As she passed through that illusory gate, Triss simultaneously concealed her form and jumped directly off the cliff at the entrance, falling toward the unseen bottom of the dark ravine.
The secret tomb of the "Blood Emperor" Tudor was hidden there.
During the fall, Triss's body was as light as a feather, having lost most of its weight, but her speed was no slower for it.
None of the few remaining guards detected her intrusion.
Just as Triss was nearing her target, a voice suddenly sounded in her ear: "Hiding is forbidden here."
Triss's figure was irresistibly forced into visibility, and above the majestic tomb at the bottom of the dark ravine, a man had appeared at some unknown moment.
He had a somewhat rectangular face, wore a white wig, sported two upswept curved mustaches, extremely thick eyebrows, and relatively large eyes.
He wore formal attire with a flowing cloak and extremely long-pointed shoes, his style out of step with the era—this was Prince Grove, the demigod who supported King George III.
Atop this Sequence 3 Chaos Hunter's head sat a crown woven of thorns, with pure light constantly converging into it, interweaving into an "ocean."
Sealed Artefact "0-36."
……
Downstream of the Tassok River, Klein had just brought his puppets Kunas Korg and Enuni through the illusory gate when a scene abruptly surfaced in his mind: A deep-black cathedral with a pointed spire stood ahead, its wide doors open, revealing men in suspenders, gentlemen in formal suits and top hats, girls with ruffled cuffs, and young ladies with lace forming flowers on their skirts...
All of them were suspended in midair, motionless.
"Caw! Caw! Caw!"
Black crows circled the cathedral's spire, letting out heart-chilling cries.
Without a moment's hesitation, Klein felt as though he had plunged into a crack in a frozen lake—his entire body went cold, his hair standing on end.
Countless thoughts surged frantically in his mind, all crying out a single name: Cheract!
In an instant, Klein instinctively made his decision, intending to swap positions with a puppet outside, directly escaping the "cathedral" before him.
Clearly, he had encountered a "miracle." After passing through the illusory gate, he had failed to enter King George III's secret tomb and instead arrived at some inexplicable place.
The next second, he discovered that the "Threads of Spirit" connecting him to the external puppets had snapped, floating rapidly upward, drifting toward the interior of that pitch-black cathedral.
If not for his intuition that transcended his own level, which had alerted him to the danger in advance, it would already be too late to react, and he would certainly have been hoisted up, becoming one more among those puppets.
There was no time to overthink. Klein rapidly manipulated the "Threads of Spirit," pulling them all back and reconnecting them to himself, forming loop after loop.
This temporarily freed him from the crisis, but it also cost him the puppets Kunas Korg and Enuni in a single second.
Those two puppets' necks suddenly tightened as they were lifted by an "invisible hand" and suspended inside the pointed cathedral.
Together with the original corpses, they swayed in the wind, speaking with different voices but identical words: "Welcome back..."
……
On Memorial Square, the imagined King George III was still giving his speech: "...I will once again lower the property requirements for suffrage and transfer more authority to the House of Commons..."
Although the public didn't quite understand why the speech had taken this turn, they felt it sounded rather good.
"Those are proposals that have already passed the House of Lords—there's no need to present them to the public during the speech... The king seems to be emphasizing that he will definitely follow this plan in the future..." Audrey felt a flicker of doubt but couldn't find an explanation that convinced her.
Inside the "No. 1 Ruins" on the outskirts of
The true King George III had already donned the black crown and consumed the potion.
His body was transforming toward the direction of Order's Shadow, expanding and extending in a wondrous state, while those nine tombs were islands in a void ocean, integral parts of the entire rule, and the "Emperor George III" simultaneously recited by the masses during the ritual were countless, densely packed beacons, collectively anchoring this ruler of Loen, East Balam, and the Roselle Archipelago, preventing him from completely detaching from reality and becoming part of Order's Shadow.
During this process, George III's thoughts irrepressibly scattered, as though being torn apart: "Cheract of the
"He said that from the Kaping case, the 'Disease Maiden' attack, the Mad Captain being silenced, and the disappearance of Kunas Korg, he glimpsed some of Gehrman Sparrow's intentions, and his divination results led him to cooperate with me, helping me guard a tomb, waiting for Gehrman Sparrow to walk before him of his own volition, driven by his own purposes and the Law of Beyonder Characteristic Convergence...
"He also said that dealing with a qualified demigod of the Seer Pathway requires patience and composure above all...
"What a true charlatan...
"He also brought the 'God's Spawn' Sia..."