Chapter 211: Attempts

Chapter 211: Attempts

After putting down the fountain pen in his hand, Klein unfastened the pendulum hidden inside the cuff of his left wrist. Holding it with one hand, he suspended it directly over the paper, so close that it nearly touched.

“Edwina is inside this book’s story.”

Klein then closed his eyes and silently recited the divination statement.

After seven repetitions, he opened his eyes and saw the yellow crystal pendant rotating clockwise.

That meant affirmation. It meant Vice Admiral Iceberg Edwina truly was inside Travels of Groselle!

So it really is a world inside the book… And the state inside should be rather special. If no new person joins, the story cannot turn to the next page… Klein nodded almost imperceptibly. He wound up the silver chain holding the yellow crystal pendant again, picked up the deep-red round-bellied fountain pen nearby, and wrote a new divination statement:

“The method of entering Travels of Groselle.”

This time, he used dream divination. In the gray, foggy world, he saw one blurry figure after another.

Some of those figures were enormous, others slender. Their shared trait was that each held a book bound in yellow-brown parchment.

What followed split into two different developments. Some figures who carried Travels of Groselle with them all the time vanished silently, while other figures, who sometimes picked up the book and sometimes set it aside, suddenly disappeared after blood, whether accidental or intentional, dripped onto its cover!

The image shattered. Klein opened his eyes and looked at the mottled long table before him, frowning slightly as he began interpreting it.

“To enter or activate Travels of Groselle, one either has to remain in long-term contact with it until a certain threshold is reached, or drip one’s own blood onto the cover?

“Isn’t that a bit too simple? Perhaps… it really is that simple. When the Loen soldier in the story first ‘appeared,’ he was only an ordinary person. He didn’t even understand mysticism. It was only with the help of his companions that he gradually grew into a Punishment Knight… Therefore, the activation method wouldn’t be complicated. Ordinary people can complete it too.

“The small number of previous researchers, including Vice Admiral Iceberg Edwina, were all Beyonders with sufficient mysticism knowledge. They knew very clearly that they couldn’t casually drip their own blood onto random objects. Otherwise, they might not even know how they died. That’s similar to ordinary people using the effective ‘magic mirror divination method’—it makes it extremely easy to provoke powerful, unknown, hidden existences. That is why they didn’t run into trouble…

“On top of that, Edwina kept Travels of Groselle in the collection room most of the time and only came into contact with it occasionally. That means it wasn’t until she recently developed a new research approach and touched it for an extended time that the book finally reached the activation condition?

“Mm. Even Magic Mirror Arrodes only knew that the book was strange, that many of its former owners went missing, and that it was suspected of being connected to the dragon race and the City of Miracles, Liveseyd. This indicates that when Travels of Groselle activates, it interferes with the surrounding environment and erases corresponding clues. That’s why the vast majority of its former collectors never knew it had a problem, much less developed any urge to research it.

“The missing owners should number more than the few people in the story. The rest may have died for various reasons and failed to leave their names in the travelogue…”

Klein withdrew his thoughts and performed another divination, hoping to obtain the method for leaving Travels of Groselle.

This time, in the gray, foggy dream world, he saw an even more violent blizzard. He saw a gigantic figure standing atop an icy peak.

It was a nearly transparent dragon, close to five meters tall even when standing on all fours. It…