Chapter 23: Fooling

Chapter 23: Fooling

After returning to Byers’s home, Klein did not wait for Roy and the others to ask anything. He pulled over a chair, sat down, and made a rather pious wish to himself.

“I wish for my spirituality to be restored.”

The moment his voice fell, he raised his right hand and snapped his fingers, fulfilling that wish and returning his spirituality to the level it had when in perfect condition.

Immediately afterward, he reached out with his left palm, preparing to end the maintenance of the historical projection of the “curtain,” then summon another one to continue sealing off the region of the spirit world corresponding to Belltaine, denying Larrion, Patriarch of the Church of the God of Combat, any chance of escape.

“There is no need. If you miss this chance, there will be another.” At that moment, Arianna slowly shook Her head, signaling that Klein did not need to summon the “curtain” originating from the Dark Demonic Wolf again.

One limitation of the “wish” power was that a Miracle Invoker could not satisfy multiple similar wishes from the same wisher within a short period of time. In other words, for the next one or two hours, Klein could no longer restore his spirituality through this method of making a wish to himself.

Of course, for a qualified angel of the Seer pathway, there were certain ways around this limitation. For example, he could have Pasha, Roy, Phil, Byers, and Arianna take turns wishing for Klein Moretti’s spirituality to be restored, then satisfy those wishes as a Miracle Invoker.

The problem was that even if he could restore his spirituality many times this way, he still could not maintain the “curtain,” which possessed Sequence 1 status, for more than an hour. And for 0-02 to erase its rules and begin writing anew, they had to wait one full hour.

Klein considered for a moment, then nodded lightly and responded with a smile.

“Let us try first. In any case, we are relatively free right now. We can give up after the final restoration of spirituality. Mm, it purely depends on how lucky that Patriarch is. Perhaps during this process, He will lose control from anxiety, irritation, and tension.”

As he spoke, Klein ended his maintenance of the original “curtain.” His left hand immediately followed the motion, reaching forward and dragging out a new “curtain,” causing it to manifest within the spirit world corresponding to Belltaine.

In that place of richly layered colors, Larrion, who wore a black robe with white edges and a square cap, had just sensed the restriction vanish and was preparing to shuttle away, only to see a new “curtain” fall and isolate the area once more.

The faint smile that had appeared on his face instantly froze.

Phew… Several seconds later, Larrion slowly exhaled, adjusted his mental state, and continued to wait calmly.

Over the next few dozen minutes, the Patriarch of the Church of the God of Combat experienced several more instances of hope appearing, only to be extinguished again, along with the corresponding frustration and pain.

He attempted to search for a pattern and figure out the corresponding time interval, hoping to seize that fleeting opportunity at the instant the old “curtain” vanished and the new “curtain” had yet to appear, rushing out through the barrier.

In the end, however, he discovered that the pattern in the time interval was that there was no pattern. The one blocking him was not restoring spirituality only when it was nearly exhausted. At times, the other party would do so far in advance.

If not for the fact that Feysac had not forced the people to abandon their faith in the God of Combat, and the order declaring Larrion a heretic had not yet spread widely, this angel walking the earth might already have lost control on the spot.

As time passed second by second, Larrion once again sensed the dissolution of the old “curtain.”

This time, however, no new “curtain” appeared.

He has finally reached his limit… Larrion’s heart filled with joy. He did not spare any thought for other matters and charged without hesitation out of the divine kingdom’s embryonic form that was collapsing.

The next instant, He saw a headless woman carrying four blond, red-eyed heads and wearing a gloomy, complicated dress. He saw an unknown existence wrapped in bandages, brownish-yellow liquid flowing all over its body. He saw many grotesque yet abnormally powerful spirit world creatures…

The “curtains” Klein had summoned several times earlier had all been historical void images stained with the aura of Sefirah Castle. Naturally, they were able to attract things sensitive to it. Even if Amon appeared in this group, Klein would not have found it strange.

The faint smile on Larrion’s face froze once again.

…

Belltaine City, inside Byers’s rented room.

Klein suddenly raised his head, glanced toward the sky, and murmured,

“Still quite impressive…”

He then fell silent once more, until the Magic Mirror emitted hazy waterlight and reflected the current state of the noticeboard.

The rules written upon it were disappearing in reverse order, from the newest to the oldest.

This meant that 0-02 had begun erasing the rules it had previously formulated and was preparing to start over.

The moment the curfew decree was abolished, Klein, whose mind was highly focused, immediately grabbed Madam Arianna and, through Flaming Jump, appeared outside the shrunken Belltaine Municipal Library.

At a glance, he discovered that the speed at which the rules on 0-02’s brass pages were being erased had already become extremely fast. In the blink of an eye, only the clause, “The following rules are invalid,” remained in the latter half.

Immediately afterward, this clause also vanished. Without the slightest pause, a new rule rapidly surfaced:

“The Trunsoest Brass Book is the most precious object. No living being or object may touch it without its permission…”

Before this rule had finished appearing, Arianna’s figure had already appeared beside the rectangular table. Her finger touched the brass page.

