Chapter 25: Two Rituals

Chapter 25: Two Rituals

Above the gray fog, within the ancient palace, Klein’s figure appeared.

At that moment, seated in the high-back chair belonging to The Fool was a “person” shrouded in grayish-white fog.

As Klein returned to Sefirah Castle, that “person” instantly collapsed, turning into transparent, twisted Spirit Worms that flew toward Klein and burrowed into his body.

Fortunately, 0-02’s restrictions were only that I couldn’t leak secrets or return. My connection with this portion of Spirit Worms keeping watch over Sefirah Castle wasn’t severed. Otherwise, they would already have gone out of control and become monsters… Klein inwardly sighed. Then he sat in the position belonging to The Fool and picked up The Fool card that had already been sacrificed earlier.

Because this Card of Blasphemy had already been activated, he did not need to search for an additional incantation. Merely by pouring spirituality into it, he could see the corresponding changes appear.

The Fool card rapidly transformed into a miniature, illusory book. Guided by Klein’s thoughts, it continuously flipped backward until it reached the final two pages:

“Sequence 1: Attendant of Mysteries.

“This is an angel who serves Mysteries. It has preliminarily grasped the authority of the corresponding domain. It can awaken the ‘Spirit Body Threads’ originally existing within objects and combine many physical entities or abstract concepts together…

“The potion formula is as follows:

“Main ingredient: one Attendant of Mysteries Beyonder characteristic;

“Supplementary ingredients: nine kinds of spirit world specialties;

“Advancement ritual: establish a town formed purely from marionettes, and design a fate trajectory for every marionette. Through their interactions with one another, have them perform a sufficiently realistic tableau of life, thereby giving birth to the corresponding region in the spirit world.

“The larger this town is, the more marionettes there are, the more detailed the daily routines, and the more vivid, real, prolonged, and enduring the different fates, the better the ritual’s effect.”

“Sequence 0: The Fool.

“This is a true deity. In a certain sense, He is the embodiment of the corresponding authority… He is adept at fooling all things through various methods and displaying all manner of inconceivable miracles…

“The potion formula is as follows:

“Main ingredients: The Fool’s Uniqueness, and the remaining two Attendant of Mysteries Beyonder characteristics outside oneself;

“Supplementary ingredient: control at least one-fourth of the fog of history;

“Advancement ritual: fool time, history, or fate once.”

As Klein read on, his brows gradually furrowed. He silently muttered to himself,

“Compared with the advancement ritual of Attendant of Mysteries, The Fool’s is far too abstract… What counts as fooling time, history, or fate? And how does one determine whether it succeeded?

“Controlling at least one-fourth of the fog of history is still relatively simple for me. On one hand, I know enough ancient secrets and have lit up quite a few historical fragments. On the other hand, I can directly influence the fog of history through Sefirah Castle…

“Let’s not consider becoming The Fool for now. The current focus is Attendant of Mysteries. The road must be walked step by step. Uh, of course, some lucky people can fly directly…

“Nine kinds of spirit world specialties should be easy to find. Whether I ask Miss Messenger for help or consult the Seven Lights, that won’t be a problem… That advancement ritual resembles the conditions surrounding Zaratul and the ancestor of the Antigonus family. It also matches what the Seven Lights said about it being closely connected to the spirit world. We can preliminarily judge that it is indeed real.”

Thinking of this, Klein removed the yellow crystal pendant wrapped around his left wrist and used divination to confirm the authenticity of the Attendant of Mysteries potion formula.

It was not that he did not trust Emperor Roselle. Rather, before that fellow countryman made the Cards of Blasphemy, he should already have been influenced by Mr. Door, gone above the moon, suffered the Mother Goddess of Depravity’s contamination and corruption, and had the corresponding memories distorted.

Precisely because of this, it was entirely possible that the late-stage Roselle had buried certain traps at crucial points in the Cards of Blasphemy.

In this regard, Klein had always been cautious and careful.

“Speaking of the true body of the Primordial Moon, that most powerful Great Old One, the Mother Goddess of Depravity… judging from Her honorific names, could the Emperor have already been defiled without realizing it? Above the moon, perhaps there are many younger brothers and sisters Bernadette has never seen. Of course, they may not necessarily have gender distinctions…

“The marionettes needed for the Attendant of Mysteries ritual can be obtained from the Forsaken Land of the Gods. The fact that there are so many monsters there is also an advantage, and I previously accumulated quite a few.” As Klein’s thoughts wandered, he turned his head and glanced at the other side of the ancient palace, causing the grayish-white fog in the area beside the junk pile to disperse all at once.

As the fog receded, rows of brownish-yellow seats were revealed. On every seat sat a figure.

Among those figures were giants covered in full-body silver armor, humans in linen clothes with deformed features, and great lumps of flesh covered in eyes… They sat quietly in their places, their eyes dull and indifferent as they stared toward the mottled long table, row after row.

These were all the marionettes Klein had gathered in the Forsaken Land of the Gods. Whenever he had needed to move and found it inconvenient to carry too many with him, he would sacrifice a batch above the gray fog.

