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…