"!!!"
Bernadette's heart jolted. After thinking for a moment, she asked, "Then what role is Intis playing in all this? Why are they deploying airships as well?"
"Maybe they just want to join in the excitement."
Not just Intis, Feynapotter should be getting lively too, shouldn't they?
Only then would this war sweep across the entire continent.
———
Foggy Town.
The game of hide-and-seek between Klein and Mr. A had been going on for almost half a day.
Because he had been suddenly thrown here by that powerhouse from the Church of the Evernight, Klein hadn't been able to bring his Sequence 4 Marionette with him. He could only make do with a temporary Sequence 5 Marionette to face the enemy—one crafted by Hell Admiral Ludwell, the Gatekeeper of the Corpse Collector.
By all accounts, a Sequence 5 Marionettist plus a Sequence 5 Gatekeeper, combined with the Creeping Hunger in Klein's possession, should have made defeating a Sequence 5 Shepherd relatively easy.
The problem was that Mr. A could, through some special method, temporarily gain the strength of Sequence 4.
If Klein hadn't happened to bring along a good assortment of delicious mushrooms he had acquired from Frank—enough to distract Mr. A—his situation would have been far worse.
As darkness descended once again, the town fell into danger.
Hiding inside a house, Klein shouted, "Mr. A, if we keep dragging this out, neither of us will benefit. I'm certain the way to escape is hidden inside that church."
"Why don't we stop for now and let me try?"
Mr. A curled up where he stood, gnawing on a mushroom. The easing of his hunger brought back some of his rationality. On his exquisitely beautiful—almost womanly—face, his brows furrowed. "What exactly did you see in that church?"
"Zaratul."
Klein answered honestly, "There's someone in there claiming to be Zaratul. He said the method to leave this place is hidden behind a wall in the church."
"Heh. And you believe Him? Before you arrived, no one who entered came out alive. What makes you think you're special?"
"Perhaps because...I'm the only Seer Pathway Beyonder to have arrived here so far?"
"Then why didn't you leave directly through the church? Why come back out?"
Klein said, "Because the 'key' needed to open that door is in your hands."
Mr. A paused thoughtfully. Something appeared in his hand. "That obsidian?"
At that moment, Foggy Town lit up again.
Klein manipulated the Marionette to step outside. "Give me the obsidian. I'll open the door. If I succeed, it naturally works out for both of us—you can follow me through. If I fail, you lose nothing."
"How do I know the door opened with the obsidian isn't single-use?"
"Then what do you want to do?"
Mr. A "grew" out of the shadows, his hooded robe a vivid blood-red. In a calm, low voice, he said, "I will use 'Flesh Magic' to enter your body and monitor your condition. When the door you're talking about opens, I'll leave your body and go through it."
Klein had the Marionette curl its lips into a smile. "As far as I know, the Rose Bishop can indeed hide inside someone, but when they emerge, the host dies instantly."
"No. That method is meant to avoid detection, so it must fuse completely with the host's flesh. There's no need for that this time. I'll wait quietly inside your stomach."
Klein took out a coin and performed a divination. Then he nodded. "No problem."
Mr. A walked straight toward the Marionette that had taken on Klein's appearance. His body—along with his "clothes"—melted rapidly into a mass of viscous flesh, becoming a "stream" about the thickness of an arm that flowed toward Klein.
Inside a distant house, Klein, feeling faintly nauseous, retched dryly, then had the Marionette open its mouth.
The "stream of flesh" climbed up the Marionette's body and slithered into its mouth, that slightly warm yet slimy sensation travelling through the oesophagus and into the stomach.
"Let's go."
Mr. A's voice echoed from within.
Passing through the church's door, Klein once again entered the hall where the corpses hung suspended. Each body drooped its head, eyes rolled back, gently swaying in the intermittent draft. From their lips drifted faint mutterings—"Hornacis…Flegrea…"
Even though it wasn't his first time seeing this scene, it still felt unsettling.
Klein carefully threaded his way between the corpses, making sure not to touch any of them. In the distance lay a pitch-black altar and a statue of an Ancient God's descendant.
The old man claiming to be Zaratul still sat diagonally behind the stone sculpture, hooded, with a face full of white beard.
Klein's steps suddenly slowed a little. He whispered, "Mr. A…do you know Edward?"
Inside the stomach, Mr. A paused. He clearly hadn't expected to hear that name here. He buzzed in response, "I do."
"To be honest, Edward is a friend of mine. He once told me that you and he had a rather close relationship—that both of you are trusted by the True Creator. So…could you, for his sake, refrain from doing anything later and let us leave this place first?"
After a few seconds of silence, Mr. A said, "All right."
