Chapter 48: Extraction

Chapter 48: Extraction

Walter came to the third floor, bent his finger, and knocked on the master bedroom door.

“Who is it?” Dawn Dantes’s somewhat weak and hoarse voice came from within.

Walter turned the handle and pushed the door open a crack.

“Sir, Bishop Elektra has come to visit you.

“Would you like to see him in the parlor or sitting room, or invite him directly to the bedroom?”

Normally, visitors were not permitted to enter the host’s bedroom. It was an extremely improper act. However, visits to the sick were an exception.

After a brief silence, Dawn Dantes answered, “Invite him to the bedroom.”

“Very well, sir.” Walter gestured for Richardson to hurry the maid into preparing tea, then walked to the lower floor and led Bishop Elektra of the Evernight Church upstairs.

Before long, Elektra entered the bedroom and saw Dawn Dantes reclining against the bed, looking somewhat haggard.

“Richardson, bring the bishop a chair.” Dawn Dantes smiled, his face slightly pale.

Richardson had already prepared and immediately moved a high-backed chair to a spot not far from the bed.

Elektra took a few steps forward, observed the new tycoon’s face, and asked with concern, “Dawn, how are you feeling? Have you had an internist come by?”

His spiritual intuition had not been stirred, so he made no other attempts. This was merely a normal sick visit to a devout believer.

Dawn Dantes coughed softly twice and revealed a smile.

“I’m actually almost recovered. I think tomorrow, or the day after, I’ll be able to continue going to the cathedral and listening to your sermons.”

“That is good. I was wondering whether I should help pray to the Goddess for protection on your behalf.” Elektra laughed, took a step back, and sat in the chair Richardson had moved over.

At that moment, Dawn Dantes glanced at the bishop and chuckled.

“I have actually always had a question. Are priests and clergy of the Church of the Goddess allowed to marry?”

Elektra, still two years shy of forty, sighed and smiled.

“This question actually troubled us for a very long time.

“During many ancient theological councils, the archbishops argued fiercely over it.

“One side believed that servants who attended the Goddess must maintain purity, regardless of gender. Otherwise, it would be blasphemy against God. The other side found the Goddess’s words within The Revelation of Evernight and other scriptures, believing that the Goddess encouraged marriage and encouraged equal, normal relations between men and women. They believed clergy should serve as examples rather than counterexamples, and that this was the greatest respect toward the Goddess.

“In modern times, this issue has basically been set aside. The Church neither forbids nor encourages it. The only requirement is that married clergy cannot have their family members live inside the cathedral.”

Dawn Dantes listened and slowly nodded. The corner of his mouth lifted.

“Bishop, do you have a wife?”

Bishop Elektra, whose face was thin and whose looks were not striking, yet somehow pleasing to the eye, sighed. His smile was difficult to hide.

“Two years ago, under the Goddess’s witness, I entered the hall of marriage. This year, we happened to have a child.

“I had originally intended to remain single and serve the Goddess all my life, but…”

As he spoke, he gave a self-mocking smile and shook his head.

Before Dawn Dantes could press further on the topic, Bishop Elektra asked in return, “You also seem to be single. Are you considering marriage?”

He seemed to take the answer to that question for granted and directly treated it as confirmed. Then he asked, “What sort of lady do you like? Perhaps I can introduce you to someone suitable.”

Dawn Dantes coughed softly again and smiled.

“In the past, in order to accumulate wealth, I was always choosing adventure. That is why I was unwilling to marry. I feared I would drag someone else into danger. Heh. As for the type of woman I like, there are many. I am not picky.

“I like women a little older than me, women who can give me warmth and make me feel at ease…”

Before he had finished speaking, Richardson, the personal valet standing nearby, suddenly froze. Then he turned his head to look beside him, only to uncomfortably lower it again. For some inexplicable reason, his face felt hot and stinging.

Dawn Dantes seemed not to notice and continued, “I also like women much younger than me—innocent, lively, and so radiant that seeing them is like seeing the morning, making one unconsciously feel full of vigor…”

The smile on Bishop Elektra’s face suddenly stiffened. He lifted a hand, made a fist, pressed it to his mouth, and coughed twice.

Dawn Dantes did not stop. Shaking his head, he sighed with a smile.

“I also like ladies who have once experienced love or marriage, whose status and position make one fear approaching them, so that one can only admire them from afar. They are full of charm. Every movement they make is intoxicating and difficult to resist. One always dreams of…”

The nearby butler Walter abruptly trembled, as if he had just experienced a dream he did not wish to wake from yet strongly resisted—one so hard to distinguish as good or bad.

Dawn Dantes seemed about to continue, but after opening his mouth, no sound came out.

He then gave a low laugh and said, “All of this is very normal. Human beings are restricted by the body. Under the influence of all kinds of senses, they will always have some abnormal thoughts. So long as one can restrain them, act according to one’s own will, and not feel tormented by it, one can still be a good husband, a good father, and a good man.”

