Chapter 83: Review

Chapter 83: Review

Backlund, 160 Böklund Street.

Gehrman Sparrow’s figure suddenly appeared inside the master bedroom. His black trench coat swayed lightly, and his half-top silk hat sat neatly upon his head.

Dawn Dantes, who lay on the bed, immediately turned incorporeal and shrank back into a palm-sized mirror.

No one should have come to visit tonight. Arrodes didn’t cause any trouble…

Seeing this scene and sensing the calm and quiet around him, Klein secretly breathed out in relief. His figure rose slightly, his temples rapidly turning gray-white, while his blue eyes grew deep. He returned to the appearance of Dawn Dantes.

At the same time, on the surface of that mirror, water rippled and silver light gathered, outlining word after word:

“Great and supreme Master, I did nothing tonight! No—I earnestly played the role of Dawn Dantes sleeping.

“Also, I did encounter one matter. Would You like to know?”

Ignoring the first part, where the Magic Mirror Arrodes was clearly fishing for praise, Klein’s heart gave a thump. While taking off his hat and casually tossing it onto the nearby easy chair, he answered in a low voice, “Speak.”

On the mirror surface, the original words broke apart and squirmed into new text:

“A lady, while passing by this street, looked at this house once.”

What kind of matter is that? There are far too many people who pass by here every day and casually admire the surroundings…

Klein was just about to speak when the surface of the mirror rippled with watery light, reflecting a figure.

To ordinary people, that figure would count as oddly dressed. She wore black spirit medium robes, with blue eye shadow and blush, both gorgeous and uncanny. It was none other than Daly Simone.

The lady had been riding in a carriage through Böklund Street. When she passed No. 160, she turned her head toward the window and looked for more than three seconds.

Hiss. Not only did she remember Dawn Dantes because of his eyes, she also incidentally grasped some information?

Klein frowned slightly, then asked, “Was there anything else?”

“No!” Arrodes answered by making words protrude from the mirror surface, while also drawing a simple symbolic picture of someone “swearing an oath.”

Klein nodded and, ignoring the Magic Mirror’s enthusiasm, forcefully dismissed it.

After finishing all this, Klein took out a candle and prepared to arrange a ritual: summoning himself, responding to himself, and bringing all the spoils he had obtained this time, along with the clothes he had worn, above the gray fog. He planned to distinguish Gehrman Sparrow’s clothing from Dawn Dantes’s, so as to avoid being exposed through this detail in the future.

Snap!

He snapped his fingers, causing a crimson flame to rise from the candlewick.

Flame.

Flame…

Klein’s gaze froze for several seconds. He swiftly closed his eyes and turned around, putting his back to the candle.

Then he controlled the Wraith Senor, making the marionette approach the desk step by step.

During the process, Senor’s body trembled more and more violently. Yet in the end, he still forcibly stretched out his right hand and pinched out the candle flame.

I’ll sleep first and deal with it tomorrow… No, the Tyrant card is with me and has already been unlocked. Although it is sealed by a wall of spirituality, that may not completely isolate its ability to attract and converge with the same pathway. Perhaps it only weakens the influence and lengthens the time… Just now in Bayam, I kept going in and out quickly and didn’t dare linger for too long…

Klein had only just calmed down when he thought of these problems.

A few seconds later, he slowly inhaled, raised his hand again, and snapped his fingers, lighting the candle once more.

Immediately afterward, he controlled the fear in his heart and had the Wraith Senor take out two other candles to set up a sacrificial ritual. That way, he would not need to respond to a summoning and pass through candle flames to arrive in the real world.

Once everything was prepared, Klein turned around with great difficulty, lowered his head “devoutly,” not daring to look straight at the candle flame, and earnestly recited the Fool’s honorific name.

Relying on willpower, nearly moved to tears by the terror, he finally completed the ritual and sacrificed every item that needed to be sent above the gray fog.

Whew…

Klein breathed out, took four steps counterclockwise, and arrived in that silent, mysterious space. Sitting in the chair belonging to the Fool, he first picked up the Tyrant card and activated its contents.

The Card of Blasphemy instantly became three-dimensional, like a palm-sized book.

The book flipped page by page. On every page was Roselle Gustav. In one, he was dressed as a sailor. In another, he wore a captain’s hat and held a sextant. In another, against a background of the sea, he raised his voice in song.

Klein was rendered speechless by what he saw and increasingly felt that this fellow countryman of his was unbelievably narcissistic.

If the Demoness card still uses his own image, then I will truly have to admire him…

As Klein mocked inwardly, he browsed the corresponding contents, analyzing the Sequence names, ingredients, and rituals of the entire Storm pathway.

“Sequence 9: Sailor… Sequence 8: Folk of Rage… Sequence 7: Navigator… Sequence 6: Wind-blessed… Sequence 5: Ocean Songster… Sequence 4: Cataclysmic Interrer… Sequence 3: Sea King… Sequence 2: Calamity… Sequence 1: Thunder God… Sequence 0: Tyrant…

“The ritual to become Tyrant—that is, the Lord of Storms—is very different from the Black Emperor’s. First, one needs hundreds of thousands of followers who obey and believe out of fear. Second, one must challenge a true god alone, meaning another Sequence 0, and survive. Finally, amid the atmosphere of fear and obedience, one consumes the potion and completes the advancement.

