They all call me an Outer God.

Chapter 94 Integer Fifteen
15 is a common number for Ria.

James also said that this number is an integer favored by God. When he saw it again this time, Ria did not feel any sense of familiarity. Too many coincidences add up to no coincidences. He could not understand the meaning that this number was trying to convey.

Of course, it's also very possible that he's just overthinking things, since he's been quite suspicious lately and finds it hard to relax his tense nerves.

"Once this lousy illness is cured, I must take a long vacation."

Ria brought the moth close to her eyes; its tiny antennae twitched constantly, and its dark eyes stared at the young man before her.

Normal moths would never have such regular numbers on their wings, so Ria can conclude that these numbers were marked by someone.

But what exactly needs to be labeled...?

"Laboratory animals".

Ria's heart sank.

"The moth's wings had bloodstains on the edges, but so far the only blood found was from the skin of a killed living corpse. Was it always attached to the skin?"

Or perhaps it remained attached to that skeletal, living corpse.

Since Ria couldn't understand these things, he chose to take the moth back to the library to have a professional plague doctor identify it.

Inside the old Cabernet Library, the lights were off, except for a small cluster of candles that burned continuously.

The doctor with the bird-beak continued to turn the pages of his book by the only light of the fire. A moment later, an old man approached him, trembling, holding a blanket in one hand and a medicine bottle with an IV drip in the other, and handed the doctor the warm clothing.

"Why aren't you resting so late?" Ilint smiled gently, though the grime around her eyes was still quite severe.

“Doctors don’t need to sleep.” Bruner didn’t turn his head, but the old man covered his back with a thick blanket.

"That won't do. You should rest as much as possible. Nobody likes to work all the time. Take a nap."

"..." Bruner let out a barely audible sigh. He stood up. "Let me help you change your dressing."

The doctor successfully changed Ilint's dressing, and then he sat back down in his original seat: "Old Hord, what do you think is... or rather, how do you view 'death'?"

"I don't know anything about that kind of thing."

Ilint held out her hand without the needle, the back of which was covered with needle marks: "I don't need to think about this, because I'm enjoying every day of my life."

"But aging is still taking its toll on you."

The doctor turned the yellowed pages of the book: "You are a Zolamu, and you will always return to the place where you were born. Take advantage of the early hour and go back now."

“If you were to become someone no one wanted to see in a few more days, the Order Society would condemn you as a heretic in your most cherished library—and they would kill you completely.”

"No, no, doctor, nothing could be worse than this."

Ilint stroked the wrinkles on her face: "I've experienced all stages of life in such a short time, and that's already worthwhile."

"I love my life. Every day, everything I encounter, even just breathing, makes me feel the meaning of life."

"My blood is flowing, my heart is beating, and I am truly alive in this world."

After saying that, she took the medicine bottle and left the area illuminated by the firelight, returning to her room. Outside the door, a young man wearing a black top hat and leaning on a cane was standing there at some point.

The young man helped her back to the door of her room. She didn't ask who was helping her, and with a kind smile, she slowly moved her legs, the medicine in the bottle dripping away, occasionally bubbling up. "You're a good child... Goodnight, child."

Ms. Irint Hod went into her room, and Ria found Dr. Birdbeak reading a book again, sitting opposite him, a coin nimbly flipping between her fingers.

"Did you hear everything?"

Ria nodded, pausing what he was doing, while the doctor glanced at the coin in his hand: "The Batantusa coin, a mysterious item. Isn't it a bit too extravagant to use something like this to ask a question?"

"I haven't asked anything yet."

Lia was very frank: "But I can already guess that some of what you said before was a lie, Doctor."

"Oh? What did you mean?"

“Ms. Ilint is not an ordinary patient. She is from the Zolamu neighborhood, where people are born with a curse of aging, and she will also turn into a so-called zombie in a short period of time.”

"It seems you've heard more than I thought—so how can you prove I'm lying based on this?"

"Just because you're paying attention to her."

Ria picked up the Batantusa coin with two fingers, gave it a slight shake, and the coin disappeared automatically.

“There are connections among disordered individuals, but not among patients who are not disordered.”

The Disorderly One—that doesn't quite fit either, since she hasn't joined us yet. You're here because you want to persuade her, who has Disorder Syndrome, to join the Keepers of the Secrets.

With your abilities, you could easily capture some people from Zolam Street for research; there's no need to specifically target one person.

The young man's glasses were reflected with a layer of firelight: "The above is purely my personal speculation. Even if it is wrong, I will not be responsible for my own words."

"Hahahaha!" Bruna laughed a few times, then curled his fingers and tapped his head. "You have a pretty good head."

"Thank you, it was just replaced."

Lia made a casual joke, then put aside the previous questions and took a dying moth out of her pocket and placed it on the table.

"Does the doctor recognize this thing? It might have come from the body of a zombie."

"Number fifteen?" Bruner pinched its wing with his index finger and thumb and brought it close to the lens.

Ria: "My doctor told me that fifteen is a very special number, but no one told me exactly how special it is."

The church's judgment candles are presented in fifteen numbers, and the meme cards of the disordered also happen to be fifteen. Ria is extremely eager to know the truth. The pollution in his body seems to have affected his behavior to some extent. For example, right now, Ria's thirst for knowledge is abnormally high.

He craved knowledge, wanted to know all the answers, and his mind was constantly engaged in various thoughts and judgments, which Lia knew was not a good thing.

In this world, the more you know, the easier it is to get yourself mired in a quagmire from which you cannot extricate yourself.

So he was trying his best to control his thoughts. At this moment, he only needed to learn some things about the origin of moths from the bird-beaked doctor in front of him, and did not necessarily need to know the meaning of the integer fifteen.

The doctor also became serious, and his opinion was exactly the same as James'.

(End of this chapter)