"..."
Klein's eye twitched. He kept his voice low, forcing it through gritted teeth. "Cut it out, Miss Daisy. I already told you, someone might be watching me."
"Relax, we've already swept the area. At least within the church grounds, no suspects have turned up."
"Phew—"
Klein let out a long breath. Ever since he'd picked up that note the night before, his nerves hadn't loosened for a second.
"Hey, Klein — want to try using this face to go seduce Leonard?"
"..."
Klein rubbed his temple. "Miss Daisy, I found a lead on the vampire."
"Oh?"
Daisy's expression turned serious. "Let's hear it."
"So, here's what happened..."
He recounted everything that had gone down at the Harvest Church. "I figure — even if we manage to rescue that vampire, and he can't heal the Captain's legs himself, maybe we could at least use him to track down a higher-Sequence member of his bloodline."
Daisy frowned as she listened. "The Harvest Church, huh? That might be a problem."
"Why?"
"That Giant Bishop is a follower of the Earth Mother Goddess, out here in Backlund spreading her faith on her behalf. Archbishop Anthony specifically told us to avoid friction with that church if at all possible."
At that, Daisy's expression softened into something like relief. "As for tracking down the bloodline, I've actually got a few leads of my own. You don't need to rush this."
"All right."
Klein didn't push further. He knew perfectly well — no one in this world cared about Dunn more than the girl standing in front of him.
"Oh, by the way, Miss Daisy — I don't think I'll be able to finish the mission infiltrating the Witch cult." Klein took a deep breath. "From what I've found out, Prince Edsac isn't actually the villain everyone makes him out to be. I can't bring myself to go through with assassinating someone like that."
Daisy didn't seem surprised. She frowned slightly. "That mission really was asking too much of you. Setting aside whether the prince is good or bad, sending a Sequence 7 witch to assassinate the Prince of Loen — that's borderline cruel. The Church underestimated how wary the Witch cult is of outsider witches this time. They prefer training their own from scratch."
"That said, my own read on it is — the real point of sending you undercover was to find out what the Witch cult's actually plotting next. You yourself already suspected that having them ask you to assassinate a prince probably wasn't random — that there's likely some deeper purpose behind it."
"Maybe you could try following that thread yourself?"
Klein blinked, then nodded, understanding. "I see what you mean."
"Whatever you do, your own safety comes first. Be careful!"
"I will!"
Klein nodded firmly, but his gaze lingered on the vast, holy radiance of the Evernight before him, and his mind drifted back to what Lord of Chaos had said to him the night before: "The Goddess of the Evernight and your Fool go back quite a ways, you know."
One thing was certain — his own "Fool" identity couldn't possibly have any real connection to the Goddess of the Evernight, given that he didn't even know her.
So did the "Fool" Lord of Chaos had mentioned refer to the previous Fool?
If the Goddess of the Evernight really did have deep history with the previous Fool, then once she learned that he'd usurped the position... would she...
Ugh, never mind. Not thinking about it.
Overthinking it would only pile on more worry for nothing.
A few minutes later, Klein changed his clothes and appearance, leaving the church alongside a dozen or so believers, splitting off midway to slip into a department store. After confirming through divination in the washroom that no one had followed him, he steeled himself, took four steps backward, and entered Beyond the Grey Fog.
Seated within the palace wreathed in gray-white mist, the first thing Klein did was divine whether anyone was secretly watching him. Once he saw the yellow crystal spin counterclockwise, he covered his eyes and leaned back against his chair — only then did he truly feel himself relax.
After resting a moment, Klein looked toward the depths of the gray fog, at the flickering red star representing Miss Justice, and raised a hand, letting spirituality spread outward, bringing her image into view.
"Mr. Fool, I've asked Lord of Chaos that question, exactly as you instructed."
Even knowing the answer already, Klein still felt his heart rate spike.
Audrey continued, "Lord of Chaos's answer was 'He knows.' But — but..." She lowered her head, saying quietly, "But he also said, if you want the actual answer, you'll have to ask him yourself, in person."
Ask him myself, in person.
Well. I technically already did that.
Klein shook his head, then settled into an air of practiced inscrutability. "I see."
He passed the memory of the exchange along to Miss Justice, then, without pausing, manifested a pen and paper, quickly writing out a divination phrase: "The person who sent the note knows my true identity."
After murmuring it seven times, the yellow crystal began rotating clockwise, at a measured pace.
Klein's stomach dropped. He rubbed his fingers together and wrote again: "The person who sent the note knows I am the Fool."
He drew a slow breath and lowered the yellow crystal once more.
Thankfully, this time it rotated counterclockwise.
"So — this person knows I'm a transmigrator, but doesn't know I'm the Fool."
Not as bad as it could've been.
Klein manifested another sheet of paper and wrote: "The identity of the person who sent the note." He picked up the paper bearing the divination phrase, leaned back against his chair, and, lips moving softly, began murmuring "the identity of the person who sent the note," over and over.
His voice rippled outward through the vast, silent expanse of the gray fog. His eyes darkened rapidly, and his eyelids slowly drifted shut.
In the fragmented, shattered dream, Klein saw a man with black hair and black eyes, dressed in a loose coat and trousers, walking down a dim, quiet corridor. He pulled out a piece of paper and wrote a few Chinese characters on it: "I see you."
Then the man slipped the note under a door and vanished.
Crack!
The dream shattered completely, and Klein's eyes snapped open, fully awake.
He pressed his temples, replaying the divination-dream in his mind, then raised a hand, manifesting a photograph of the man's face.
"Black hair. Black eyes. Yellow skin..."
Klein reached out instinctively, touching the photograph floating in the air, a note of confusion in his thoughts: Is this person a body-transmigrator?
No — though this world was broadly "Western" in setting, there were still people here with East Asian features. But combined with the man's actual identity, Klein still felt an odd sense of kinship toward him.
Unfortunately, feeling a sense of kinship himself didn't mean the man harbored any goodwill toward him in return. So Klein wrote out a fourth divination phrase: "Contact with this person would be harmful to me."
He repeated the phrase, staring fixedly at the suspended yellow crystal — but this time, it gave no response at all. Neither counterclockwise, nor clockwise.
Did the divination fail because there wasn't enough information or context to go on — or does that mean contact with him is neither harmful nor beneficial to me?
Klein thought it over for a moment, then manifested a fresh sheet of parchment. "All right. One last thing..."
He gripped his pen tightly and wrote:
"This person's current location."
He closed his eyes again, slipping back into the dream. In the hazy world, the man was seated inside what looked like a carriage compartment — apparently a hired coach — nothing distinctive about it, nothing that let him pin down where the man actually was.
About ten seconds later, the dream shattered again.
Klein opened his eyes, running his fingers over the yellow crystal, lost in thought.
...
While Klein had been divining, Bernadette had received a letter delivered by Xio's invisible servant, arranging a meeting at Bravehearts Bar.
To be continued…
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