In the dim room, a thin layer of pale red moonlight spread, making everything hazy and indistinct.
Three men in black coats slept in different places, and on the small sofa, Klein, half-melting into the darkness with his eyes closed, also seemed to be asleep.
His dream was a gray, distorted world, occasionally flashing with light.
Eventually, these flashes coalesced into a picture.
It was a gloomy corner where sewage flowed on the ground. A man with short yellowish-brown hair, a white shirt, and a brown vest leaned against the wall, surrounded by dense gray rats.
The man's lips were half eaten, revealing slightly yellow teeth and rotting gums. His nose was only a bloody mess mixed with some short fur, and his throat seemed to have been gnawed by some beast, missing at least half.
Klein barely recognized him as Zeryl Victor Lee, no longer matching the mature and handsome appearance from the black-and-white photo given to him by Ian.
Zeryl was dead, and in a few days, he would probably be gnawed down to bones, perhaps even incomplete bones... Klein left the dream, recalling the scene he had just seen.
His past experiences had allowed him to view such corpses relatively calmly.
Looking at the crimson moon outside the window, Klein thought for about ten seconds and decided to attempt spiritualism on the black-clad man next to the sofa.
——He had prepared a bottle each of the corresponding "Amanda" hydrosol and "Spirit Eye" potion over the previous days. As for the tranquility potion, Klein didn't need it; he could maintain calm and rationality when others invaded his dreams or forced spiritualism.
After setting up a simple altar and letting the quiet and peaceful fragrance spread, creating a semi-dream state, Klein prayed to himself, to "The Fool that does not belong to this era."
Then, he entered the gray fog above and responded with more than two-thirds of his spirituality.
"When I advance to Sequence 7, similar prayers should also be able to slightly leverage the power of the mysterious space above the gray fog, like summoning and sacrifice rituals..." Looking around, Klein made a rough judgment and quickly returned to the real world.
He passed through a world like a starry sky and chaotic, noisy mental storms, entering the mind layer of the target man, and saw his illusory figure floating in mid-air.
"Who sent you to the Zeryl family?" Klein looked and asked in a deep voice.
The man's phantom, with dull eyes, answered dully: "Mersault, Mersault sent me to wait for a boy named Ian."
His mental world changed with the light and shadow, presenting a lean, slender, and dark-complexioned man, exactly the leader of the group that had chased Ian on the steam subway, which Klein had seen before.
It was him indeed... Klein had consumed too much spirituality in responding to the prayer and was starting to feel tired, so he hurriedly asked: "And who directed Mersault?"
"I don't know... He is the 'Executioner' of our Zmengh party. No one can direct him except the boss," the man said blankly.
Zmengh... 'Warrior' in the Highland language... Pseudo-historian, true mystician Klein felt a sudden pain in his head, and his body involuntarily flew out of the mental storm.
Soon, he left the spiritualism state, feeling a hollow throbbing in his head.
He didn't rush to leave, methodically collected the materials and the short yellowish hair, opened the bay window outward, letting the cold night wind blow in to dispel the smell of "Amanda" hydrosol and "Spirit Eye" potion.
During this process, Klein returned to the balcony, locked the door from inside, and wiped all the places he had touched.
When Zeryl's bedroom returned to its previous state, he bowed to the three still-sleeping men, pressing his chest.
Straightening up, Klein put on his gloves, pushed off, and agilely vaulted to the outside of the bay window, standing on tiptoe and using the extremely small space to balance steadily.
He lifted the vertical latch, placed a Tarot card underneath, used his "Fool" ability to feel the details and adjust the balance.
After a few seconds, Klein slowly pulled out the Tarot card, and the vertical latch remained stable in place, not falling.
Swish!
He first closed the half of the window without the latch, then flashed over, with his right hand pushing sharply inward to shut the other half.
This action was so fast that the latch fell only after the vibration, precisely inserting into the matching iron hole.
Bang! An unavoidable sound, like strong wind hitting the glass.
Klein knew that the three men in the bedroom would wake up slowly, so he didn't delay and directly jumped to the street.
The height of the second floor posed no danger to him now, but the landing was no longer silent, and it produced a noticeable noise.
Klein quickly left the vicinity and Rose Street, but he didn't take a hired carriage back to Minsk Street in the Joewood District.
He turned a few corners and headed towards the adjacent East Borough.
In the cold night, the wind chillingly pierced the bones, and Klein shivered, deciding to wear a sweater for future actions and to buy charcoal in the coming days to let the fireplace play its proper role.
After an unknown amount of time, without a map, he entered the East Borough of
There were very few gas lamps here, only one or two visible in the distance. If not for the clouds not covering the crimson moon, Klein believed that many roads would be pitch black, completely invisible.
As he walked, he suddenly saw in the deep darkness ahead a pair of eyes, and many stooped figures emerging one after another.
They swayed from the blurry distance, silent, soundless.