Under the crimson glow, the previously deserted small town suddenly filled with residents. They walked through the streets and alleys, greeting each other and debating whether to just buy bread today or splurge a little and get a pound of beef.
The Misty Town abruptly seemed to awaken from its deathly stillness, resembling a normal town once again.
However, those faint, indistinct figures never attempted to enter the houses on either side. They seemed to endlessly walk up and down the streets, and the sounds they made were hardly what one would call "talking"—they were more akin to low, beast-like growls.
"Compared to the 'utopia' Klein crafted with his own hands in the future, Antigonus's 'craftsmanship' is still a bit too rough," Ebner complained while tidying up the Beyonder characteristics. Just as he was considering his next move, the street outside suddenly fell unnaturally silent.
The beast-like growls completely vanished.
The wandering, whispering figures on the streets seemed to have all turned toward a certain direction.
And from that direction came a polite male voice: "Excuse me, is this..."
Before the speaker could finish, his words were abruptly cut off. After a brief silence, the murmuring resumed, and the faint figures continued wandering back and forth.
That voice sounded familiar... Hmm, it should be Prince Edessak's butler, Finkel... Back at the ball held at the Daily Observer headquarters, I met him once... Ebner thought.
In the original work, he indeed got sent into the Land of Night by '0-17,' but there was no further follow-up... Looks like, judging from now, he was turned into 'bacon' in the church immediately after arriving...
Ebner shook his head and stopped dwelling on it. Instead, while recalling the relevant plotlines of the "Land of Night," he pondered:
If the Goddess isn't deliberately targeting me, then to leave this Misty Town, I need to enter the deepest part of the church, find the wall with an indentation, place a matching obsidian piece into it, and draw the symbol from the Goddess's sacred emblem.
With the help of the Marionettist I'm shepherding, manipulating the Spirit Body Threads to resist the 'magnet' atop the church shouldn't be an issue...
The obsidian, according to the original story, was in the possession of the Despair Nightingale Panatiya... but that's several months later, after she had devoured most of the 'survivors' in town and acquired it...
In other words, right now, the obsidian is probably still on some unknown 'future ingredient'...
Hmm, if the plot hasn't changed, Zaratul, who desperately wants his historical projection to connect with the external 'fate' and 'history' to achieve 'resurrection,' must know where the obsidian is... In the original story, he pointed Klein directly toward the Despair Witch...
So as long as I ask him, I should be able to find it...
Lastly, as for drawing the symbol... Klein used a sketch of the dark sacred emblem to escape safely... but he was a Follower of the Goddess, no problem there. Me... can I pull it off?
In the previous nightmare connecting to the Underworld, the Goddess did invest in me to some extent... But now that She's pulled me into this place, will She really let me leave peacefully without doing anything? What is Her true goal?
Moreover, once I open the 'door,' regardless of which symbol I use, it will momentarily lift this place's 'concealment' and connect it to external history and fate... That's equivalent to prematurely releasing Zaratul...
Could it be the Goddess actually wants to use my hand to set him free? But why? Klein is only Sequence 6 right now and can't even fully conceal the Source Castle aura leaking from his body. Zaratul's resurrection would do him no favors... it would only add countless dangers...
Or maybe, history has shifted dramatically in ways I don't know, and the Goddess now needs Zaratul to stir the waters?
At this thought, Ebner couldn't help but furrow his brow, though he knew he was merely speculating. To find out the real answer, the best way was still to enter the church and see for himself.
At this moment, the faint crimson moonlight streaming through the windows suddenly grew extremely dim. The red moon was once again shrouded by mist, and the ghostly figures wandering the streets disappeared entirely, as if they had evaporated. Even the beast-like growls ceased abruptly.
Seeing this, Ebner activated the "Evans's Concealment Barrier" to cover himself again, then mimicked the Apprentice ability of "Opening Doors," moving through the row of houses, one after another, until he arrived at the last house near the spired church.
Although the spirit world domain corresponding to this town was also under "Concealment," making entry into the spirit world and teleportation impossible, each person inevitably maintained a connection with the spirit world—after all, their own astral bodies always existed there. Thus, some abilities borrowing the spirit world's properties could still be used... such as divination, blink, and... door opening.
