Chapter 77: A Chance Encounter

Chapter 77: A Chance Encounter

Having formed an idea, Klein immediately planned to make a few preparations.

He would first explore the spirit world and choose a suitable candidate to become his messenger. Then, once he left the Rorsted Archipelago and the nearby waters, he would carry the Sea God Scepter over, reason with the target, and persuade it to become his messenger.

If I get lost, or encounter danger, I can immediately end the summoning and return above the gray fog. That means there is basically no risk… Klein considered for a few seconds, locked the bedroom door, and began the ritual to summon himself.

At the end of the ritual, he swiftly entered the world above the gray fog. But he did not hurry to respond. Instead, he sat down and made the Sea God Scepter fly out from the pile of miscellaneous items and land in his palm.

He planned to browse through the believers’ prayers as a matter of routine and see whether there were any matters that needed a response.

During this process, Klein discovered that a portion of the prayers were actually quite interesting, because human beings could deceive friends and relatives, but found it very difficult to hide their truest thoughts when confessing or praying to a deity. At most, they could make a few embellishments, making those thoughts look not quite so bad.

A mixed-blood who had risen into the middle ranks of Bayam’s police department had clearly begun leaning toward converting to the Lord of Storms. Yet in his confession, he exerted every effort to describe his actions as a plan involving humiliation and endurance. For the bright future of those with local blood, he could only painfully confess to his deity and hope that He would protect him, allowing him to use the identity of a believer of Storms to climb higher within the police system.

Although his words sounded flawless, the fluctuations of his thoughts and the rise and fall of his emotions were clearly presented within the prayer scene. They produced a feeling that could not be concealed.

Deceiving himself while also attempting to deceive a god… If it had been Kalvetua, that sea serpent with little intelligence, perhaps he really would have believed it… Should I strike him with lightning, or give him ten wind blades? Mm. A mixed-blood able to climb to the level of chief inspector is quite decent. I will leave him for now. Even traitors have their uses… Klein lifted the Sea God Scepter and made one of its blue-green “gemstones” shine brilliantly.

The light entered the scene and invisibly seeped into the chief inspector, a man named Braya.

This was not a curse, nor was it an influence. It was a mark on the divine level, and would almost certainly not be discovered by others.

Put simply, it is a unilateral “special attention”… Klein silently added inwardly.

He continued browsing and saw a young believer with bronze skin and slightly curled hair praying for the deity to make a man named Cham encounter a storm and be buried in the sea. The reason given on the surface was that the other party was not devout enough. But the true thought in the young man’s heart was that, as fellow fishermen, Cham always brought in a better catch than he did.

What sort of nonsense is this? The human heart really is hard to fathom… Klein first frowned and muttered silently, then had a vague idea.

“For a Faceless to achieve true acting, there must not only be no flaws in appearance, features, habits, and gestures. The fundamental consistency of the personality must also be maintained. There cannot be too great a change. Yet personality differs from person to person. Everyone has their own distinctions…

“By browsing the prayers of believers, it is equivalent to being able to witness different personalities and different psychological states without going through too much trouble. The ‘face’ in ‘a thousand faces for a thousand people’ does not refer only to appearance…

“This is quite important to my later acting as a Faceless. It can save me a great deal of time accumulating experience.”

Klein increasingly felt that playing Sea God had no small benefit to him.

When one truly acts as a demigod, even if no feedback is obtained, there will certainly still be considerable gains… This is equivalent to experiencing a higher-level state… Klein’s spirits lifted, and he was no longer so perfunctory when browsing the prayer scenes.

Scene after scene swiftly passed by. His gaze stopped on a merchant named Raelph.

This trading merchant praised the miracle of Sea God’s reappearance upon the earth. He expressed that he would dedicate one-third of his fortune, property worth twenty thousand pounds, to the rebels. Half would serve as military funds, and the other half would be used to reshape the statue of God.

Actually, it does not need to be that troublesome. You can simply sacrifice it directly… Klein half-jokingly muttered.

After thinking for a moment, he materialized a background where ocean waves and storms coexisted, where torrential rain and lightning fell together. Then he responded in a low, deep voice:

“To aid your compatriots and companions is to praise My name.

“Those young lambs need rescue, food, and education.”

He intended to have Raelph use the twenty thousand pounds in wealth to establish a charitable foundation and broadly seek donations from society. In the name of healing wounds and building consensus, and under the pretext of helping governance, it would provide a certain amount of food, clothing, and education to children with local blood.

As for the rebels’ military funds, Klein had already thought things through clearly. In a world where Beyonder powers existed, relying solely on the resistance of the colony’s local people would make success very difficult. Therefore, the rebels inevitably had to rely on help from foreign nations like Feysac and Intis.

Providing funding was undoubtedly one part of that help.

Unfortunately, I cannot add a commandment saying, “Go confidently and freeload funds from others.” That would damage Sea God’s image… The rebels also should not keep thinking about annihilating the garrison. Their main focus should be destroying transportation facilities and raising the Governor-General’s Office’s cost of rule. They should use attacks to force negotiations… As a mighty keyboard warrior, Klein did not lack ideas in such matters.