Soon, Klein arrived before Zaratul again.
Zaratul spared him a glance, as if seeing past the Marionette's eyes to meet Klein's true gaze.
But He said nothing. Instead, He extended a withered hand and grabbed forward, pulling out a sheet of yellowish parchment, a quill dripping with ink, and a bottle of ink.
Klein immediately understood: He knows perfectly well the one before Him is a Marionette, but He doesn't care. All He wants is for me to open the door for Him?
Zaratul picked up the quill and swiftly wrote symbols and words on the parchment, then rolled it up and handed it over.
"This is the symbol for 'opening the door,' as well as the formula for the Bizarro Sorcerer potion you asked for. They can only last for three quarters of an hour and cannot be taken outside."
Klein unrolled the parchment, letting both the potion formula and the "door-opening" symbol fall into his line of sight.
His pupils suddenly contracted. His expression stiffened.
The "door-opening" symbol that Zaratul had just drawn was largely the same as the complex sigils Klein had once seen in Tingen—in the Charnis Gate beneath the city—provided through the "Lucky Doll." It was a vertical eye composed of intertwined mystical patterns and hidden symbolism.
But one detail was different: a crescent-shaped pattern and a broken-line mark had swapped positions.
Meaning—the symbol Zaratul had given…was likely fake?!
Zaratul returned the quill and ink bottle to history, then lifted His head and sighed.
"All the necessary conditions are already prepared. You may now go and open the 'Door of Escape.'" He paused. "Do not forget to take my urn."
The moment His words fell, His entire body shattered into countless tiny motes of light. They scattered outward and dissolved into the void, as if He had long since rotted away and turned to ash.
Left behind where He had sat was a tin-white urn, old in pattern and modest in appearance.
But Klein's gaze suddenly froze.
On the statue Zaratul had been leaning against, he saw five Chinese characters—five characters that made every hair on his body stand up, his breath nearly halt:
"你好,周明瑞."
Hello, Zhou Mingrui.
He had been in this world for a year. The name Zhou Mingrui felt like something buried deep in the distant past—a faded memory slowly slipping away.
But how could he possibly forget his true identity?
He was a transmigrator from another world—Zhou Mingrui.
Yet why?
Why was his name written here?
And in Chinese, no less.
A girl's silhouette flashed through Klein's mind. Could it have been her? Did she carve my name here in advance?
But what Klein could not comprehend—what chilled him to his very core—was:
How did she know his real name was Zhou Mingrui?
How did she know he would come here?
Why leave this name?
What was she trying to express?
"An arrangement?"
He couldn't stop the word from emerging. Could everything have been arranged from the very beginning? Was he merely a puppet moved by invisible strings, experiencing events that were nothing but a prewritten script?
For a moment, Klein's mind was in chaos.
If…if it weren't for the mental preparation laid down by that girl earlier, Klein suspected these five characters alone would have scared him into losing control on the spot.
"Open the door."
Mr. A's voice urged from within.
Klein took a deep breath, forcing down the turbulence in his heart. He nodded with difficulty. "All right."
—No matter what, they had to leave first.
Klein took the obsidian slate and inserted it into the depression. The two fit together seamlessly, not a bit out of place.
The wall quickly lit up, gradually turning transparent, revealing the stone slabs outside, the fractured wall, and drifting clouds suspended midair.
"Next…do I draw the symbol Zaratul gave me, or the one I saw in Tingen?"
After a brief hesitation, Klein decided to try Zaratul's symbol first. After all, this was only a Marionette. Even if things went wrong, there would still be a chance to fix it.
Besides, Mr. A inside the stomach seemed to have seen the symbol as well. If Klein didn't draw it exactly, who knew whether Mr. A would think he was up to something—and act accordingly?
With that thought, Klein raised his hand and began drawing.
Over a minute later, the intricate vertical eye was complete.
Pure light flowed along the lines, tracing every pattern before converging at the centre.
With a brilliant flash, a vague, mysterious double-door appeared on the wall, slowly opening under the push of "Gehrman Sparrow."
Behind it lay the same ancient stone slabs and broken wall he had seen earlier. Everything was utterly quiet—no abnormalities whatsoever.
"It's done…"
Just then, a violent tearing pain surged from the Marionette and stabbed directly into Klein's senses, nearly dropping him to the ground.
In the next instant—
Klein received the message: The Marionette had been destroyed.
Mr. A had transformed inside it into a flesh-and-blood bomb, blowing Ludwell's Marionette to pieces!
"Edward, damn you!!"
That was the last sentence Klein ever heard from Mr. A.
———
[Note]: Don't forget to VOTE. It keeps me motivated.