Ritual Successful

In the basement of 6 Narcissus Street, Tingen City.

Dressed in a simple black robe, Angel carefully carried a plate of Feneboote Noodles down the stairs. Several candles and an oil lamp had already brightly illuminated the basement. She navigated around the clutter beside the stairs and arrived at the center of the room, where a square wooden table, moved down earlier from the living room, had been placed.

Seafood Rice, White Bread, and Dixie Pie had already been set at three corners of the table. The Feneboote Noodles in her hands were the last meal required for the ritual. They had just been delivered from the Silver Crown Restaurant on the corner, still steaming and giving off a rich fragrance that tempted Angel's taste buds and made her mouth water despite having just eaten lunch.

"This is an offering for the ritual. I can't eat it..."

Resisting the urge to slurp down the sauce-coated noodles, Angel placed the dish at the remaining corner of the table and picked up the parchment in her hand again to confirm that all four foods were positioned correctly.

"Clockwise, they are Seafood Rice... White Bread... Feneboote Noodles..."

After confirming that all four foods had been arranged, Angel decided that it should not affect the ritual's results, even though the Dixie Pie was no longer fresh from the oven and the White Bread purchased earliest had begun to dry out and wrinkle.

"Next are the essential oils... Moon Flower, Golden Mint, Deep Sleep Flower, Golden Bergamot, and Rock Rose."

Naturally, there was no way to verify the mixed oils. She could only recall whether she had made any mistakes when buying them, then set the small bottle of pale-blue blended oil aside for later use.

The Sandalwood Candles had already been placed at the four corners of the table beside the four dishes. To prevent them from toppling over due to an accidental disturbance, she had secured them beforehand with wax melted from another candle.

She lit the four Sandalwood Candles with a match. Under the faint glow of the flames, she briefly consecrated the carving knife with coarse salt and clean water. Holding the blade, she circled the square table that had become an altar, using the invisible force surging from its tip to create a Wall of Spirituality around the altar, one that could isolate unclean things.

Separated by the Wall of Spirituality, the area around the square table seemed to have become a sealed space, as though all disturbances and impure forces had been excluded.

Angel dripped the blended oil onto the flames of the four candles in turn. As the liquid evaporated instantly with a sizzling sound, a faint fragrance spread through the basement, mixing with the existing sandalwood scent and adding another touch of mystery to the ritual.

Licking her lips, Angel, draped in a black robe and hood like some cultist, lowered her head and recited the incantation she had long since memorized in Hermes Language.

"The Fool that does not belong to this era, the Mysterious Ruler Above the Grey Mist, the Yellow and Black King who governs Good Luck."

"I pray for Your help, I pray for Your favor..."

"...Please convey power to my incantation."

After fully reciting the entire incantation taught by The Fool, Angel felt as if a breeze had risen around her. The flames of the four candles on the table trembled slightly for a moment before settling down again.

With a thought, she raised her right hand and looked at her palm. The Teardrop-shaped Mark, which had become invisible after being imprinted there following the first Tarot Club gathering, surfaced once more, deep-red light flickering within it.

The ritual had succeeded?

Angel hurriedly closed her eyes, clasped her hands together, and prayed softly, "Honorable Mr. Fool, I have completed the ritual you instructed me to perform. Do you have any further instructions?"

After waiting quietly for a moment, she opened her eyes in confusion. The wooden table, food, and candle-made altar remained exactly as before. The breeze around her had also vanished, and nothing seemed to have changed.

"That's it? Do I need to keep waiting for His response?"

Angel did not dare act rashly. Instead, she continued standing before the altar until the four candles had burned down by half and the sandalwood scent in the basement grew increasingly strong.

"Perhaps Mr. Fool is too busy to respond to such trivial matters..."

She shook her head, blew out the candles, and began clearing away the food, which had already gone somewhat cold.

That morning, the elite members of Tingen City's Nighthawks team had all been dispatched to the Underground Trading Market beneath the Evil Dragon Bar in the Docklands, intending to arrest the Wanted Criminal, the Instigator Triss, who had appeared there. After Angel followed Sica Theon to the Police Station to borrow a squad of plainclothes Patrol Officers, she returned to Blackthorn Security Company as ordered by Captain Dunn Smith and waited for good news from the others.