“This is rather brutal. A Sequence 1 that has not yet undergone a qualitative transformation challenging a Sequence 0 true god—out of ten attempts, seven or eight would probably end in death… And if that era had no other Sequence 0s, wouldn’t one have to find a way to cultivate one, or switch to a neighboring pathway… Of course, the ritual may not be absolutely necessary. So long as one is lucky enough, drinking the potion directly may still have a chance. Sea God Kalvetua is an example. What it consumed was not even a potion, but an unblended Beyonder characteristic…

“The core of this ritual is courage to challenge a deity, and vast amounts of fear and obedience?

“Mm. Tyrant also does not seem to possess the Black Emperor’s special ability to distort and use rules—to revive from death and return from nothingness. But it appears to have the terror of briefly transforming into electric current and light speed. Perhaps it can also create planet-level disasters… Emperor Roselle’s records focus on formulas and rituals. There is too little description of corresponding Beyonder abilities and divine authorities, and what there is remains very vague…”

Klein casually summoned an unrealized sheet of paper and used a round-bellied fountain pen to copy down the potion formula for Cataclysmic Interrer. In the tone of the World, Gehrman Sparrow, he marked a sentence:

“Try not to recall the contents of that painting in ordinary times.”

This was a reminder for the Hanged Man. In the mystical domain, matters involving Sequence 0 had to be treated with enough prudence and caution. Even if it defied common sense, one still had to be careful.

That nothing happened when they saw and discussed the painting on the primitive island did not mean it would definitely be safe in the outside world. If one often recalled it, perhaps one day, due to insufficient “luck,” one might be struck by lightning during a thunderstorm; or encounter some difficult problem and, being unable to solve it, have a blood vessel in one’s brain suddenly burst; or suffer heatstroke under the sun and die because rescue came too late.

“The ritual for Cataclysmic Interrer is extremely dangerous too. It triggers earthquakes and tsunamis, and the one advancing must consume the potion in that environment and hold on until it ends…”

Klein folded the paper, placed it to the side, and put away the Tyrant card.

After using divination to identify the three Beyonder characteristics he had gained as Sequence 5 Chaos Mentor of the Black Emperor pathway, Sequence 5 Ocean Songster of the Storm pathway, and Sequence 5 Druid of the Planter pathway, Klein finally had leisure to recall everything that had happened during this exploration and ponder the information hidden within it.

“The Eternal Blazing Sun is clearly of the Sun pathway, while the Creator of the City of Silver is also known as the ancient Sun God. This can be concluded from certain Fourth Epoch historical remnants and the murals of the elves… According to the law of conservation that there can be a Sequence 0 but no Sequence 1s, the Pure White Angel at that time should not have been a King of Angels. But if He was not a King of Angels, He fundamentally would not have been qualified to participate in the feast of dividing and devouring the Creator of the City of Silver. This was not only because of external factors; His own condition mattered too—jumping directly from Sequence 2 to Sequence 0 would carry an overwhelming chance of losing control!

“Either the Eternal Blazing Sun switched pathways to become a god, or the principal authority of the Creator of the City of Silver was not Sun. After defeating the ancient gods, He had already distributed that portion of authority to an angel beside Him, allowing that angel to become a King of Angels. Therefore, the elven murals and the later titles only indicate that He once held the Sun authority, not that He held it all along.

“There is also another possibility: after reclaiming the authorities of the ancient gods, that Creator gained the ability to allow a Sequence 2 of the same pathway to advance to Sequence 1…”

Klein’s train of thought quickly shifted to who had built that church and who had left that painting. Because too many possibilities were mixed together and difficult to organize, he simply manifested a sheet of parchment and summarized the key points in writing, searching for connections:

“That primitive island was discovered together by Qilangos and Mr. Hanged Man…

“Qilangos accepted a commission from the Twilight Hermit Order and went to Backlund to assassinate Duke Negan for some highly valuable item. He died at Mr. Azik’s hands…

“Qilangos told Mr. Hanged Man that in the depths of that ruined church, there was something precious no less valuable than Roselle’s tarot cards, but one had to be at Sequence 5 level to obtain it…

“He later obtained Creeping Hunger and became a pirate admiral, his strength already equivalent to that of a powerful Sequence 5…

“That Tyrant card still remained inside the burial hall beneath the church…

“Qilangos did not try again afterward? Or did he try and fail?

“That church was built by beings who believed in the ancient Sun God. The murals within it recorded the dark history of the orthodox deities from before the Cataclysm, with a clear stance favoring the ancient Sun God…

“The Twilight Hermit Order is suspected to have been founded by Adam, Son of God. Its goal is to resurrect that ancient Sun God, the Creator of the City of Silver…

“That primitive island suddenly vanished as if it had never existed at all…

“Adam is the Angel of Imagination… Among the core members of the Twilight Hermit Order, there is at least one angel of the Spectator pathway: Hermes…

“The Twilight Hermit Order tends to have its members choose the Sailor, Reader, and Sun pathways. There is a high probability that it possesses high-Sequence materials and items of the Storm domain… There may be an angel of the Storm domain within the Order…”

Klein set down the fountain pen. Looking at the contents listed on the paper, he slowly formed a conjecture.