Chapter 21: The Night of the Full Moon

Chapter Twenty-One
The Night of the Full Moon

It was the same dream divination, but this time, Klein saw far more scenes.

The first scene was still that cramped, dark, filthy room, and Ian Wright asleep on the upper bunk.

The second scene was the sewer both of them had visited. Ian crouched before Zeriel’s mutilated corpse, reached out, felt along the two rows of pale-white teeth, and removed one of them.

The third scene was a busy, noisy street. The pedestrians wore plain clothes—some even old or ragged.

At the center of the street were gardens and lawns surrounding low chimneys that spouted mist. Ian, wearing an old coat and round-topped hat, looked around vigilantly and entered a telegraph office not far from the street center. Diagonally opposite was the steam underground entrance that looked like a department store.

The scene rapidly faded until it became transparent. Klein opened his eyes, lightly tapped the edge of the bronze long table with his index finger, and made a preliminary judgment.

“Judging from the tooth and the telegram, Zeriel and Ian were not a detective pair accidentally caught up in a dangerous incident. There is an organization behind them!”

“I should be able to determine where the third scene corresponds to…”

Klein did not hurry to analyze it more deeply, because he did not wish to remain above the gray fog for too long.

Leaving the high-backed chair belonging to The Fool, he walked to a corner at the side and rummaged through the paper bag he had previously sent there, pulling out Meursault’s Beyonder characteristic.

Holding the jelly-like, deep-red object, Klein returned to his seat and wrote a new divination statement:

“The corresponding potion’s name.”

While silently reciting, he held the lump of Beyonder characteristic in one hand and the paper bearing the divination statement in the other. With meditation’s aid, he entered slumber.

Inside the gray, illusory dream, the ambassador with flamboyantly magnificent clothing, a lean face, and stubble appeared before Klein’s eyes once again.

He held a bottle of deep-red liquid and said to Meursault, “Drink it. Drink this Hunter potion, and you will be able to dominate the Zmanger gang. Of course, money is also indispensable. Emperor Roselle once said: in one hand, the big stick; in the other, the carrot.”

“Hunter? Backlund is a metropolis…”

Meursault frowned slightly and asked in confusion.

In his illiterate understanding, hunters belonged to the wilderness, to animals.

The middle-aged ambassador chuckled.

“The greatest metropolis is also the greatest dark jungle.

“Here, everyone has two identities. First, prey. Second, hunter.

“Even the weakest hunter is still a hunter, and may wound powerful prey.

“Go. Join this grand hunt.”

…

The scene broke apart, turning into countless fragments of light and shadow. Klein lowered his head and looked at the deep-red Beyonder characteristic in his hand, muttering soundlessly, “So it was the Hunter potion. No wonder Meursault could fight so well and even used poisoned blow darts.

“No wonder he could track me down…

“However, he does not seem to have truly understood the essence of a Hunter. He did not set traps beforehand, did not use weapons, and did not bring out the corresponding specialties… On one hand, that was because he did not know I was also a Beyonder, and a Sequence 8 Beyonder at that, so he underestimated me. On the other, it also indicates that he had not consumed the potion for very long…

“The Hunter pathway is simultaneously held by the former Intis royal family, the Sauron family, and the ruling Einhorn family of the Feysac Empire, as well as the Iron and Blood Cross Order, a secret organization that appeared only in the last two or three hundred years. Adding the style of his clothing, that ambassador’s identity can basically be confirmed… a high-level diplomat of the Intis Republic, the ambassador stationed in the Loen Kingdom…

“I wonder what that important item he wants is…”

As his thoughts churned, Klein wrapped himself in spirituality and plunged downward.

The moment he returned to his room, he vigilantly examined his surroundings. He discovered no abnormal changes.

Hoo. Klein exhaled silently and felt a little more confident about summoning the members of the Tarot Club on time the next afternoon.

He searched out the Backlund map he had bought on the steam train and began looking for telegraph offices along the underground lines, the telegraph offices not far from street centers.

At present, Backlund had only a few underground lines. Klein quickly identified three possible targets: one in the West Borough, one in Saint George Borough, and one located where the East Borough met the Backlund Bridge area.

He recalled the clothing and apparent social class of most pedestrians in the dream and obtained his final answer.

The third one!

The place where the East Borough meets the Backlund Bridge area!

Sometimes, interpreting revelations also requires rich real-world knowledge and corresponding reasoning ability…

Klein mocked himself once, then went to the desk and added another line after the earlier statement he had written, enriching the contents of the paper:

“I do not know Ian Wright’s whereabouts. After discovering Zeriel’s corpse, I have not seen him again. However, through my own channels, I learned that Ian Wright once appeared at the telegraph office on White Rum Street.”

After writing this, Klein did not fold the paper away, nor ignite it with spirituality. Instead, he let it remain spread open on the desk, wantonly displaying its contents.