“Very reasonable. When we are angry, we always have irrational thoughts, but very few people turn them into reality.” Bishop Elektra cleverly shifted the topic away, while Butler Walter and personal valet Richardson each revealed thoughtful expressions.

The bishop did not linger for too long. After drinking several mouthfuls of Marquis black tea brought by a maid, he rose and took his leave, departing Dawn Dantes’s residence.

The room quickly became quiet. The balcony window opened silently, and Klein, having returned to the appearance of Dawn Dantes, leaped inside with lightness and grace.

Good thing I returned in time. If I let Magic Mirror Arrodes keep chatting like that, Bishop Elektra might refuse to recognize me as a devout believer anymore… Tomorrow morning, I might even find Walter and Richardson hanging themselves in their rooms, while the entire block spreads the rumor that Dawn Dantes is a pervert…

Klein glanced at the false Dawn on the bed, which was really the Magic Mirror, and silently sighed. The latter half of what had just been said had been answers he had personally drafted, letting Arrodes recite them.

Of course, this was only his worst-case imagining. He trusted that Arrodes would not actually let matters deteriorate to that point.

“Welcome back, my great Master.” Dawn Dantes on the bed bowed in greeting. “Your humble and loyal servant Arrodes did—did I do well?”

Hearing the Magic Mirror stammer as it asked, Klein sighed again.

“Not bad. The disguise was quite good.

“However, when chatting, try not to provoke others.”

“I-I will pay attention!” The false image of Dawn Dantes swiftly vanished, revealing a small mirror on the pillow.

Silver-white light immediately burst from the mirror and squirmed into one word after another:

“Thank You for Your affirmation. I will always follow in Your footsteps and look forward to the next opportunity to serve You~”

After a simple stick-figure goodbye expression, the mirror returned to normal.

Klein approached, put the mirror away, then entered the washroom attached to the master bedroom. Taking four steps counterclockwise, he arrived above the gray fog.

He had to complete the grazing before Mr. X’s spirit completely dissipated.

…

Inside the book world, on a snow-covered mountain peak, in a cave.

Klein looked at Mr. X’s corpse on the ground. He carefully identified the head pieced together from fragments and compared it with the target portrait Miss Magician had provided from memory.

“It’s him… I hope I can obtain Travel or Record this time. If I get either one, this operation will be worth it. If neither appears, I’ll have to consider making Miss Magician pay extra. Hunting a Sequence 5 and facing a demigod are two completely different levels of difficulty.”

As Klein thought, he extended his left hand, spread his five fingers, and aimed them at the corpse whose spirituality had not yet completely dispersed.

Creeping Hunger swiftly returned to its original form, as if made from a thin layer of human skin. At the center of the palm, two eyes split open, their pupils crimson as though dyed in blood.

Within the bone-piercing cold wind, Mr. X’s partly dissipated spirit and the brilliant Beyonder specks of light connected like a galaxy drilled one after another into Creeping Hunger, fixing themselves upon the blank finger.

Creeping Hunger first became transparent, like a reflection of the spirit world, then returned to normal.

Klein closed his eyes and sensed it. Gradually, his brows relaxed, and a smile appeared on his face.

This time, his luck was rather good. He had extracted one of the Beyonder abilities he wanted most:

Traveler’s Door!

This could also be called Door of Teleportation, Teleportation, or Travel for short. Its function was to allow a person to traverse through the spirit world, provided they could sense the outside world and orient themselves. Different Sequences, owing to the different strength of their spirit bodies, could endure different durations of teleportation, and the effects and distances of spirit world traversal would vary clearly as well.

If one were only Sequence 9 or Sequence 8, it probably wouldn’t go beyond the range of Backlund… At my current level, I wonder whether I can directly go to the primitive island Mr. Hanged Man mentioned. Mm, if that doesn’t work, I can split it into two or three trips…

Klein thought with a smile.

Only at this moment did he realize that a Traveler’s frontal combat strength was truly formidable. The difficulty of using short-distance Travel was roughly equivalent to Flame Jump, which meant that a Traveler could continually blink around a target, near and far, making them impossible to guard against and impossible to attack.

Combined with the various recorded abilities they had prepared, and their vigilance in immediately distancing themselves at the first sign of trouble, Klein suspected that even if he possessed Lightning Storm and Tornado, he still might not be able to keep a Traveler in a frontal fight.

As expected, a Marionettist should do his utmost to remain behind the scenes…

As Klein sighed, he shifted his gaze back to Mr. X’s corpse.

Creeping Hunger had obtained one other Beyonder ability just now: the Apprentice Sequence’s Door Opening. It was nearly equivalent to a greatly weakened version of Travel and held little value.

As his gaze moved, Klein’s eyes reflected the gold ring inlaid with ruby upon Mr. X’s hand.