Along the way, Ebner encountered several Beyonders who had clearly mutated, engaged in brutal slaughter against each other. Their eyes were filled with madness, each desperate to devour the other.
Their strength wasn't low either, all roughly Sequence 5 level—after all, any weaker ones had probably already been eaten.
Although the occult knowledge possessed by Beyonders of this level would have initially taught them to wait for the Beyonder characteristic to precipitate before 'dining,' once trapped here without food, they had no choice but to turn on each other. As various characteristics mixed chaotically, their minds became increasingly deranged... Eating too many like that, how could there not be problems...
Even the people of Silver City, when eating monsters hidden in the dark, needed sealed artifacts to remove the contamination!
These thoughts flashed through Ebner's mind, but he paid them no mind. He moved straight to the side of the ancient church, placed his hand on the wall, and silently passed through the thick, dark structure to enter the church's interior.
At the same time, the crows circling around the church's spire suddenly froze mid-air, a starlight flickering in their eyes.
Inside the church, Ebner, having phased through the wall, first had the Magic Mirror switch his soul to the Marionettist state, allowing it to manipulate his Spirit Body Threads to counter the upward pull. Only then did he simulate night vision and begin examining the dim church interior.
Within his line of sight, human bodies were hanging midair in rows.
Some wore black classical robes, some brown jackets, some voluminous, puffed-up skirts, and some were dressed in tattered clothes like beggars.
Some faces were rough and rugged, others sharply handsome and masculine; some had exquisitely beautiful, delicate features; some were young and adorably childlike—there was no consistency.
No, there was one thing they had in common: they all resembled cured bacon being dried. Suspended high above, their heads drooped, their eyes rolled back, and they swayed lightly.
Hanging right in front was none other than Mr. Finkel, the butler Ebner had met once before.
At this moment, he seemed to sense Ebner's gaze, and together with the other suspended figures, turned to face him.
Although Ebner had anticipated this due to the original plot, he still felt a cold chill run down his neck, realizing that the "art style" of this place didn't suit him at all.
"Hornacis... Flegrea..." As the "choir" of the hanging corpses chanted, Ebner took a deep breath and slowly made his way toward the depths of the church, soon arriving before a pitch-black altar.
Upon the altar stood a stone statue:
It was a statue of a beautiful-faced woman, but from her ribs and waist sprouted two beast-like legs, covered in short, coarse, and tough black fur.
Around the statue, black ribbons floated, winding like numerous extended tentacles.
At the feet of the statue, soul forms lay dormant, resembling a cluster of stars surrounding it.
"Mother of the Sky"… Sealed item "0-17"… The Goddess's vessel for descent!
Ebner silently recited the three identities of the statue, then no longer stared at it. He shifted his gaze to the back side of the statue, searching for the location of Zaratul's historical projection as described in the original novel.
However, the moment his gaze touched the figure, his pupils froze.
Because instead of the bearded old man mentioned in the original novel, there sat a young man in his twenties beside the statue, cross-legged, with a slightly aged parchment laid out before him and a tin-white canister filled with gray-white dust and particles.
The youth was handsome, with hair as dark as the night sky and half-closed deep blue eyes that seemed drowsy. Were it not for his overly "Eastern" posture, he would have looked like a vampire duke out of a folk tale.
He wore a silk robe sewn with the emblem of the Abraham family.
As Ebner gazed at the young man's face, a strange sense of familiarity rose in his heart, exactly the same as the feeling he had when he saw objects left behind by other transmigrators through the "Pure White Eye"...
The "Wanderer" from over a thousand years ago of the Abraham family? The author of "The Book of Constellations and Elements"? Why is he here...
And the urn of ashes in front of him... could it be Zaratul's?
Hmm... This "Wanderer" should have died here more than a thousand years ago, otherwise there wouldn't have been a Dannet afterward...
And Zaratul was a figure from the era of Roselle over a hundred years ago... By right, there should still be a historical projection of him left here... why has it already turned to ashes? The "Door" hasn't even been opened yet...
Could this be a trap Zaratul set in advance?
Out of wariness toward Zaratul, Ebner immediately activated the "Pure White Eye," intending to observe.
