This was... honestly, more than a little absurd. Absurd on top of absurd, frankly, absurd through and through.
Still, on balance, it seemed to be a good thing — for now. As for all the remaining questions, they'd have to wait until he'd actually survived this crisis before he could sit down and think them through properly.
Within the Nation of Disorder, Vincent raised a hand and channeled spirituality toward the ancient, unadorned scale, letting the golden mist already spilling from it swell even larger. Klein's silhouette gradually resolved into clarity within it.
He was still in his female form, standing in something like a ritual altar, surrounded on all sides by several strikingly beautiful women, murmuring incantations as they carried out some kind of ceremony.
Putting this together with what he already knew, it wasn't hard to guess: this was almost certainly the Witch cult, using Klein as their vessel to hold the ritual for the Primordial Witch's descent.
Vincent kept channeling spirituality, trying to establish a connection with Klein — but it failed.
Why would it fail?
Vincent's chest tightened as he watched Klein's silhouette gradually fade from within the golden mist, an ominous feeling washing over him. Don't tell me the Primordial Witch has already descended into him?
Damn it — the future "savior" is dead? That's a disaster.
The Lord of Mysteries world wasn't like most other worlds — if this were some other story, whether the protagonist lived or died after a transmigration wouldn't matter much to the transmigrator themselves.
But the Lord of Mysteries world was different. Given its setting and power structure, someone like Klein reaching that final stage — ascending to become the "Lord of Mysteries" itself, a being beyond even the gods — wasn't necessarily a good thing at all.
Which meant, if at all possible, it was probably best to leave that "savior" burden squarely on Klein's own shoulders.
Klein could die — but not like this. Could he really pull off some "miracle" of returning from the dead after being used as the Primordial Witch's own vessel for descent?
At the thought, Vincent frowned. That doesn't add up, though. There's no way the Goddess of the Evernight would just let Klein die without lifting a finger, right? If nothing else, she's counting on him, after he ascends to Lord of Mysteries, to help her secure Source Quality from the Evernight Pathway.
Sure, in the original story, the Goddess of the Evernight often had her own calculated reasons for testing and tempering Klein — but there was no way she'd use something as extreme as a Primordial Witch's descent to test a mere Sequence 7.
Back in reality —
As the soul fragment Vincent had split off returned to his body, he became whole again. He didn't dare leave his soul divided for long — the last thing he needed was to accidentally trigger some kind of split personality.
Come to think of it, the Lord of Mysteries world seemed to have a real fondness for split personalities.
"I can't reach Klein."
Vincent said, tense. "He called out to me for help while the Witch cult was using him for the descent ritual, speaking Lord of Chaos's honorific. Right now, he's..."
Bernadette was quiet for a moment, then asked, "In the 'future' you know about — did Klein play a genuinely important role?"
"..."
The question left Vincent stunned for a good while, before he remembered — in the middle of his own "near-death" moment earlier, he'd apparently told her far more than he'd meant to.
Though he'd kept things vague, someone as sharp as Bernadette, combining that with everything he'd said and done up to this point, could easily piece together nine-tenths of the truth.
At this point, there wasn't much reason left to keep hiding it.
"Yes. Very important."
Vincent nodded firmly. "Put simply — Klein is the 'savior' who saves your entire world from the apocalypse."
"Back to Backlund."
Bernadette said, decisive. "We'll talk through the rest on the way."
Vincent stepped into the Spirit World at once, racing toward Backlund's location within it.
"Is Dad... still alive?"
She already had confirmation of that from Adam, but she still couldn't help asking again.
"Mm."
"Why? Why would he be alive and never come find me? Why would he be alive, and George III still able to ascend to Black Emperor?"
Vincent thought it over carefully. "Emperor Roselle exists in some special state between life and death. Calling him 'alive' is really more accurate as 'not entirely dead.'"
"You know how it works — after a 'Black Emperor' dies, he reawakens within a tomb. Given the Black Emperor's nature, he should have gone on to absorb three more Sequence 1 Beyonder Characteristics and Uniquenesses, and reclaimed his place as a true god."
"But he deliberately stopped that process before it could continue."
Bernadette's voice rose slightly. "Why?"
