The woman in black said, flat, "That's your brother, Klein Moretti."
"???"
Melissa froze. Klein turned into a woman?
Vincent, meanwhile, stared in surprise: Klein? Brother?
There should only be one person in this whole world who called Klein "brother" — but wasn't Melissa supposed to have died in the Tingen incident?
Oh.
He understood now. This had to be this woman's doing.
Because of my interference, Klein didn't die, and Dunn didn't die either — so, to give Klein some motivation for revenge, for growth, she killed off Melissa instead?
Though, compared to Dunn's clean, permanent death, she'd spared Melissa's life. Hard to say whether that was simple mercy, or something meant to help Klein hold onto his humanity down the road.
"Teacher, what happened to Klein?"
Melissa crouched beside Klein, shaking his arm, asking, anxious.
"Nothing's wrong."
Before Melissa could feel any relief, the woman in black delivered a line that left her shaken: "He's just dead."
"???"
Vincent, though, understood exactly what she meant. As the master of Beyond the Grey Fog, before advancing to Miracle Worker, Klein could still draw on a limited number of "death and resurrection" chances.
Death, for Klein, wasn't an ending — it was a new beginning.
"Medici."
Melissa turned to Medici, arms crossed nearby, tears welling in her eyes. "Did I hear that right?"
Medici snorted. "You can trust your ears completely on this one. She really did just say your brother, Klein Moretti, is dead." She paused, jerking her chin toward Klein. "And honestly, isn't it obvious? He's about as dead as dead gets, right now."
"..."
Melissa couldn't hold it back any longer, tears streaming down her face as she threw her arms around Klein, sobbing loudly.
Medici eyed the woman in black coldly, replaying Amon's earlier conversation with her in her mind: she's Amenisis's daughter? And Amon called himself her real uncle — which means her father's identity is more or less obvious.
And yet I had absolutely no idea about any of this?
Buried deep, all right.
The woman in black made no move to explain herself, simply turning to Vincent. "All I need to do is speak Lord of Chaos's honorific, and I'll be in contact with him — is that right?"
Vincent nodded. "That's right."
The woman in black gave a slight nod, and made as if to leave. Vincent hesitated for a moment before calling out, "Wait. Ma'am."
She paused, saying flatly, "You want to ask me about the location of Roselle's final tomb."
"Yes."
In truth, Bernadette hadn't actually asked Vincent to bring it up — she knew what mattered right now, and despite how badly she wanted to know, she also knew this wasn't the moment.
But Vincent knew, better than anyone, exactly how badly she wanted this.
The woman in black waved a hand, sending a sea route chart flying toward Vincent. Then she turned, and along with Melissa — still clinging to Klein, sobbing — and Medici, watching the whole scene play out with obvious amusement, she erased them all from existence at once.
And it was right at that moment that a deep rumble of thunder rolled in, lightning suddenly lighting up the pitch-black sky.
The Church had arrived.
...
On the road outside Red Rose Manor, Amon gave a lazy yawn. "A Source Fortress delivered right to my door still can't beat going and getting it myself, though. Feels a lot safer that way."
The reason he'd turned down his dear niece's "deal" wasn't purely about the missing half of his Uniqueness — the more critical reason was that an avatar of his, left behind in the god-forsaken land years ago, had caught the scent of the Source Fortress.
If he wanted the Source Fortress, he could just as easily go get it himself.
He raised a hand, lightly brushing the monocle over his eye, and where his fingertip touched, faint, fine cracks appeared. "There are two souls inside Roselle's daughter."
"But why is it that neither of those two souls has anything to do with you?"
He tilted his head up, gazing at the starry sky. "Are you really dead? Or are you just hiding somewhere no one's thought to look?"
"Vincent."
...
RUMBLE.
Lightning danced wildly across the sky, crashing down in a frenzy, lighting up the entire region around Red Rose Manor as bright as day.
