The dark clouds in the sky dispersed as quickly as they had gathered, and everything inside the Cathedral of the Holy Wind was as normal as ever.
In a corner nearby, Klein raised his hand to rub his forehead, his lips twitching as he muttered: "If you won't give it, then don't... But why did you have to strike down my mystical puppet..."
He then let out a breath, and his figure rapidly faded away and vanished—the duration of this historical void image was itself nearly at its end. After all, the gap between the high-level abilities replicated by a "Recorder" and the originals was significant. The burden of a Sequence 6 summoning a Sequence 3 was extremely heavy, and even though an "Ancient Scholar" could transfer his consciousness over to reduce the drain, it still couldn't let Fors hold on for much longer.
…………
Outskirts of
Leonard tucked away his Red Gloves and walked at a leisurely pace toward a certain location.
Suddenly, Pales
Remembering the earlier exchange at the
After hearing this, Pales Sauron said nothing more, allowing Leonard to continue on his way.
…………
After setting the special coordinates, Fors was thrown back into the real world by Gehrman Sparrow's messenger.
"I feel so exhausted, but I only just woke up not long ago... It must be that high-Sequence Beyonder powers consume too much spirituality..." Fors covered her mouth with her hand, yawned, and said to Xio with a haggard expression.
"That's possible." Xio agreed with her friend's assessment.
Her intuition told her that the Gehrman Sparrow projection that had been summoned was far from simple—it might even be equivalent to a saint.
After a moment of hesitation, Xio spoke: "Get some more sleep. Don't attempt an advancement in this state.
"In one of the cases I prosecuted before, the culprit was a psychopath who would deliberately have his friends, his students, and the homeless people he took in consume potions while in various negative states, watching them lose control and transform into all manner of monsters—disgusting and terrifying monsters."
"...What was this guy's purpose?" Fors was stunned for a second.
"Two purposes. First, to observe whether the same potion caused identical loss of control across different people. Second, to record the corresponding scenes in oil paintings. He believed that kind of madness, that kind of pain, that kind of distortion, possessed unparalleled beauty and could ignite his most intense creative passion." Xio recalled the trial at the time, her tone carrying both hatred and a trace of inexplicable dread. "He was an absolute madman."
"That sort of person should be humanely exterminated!" Fors shuddered at the mere thought and said through gritted teeth, "Was he a cultist?"
"Perhaps, but there were no leads... On the surface he was an outstanding painter, famous internationally. If more than five of his students and friends hadn't gone missing over the past few years and drawn our attention, this might not have been discovered until he had completely gone mad and lost control, transforming into a monster." Xio paused here, then continued, "When the law enforcement team that captured him opened his hidden basement, they all vomited. Inside were row after row of horribly mutated corpses, and hanging on the walls were painting after painting that were both terrifying and possessed a strange, mesmerizing charm..."
"A despicable person, but also a very compelling story." Fors thought for a moment and pressed further, "Was he a 'Demonic'?"
"No, he was a 'Psychiatrist.'" Xio denied her friend's guess.
"...Did you sentence him to death?" Fors asked expectantly.
Xio shook her head and said: "His defense lawyer convinced me that he would be better suited as a sealed artefact researcher."
"He had a lawyer? Your Special Courts have lawyers? Isn't it all immediate judgment?" Fors asked in surprise.
Xio tidied her slightly longer blonde hair and said: "We have some Beyonder lawyers within our ranks who follow the 'Lawyer' Pathway. They also need to play their roles, though naturally, they don't know they're doing so."
"All right." Fors yawned again and pointed to the armchair by the fireplace. "I'm going to get some sleep first—wait, weren't you supposed to go to work?"
"I can take the day off," Xio replied briefly.
Fors didn't ask further. She walked over to the fireplace and collapsed into the chair.
Roughly two or three hours later, she woke up and meditated for a quarter of an hour.
Then she took out the "Traveler" Beyonder characteristic and supplementary materials that her teacher, Dorien
The potion was whitish but transparent, resembling melted snow mid-thaw, with pale green bubbles occasionally rising through it.
Fors held the potion, glanced at her friend keeping watch beside her, and smiled: