Klein looked down at his palm, and the image of a gold coin reflected in his eyes:
It landed heads up, showing the king's head.
This meant yes—it meant Klein should use the puppet's eyes to look at himself!
After receiving this guidance, Klein still hesitated, thinking about whether to perform a ritual to bring the puppet Enzo to the Gray Fog, where in that relatively safe environment all damage and contamination to the spirit could be completely removed, and try it there.
However, he doubted this would yield any results, because a Beyonder of the Fate pathway was already paying attention to the projection of that mysterious space onto reality and onto him; once above the Gray Fog, such peculiarity would likely disappear, like trying to observe the external shape of an elephant by crawling inside its body.
One by one, Klein curled his fingers, gripping the coin. He was silent for a long time, then finally made a decision.
He abruptly stood up, took out the ritual silver dagger, and created a "Spiritual Wall," covering the room.
This was to guard against any possible horrible screams or strange noises leaking out!
Immediately after, Klein performed another ritual, offering "Creeping Hunger" as a sacrifice to the Gray Fog.
He was afraid that if something went wrong with his condition, this glove would turn on its wearer!
—This was an inherent attribute of "Creeping Hunger": if it wasn't fed enough, if it couldn't eat a person every day, it would feed on the wearer, and Klein starved it more often than he fed it.
Having prepared everything else methodically, Klein reached out and removed the "Blood Ring" from the puppet Enzo's hand, bringing it to his left palm.
This would ensure that even if his physical body suffered severe damage, he could recover.
Just before putting it on, Klein thought for a moment, paused, took out paper and a pen, and wrote a sentence:
"Remember to take off the ring."
He was worried that after the experiment, under the intelligence-reducing effect of the "Blood Ring," he wouldn't want to take it off.
Then maybe a beautiful princess would be needed to kiss me awake, no, to help me take off the ring... Klein smiled wryly, let out a breath, took off his clothes, and put on the ring.
Then he turned his gaze to the new puppet, "Winner" Enzo.
Hesitation and inner retreat were always inevitable, but once the decision was made, having been through so much, he could already forge ahead bravely without backing down.
After slightly adjusting and entering a state of meditation, Klein slowly turned the puppet to face him.
Through the eyes of "Winner," he first saw a thin layer of grayish-white mist, faintly diffusing outward.
Within the mist, there was a vague, brilliant door of light stained with a hint of blue-black.
That door was composed of countless overlapping spheres of light, each sphere in turn being a tangle of writhing worms; some worms were transparent, others translucent, bearing symbols and patterns profound or inexpressible.
Before Klein could see the details clearly, his mind suddenly buzzed, and he lost consciousness.
After an unknown length of time, he slowly woke up, momentarily forgetful, nearly thinking he had simply slept until dawn.
"What happened? The night outside is still deep..." Klein propped himself up and sat up, only then realizing he was lying on the floor.
At that moment, catching a glimpse of the puppet Enzo standing nearby, a flood of images and sounds suddenly surged into his mind.
"That's right, I was studying what a Beyonder of the Monster pathway could see in me... Did I exceed the limit and just pass out? I vaguely remember hearing agonized screams—was that me?" Recovering his memory, Klein quickly examined his body and was shocked to see one bloody, gruesome wound after another all over his skin, as if something had burrowed out from inside.
At this moment, in these dense wounds, the flesh was squirming and rapidly reorganizing into a whole.
Klein then looked at the floor: the place where he had been lying showed a bloodstained silhouette of a figure.
"Good thing I wore the 'Blood Ring,' otherwise I might have slowly died from the severe injuries caused by my body collapsing. I wonder, if I died like that, after resurrection, would I be in human form or monster form..." Klein raised a hand to rub his temple, looking around and noticing that the tables and chairs were tipped over, but the "Spiritual Wall" was not broken.
This truly relieved him, confirming that the anomaly was confined to his own body and a very small area around him, not spreading outward.
From the recovery speed of the wounds, Klein judged that he had been unconscious for no more than a minute.
He righted a chair, sat down, and felt as if he had forgotten something, but couldn't remember what.
Only when he instinctively started to clean up the scene and saw a note with the words "Remember to take off the ring" did he suddenly realize, and he pulled off the gold ring set with a ruby from his left hand.
More memories then surfaced. Klein, both scared and amused, shook his head and muttered:
"Luck is really important sometimes; if the negative effect of the 'Blood Ring' had been at its strongest, I might not have even recognized the words, and I wouldn't have gotten the reminder..."
Seeing that the wounds on his body had almost healed, he had the puppet Enzo put the "Blood Ring" back on and removed the "Ring of Green Splendor."
With the help of the latter's healing, Klein no longer felt any discomfort and focused his attention back on the image he had seen before—the scene a Beyonder of the Fate pathway sees in him: