Chapter 78: Humanity

Chapter 78: Humanity

Seeing that there was nothing abnormal about the marionette town, Klein began pondering Miss Justice’s experience.

“The operation against Ariehogg, that mind dragon, wasn’t arranged by Adam, but led by Hermes?”

“Otherwise, it would be impossible for Adam not to descend, and Ariehogg would not have been able to escape so easily. He would certainly need to borrow the second City of Miracles to have some hope.”

“If Hermes was the one leading this, then the development of the whole matter is logical… Hermes never intended to capture or kill Ariehogg. He only hoped to learn some information from that ancient mind dragon. Once Ariehogg said, ‘Adam is not necessarily Adam,’ the operation naturally ended.”

“Mm. From this perspective, Hermes had long held a certain suspicion regarding Adam’s true state. It is only that, due to the limitations of his own identity, he had no way to make Ariehogg voluntarily appear, so he made a circuitous use of Miss Justice.”

“Adam is not necessarily Adam. Ariehogg is not necessarily Ariehogg… That sentence is truly interesting. The higher levels of the Spectator pathway are even more mysterious than the Seer pathway. Back then, the Dragon of Imagination, Ankewelt, had clearly already occupied the Sequence 0 position, yet beside Him was also a son of the same pathway at Sequence 1, the Dragon of Nightmare, Alzuhod…”

“If Adam truly isn’t Adam, then who could He be? Is He the Adam from myths and legends before the First Epoch, or a portion of the Primordial? Or is He related to the resurrection arrangement of the ancient sun god? From this perspective, Medici calling Him ‘paranoid’ really carries profound meaning…”

Klein quickly manifested a gold coin and flicked it into the air with a pa, performing a divination.

The divination result showed that today’s events carried no danger.

Klein immediately dispersed the gold coin and prepared to sink his consciousness, returning to the true body sleeping beneath Saint Arianna Church.

At that moment, his movements slowed by a fraction:

Miss Justice encountering Ariehogg and Hermes, and that MI9 member returning to Utopia to appear in court and testify, had happened almost simultaneously.

Viewed separately, neither side presented any problem. Yet the word “simultaneously” made Klein vigilant.

He was extremely sensitive to phrases such as “just in time,” “coincidence,” “simultaneously,” and “about the same.” This was a mark left in his mind by all the experiences of the past.

His finger lightly tapped the edge of the mottled long table. Klein decided to make some preparations for his concern.

He quickly condensed a ray of light containing certain words and a particular will, then cast it into one of the prayer lights.

After doing this, Klein sank his consciousness, left Sefirah Castle, and returned his spirit to his true body.

Immediately afterward, he began influencing Utopia, intending to temporarily have the outsiders currently in the city “leave” through all sorts of arrangements.

This way, even if some accident truly happened, it would not affect innocents.

And this also meant that Klein was prepared to abandon Utopia and rebuild the marionette town elsewhere. After all, the ritual could be repeated many times, but once people died, they could only be revived one more time.

…

“Rest well these next two days. It will still be some time before court opens.” Byers escorted Wendel to the entrance of the Iris Inn.

Wendel responded with a smile.

“I’m already feeling sleepy.”

At that moment, it was the middle of the night. Earlier, he had been too anxious and tense to sleep at all, so he had thought of walking around MI9 headquarters to ease his mood. As a result, he had heard the conversation of his night-duty colleagues, had his emotions completely detonated, and decided to return to Utopia to face the problem directly.

After checking in, Wendel, who carried no luggage, walked with light steps to the third floor and entered his room.

As he passed through the doorway, he vaguely had the feeling that the surroundings were unusually dark.

To sleep better, Wendel walked to the window and drew the curtains closed.

During that process, he inexplicably felt that the scene outside the window was unusually familiar.

However, under the cover of night, he had no way to distinguish it too clearly. Thinking it might be a scene he had seen before in Utopia, he raised his hand to cover his mouth, yawned, and walked toward the bed while removing his clothes.

…

Monica woke in the middle of the night with an urgent need to urinate.

She endured it for a long while, but ultimately could not hold on. In the end, she turned over, climbed out of bed, and walked toward the washroom attached to her room.

When she pushed open the washroom door, she felt that it had become slightly heavier.

Rubbing her eyes, which were almost impossible to open, Monica did not care about that tiny change. She quickly dealt with her personal matter, ran out of the washroom, and rushed back to bed.

As she burrowed beneath the covers, she felt the temperature inside had dropped considerably. She could only wrap herself layer after layer.

It did not take long for her to successfully fall asleep again.

…

About a quarter of an hour later, Byers, who had been patrolling the streets, rubbed his hands together, turned toward the street where the police station was located, and prepared to hand over duty to his colleague.

Suddenly, his body stiffened at the mouth of the alley.

The fine, illusory-black Spirit Body Threads on his body detached all at once and floated upward.

A finely cut paper figurine dropped down, connecting to those Spirit Body Threads and rapidly turning into another Byers.

At the same time, torrents of information formed from vast, complicated knowledge surged over, reorganizing into a man in gorgeous clothing with long chestnut hair.

The man had blue eyes, a high nose bridge, and thin lips. It was the Sequence 1 historical projection of Roselle Gustav.

Immediately afterward, the projection reached out, absorbing all information in the surroundings into its palm and condensing it into an illusory ball of light.

This information included all the details of Byers having encountered a problem.

In the next second, Roselle Gustav’s historical projection forged a segment of information in which everything was normal, letting it travel along the Spirit Body Threads connected to the paper figurine toward Saint Arianna Church at the municipal square, then toward the underground beneath the church.

After this series of operations, more torrents of information surged in from midair and, with Roselle’s assistance, reorganized into three figures:

One was an old man in a black robe and hood, his white beard long and dense. Another was a middle-aged man wearing a cloak, with black hair, blue eyes, a rather square face, and an imposing temperament. The last was a gigantic tree that seemed to have been drenched in petroleum. From the tree extended arm after arm, each bulging with all kinds of strange things, while black-and-white eyeballs covered in blood vessels rolled one after another.

They were, respectively:

The leader of the Secret Order, Zaratul!

The protector of Loen, the first king, William Augustus I’s image from the historical void!

The historical projection of the Abomination Suah!

After completing the corresponding preparations, and with the positioning provided by the previous historical projection, Zaratul quietly infiltrated Utopia.

Without any delay, He stretched out His right hand and, using the law of Beyonder characteristic convergence, drew out the Worm of Spirit inside Byers.

On the other side, in one of the hands of the historical projection of Abomination Suah, there appeared a palm-sized, extremely ugly doll.

The doll was wet and sticky. It had no eyes, no ears, no nose—only a hole-like mouth that breathed in and out grayish-white fog.

As the Worm of Spirit and that doll drew close, all the black-and-white eyeballs rolling over Suah’s tree trunk looked toward them at the same time.

Silently, the Worm of Spirit fused into the ugly doll. The doll twisted, squirmed, and grew eyes, a nose, and ears, becoming like Klein Moretti.

At this point, Zaratul no longer concealed Himself—nor could He. He took out a pitch-black shroud and fiercely wrapped it around the Klein doll.

Inside all of Utopia, the Spirit Body Threads of every marionette snapped at the same time, no longer able to connect to their main body.

It was not that they had encountered a problem, but that the main body had been isolated from them.

In an instant, the officer on duty in the police station, the guests in the inn, Tracy and the thieves in the detention room, Anderson, Alesso, and the other citizens in different houses all stopped breathing at the same time and became rigid.

Whether they were sleeping or doing something else, it was as if the pause button had been pressed.

Beneath Saint Arianna Church, Klein instantly woke and knew that the accident had truly arrived.

Without hesitation, with a shift of thought, he attempted to return to Sefirah Castle and use the status and strength of a King of Angels to confront the enemies who had surfaced and those who had yet to surface.

That was the optimal choice in the current situation.

Even if he failed to protect his true body, Klein still had one chance at resurrection.

At that moment, however, his rising consciousness struck an invisible, deep-dark barrier and could not penetrate it to enter Sefirah Castle.

This… Klein’s spirit tightened. He believed the enemies might be more troublesome than he had imagined.

There were not many high-level existences who knew he could return to Sefirah Castle with a single thought, without a ritual.

In the next second, the gigantic tree drenched in viscous petroleum had already arrived above Saint Arianna Church.

In addition, a low, dignified voice echoed layer upon layer:

“Roaming is prohibited here!”

“Teleportation is prohibited here!”

“…”

Klein was not controlled by emotion. Seeing that he could not return to Sefirah Castle for the moment, he immediately changed strategy and leapt into the fog of history.

That grayish-white fog had just entered his eyes when it turned into a vortex formed from countless transparent worms. From the vortex extended one slimy tentacle after another, covered in strange patterns.

Different from the previous time, the vortex now emitted a powerful suction, causing Klein’s figure to accelerate toward it and be wrapped, layer upon layer, by countless tentacles.

The law of Beyonder characteristic convergence!

The law of Beyonder characteristic convergence between angels!

A subtle, dim light flashed. Klein, who had been tightly controlled by Zaratul’s mythical creature form, turned into a paper figurine.

This was both an angel-level application of Paper Figurine Substitution and aided by Grafting.

Although Klein could not return to Sefirah Castle, he could influence the Worms of Spirit on duty above the gray fog, making them take in the “curtain” and provide help.

After dodging Zaratul’s fatal blow, Klein sprinted through the fog of history, fleeing all the way toward the old city before the First Epoch.

At this time, inside Utopia, after losing the maintenance of their Spirit Body Threads, many marionettes that had been dead for a long time rapidly rotted in flesh or had their limbs fall apart. Others, affected by their own Beyonder characteristics, underwent all kinds of mutations, transforming into terrifying monsters of different forms beyond imagination.

Some swallowed their own heads. Some became only a lump of squirming flesh. Some grew dense clusters of eyes…

Soon, Klein reached the old city inside the fog of history.

For him, this was a trustworthy safe house, because only an Ancient Scholar who was also a prehistoric human was qualified to enter.

Without hesitation, after habitually looking around once, Klein began praying to the Evernight Goddess amid the layered ruins of the city.

Pfft!

A soft sound rang out. An ancient wooden cross stake with lingering bloodstains pierced through Klein’s heart from behind.

A figure then outlined itself behind him. It was a cold-faced man wearing a half-height silk top hat and a black trench coat.

Gehrman Sparrow.

Klein’s pupils abruptly dilated, while that crazy adventurer spoke in a low voice:

“Adam gave me humanity.”