"Because he'd been contaminated — during his trip to the moon, at that primordial island, and also during his exchange with Mr. Door." Vincent explained, "He was stabbed and killed at White Maple Palace — and it seems that was his plan from the very start. He meant to use the Black Emperor's death-and-rebirth trait to shake off the contamination."
Bernadette understood. "He failed? He came back, and the contamination was still there?"
"Yes."
She sounded genuinely startled. "But — Dad was already a true god by then, Sequence 0. What kind of contamination could possibly require even a god to use 'death' to escape it?"
"It came from beyond the Starry Sky. It's tied to the apocalypse in your world."
"So what is the apocalypse, exactly?"
Vincent shook his head. "I... don't know."
"To be precise, when it comes to anything involving what lies beyond true godhood, the Starry Sky, or the apocalypse — I basically don't know any of it." His expression grew heavier as he spoke.
He'd always assumed his own ignorance on these things came down to how he'd originally learned about Lord of the Mysteries — from scattered, incomplete clips on short-video apps. But lately, he kept remembering "new" things, details he shouldn't have known at all — he could even recall, now, that in the story's grand finale, Klein defeated Amon and drove him off Earth entirely.
It suddenly struck Vincent — maybe it wasn't that he'd never known these things. Maybe he'd simply... forgotten them.
Forgotten the knowledge, the information itself.
In the Lord of Mysteries world, knowledge itself was poison. Learning something you weren't meant to know, before reaching a high enough Sequence, meant corruption — and corruption meant loss of control, and death.
He had no idea whether this "forgetting" was some kind of self-protective mechanism, or something else entirely.
Bernadette suddenly asked another question. "Was the reason you paid so much attention to that Angel of Time — because he plays some important role in the 'future,' too?"
"That..."
Vincent scratched his head. "The Angel of Time — Amon — is basically Klein's archnemesis. Klein has to defeat him first, before he can become the final 'savior.'"
"Is that so?"
She seemed to land on something. "In the 'future' you know — did Klein already go through a crisis like the one happening right now?"
"No."
"So the Primordial Witch's descent was ultimately stopped, in that timeline?"
"No — there wasn't even a version where Klein became the descent vessel at all. Klein never had this kind of connection to the Witch cult in the first place."
Bernadette asked, "So where did things start diverging?"
"Let me think." Vincent cast his mind back. "It was probably after Klein left Tingen — that's where things started changing. In the 'future' I know, Klein used a faked death to sever ties with the Church, during that whole incident in Tingen."
"Once he reached Backlund, he was no longer an official Beyonder of the Church of the Evernight at all — which meant he never carried out the mission the Church assigned him this time around."
"The Church of the Evernight?"
She murmured the name. "Could it be that the Church of the Evernight is the one pulling strings behind him, getting him to this point?"
"???"
Vincent froze. He'd meant to say "impossible" — but on second thought, given that Klein had just been used as the Primordial Witch's own descent vessel, and yet neither the Church nor the Goddess had shown any reaction at all... maybe it really was possible.
"But... why, though?"
If the Church of the Evernight really was behind this, that meant it was the Goddess of the Evernight's own doing — but to what end? Using a true god's own descent to temper and test Klein? That seemed like an absurd stretch.
"What's Klein's relationship with the Church of the Evernight — or with that goddess, actually like?"
Bernadette had clearly landed on the same thought.
"Cooperative. Mutually beneficial. An investor-and-investment kind of relationship."
"Which means the Goddess of the Evernight would have no reason to deliberately set Klein up like this, right?"
Vincent hesitated. "That's... hard to say. Who can really guess what a god is thinking?"
"Where's the primordial island where Dad built his final tomb?"
"I don't know that either — only that it should be somewhere in the Fog Sea, but I don't know the exact location. And because of the contamination from the Starry Sky on that island, going there before ascending to Angel is far too dangerous... no, even for an Angel, it'd still be dangerous without the Fool's help."
"After all — that's contamination beyond even the gods themselves!"
By now, Vincent had arrived at Backlund's position within the Spirit World. He raised a hand, about to step out — when Bernadette's voice sounded once more:
"One last question."
"Klein... and the Fool. What exactly is the relationship between them?"
To be continued…
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