Асуулт хариултын «тоглоом»

After a full half hour of uninterrupted silence, Klein opened his eyes and slowly rose to his feet.

He took his cane, put on his hat, and left the cathedral, taking a rental carriage back to Minsk Street in the dark.

At this moment, the vigilance and surveillance of the surrounding area had inevitably relaxed, turning into the shadows under the light of the gas lamps.

Shortly after midnight, Klein took out his key, opened the door to his house, and entered the empty guest rooms to search for the Book of Secrets.

It didn’t take him much effort to find the old book, bound in thick goatskin, in the wardrobe in a room on the first floor.

The hardcover of the book was dark black, with two lines of Hermes written in crimson:

"Book of Secrets.

"Klarman."

Phew... Klein exhaled but was in no rush to read the book. Instead, he quickly constructed a wall of spirituality in the room, summoning and responding to himself via a ritual, and then he threw Azik’s copper whistle, the Master Key, the All-Black Eye, the Beyonder bullets, the bottle of biological poison, the Werewolf Beyonder characteristic, the Book of Secrets, and even all the vessels above the gray fog. He planned on waiting for the commotion to subside before deciding on which to take out and which to carry.

After doing all this, he didn’t even bother to study the Werewolf Beyonder characteristic or the bottle of biological poison. He simply washed up and laid in bed.

There were two reasons for doing so. Firstly, reading the book was too time consuming. It was very easy to bring trouble to his body in the real world on this rather uncalm night. Secondly, Klein was aware of his current weakness, which was that the speed at which his spirituality was growing wasn’t enough to satisfy his ever-increasing Beyonder powers and mystical items.

After such an intense battle, his spirituality was already drained. His head was aching, and he was drowsy.

Yes, the one thing that places the greatest burden on my spirituality are the Paper Figurine Substitutes, followed by the creation of "Sun Holy Water" with the Sun Brooch, but it wasn’t used tonight. Next in the list is Holy Water Creation and Flaming Jump... Klein yawned and used Cogitation to get rid of the state of extreme tiredness and tenseness that prevented him from falling asleep.

In less than ten seconds, he entered the land of dreams as various fragmented scenes appeared alternately before him.

...

In the clearing surrounded by the abandoned warehouses, the Machinery Hivemind came and went before coming again. The person in charge of investigating this incident went from being a team captain to an expert at the rank of deacon.

Ikanser Bernard’s brown hair remained unkempt and stuck out stubbornly, making it impossible to hide them even with a hat on.

This led to many members of the Machinery Hivemind to secretly joke that the deacon probably used a bomb to style his hair.

At this moment, Ikanser, with his cut jaw and facial features, was holding a silver mirror with ancient patterns on it.

On each side of the mirror was an eye-like ornament. They were built on the foundation of a black gem which looked serene and charming.

Ikanser surveyed the area and said, "Although the rats in the sewers are experts at interfering with divination and mediumship and had already dealt with the scene effectively, this is a mysterious Beyonder world, and there is no way to guarantee a one hundred percent success."

As he spoke, he looked at the silver mirror in his hand as he used his right hand to touch its surface thrice.

After pausing for two seconds, Ikanser took a deep breath and said in a deep voice, "Respected Arrodes, my question is ‘Who were the participants in the incident that just happened here?’"

The surrounding darkness suddenly thickened, and the surface of the silver mirror began to ripple with aqueous light.

Soon, a scene appeared in the silver mirror.

Amidst the rising flames, there was a figure floating in the air. He was wearing a black double-breasted frock coat and a half top hat. His body was distorted, and his face was indistinct. Furthermore, his face was smeared with paint.

Beneath his feet, flames rose up and engulfed him.

As the aqueous light flashed, the scene changed. A middle-aged man in a dark red cloak appeared. His arm was burning with resplendent flames, but his head was hidden in the darkness.

Scene after scene was played out in front of their eyes. They saw a woman with a complicated black regal dress and messy blonde hair. However, her face was completely transparent, as if she didn’t exist.

Beside this lady were two men with black fur all over their bodies. Only their backs could be seen as they were being pulled by strange arms.

Finally, the changes came to an end as it fixed onto the blazing flames that soared into the sky. The "fireworks" bloomed in a splendid and resplendent fashion as they lit up the entire scene.

In this dreamlike scene, the man in the black double-breasted frock coat appeared once again.

Twisting and retracting, he faced forward, pressed his hat to his chest, and bowed slightly.

Not only was his face extremely blurry after being interfered with, but it also presented a glisten of oil.

Just as Ikanser was about to ask his teammates for their opinions, several lines of text in ancient Feysac appeared on the surface of the mirror.

"Based on the principle of reciprocity, it’s my turn to ask the question.

"If you answer wrong or lie, you will be punished."

The word "punishment" was blood-red, as if it were dripping with liquid!

The expression on Ikanser’s face was twisted at first before it turned abnormally serious.

Soon after, the mirror’s aqueous light flashed and a new line of text appeared.