An old man in a black soft cap, wearing a black robe embroidered with storm sigils, descended from the sky, shattering the barrier that had sealed off the estate's surroundings, then hovered in midair, drawing a bow and firing an arrow of lightning down at the massive, still-flaming figure below.
But the fire giant showed no reaction at all — it had clearly been dead for some time already.
The expression on the face of this "Singer of the God," Ace Snake, only darkened further. First a witch spreading plague to create a lethal fog, then a string of demigod-level battles breaking out one after another, and now even a full-on Mythical Creature Form brawl to the death.
And every single time, they'd missed it — always arriving after the fact, everything already over and done. It was starting to feel like the Church of Storms's Enforcers existed purely to clean up other people's messes.
That thought alone was enough to leave the already short-tempered Ace Snake feeling like a volcano ready to erupt, with nowhere left to vent.
Just then, the Night Watchers, led by the Church of the Evernight's Sage Anthony Stevenson, arrived on the scene as well. Anthony, his expression grave, walked into the one remaining structure on the estate grounds, making his way to the room where the descent ritual had taken place.
What greeted him was a body lying motionless on the floor. Anthony stepped closer and quickly recognized who it was.
The Archbishop stared at Klein for a long moment, then let out a heavy sigh, turning to instruct the Night Watchers waiting outside:
"Try divination. Search the surrounding area."
He paused, then added, "And send word to Leonard and Daisy."
Anthony walked slowly to the window, gazing up at the bright red moon overhead. He made a few gestures over his chest, his lips moving — but in the end, he said nothing at all.
...
Vincent had only just left Red Rose Manor when Bernadette's voice reached him.
"Thank you."
"Haha, honestly, it just hit me a second ago that I overreacted a bit there." He laughed it off. "I could suddenly feel the 'Black Box' potion had fully processed — once I advance to demigod, I can just use that compass directly to find Emperor Roselle."
"But we still don't actually know for sure whether that compass really can point us to Dad's location," Bernadette said quietly. She paused. "Anyway — thank you."
Her tone stayed even, but her heart was anything but calm. After all these years searching, all these years waiting, to finally have a clear location for her father — how could that not leave her thrilled, overwhelmed?
If anything, it had come so suddenly, so abruptly, that it almost felt unreal.
Vincent tucked the sea route chart into the "Secret Door" and said, "That said, I have to warn you — until you've advanced to Sequence 2 Angel, we absolutely cannot go looking for Emperor Roselle. It's far too dangerous!"
"I know."
As he spoke, Vincent followed the divination Mr. Z had specifically set up for him, making his way underground somewhere in the South Bridge District.
Honestly, Vincent had suspected from the start that Mr. Z's situation was the most dangerous of all — because whether it was the Sage of Secrets or Mr. Z himself, their goals had always been exactly the same: complete the ritual, and bring the True Creator down.
His original plan had been to deal with the Despair Witch first, then rush straight over here. Instead, that whole string of events had unfolded in between.
In the hall, its stone pillars snapped and broken, the wreckage on the ground still faintly recognizable as the remains of an altar. Everything around him was silent, pitch black, empty — nothing to see at all.
Clearly, the True Creator's descent ritual had failed here too.
But why was everything so clean, as if someone had deliberately come through and tidied it all up? Had the Church already been through here?
And where was Mr. Z? Had he been killed?
Or had he fled?
No — if he'd fled, Vincent should have been able to track him down to right here.
"Someone from the Sleepless Pathway did this — a high-Sequence one."
Bernadette said, "Everything here's been 'hidden.'"
That black-dressed woman from Red Rose Manor again?
She shouldn't have been able to get here this fast, which meant—
Vincent's body tensed instantly, and the darkness pooling all around him suddenly felt unbearably menacing.
He stepped forward at once, slipping through the Spirit World back to the house on York Street, his heart pounding — terrified some woman might suddenly appear in front of him and erase him from existence with a wave of her hand.
He'd barely sat down on the sofa when Bernadette spoke, her tone carrying neither excitement nor surprise — simply stating a fact.
"My ritual is complete."
"Just now."
To be continued…
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