He quickly restrained his drifting thoughts and performed a divination regarding whether exploring the spirit world that day would be dangerous.

After obtaining a revelation that it would not be too dangerous, Klein brought the Black Emperor card with him, naturally changed his appearance, and stepped into the “door of summoning.”

After entering the real world, he tucked the necessary mystical items into his body to guard against accidents. Then, as before, he relied on meditation and sensed the spirit world.

Taking one step forward, he passed through the invisible curtain and floated up illusorily.

Around him, blocks of red, yellow, blue, green, and other colors overlapped vividly, like the most abstract oil painting. Human concepts such as up, down, left, and right no longer applied here. If one used those methods to distinguish direction and position, one would inevitably become lost.

Klein wandered carefully yet casually. Sometimes he saw a yellow sun drawn like a child’s doodle, and sometimes he brushed past a silent river that flowed without substance.

There were also flat women with bare upper bodies, moons bearing smiling faces, dugout canoes with their head and tail tilted upward, tangled balls of thread, and serpentine staircases leading to the seven pure lights…

In this world, chaotic to the extreme, all kinds of information existed in the composite form of abstract symbols, aside from spirit-world creatures themselves. Therefore, the results obtained through divination could only be revelations, which needed to be interpreted personally.

And those symbolic signs had a certain chance of coming alive, transforming into non-corporeal monsters.

This was the spirit world, which could not be understood or viewed through human common sense.

What puzzled Klein was another issue. The last time he had entered, he had easily discovered spirit-world creatures and sensed gazes of unknown origin that left one’s hair standing on end. Whether it was the headless woman carrying four heads, the round black-and-white eye, or the giant jellyfish whose tentacles ended in skulls, he had encountered them all with such ease.

But this time, he wandered for quite a while without seeing a single spirit-world creature. Even those figures in the distance whose forms were difficult to describe had vanished, as though they had hidden themselves.

It cannot be that they are afraid of being made into my messenger, can it? Mm. I am entering the spirit world directly as a spirit body. Perhaps my thoughts may be invisibly displayed here because of this place’s special qualities, transforming into hidden symbolic signs. As a result, they interact with the spirit world and naturally affect my choice of route? Klein pondered in confusion, but could not find the reason no matter how he thought.

All kinds of ideas flashed through his mind. Suddenly, his body sank, entering free fall.

After falling for a while, Klein still saw only vivid, overlapping color blocks and all sorts of symbolic signs that had transformed into entities.

What exactly is going on? He began considering whether he should write to ask Mr. Azik, or throw the wireless telegraph receiver above the gray fog, let it be stained with aura, and thereby contact the magic mirror Arrodes.

While floating on his own, Klein’s heart suddenly stirred. He sharply dodged to the side.

A streak of yellow-green flashed before his eyes. A foot so huge that it could crush his entire body stomped down, stepping into a red-and-blue interwoven block of color.

Above that foot was a rotting, long leg dripping yellow-green fluid, over three meters in length as a whole. Farther upward was an enormous body wrapped in corpse-oil bandages.

The surrounding aura seemed nearly frozen solid. The two legs dripping yellow-green pus lifted in alternation, carrying the massive body whose form could not be clearly seen, swiftly moving away and vanishing into the depths of the spirit world.

Klein stood some distance away and did not dare make the slightest sound.

Finally, after confirming that nothing had happened, he bared his teeth and thought:

The spirit world is truly terrifying. One careless moment, and I meet some big shot passing by… A big shot among spirit-world creatures?

Klein shook his head and continued his search.

By then, he no longer had the slightest idea where in the spirit world he had wandered.

After drifting for a while, he finally discovered some traces of spirit-world creatures.

Just as he prepared to change from flying forward to falling left, he discovered in astonishment that his body continued forward beyond his control, and faster and faster.

In his “front,” the chaotically overlapping color blocks and the faint grayish-white fog spreading through the area suddenly split open. An enormous three-masted sailing ship covered in pure black leaped in.

The ship was nearly a hundred meters long. Three black canvas sails hung high like flags.

On both of its sides were cannon ports, and on the deck, all sorts of sailors ran and bustled about.

All of this was so real, so full of texture, that it was utterly out of place with the spirit world’s overall condition.

But as the ship fully entered the spirit world, its blackness quickly deepened and became tinged with a hint of illusion.

On its deck, leaning against the cabin, stood a mottled stone chair two to three meters tall. Seated upon it was a colossal being comparable to an ancient giant.

He had a black beard that just passed his neck, a tall spired crown upon his head, and a magnificent black robe edged in silver. His facial lines were hard and deep, filled with authority, making others instinctively want to lower their heads.

Beneath his slightly wrinkled broad forehead and above his high, straight nose bridge, two deep-black eyes flowed with dark-red light, reflecting Klein, who wore black full-body armor and a pitch-black crown.

And Klein was flying toward him, unable to stop and unable to slow down.

The eyes of the two met once within the layered color blocks and various symbolic signs of the spirit world. Then Klein vanished directly.

The “giant” seated upon the mottled stone chair did not withdraw his gaze. He continued looking at that place, remaining silent for a long time.