Chapter 244: Preparation Matters

Chapter 244: Preparation Matters

All at once, Klein had that familiar feeling again, as though every tree around him, every leaf, every stone, and every blade of grass wanted to put him to death.

Seeing the strange net made from trash, paper, and other debris about to pounce, his body suddenly collapsed and thinned, transforming into a paper figurine.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Arrow-like branches pierced through the paper figurine and landed in the distance. The strange net then completely wrapped that place up, binding everything into a ball that wriggled gently.

Klein’s body appeared seven or eight meters to the side. He knew that the attack he had worried about had finally come.

Without making any observations, and without the slightest hesitation, he lifted his right hand, intending to reach into his pocket and take out his Adventurer’s Harmonica.

The situation just now made him understand that the attacker was very likely a demigod of the Rose School of Thought—an enemy he currently could not oppose!

Back then, the one who had hunted Sharron had given him a similar feeling!

At that moment, the paper figurines in his pocket suddenly flew out and stuck to his face, one after another, layer upon layer!

At the same time, Klein’s sleeves tightened of their own accord, constricting his upper and lower arms and preventing his hand from reaching down.

His Talaba shirt and his brown jacket also contracted inward, like a bear applying a crushing hug!

Within a second or two, he was bound in place by his own clothes, trousers, and shoes. His face was covered in paper figurines, his ribs nearly snapped, and breathing became extremely difficult.

Klein had both mental preparation and rich combat experience. At this moment, he did not panic. His right thumb and middle finger, which were still unaffected, pressed together and snapped.

Scarlet flames suddenly rose at the bend of his knees, burning away the tightly wrapped trouser legs before spreading upward and downward.

Seizing that chance, Klein straightened his knees, forced himself into the air with great difficulty, and pounced toward the right like a cannonball that had lost power the moment it was fired.

While still in midair, he snapped again. This time, he ignited the sleeve at his right elbow!

At the place where he had originally stood, the green grass suddenly withered, and the almost-black ground instantly turned white, as if it had been weathered for a very long time.

The attack had come silently and without warning. If Klein had not known how powerful the enemy was, and if he had not realized that staying in the same place might bring an attack difficult to withstand, thus removing the restriction on his legs in advance, he would now already have been gravely injured, lost the ability to fight, or even lost his life.

Amid the snapping sound, two spots on Klein’s sleeve burned. His right palm finally gained room to move, reached into his pocket, and grasped the Adventurer’s Harmonica.

Thud!

He fell to the ground, rolled, then immediately braced himself with his right hand and bounced up. His left palm, wearing the human-skin glove, snapped as well.

This time, his target was the paper figurines stuck to his face, preventing him from breathing.

Snap!

The paper figurines burst into flame. Scarlet tongues of fire nearly burned Klein’s hair.

Just then, an image suddenly flashed through his mind:

A thin arrow condensed from ice crystal and dyed eerie green was flying toward his head at extreme speed!

Because it moved so quickly, and because it was transparent, the thin arrow would normally be impossible to discover!

Even though Klein had obtained the danger premonition, it was already somewhat too late. His movement was still restricted by his clothes, and he could not completely dodge in time.

In a flash of thought, his waist barely bent, his upper body leaning backward and shifting considerably to the right.

Puff!

The cold, tiny ice arrow struck his left chest, instantly shattering the brown jacket and all-white round-collared shirt there, scattering fragments into the air.

However, the lethal ice arrow could not continue forward, because what blocked it was a dark-brown-covered book.

The book looked completely ordinary. Its pages were bound from common yellow-brown parchment, yet it had not shattered like the two layers of clothing outside it. There was not even a single nick upon it.

Travels of Groselle!

This was an item that had remained undamaged even after being struck head-on by the Sea God Scepter’s Lightning Storm plus a small amount of power from the mysterious space!

Klein, who had been frightened the night before by the telegraph saying “I see you,” had undoubtedly added more protective measures and prepared every method he could think of!

Besides hiding the travelogue against a vital part of his body, he had also placed an iron cigarette case in his other pocket. Inside it was the contaminated Tinder glove. If the situation became wrong, he would remove the wall of spirituality and throw out that item, to see whether it could attract the True Creator’s attention, prompting Him to send powerful subordinates over and make the situation even more chaotic.

He knew that evil gods such as the True Creator also hated the Mother Tree of Desire!

After blocking the ice arrow, Klein followed the momentum and fell backward, rolling to the side while bringing the Adventurer’s Harmonica to his mouth and blowing hard.

At that moment, his face had been darkened slightly by the smoke from the burning paper figurines. But with the assistance of Flame Manipulation, he had not been injured.

Then he felt the clothes binding his left arm, waist, abdomen, thighs, neck, and feet all return to normal, allowing him to regain freedom.

As he blew the harmonica, having already swiftly activated Spirit Vision, he saw Miss Messenger walk out from the void. The four blond-haired, red-eyed heads she carried in her hands turned on their own, all looking toward the same place.

