Bernadette took the parchment and scanned it quickly. Confirmed — nothing she'd seen in any of the diary entries before. She folded them carefully and tucked them away. "Thank you."
"This book, on the other hand…"
Vincent's voice surfaced in Bernadette's mind. "Something feels off about it."
The book Edwina had set down was the dark-brown leather-bound volume — a codex bound in sheepskin parchment, its cover bearing the title Groselle's Travels. The very book created by the Dragon of Imagination, containing an entire world within its pages.
Noticing Bernadette's gaze, Edwina explained: "This book came from a sunken ship on the ocean floor. It had been submerged for 165 years, and was completely undamaged."
"The story inside follows a giant called Groselle and his companions as they travel to the Nation of Frost to hunt a powerful frost dragon. But the narrative cuts off just as they come face to face with the King of the North — it's not that the story simply ends; the later pages are stuck together and can't be opened by any means."
"Oh?"
Bernadette picked up the book, flipped directly to the back, and found the later pages fused completely — no amount of effort could separate them.
That was genuinely surprising. She'd just used nearly her full strength — and while the Hermit Pathway was less focused on raw physical power than the Warrior types, she was still a Sequence 3. How was she unable to force open a book?
If it had been an ordinary book, that grip would have shredded it to pieces.
"I've had this book for quite some years now, and I've never managed to uncover its secret." Edwina paused, with something almost like anticipation in her voice. "If Your Majesty has an interest in it, I'm willing to sell it at a fair price. The only condition is — if you work out the secret, please tell me."
"How much?"
"Eight… no, five thousand pounds."
She named the price, then quickly added: "Based on my research, I'm confident its true value is much higher. The sheepskin parchment it's written on dates to at least three thousand years ago — before the Great Calamity."
That addendum only made Bernadette more interested. Knowledge was precisely where Hermit Pathway Beyonders drew their power — after advancing to demigod, they actively sought out obscure and hidden information to feed the Mystical Re-enactment they could weave.
"Done."
Bernadette pulled out a thick sheaf of banknotes and handed it over without hesitation. The exchange was concluded pleasantly.
"What?!"
Vincent was caught completely off guard. I only muttered one comment and somehow I just snatched away an opportunity that was supposed to be Klein's?
The moment they were back in Backlund, Bernadette held Groselle's Travels and let her eyes go deep, attempting to probe the book's secrets through the Clairvoyant's abilities.
Her vision blurred, as though piercing through the book itself — through time and space — to glimpse fragmented images, perhaps from the future, perhaps from the past.
She saw an immense city, suspended in the air.
She saw a vast palace, built on a scale that no human architect could have designed.
She saw a pair of terrible golden eyes.
She saw an enormous cross.
Crack.
Everything before her eyes shattered and collapsed. Bernadette's body convulsed, and she fell back into the sofa, two trails of vivid red running down her cheeks from her eyes.
"Honestly."
Vincent, who'd caught some of the backlash himself, said with weary resignation: "Your Majesty, I respect your extensive experience in doing reckless things — but you can't keep doing it forever. One of these days you're going to see something beyond what you can handle, and I'm worried we'll both just explode on the spot."
Bernadette wiped the blood from her cheeks and replied, entirely without conviction: "I'll be more careful in future."
"What's your read on the book? Why the feeling that it's not ordinary?"
"That… I'm not sure either. Just instinct."
Vincent remembered: Groselle's Travels, if held long enough — or if blood touched the cover — would forcibly drag the holder into the world inside. The only way out was to defeat the King of the North, Ulyssan. If he recalled correctly, the book currently still needed three more "slots" to reach the required number of participants.
Even counting himself and Bernadette as two, that still left one short. Going in under those conditions would be truly helpless.
So if they ever wanted to explore this book properly, they'd need to recruit at least one more teammate first.
Bernadette put Groselle's Travels away and took out the yellowed diary pages. Thanks to weeks of intermittent study, she could now read Chinese freely:
"January 6th. A new year, a new beginning. Now that I've advanced to 'Artisan', I finally have the ability to do that thing — to recreate that mysterious silver medallion from my memory. That medallion is almost certainly what caused my crossing over!"
Bernadette's breath caught. These diary entries were about Father's secret — how he'd crossed over? Had he actually figured it out?
She read on quickly:
"In truth, once I became a 'Polymath', I'd already fully recalled its appearance — every strange symbol and pattern on its surface. But I could clearly sense at the time that I lacked the ability to replicate anything like it."
"January 9th. After several failed attempts, I finally succeeded. Holding this silver medallion covered in strange symbols and patterns, I poured in spirituality and tried to activate it. Before my eyes, what seemed like a boundless expanse of grey-white fog appeared — but then nothing happened."
"January 10th. I reconstructed the exact circumstances of my crossing, restored the state I was in at the time, believed I was missing nothing — yet the mysterious medallion could only show me that strange grey fog. It couldn't help me do anything else."
"Since that's not working, how did I actually manage to cross over in the first place? I've put this aside for now. I destroyed the medallion I'd made. Perhaps once I'm a high-sequence Beyonder, a demigod, I'll have the means to decipher those patterns and symbols, and unravel the mystery of the crossing."
"Well — I'm definitely going to become a demigod. I'm the protagonist of this era!"
"January 12th. I dreamed of that grey-white fog again! This time I was inside it, drifting aimlessly with no sense of direction, no idea what I was doing."
"Suddenly, within that boundless grey-white fog, a shadow appeared. I couldn't make out what it was — but I could feel clearly that it was looking at me."
"After a long while, the gaze disappeared, and the shadow disappeared — and I jolted awake from the dream. Or… I can't even say for certain whether what I just experienced was a dream at all."
"January 13th. After a day of hesitation, I forged the mysterious silver medallion again. I poured spirituality into it once more. The grey-white fog returned before my eyes, as before. But again — nothing happened."
"I am not giving up. I will absolutely get a result from this."
"January 14th. Nothing."
"January 15th. Nothing."
"January 16th. I'm exhausted. Roselle — do you really have to waste all your time on this?"
"Lady Saliare is quite gentle!"
To be continued…
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