"No..." Chunas Kolger stood rooted in place, a surge of intense despair rising in his heart.
As a military demigod who had weathered no small number of dangers, he had a clear awareness of his current predicament, and could already hear the footsteps of death drawing ever closer.
He wanted to make a desperate stand, wanted to reveal his mythical creature form, but after the command was issued through sluggish thoughts, it had no effect whatsoever.
His body had been "parasitized"—it was no longer under his control!
In this moment, Chunas Kolger couldn't even shed a single tear.
Under the illumination of the enormous red moon, time ticked by second by second. Suddenly, Chunas Kolger raised his left hand and touched his cropped hair.
He had already become Klein's puppet.
In truth, right at the very end, he had still possessed one chance—because the duration that "parasitism" could be maintained was shorter than the time required for complete puppetification. There had been a window of two or three seconds in which he could have attempted to reveal his mythical creature form.
But the problem was that the effects of misdirection and deception still lingered upon him, and his own thoughts grew increasingly sluggish and torpid with the passage of time, making it impossible for him to seize that fleeting opportunity.
Klein looked at his new puppet, let out a soundless breath, raised his head, and gazed up at the clear, crimson moon:
"Done."
From within that enormous red moon, a black speck instantly materialized and descended from the sky—it was Ariana, the Archbishop of the Church of Darkness, the "Servant of Mysteries," clad in a plain robe with a bark belt cinched at her waist.
In this hidden world, this ascetic hovered in midair without using any Beyonder power, her gaze falling upon the "Fallen Baron" below.
With a gentle raise of her right hand, the slightly hazy soul of Chunas Kolger rose from atop the military demigod's head, and Klein thereby lost control over the puppet.
He wasn't particularly surprised. After all, he hadn't yet separated a "spirit worm" and sent it through the "threads of the spirit body"—his control over that puppet was fundamentally still at the Sequence 5 level, far below the demigod tier.
"Where did you go just now?" Ariana asked calmly, looking at the soul of Chunas Kolger.
Chunas Kolger's expression twisted slightly, then he replied:
"Ruins No. 1."
...Was this a contractual obligation, or a psychological suggestion? Watching the "spirit channeling" from the sidelines, Klein detected something from the "Fallen Baron's" reaction.
However, this wouldn't change anything, because this was a hidden world—a world unknown to all, a world that no one could sense.
"Where are those ruins located? Who did they once belong to? What are they being used for now?" As an Archbishop of the "Goddess of the Night" and an Angel of the corresponding Pathway, Ariana could share in a measure of the Authority of Secrets, so she skipped the simple questions and went straight to the heart of the matter, not the least bit worried about anything going wrong.
The soul of Chunas Kolger began to tremble faintly, giving the impression that it might spontaneously shatter, but in the end nothing happened.
After a moment of hesitation, he replied:
"Those ruins are located in the Stlevin section of the River Tasok, deep underground. There are arrangements in place that interfere with divination and prophecy."
The Stlevin section... That's quite a distance from the mountain where
Jonas Korg continued to answer:
"That ruin once belonged to the 'Blood Emperor' Aristocrat Tudor. What it's currently being used for, I don't know. I can't enter the depths of the ruin—I'm only responsible for delivering the people and materials collected through various means into it."
The name "Blood Emperor" Aristocrat Tudor made Ariana fall silent. After two or three seconds, she said:
"What kinds of materials have you been collecting?"
This time, Jonas Korg offered little resistance and listed them one by one—large quantities of mercury, iron ore, and ritual materials from various fields. Klein couldn't extract a single piece of useful information from it, because it was simply too comprehensive; anything was possible.
Indeed very cautious, using a large volume of mundane items to obscure what they truly wanted to collect. Even the demigod in charge of this aspect had no idea what it was for... This was very much the style of a Beyonder on the Spectator Pathway—the Alchemy Society's design? Klein gave an almost imperceptible nod, his suspicions forming.
Ariana apparently didn't discover anything either. She shifted her line of questioning:
"Do you have your own guess about what they're doing? What is it?"
"I do. I suspect they're excavating something and attempting a ritual." Jonas Korg stated his judgment.
Ariana gazed down at him quietly for a moment, then said:
"Who had you involved in the underground ruin matter?"
"Which people are allowed to enter the depths of the ruin?"