With a crack, the neck of this leader of the Church of Evernight’s ascetics suddenly tightened, as though She had been hoisted into the air by an invisible rope.

Even as an angel, She showed signs of broken bones and difficulty breathing.

Hanging!

However, as Arianna’s finger slid over the page with some difficulty, the newborn first rule was erased directly by an “eraser” before it had fully appeared, entering a state of Concealment.

And all rules formulated by 0-02 had to be publicly displayed or announced before they could truly take effect!

With a rustle, Arianna picked up the Trunsoest Brass Book and threw it to Klein outside the floor-to-ceiling window.

During the previous hour, Klein had already imagined the various possible developments that might follow and discussed them with Arianna. At that moment, he was neither nervous nor panicked. Taking advantage of the chance while 0-02 was still in midair, he dragged from the void a version of himself wearing a human-skin glove.

Then he grabbed the Trunsoest Brass Book with one motion and used his own historical projection to teleport away directly.

Only after his figure vanished from where he had stood did Arianna fall back to the ground with a pa, deep strangulation marks remaining on Her neck.

In only a few seconds, Klein, who carried 0-02, appeared atop the main peak of the Hornacis mountain range. Using angel-level Spirit Vision, he saw the ancient palace with collapsed walls, dilapidated beyond recognition, shrouded in mist.

Without hesitation, Klein had his historical projection take the Trunsoest Brass Book and flash to the palace’s main entrance, then reach out and push it open.

What appeared before him was a hall from which many corpses hung. Every corpse was different, some male and some female, dressed in clothing that was either luxurious, plain, refined, or casual.

Behind each hanging corpse was a transparent, slick tentacle containing complex patterns. All of them came from the depths of the hall, from an ancient stone chair.

Upon the enormous stone chair, transparent, twisted worms embraced one another into a mass, growing wildly, extending one bizarre tentacle after another into the surroundings.

This was the half-Fool of the Antigonus family, the half-Fool who had lost control and gone mad!

Sensing the door open, sensing the approach of Klein’s historical projection, the worm mass instantly left the stone chair and began waving its slick tentacles violently. They surged frantically toward the door, as though influenced by some invisible attraction.

At the same time, from the bottom of the stone chair, the tarot card bearing Roselle’s image as The Fool and words written in starlight also flew toward the door.

Just seeing this scene made Klein’s historical projection show signs of imminent collapse. Fortunately, the projection had no intelligence of its own. It was being controlled by Klein’s true body, which was hiding at a distance. Because of this, it did not suffer the negative effects of confused thoughts or mental mutation, nor did it freeze in place, unable to act.

Before it dispersed, the historical projection threw the Trunsoest Brass Book in its hand toward the terrifying pile of worms.

Those transparent, slick tentacles sensed the danger and instinctively reacted. They all wrapped forward at once, binding 0-02, the Sealed Artifact.

Amid this interference, within an invisible “gale,” The Fool card reached the door one step ahead of those strange tentacles.

Klein’s historical projection had already mostly collapsed. Seeing this, it mechanically reached out with its right hand, grabbed the Card of Blasphemy, and threw it backward.

The next instant, the newly split slick tentacles extended to the doorway, only to be blocked by the mist. Unable to burrow out, they could only crazily lash at that layer of barrier.

The open door slowly closed, hiding the scene away.

Klein, who was hiding somewhere on the mountain peak, faintly furrowed his brows. Joy and relief welled up within him, but they were inevitably accompanied by intense confusion.

“In other words, I exchanged 0-02 for The Fool card? The Goddess temporarily doesn’t need me to go to Calderón to search for clues to the River of Eternal Darkness?” Klein muttered silently to himself. Then he walked out from his hiding place, arrived not far from the ancient palace, and bent down to pick up the Card of Blasphemy.

On the surface of the card was Roselle Gustav, wearing a gorgeous headdress and multicolored clothing, carrying a cane and luggage. His eyes were filled with longing for the future, and a small dog followed behind him.

In the upper left corner of the card, resplendent starlight outlined several words:

“Sequence 0: The Fool!”

…

Inside the ancient palace, the Trunsoest Brass Book had fallen to the ground. It opened on its own to the first page of the latter half.

New rules began to construct themselves:

“…The Trunsoest Brass Book is the most precious object. No living being or object may touch it without its permission. Violators shall be sentenced to death!

“…No one may alter the state of the Trunsoest Brass Book in any way. Violators shall be sentenced to death!”

These two rules had only just surfaced and had not yet been “announced” to the owner of this place when a line of words suddenly appeared at the boundary between the first half and the second half:

“The following rules are invalid.”

An hour later, those two rules were erased, and new rules were written. But after only two lines, the clause “The following rules are invalid” once again appeared before them. It was as if 0-02 had suddenly jumped straight from a fundamentally blank state to a state in which all pages were already filled.

Again and again, the Trunsoest Brass Book sank into an endless loop.