Chapter 41: Meeting

Chapter 41: Meeting

At the center of the primitive island, inside the Black Emperor mausoleum.

After sending Bernadette away, Roselle did not immediately enter slumber. He slowly raised his head and once again looked toward the infinite height above.

Above the gray fog, Klein silently sighed. He lowered the Staff of the Stars, drew over a paper figurine, and casually shook it.

With a pa sound, the paper figurine rapidly thickened and expanded, then flew into the semi-transparent vortex composed of illusory, mysterious symbols beside The Fool’s chair.

Although Bernadette had already been moved to the edge of the primitive island, preventing Klein from seeing the interior of the Black Emperor mausoleum through the prayer light representing her, he could, to a certain extent, maintain a connection with the Emperor through the symbol of The Fool that had already fused into Roselle’s figure.

After passing through the slowly rotating vortex, the paper figurine descended into the mausoleum’s dim interior, where the source of light was unknown, and transformed into a human before the central platform.

This human had black hair and brown eyes, bearing some resemblance to Gehrman Sparrow, but his outline was not as sharp, his facial lines not as deep, his aura not as cold, and his features held certain differences. There was also a little fat on his chin and stomach, the small amount produced by society and age. This was Klein’s original Zhou Mingrui appearance. It was the Zhou Mingrui who hung inside Sefirah Castle and had been “roommates” with Roselle—Huang Tao—Gustav for thousands of years.

Roselle showed no surprise at his appearance. With one palm pressed against the armrest, he leaned slightly forward and looked at him.

“You’ve come.”

“I’ve come.” Klein nodded almost imperceptibly.

“You shouldn’t have come.” Roselle sighed.

“I’m already here.” Klein very naturally picked up the meme.

Roselle now fully confirmed the origin of the fellow before him. As he returned his seated posture to normal, he gave a low laugh.

“I was going to ask where you were from, to see whether I needed to practice some regional discrimination. But after thinking about it, that doesn’t seem necessary. We’re both poor bastards who don’t belong to this era and have lost our homeland.”

Without waiting for Klein’s response, the Emperor’s voice sank as he asked,

“Do you know the truth of the apocalypse?”

“I do.” Klein nodded lightly.

Roselle continued asking,

“Do you know that this place is Earth?”

“Mm.” Klein answered frankly.

Hearing that, Roselle gave a self-mocking laugh.

“You actually learned that so early. I only dared to finally confirm it when I went above the moon and saw the true appearance of this planet from high above.”

At this point, the Emperor sighed.

“Above the moon, everything was so strange. I clearly sensed terror, yet I never once thought about whether I might have been contaminated. After that, I became more and more extreme, more and more radical.

“Still, from time to time, I would gain a certain clarity through the way the people around me viewed me. But I did not dare to write diaries in that state. I was afraid of leaking secrets and losing my final chance.

“In the end, I decided to rely on all the earlier preparations and switch to the Black Emperor pathway. It was partly because the apocalypse was approaching, and only Sequence 0 had any chance of protecting the people I wanted to protect—of taking them away to other planets in the vast cosmos and, through the corresponding authority, rebuilding an entire order suitable for human survival in barren, deathly silent places. It was also because the Black Emperor’s miracle of resurrection let me see hope of escaping contamination.

“As long as I could truly be killed after becoming the Sequence 0 Black Emperor and becoming half-mad, I would have the chance to revive in the mausoleum or in the astral world. At that time, what returned to me would be a pure Uniqueness and three Sequence 1 Beyonder characteristics, without the slightest contamination, without any uncontrollable madness hidden inside.

“Speaking of which, at the time, the Eternal Blazing Sun and the God of Steam and Machinery were, to a certain extent, used by me.

“But the terror of the Old Ones surpassed my imagination. Alongside my resurrection came contamination that had also gained rebirth… Perhaps only an Old One can resist an Old One.

“I had no choice but to halt the resurrection process and survive in my current state inside this final mausoleum, preventing that Old One from borrowing my body to be born into the real world. That would bring about a disaster of destruction.”

Combining everything he had previously learned with what had just happened, Klein had already formed certain guesses about Emperor Roselle’s condition. He was not surprised at all and calmly replied,

“The Outer Deity that contaminated you is called the Mother Goddess of Depravity. She has deceived quite a few believers under the incarnation known as the Primordial Moon.”

The faintly visible features on Roselle’s face changed slightly.

He fell silent for several seconds before saying,

“I knew of the Primordial Moon, but I did not know Her true honorific name was the Mother Goddess of Depravity.

“Thinking back now, perhaps it was no coincidence that I was able to discover Mr. Door calling for help…”

Hearing this sentence, Klein felt a sudden chill in his heart. He instantly recalled the many conditions on the island outside and already had a certain premonition of what Emperor Roselle intended to say.