"What’s your sexual orientation?"

Ikanser was stunned as he felt the gazes of his surrounding team members all land on him.

...

Six in the morning. The sky was just beginning to brighten.

The sleeping Klein awoke to the punctual church bells.

According to his usual habits, he would just turn around and continue sleeping until it was almost 8 o’clock. But this time, he immediately sat up and looked around.

"Yeah, I didn’t get raided on the pretext of checking my gas meter..." He let out a sigh of relief, and without even bothering to clean himself, he got off the bed and took four steps counterclockwise to go above the gray fog.

He wanted to study his spoils from last night!

Sitting in The Fool’s seat, Klein started from the simplest.

He picked up the dark-green fang and observed it for a few seconds. Then, he conjured a pen and paper and wrote the divination sentence: "Its effects."

This didn’t mean that divination could be used as a substitute for experimentation. With the fact that he held the item in his possession, and how he knew a lot about Prisoner, Lunatic, and Werewolf from Sharron and Maric, he believed that it was enough for him to attempt to gain some revelations from it.

After reciting the statement, he quickly entered the dreamland and witnessed one scene after another.

A vicious wound appeared on Werewolf Tyre’s stomach, and his intestines flowed out as they were dragged across the ground. However, he only washed it with water and stuffed the intestines back into his stomach. He pinched both sides of the wound, and in the end, the wound actually healed...

Under the perfect red moon, he faced the sky and let out a long howl. Black fur grew out of his body, inch by inch, and the fangs in his mouth were distinct...

He waved his claws and cracked the steel plate that wasn’t considered thin...

He ran wildly through the wilderness, increasing the gap between him and the group of pursuing gray wolves as he ran further and further away...

He made the attendants, whose eyes were glazed but cold, charge at their enemies without fear of death...

He also used a variety of weapons to kill people, including bombs, and he became stronger as he lost his reasoning while in his enraged state...

...

Opening his eyes, Klein roughly understood the characteristics of a Werewolf and grasped the hidden dangers of this Beyonder characteristic.

Werewolf Tyre had been under the full moon’s illumination, allowing him to be unrestrained towards his desires. After his death, he left a relatively strong spiritual mark, so those Beyonders, who would use this Beyonder characteristic to concoct a potion to advance themselves to the next Sequence, had to resist this kind of effect at an early stage; otherwise, they would show signs of losing control.

However, the negative effects had yet to reach the level of a Sealed Artifact, and the Beyonder characteristic left behind by the Werewolf could still be used as the main ingredient for a potion.

That’s good... Unfortunately, Zombie Jack’s Beyonder characteristic has been swallowed by that strange door... I wonder where it leads to and if there’s a way to get it back... Klein put down the dark-green fang, feeling both regret and sadness for his loss, before picking up the bottom of brown translucent biological poison.

He repeated the same procedure and performed a dream divination, but this time he didn’t have the confidence to gain a detailed revelation. Therefore, he changed the divination statement to: "Its positive and negative effects."

In the gray gloom of the dream world, Klein once again saw tragic scenes.

Someone fell to the ground, scratching himself and ripping off his skin, flesh, and even bones...

Another person held his head, his eyes losing focus while his auras weakened...

One kept vomiting. Towards the end, the person who died was convulsing...

Someone burst out laughing, laughing so hard that he couldn’t even breathe...

Some people stopped fighting and looked at each other. Then, they hugged and kissed each other...

When the scene reached the end, the translucent brown bottle was placed into a cup with water. The transparent liquid inside gradually turned amber in color and was drunk... The person holding onto the bottle of biological poison was weakened at first before coughing. Then, he touched his forehead. He found himself scalding as his condition turned for the worse...

The dream quickly ended. Klein tapped his finger on the edge of the long table as he attempted to interpret the revelation with great difficulty.

According to Steve, the earlier revelations mean that after the biological poison’s bottle lid is removed, it would keep emanating its poison. As for which poison the opponents gets inflicted by, it’s completely random, and even the wielder is unable to control it? The poison inside is really quite abominable...

The effective range of the poison cannot be deciphered via a revelation... Hmm, soaking it in water and drinking the amber liquid in advance would prevent one from getting poisoned? But how many minutes should the soaking take? Even if the person holding the Biological Poison Bottle doesn’t open the lid, their bodies would get worse as they slowly get infected, and the ailments become serious? Uh, what’s the exact cut-off time?

Klein rubbed his forehead, intending to do some experiments above the gray fog when he was free, but he didn’t know if the Biological Poison Bottle was effective in there.

For example, in his current Spirit Body state, he wasn’t afraid of being poisoned at all.

I’ll leave it at this. I’ll study it in detail in the future... Klein turned his attention to the Book of Secrets, which was bound in goatskin. He then casually flipped to the first page.

It was a title page with simple patterns on it but with nothing written on it...

Flipping another page, Klein finally saw the opening line of the Book of Secrets: "We worship the moon, not the Evernight Goddess."