Feeling that he wasn’t too tired yet, Klein rubbed his temples and waved his hand, making a small metal bottle fly over from the pile of junk.
Inside was a small tube of blood he’d had to painfully extract from his own veins. He had brought it to the Gray Fog some time ago, waiting for the chance to send his spirit into Groselle’s Travels and explore the world inside the book.
Unscrewing the cap, Klein didn’t immediately smear the blood onto the book’s dark brown cover. Instead, he “summoned” all the items he’d brought into this mysterious space before the Tarot Club meeting from the pile and scattered them in front of him.
Considering the Black Emperor card was too conspicuous and he had no idea what the world inside the book was really like, Klein decided not to take that Blasphemy card. Instead, he used Azik’s copper whistle to reinforce his spirit, just in case some unknown force destroyed him before he could return to the Gray Fog.
As the ancient, delicate copper whistle merged into him, Klein’s spiritual body seemed to swell a little, but actually grew denser.
Two pitch-black flames jumped out from his eye sockets as if they had a life of their own.
Through meditation, adjusting his spirituality, Klein drew all the cold of death back into his body, and the anomaly in his eyes quickly disappeared.
It was like an evil spirit pretending to be an ordinary person to lure in prey.
Then Klein put on Creeping Hunger and stored the Beyonder characteristics of the Death Knell revolver and the Nightmare inside his body—the latter was in case he needed to explore the dreams of the book world’s creatures to find anomalies.
Having made all preparations, he unscrewed the lid of the metal bottle, poured out a few drops of blood, and spread them over the cover of Groselle’s Travels.
After a short wait, his vision first blurred, as if filled with countless transparent things, then snapped into focus. He saw blue sky, white clouds, a gray-brown city wall, and people coming and going.
Not the icy land from before, but a city that looked perfectly normal on the surface… Klein stood on a tamped-earth road, studying the book world’s residents. Most of them were wearing linen shirts, brown short jackets, and dark loose trousers, an overall style similar to the Loen Kingdom of a few hundred years ago.
He glanced down at the tailcoat, stiff collar shirt, and dark red bow tie he had manifested. Silently, he changed it all, instantly blending in with the people around him.
He walked toward the gate, ready to enter.
Just then, a soldier in leather armor guarding the gate stopped him:
“Entry tax! One riddel.”
Do I look like I have money? I don’t even know what a riddel is… Klein laughed to himself, then used a form of “communication” between spirits to redirect the guard’s attention to the merchant caravan entering behind him.
As a quasi-wraith capable of possessing and manipulating others, exerting mental influence on a target was standard practice. It wasn’t a strong ability, but it was very effective against ordinary people.
Once inside the city, Klein strolled through the streets, outwardly relaxed but inwardly alert. He noticed the sanitation was even a bit better than Backlund’s in earlier years—there seemed to be a well-developed sewer system, and no one was dumping waste or garbage from above.
“It doesn’t seem like a fake world from a book at all. Everyone has ‘spirit threads’…” Klein muttered as he looked around and moved forward. Suddenly, he spotted a stone building over ten meters high to the side. It was only two stories, with the top of the door about four meters from the ground.
Next to the building was a sign with a few words written in a script unlike any he knew, but Klein could read them at a glance:
“Pessotte Blacksmith Guild”
So there’s a blacksmith guild—the steam age hasn’t reached here yet… Klein had just remarked to himself when the door creaked open, and a giant with disproportionately long limbs walked out!
The giant’s skin was gray-blue, a single vertical eye was his most striking feature, and he carried a huge, heavy hammer. With a grin, he crossed the street.
The passersby didn’t seem afraid of him at all, as if they’d seen this many times before.
They even greeted him:
“Good afternoon, Groselle!”
Groselle… Klein, who couldn’t tell giants apart, narrowed his eyes and felt a jolt of recognition!
He was about to follow, but the giant turned a corner and disappeared from sight.
Klein stood still, silently watching the intersection, a vague guess forming in his mind:
“Is there another Groselle in this book world?
“No, at the end of the travelogue, Groselle died in the Land of Frost…
“Is this a different story?”
His mind full of questions, Klein didn’t rush to find Groselle. Instead, he turned into a tavern by the street.
Such places were often where a city’s most chaotic and varied information gathered, helping him quickly get a grasp of the situation.
The tavern was dimly lit and poorly ventilated, the air a bit stale. Not many drinkers had shown up yet; most were gathered at the bar, chatting pleasantly with each other and the bartender.
Klein walked over slowly, then stopped short.
At the side of the bar sat a man wearing a tall, stiff black hat and an asymmetrical coat. He was good-looking, with flaxen hair, dark brown eyes, a high nose, and thin lips—it was none other than Viscount Mobet Soroaster of the Solomon Empire!
Seeing him, Klein remembered the “Dream Thief” rapidly aging, falling to the ground, and crawling with difficulty toward the elf singer Shatas to take her hand.