He looked at it deeply once. Then he returned to the bed, undressed, and slept.

Outside the tightly drawn curtains, the red moon emerged from the clouds. Its radiance was pure, complete, and full.

…

Hillston Borough, inside a house.

Fors, who was sleeping separately from Xio, suddenly sat up and stretched both hands to cover her head.

Her still rather decent face had twisted to the extreme, ferocious like that of a demon.

Fors pressed her hands over both ears and rolled again and again on the bed, as though resisting illusory ravings.

Drops of sweat seeped from her forehead. Blue veins bulged one after another on the backs of her hands.

Her body sometimes tensed, sometimes rolled. The light-blue eyes that usually carried mockery and languor were now filled with pain.

In the depths of those pupils, countless lights and shadows seemed to shift and overlap.

“No!”

Fors finally could not endure it any longer and let out a low scream.

Her hands no longer covered her ears. Instead, they clawed at her hair, as though she wanted to use pain to resist pain.

Her body twisted and writhed for several minutes before Fors finally stopped.

She released her hands and saw handful after handful of slightly curled brown hair. Weakly, she gave a self-mocking smile.

“I lied to Xio. I told her the ravings each full moon did not have much negative effect on me… At least losing hair is a very serious problem…”

Fors struggled to sit against the headboard and looked toward the curtain half covering the window. Through the gap, she saw the dreamlike crimson full moon outside.

“It gets worse every time. Next time, will I lose control because of it…?”

Fors murmured, no longer able to suppress the weakness she usually buried deep inside her heart.

She had tried separating herself from the bracelet that allowed one to use the spirit world for teleportation, but this no longer made the full-moon ravings disappear.

She had tried taking sedatives. She had tried reciting the honorific name of the God of Steam and Machinery. She had tried certain ritual magic. Yet none of them had changed her current situation, which was gradually sliding toward the abyss.

“If only I could understand what those ravings are saying… I would rather die understanding than be buried in ignorance… Perhaps, perhaps after advancing to Sequence 8, I would hear them more clearly? But I have never encountered anyone selling the formula for Trickmaster.”

Fors stared blankly out the window, the moonlight staining her eyes with a layer of red.

…

Early Monday morning, Klein, who had not slept soundly, woke early and rolled out of bed.

He walked to the desk, preparing to pull open the curtains and open the window, letting both light and outside wind come in.

Just then, from the corner of his eye, he saw the sheet of paper spread out on the desk.

It faced the window and remained laid open exactly where it had been.

But Klein clearly remembered that before sleeping the previous night, the paper had faced the chair, faced the bed!

After only one night, it had turned over, changing its orientation.

Klein’s pupils contracted. He abruptly reached out and pulled the curtain open, seeing that the oriel window remained tightly shut. Not even a thread of wind had entered.

Without wind, the paper turned half a circle on its own!

No. Someone came in while I did not notice!

Klein felt a chill surge along his spine toward his head.

He, asleep in his dream, had reacted to nothing at all.

That meant that at the time, he had been almost entirely at someone else’s mercy. Whether he lived or died depended only on the other person’s mood and thoughts.

Was it a member of the military’s special department, or a powerful Beyonder sent by the ambassador? From the paper not having been restored to its original position and remaining reversed, the latter seems more likely. It is a warning… To be able to infiltrate silently like this is very impressive… Should I thank him for his kindness? No. If it was so easy to do, why not simply do it? There must be a necessary reason… He did not want to alarm the military’s special department members monitoring the surroundings?

Thoughts surged in Klein’s mind, impossible to suppress.

The reason he had written those words last night and left the paper spread open on the desk was precisely to let others see it, to let the ambassador obtain the information he wanted, to delay possible retaliation until after the matter ended, and to give himself more time to prepare.

However, what Klein had originally imagined was that the other party would take advantage of him leaving the house, when the military’s special department weakened its surveillance of the building, to sneak inside. Who would have known that they could bypass the surrounding Beyonders, enter his bedroom without sound or sign, and leave him still sleeping?

That feeling of life and death being held in another person’s hands was extremely unpleasant.

“A Beyonder who is very powerful, or whose abilities are extremely strange…”

Klein turned around, putting his back to the oriel window, and took out a copper penny.

“Someone entered this room last night.”

…

He silently recited the statement and, using his body as cover, flicked the coin upward.

The coin flipped and jumped, then fell sharply before rising above Klein’s shoulder, landing in his open palm.

This time, the number side faced up.

That represented a negative answer.

It meant no one had entered Klein’s bedroom last night.

The paper would not turn on its own for no reason… Could I have been sleepwalking? No. I could stay conscious even when the Captain invaded my dreams…

Klein immediately furrowed his brows and thought of two possibilities:

First, the divination result had been interfered with and misled.

Second, what entered was not human.