One of the heads gave a “Hmph.” Its mouth opened and drew in a breath.

A cold wind began to howl. From a place a full hundred meters away from Klein, a figure was forcefully pulled out of a green tree by invisible power.

That figure could no longer maintain a state difficult for others to see. He rapidly became half-transparent, half-real.

He was a brown-skinned old man with sparse white hair and very deep wrinkles, his features possessing obvious Southern Continent traits. The moment his brown eyes reflected Reinette Tinekerr’s appearance, his brow could not help twitching. Without hesitation, he opened his mouth, seemingly about to release the most extreme curse brewed during a long silence.

At that moment, another head held by Reinette Tinekerr also opened its mouth, as if letting out a soundless shriek.

As a result, nothing happened within this forest.

Seeing this, Jakes hurriedly turned his head slightly and looked at Klein. Before Klein could react in any way, the figure of the white-haired old man with exaggerated wrinkles appeared in both his left and right eyes!

His mind instantly turned cold. His thoughts were not truly sluggish, yet he lost control over his body. He could only watch as the white-haired old man vanished and as he himself turned to face Miss Messenger.

Two of Reinette Tinekerr’s heads suddenly flew out of her hands and arrived in front of Klein. One opened its mouth and inhaled, while the other’s red eyes darkened, its teeth lengthened, each one sharp and pointed, between illusion and reality.

Klein saw the half-transparent, sparse-haired old man being forcefully “dragged” out of his own body. Then the head with lengthened teeth bit down on the old man’s shoulder, tearing away a large chunk of something that resembled both spirit body and flesh.

Jakes frowned. He did not scream. His figure abruptly vanished, jumping into a shard of glass a hundred meters away.

Then, as though being chased by invisible hands and invisible enemies, he flashed successively through shallow puddles, animal eyes, drops of dew on grass, and other places. Only then did he finally obtain a chance to catch his breath. By then, Klein’s body was still somewhat stiff, and he felt cold from the inside out.

Huff… Jakes entered the spirit world, then walked out again. In his hand was a wet, sticky, palm-sized little person.

The little person had only one hole on its face, and from it came gray-white fog that Klein found familiar.

Without hesitating, Jakes directly stuffed the little person into his mouth.

Seeing this, the other two heads Reinette Tinekerr held also left her palms. Together with the previous ones, they flew toward Jakes at the same time, so quickly that they seemed to arrive almost instantly.

But Jakes had already begun to change.

The surface of his body turned black. His skin wrinkled and secreted obvious moisture. His hair, eyebrows, and all other such parts withered, fell away, and drifted down. His limbs thinned and lengthened.

In the span of a single second, Jakes seemed to have been assimilated by the little person, becoming a large, black, wet infant with thin, long limbs and swollen, dry-wrinkled skin!

His eyes, nose, mouth, and ears moved away from their original positions and toward the center of his face, as though gathering together to condense into a brand-new organ.

His skin, his arms, and the outline of that new organ all carried an indescribable mystery and evil. Klein merely glanced at him, and his body, which had just recovered from the chill, began itching to the extreme. Red patches formed from countless tiny granules rose across his skin.

His eyes, without question, also stung so badly that he instinctively shut them tight, squeezing out tears.

After relying on meditation to calm himself slightly and reopening his eyes, he discovered that Miss Messenger and the Rose School of Thought demigod had already vanished from sight.

However, Klein’s spiritual intuition told him that both of them were still nearby, locked in fierce battle that shifted between the spirit world and the outside. Whether it was the falling of leaves, the swaying of wild grass, the crawling of insects, or the running of wild animals, each represented clash after clash between them.

With a turn of thought, Klein took out Death Knell while using his left thumb to quickly pinch the first joint of his index finger twice.

Countless illusory threads appeared in his eyes, allowing him to see things different from normal vision and Spirit Vision.

Two dense clusters of black lines rapidly moved around him, entangling back and forth. Those symbolized Reinette Tinekerr and the Rose School of Thought demigod!

Apart from them, Klein discovered another dense cluster of illusory black lines farther away, rapidly approaching his current location. From time to time, it would pause to avoid the two demigods locked in fierce battle.

Another enemy? Someone who hid far away earlier, waiting for the result, and has now decided to join the fight? In any case, under these circumstances, someone approaching in concealment can definitely be considered an enemy! Klein’s eyes shifted slightly. He cocked Death Knell’s hammer, letting it naturally hang downward, now in a state ready for a Fatal Attack.

Then, pretending he had not discovered that cluster of illusory black lines, he reached his left palm into his pocket and grasped a gold coin, letting it secretly flip and roll between his fingers as though performing divination.

He was interfering with the approaching person’s spiritual intuition toward danger!

After losing his paper figurines, he could only use this method.

He patiently waited two seconds. When the other party entered firing range, Klein’s gaze sharpened. He suddenly raised his right hand, aimed in that direction, and pulled the trigger!