Of course, this had nothing to do with environmental awareness. Rather, his experience in the foggy town and the scene displayed by Zaratul had made Klein instinctively feel that a certain ritual in the future would most likely require many marionettes. Therefore, he had always been very frugal in this regard.

As for why he had not hung all these marionettes up, but instead let them sit in a manifested theater and serve as the audience, it was because Klein felt that the ancestor of the Antigonus family and Zaratul were somewhat perverse in their behavior.

He had once tried to imitate them, but that had been for the sake of acting. He no longer needed to do that now.

“But how exactly does such a marionette city produce corresponding spirit world information? The spirit world is an aggregate of countless pieces of information from the past, present, and future, but it does not directly contain this kind of false thing…

“Through other people’s cognition? Every living being’s actions and words are reflected in the spirit world in abstract form, becoming the source of divination. When certain actions, certain words, and certain intense thoughts clearly construct a marionette city, then that city’s spirit world projection will appear and ‘truly exist’…

“The ‘interactions’ involved in this touch upon deep mysteries of the spirit world…” Klein thoughtfully closed The Fool card and toyed with it in his hand.

Because he had already reached the angelic level, he had gained a certain understanding of the Cards of Blasphemy’s creation.

Back then, Roselle had not only been able to draw strength from knowledge, but could also grant power in the substantive sense to abstract knowledge!

As for what material the Emperor had used as the anchor for their creation, and how he had achieved god-level anti-divination and anti-prophecy effects, Klein currently had no way to determine.

After thinking for a while longer, Klein tentatively accommodated The Fool card into his body.

His state immediately changed. A layer of multicolored clothing appeared over his body, and an extremely splendid headdress emerged on his head. His aura was clearly deep and terrifying, yet it carried a certain sense of absurdity, mockery, and comedy, presenting a bizarre and contradictory state.

The entire space attached to Sefirah Castle shook gently, as if it wished to submit at the feet of this indescribable deity.

“My status has risen a little again. There are no other substantial changes. After all, I’m already the master of Sefirah Castle. Heh, it’s like gaining an outfit that displays my temperament…” Klein shook his head and mocked himself with a few words.

At the same time, transparent, twisted Spirit Worms crawled out of his body and reassembled beside him into a figure identical to himself.

After separating out a “self” that could respond to prayers at all times, Klein returned to the real world. He strolled through Belltaine, treating people’s wounds through wishes and learning one side of the war from their mouths.

…

“Shit!” After hearing the sailor’s report, Danitz could not help cursing. “They actually ate the whale oil? Why didn’t you stop them?”

When passing by the Gargas Archipelago, Danitz and the sailors had bought a batch of unrefined whale oil, intending to bring it back to Bayam and sell it at a high price. Who would have thought part of it would be “stolen and eaten” by the half-giants of the City of Silver?

The sailor glanced at the divine envoy and whispered,

“They couldn’t understand what we were saying, and we couldn’t understand what they were saying. Only the shortest one can communicate, but we can’t always find him. He keeps going to places where the sun can shine on him to meditate, and he changes location every time.”

Danitz instinctively sneered.

“This is what happens to the illiterate.

“If you could master many languages like I do—Ancient Feysac, Giant, Elvish, and so on—something like that wouldn’t have happened.

“Of course, linguistic talent is related to intelligence. There’s no need for you to force yourselves too much.”

The sailor cautiously glanced at Danitz again.

“Lord Divine Envoy, what they ate was the portion of whale oil you bought.”

“…Shit!” Danitz’s reaction was faster than his thoughts, and he charged toward the cabin.

After a flurry of chaos, Danitz received a Sequence 8 Beyonder characteristic as compensation. He did not know whether he had profited or lost. In any case, the filthy bodily fluids of the monster remaining on that characteristic made him feel slightly nauseous.

By the time the ship returned to calm, the City of Generosity, Bayam, was already close before the pathfinding team from the City of Silver.

Derrick led Liaval, Candice, and the others onto the deck, gazing toward the destination of this “journey.”

Although they had passed by quite a few ports, they had never received permission to disembark and could only look at them from afar. Now, they would finally set foot on the land of the outside world for the first time.

Even so, the enormous crowds, numerous houses, and the flourishing vigor that even poverty and suffering could not conceal—things they had seen from afar several times before—had made them increasingly yearn for life in the world of light.

Of course, they, who were used to darkness and lightning, had taken quite some time to adapt to the outside sun. If they were not all Beyonders, their eyes might even have suffered permanent damage.

Looking at the many people moving back and forth on the docks, at the airships crossing high above, at the ship after ship nearby, and hearing the clamorous voices that he could barely understand but was still not familiar with, Derrick thought of how this place would become the City of Silver’s future settlement and suddenly felt an unavoidable nervousness.

As his gaze swept across the scene, he suddenly saw a man standing atop the seaside lighthouse. The man wore a robe embroidered with storm symbols. His hair was deep blue, nearly black, like tangled seaweed, and his facial lines were rough and profound.

When their gazes met, Derrick suddenly became calm. His unease disappeared.