transmigrators exchanged some information.
Silas thus learned that the mastermind who had harmed him was called Ince Zangwill, who possessed a peculiar quill pen that could create coincidences.
Klein had come to Backlund partly to pursue Ince Zangwill, and partly to become stronger.
And Klein also learned about Silas's recent situation, understanding that after his resurrection, he had been brought to Backlund by his sister and had miraculously accommodated a Sequence 5 Beyonder characteristic.
However, because of this, he once again had mental problems.
Both were very tacit, not asking each other again why they had been resurrected.