Yet the instant the "Pure White Eye" opened the passageway and connected to the "Unknown Land," the dead Abraham youth's deep blue eyes also turned "pure white," and the ashes in the tin canister transformed into wisps of illusory "historical dust," rushing at an alarming speed through the passage formed in Ebner's eyes.
Caught off guard, Ebner had no time to stop it. He remained dazed for a long while before finally understanding what had happened through the feedback from the "Pure White Eye."
It turned out that more than eleven hundred years ago, this senior transmigrator who had become the "Wanderer" had already set up this trap before his death to target Zaratul, preventing the cut-out historical image from being preserved here long-term as it was in the original novel.
It turned out he had long foreseen that a transmigrator like Ebner would come to this place, open the passage of the "Pure White Eye," and use the different fate within the "Unknown Land" to deceive Zaratul's historical projection into walking into the trap, entering the unknown, and never again easily merging with the normal world's destiny and history—thus completely shattering Zaratul's dream of resurrecting himself through miracles...
It turned out the Goddess had sent him here not to release Zaratul … but to ensure that Zaratul would be utterly unable to alter the fate of losing control while advancing to "Mystery Attendant"!
Ebner looked at the motionless youth across from him and couldn't help but sigh inwardly: Why were all the previous transmigrators such sly old foxes? Dannet was like that, and so is this "Wanderer"... Even the vampire duke and Death Consul are laying out their arrangements everywhere, making it impossible to guess their true intentions.
Moreover... are these transmigrators really dead?
The "Wanderer" before me succeeded in assassinating an angel with a layout spanning more than a millennium right under my "Spectator" eyes... He was severed from the normal world for at least eleven hundred years in this hidden kingdom... As a demigod—or perhaps even an "angel"—of the Abraham family, if he steps out of this land, he will undoubtedly bring back a long-lost era of Abraham's glory...
This matches the ritual requirements for "Mystic Mage," "Ancient Scholar," and "Miracle Invoker"… and he deliberately killed Zaratul… The characteristic of "Miracle Invoker" was probably long calculated too...
So is he... really dead?
Thinking of this, Ebner calmed his pounding heart and once again observed through the "Pure White Eye," quickly making new discoveries:
This Abraham "Wanderer"'s bodily state is very similar to that of a "Bone Dragon"... He seems to have been tainted by the aura of Calderón City… that is, the River of Eternal Darkness...
In other words, with a few adjustments, I can use the methods described in the "Book of Necromancy" to manipulate this "Wanderer" into combat... If I'm willing to spend time creating new secret arts, even temporarily "merging" with him and becoming the "Wanderer" myself wouldn't be impossible...
And the one who left behind this technology, "Death Consul" Vicente Miranda, was also a transmigrator... This can't be just a coincidence, right?
It feels more like generations of transmigrators perfecting a certain technique...
Wait... I remember Dannet also conducted experiments with the "God of Knowledge and Wisdom" using the "Sea of Chaos"...
And Baron Conva's endlessly rebooting "split form" that was likely created by the "Trinity Templar" and "Dreamweaver" was extremely strange...
Maybe the secret art of "separating pollution" they developed was just a byproduct...
Could their true goal have been to develop a perfect avatar separation technique for future transmigrators to possess the "remains" of their predecessors?
No wonder they needed a "Reader"... and firmly believed that the later transmigrator—me—would definitely be a "Reader"...
After all, the earlier research wasn't perfect... probably limited by the Beyonder pathways those transmigrators possessed...
This kind of technique, involving multiple Sequence abilities, pointing directly to the principles and essences of the Beyonder system, and possibly needing source matter like the "Sea of Chaos," could likely only be handled by a "Reader" who is omniscient and thus omnipotent, or a "Shepherd" who is omnipotent and thus omniscient!
And the latter is too deeply influenced by the "True Creator," so naturally, it's not the first choice...
But the only question is: what benefit would this bring to the previous transmigrators?
All the benefits seem to fall on me… A pile of avatars for free...
Could it be that their ultimate goal is for me to completely perfect this accumulative secret art across generations and truly "revive" them?
But how could they be so sure that I'd have the strength and moral integrity to do it?
(End of chapter)