Annan was still emanating a chill-inducing frost aura from his body.
Before Annan could take out the kitchen knife, Salvatore immediately grabbed his arm and gave Annan a meaningful glance.
Even though this action made his palm ache from the cold, he only grimaced.
He vigilantly commanded the players behind him, raising his voice:
"There’s nothing for you here! Disperse, and have a few people notify the City Guard to come and put out the fire!"
"No, no, no... that won’t be necessary, Salvatore."
Annan just gave him a gentle smile and gestured with his hand for the players not to leave.
Hearing two completely opposite orders, the players were momentarily startled, unsure whether to go or stay, and they hesitated to leave.
They looked at each other for a while and eventually decided to heed Annan’s command.
Though both were NPCs and both Wizards, it was obvious that the faction leader’s words carried more weight.
After stopping the players from leaving, Annan turned back to look at Salvatore.
He took the boning knife, its entire blade soaked in blood, out of the bag he carried with him and casually flicked off the excess blood onto the ground—much like a nurse preparing an IV by clearing the air from a syringe.
This bold move forced Salvatore to immediately back away to avoid getting cut while Annan flicked blood off the knife.
The players, witnessing this, were almost completely silent.
They looked on in near horror as Annan took out a blood-stained kitchen knife... and the inside of his bag was full of bloodstains as if it contained something it shouldn’t.
They began to regret... not following Salvatore’s advice to back off earlier.
Will we be silenced for this?!
The key is, if you’re really going to silence us that’s fine, but please don’t deduct any favorability!
"I remember, this needs to be... used first, right?"
With an awkward and cautious expression, Salvatore asked, "Are you sure you’ve used it?"
"Yes, I cut a slice of ham to eat before I left,"
Annan whispered in response, nodding, "At first I actually wanted to cut bread. But I found that wouldn’t work. Because the bread absorbs the blood, it would keep spurting blood, and in the end, the whole slice of bread turned red...
"However, when I cut a slice of ham, it didn’t soak up much blood, and it was still edible after a wipe."
Originally, Annan had planned to just take any kitchen knife from the kitchen of the Lord’s Mansion at Frostwater Harbor. But doing so could have revealed his Curse Binding to the natives—which was different from revealing it to the players.
And it would have been quite wasteful.
After all, Annan couldn’t possibly put a knife used to cut someone back in the kitchen.
He surely couldn’t serve a table full of dishes to a guest with a smile, then boast, "Come, come, try this dish made with the knife I used on Gerald," "This dish was made with the knife I used on the Viscount, you must taste it," "This is the dish I made with the knife I used on Salvatore, it’s particularly nourishing" and so on.
If Annan kept sending servants to buy new kitchen knives to "oil them" in the kitchen, they might get suspicious about what he was doing with those knives.
Then, some dreadful rumors could start to spread, which might affect Annan’s personal image...
And if he falsely accused someone of losing the knife, that would be plain shameless—because even if Annan wouldn’t blame them, it’s unjust to make innocent people suffer wrongfully.
Eventually, Annan regretfully realized he could only use the complimentary kitchen knife that came with the Curse Binding.
It was better than bothering others for no reason.
Moreover, Annan unexpectedly discovered that this kitchen knife wasn’t as inconvenient as he had thought.
If he walked around holding it, it would create a ghastly scene. But keeping it in the bag, the rate at which it dripped blood actually slowed down a lot.
Its description was, "A kitchen knife that can never be wiped clean of blood." In a simple experiment conducted by Annan, he found that if the knife was hung upside down, it would drop about one milliliter of blood per minute; however, if he tried to wipe off the blood on its surface, it would instantly exude even more blood the next second.
On the contrary, if its surface was smeared with blood or kept submerged in blood, it would stop oozing blood.
In other words, it kept bleeding just to meet the requirement of having a "knife with bloodstains" on it.
Perhaps this was its final act of stubbornness.
It was actually quite a pity.
Ann, had thought whether he could hang it up and turn it into a constant supply of plasma—if it were human blood, it could be made into blood bags; if not, it could be made into blood dumplings, blood sausage, or pig’s blood cake, and the like.
Unfortunately, it bled too slowly.
So slowly that when Annan put it in his bag, the blood wouldn’t even drip out through the seams.
So Annan simply carried it with him. Every morning or evening he used it to peel fruit or cut slices of ham and chunks of meat—it wasn’t a big problem as long as he wiped it; it could still be eaten.
This way, he could also ensure that whenever he encountered an enemy, Annan could pull it out and use it to dissolve his own Curse Binding.
Annan lifted the bleeding kitchen knife and showed a gentle and pleasant smile to Salvatore, who was dodging him:
"I plan to use it to dissolve my Curse Binding—do you have any objections?"
"...I don’t have any objections, but as for them..."
Salvatore looked at the players with some hesitation.
Annan answered without hesitating, "I trust them—they will definitely keep a secret for me. That is the agreement we have already made between us."
The players were instantly confused.
When did we agree to that...
But they were smart, no one asked about it; instead, they logically included it into their "character setups", nodding and acknowledging it one after another.
"However, you can explain to them what Curse Binding is. I have not gone into details with them before... You understand why."
Annan vaguely skipped over that part and answered with an honest and serious face, "Because I think they all have the potential to become Transcendents."
"...Okay, if that’s what you want."
Salvatore shrugged, glanced at Gerald who was covered in a layer of ice but still struggling slowly and continuously making a grating noise, and then walked towards the players.
What a perfect opportunity to introduce some setting to the players...
Relieved, Annan carried the kitchen knife and walked toward Gerald, roughly sizing him up.
He needed to quickly make a few more cuts.
Otherwise, he was going to freeze to death...
Annan said with a buoyant smile, in a very low voice, "We truly have no grudges or grievances... but I do not accept your surrender.
"You might as well give up struggling. I’ll give you a quick end, but do me a favor and give more experience points—"
As he spoke, he deftly made a faint mark of frost with the kitchen knife.
The blood droplets on the knife instantly turned white, flew out, and got embedded in Gerald’s body, only then did the bloodstain on the knife begin to melt again.
The frost mark silently penetrated the ice-bound lump that Gerald had become and made the cracking noise that Annan had become somewhat familiar with.
Annan, surprised, struck with the second, and then a third blow—
[In combat, for killing a silver-rank enemy, you have gained 1240 points of communal experience.]
Just as Annan was internally exclaiming, "Wizards of the silver-rank are indeed very tough," the next moment, he suddenly realized...
Could it be that the pressure he felt when making those three Frost Sword Technique slashes was much less than before?
With this thought, he opened his attribute page immediately.