Roselle sighed with a smile.

“The greatest problem in the first half of my life was that I was too confident. I always had the feeling that I could reload a save at any time. I did not examine many details carefully enough.

“Back then, Green was contaminated by the strange power on this island. After his death, he returned here and obtained a new life. Was that not the influence of the Primordial Moon? After I completed various examinations and carried out the corresponding purification, I thought there was no longer a problem. But in truth, fate may have undergone a tiny change as early as that moment. That led me, later on, to ‘coincidentally’ encounter Mr. Door and be guided step by step above the moon…

“This cannot be blamed on Mr. Door. His state may be even worse than mine right now.”

The Emperor means that from the moment he discovered this primitive island, he had already been targeted by the Mother Goddess of Depravity? Klein sighed.

“At that time, who could have imagined that the problem would be this serious?”

Before Sequence 2, merely understanding the starry sky and the Old Ones itself would bring terrifying contamination. But without understanding, when one encountered certain circumstances, one would be unable to accurately judge just how serious the problem was or what kind of remediation should be carried out afterward. This led Roselle to treat the primitive island as his secret base and kept him from telling existences qualified to understand the Outer Deities, the Old Ones, and the starry sky about what had happened here.

“That’s true.” Roselle seemed somewhat relieved that the mistake he had made was one nearly anyone might have made.

He then said,

“Even within that ancient, secret organization, matters related to the Old Ones and Outer Deities were almost never mentioned.”

At this point, Roselle paused.

“You should have read my diaries and know that ‘that ancient, secret organization’ is only a substitute phrase.”

Klein nodded.

“I know which organization it refers to. I didn’t expect that even after gaining the status of Sequence 0, you still wouldn’t dare mention the name of His organization.”

“I’ve always felt that He is not simple, and that He may possess an understanding of Outer Deities beyond anything we can imagine. So it’s better to be cautious. After all, I am not currently a complete Sequence 0 true god.” After Roselle briefly explained, his faintly visible brows suddenly furrowed. “How many of my diaries have you read?”

If the atmosphere had not been so oppressive and sorrowful, Klein would certainly have been unable to resist saying, “The taste of a Demoness isn’t bad,” to tease this fellow countryman.

In the end, he answered in a calm voice,

“Many.”

After speaking that single word, he casually added,

“I have also collected several Cards of Blasphemy.”

“Which ones?” Roselle immediately asked.

Above the gray fog, Klein controlled the expression of the paper figurine and said in an even tone,

“The Black Emperor, Tyrant, Red Priest, and The Fool.”

“Phew…” Roselle exhaled. His faintly visible, deeply furrowed brows loosened. “Good thing it isn’t the Demoness card, the Moon card, or the Mother card.”

You brought that up yourself… Klein gave no response and simply looked at the Emperor.

Only after Roselle finished speaking did he seem to realize something. He hurriedly coughed and said,

“We’ve all watched livestreams. You should understand very well how normal such things are…”

As he spoke, he coughed again and sighed, changing the topic.

“Which pathway are you from?”

“Seer,” Klein answered concisely.

Roselle instantly fell silent. After several seconds, he said,

“What a pity. If both of us were in normal conditions, this would be the moment for you to pull out a big-screen television and a game console from the historical pores. We would play while chatting. That would be a man’s romance.”

Too bad there’s no electricity. I’d have to rely on you to invent it… Klein did not say what was in his heart. Maintaining the same tone, he replied,

“I hope that day comes.”

He then guided the conversation onto the proper track.

“I am very curious. Why are the Cards of Blasphemy you created impossible even for gods to find? That level of anti-divination and anti-prophecy is astonishing.”

Roselle chuckled.

“Because knowledge can bring power, and power can also be bestowed upon knowledge. This is the authority of the Knowledge Emperor.

“After I attached power to the potion formulas of the twenty-two pathways, they naturally produced the force of convergence between Beyonder characteristics, and gained a certain degree of anti-divination and anti-prophecy effect.

“Then, by…”

As he spoke, Roselle suddenly stopped, as though he had detected a problem.

After one or two seconds, he said in a somewhat drifting voice,

“I made the Cards of Blasphemy one year before I held the Black Emperor ritual. At that time, I had already encountered the Primordial Moon’s contamination, and most of the time, I had no corresponding awareness of it.

“Why is it that those twenty-two cards can make even gods unable to find them?”

Hearing that rhetorical question, Klein’s spirit tensed above the gray fog. Once again, his scalp faintly tingled.

Before he could control the paper figurine to respond, Roselle’s voice suddenly rose, carrying a trace of indescribable fear.

“Do not gather all twenty-two cards!

“Beware the Mother card!”

Those two sentences echoed inside the deep Black Emperor mausoleum for a long time without fading.