Unexpectedly, the first person to return was the dejected Midnight Poet, Leonard Mitchell. Through his explanation, Angel and the others left behind at the company learned that the arrest operation had failed from the very beginning.

The reason naturally lay in the delicate relationship of cooperation and competition between the various churches.

Generally speaking, Tingen City's three Official Extraordinary factions—the Nighthawks, Punishers, and Heart of Machinery—were in a cooperative relationship. They respectively belonged to the Ruen Kingdom's Three Great Churches: the Goddess of the Night, the Lord of Storms, and the God of Steam and Machinery. Following the principle of their followers' affiliations, they handled cases involving supernatural factors within their own jurisdictions and rarely interfered with one another.

However, the Clover Incident involved dozens of victims, with many followers of all Three Great Churches implicated. In such complicated circumstances, the usual rule was to divide responsibility according to jurisdiction. The Nighthawks were responsible for Tingen City's Golden Banyan District, Western District, and Northern District; Heart of Machinery managed the University District and Tingen's outskirts; and the Punishers handled cases in the Eastern District, Southern District, and Docklands.

This time, the Instigator Triss, who had caused the Clover's passengers to slaughter one another, had appeared in the Docklands. By rights, he should have fallen under the responsibility of the Lord of Storms' Punishers. But Heart of Machinery had its own grounds—the Clover's greatest number of casualties had been followers of the God of Steam and Machinery, and the informant who had spotted Triss's reappearance was an underling cultivated by Heart of Machinery.

Thus, upon receiving the intelligence, Heart of Machinery swiftly dispatched a Beyonder team and even brought along an armed unit equipped with High-Pressure Steam Rifles, determined to arrest the wild Beyonder who had dared attack their followers.

Unexpectedly, the Instigator Triss was exceptionally vigilant. He left the scene before the encirclement could take shape, leaving Heart of Machinery's large force empty-handed. They could only vent their anger on the ordinary people at the Evil Dragon Bar, comparing faces over and over and questioning them for clues.

According to Leonard, by the time he returned, the Underground Market had not yet resumed normal trading. Dunn Smith, who had arrived at the scene with him, had also been pulled into assisting with the investigation of several key suspects and could not get away for the time being.

"Why not try Divination?"

Klein, the Diviner who was also staying behind at the company, was eager to give it a try. Last week, he had helped Angel resolve a commission to recover a ring and earned a 30-pound reward. He had also used Dowsing Rod divination with Leonard Mitchell to rescue a kidnapped boy, receiving another substantial sum of extra income. He had now become quite adept at using Divination.

Leonard shook his head and rejected the idea. "There are team members from Heart of Machinery and the Punishers at the scene, including quite a few Veteran Extraordinary who are skilled at Divination. Two people tried it separately, but both failed. Perhaps there are too few clues, or perhaps other Beyonders interfered with the results."

Divination interference again...

Angel found this rather troublesome. She had thought Divination was an extremely useful way to obtain information in mysticism, but it seemed that all kinds of wild Beyonders had methods of interfering with divination results. Aside from the two commissions Klein had completed, she had yet to see a successful example of Divination.

In any case, after such an act of alerting the enemy, the Official Extraordinary's plan to exploit the gap before Wanted Notices were posted everywhere and capture Triss before he realized he was wanted had completely fallen apart. From now on, they could only conduct widespread patrols and searches based on the Wanted Notices. With luck, they might find clues to Triss's whereabouts. Without it, he would become like those predecessors of his whose Wanted Notices had hung around for years—vanishing without a trace.

Since there was no hope of capturing Triss, Angel lost interest in continuing to wait. Before becoming a formal member, she was not required to take turns guarding Chanis Gate through the night, and her working hours were fairly flexible. Remembering that she still needed to complete the task assigned by The Fool today, she found an excuse to leave Blackthorn Security Company. Before the lunchtime rush began, she bought all the necessary food and successfully completed the ritual in the basement.

Unfortunately, The Fool had not answered her prayer on the spot. Whether that was because the other two Tarot Club members had yet to finish their rituals or because The Fool simply could not be bothered to reply, Angel believed that she had successfully completed the task He had assigned. With a clear conscience, she cleaned up the ritual site and packed away the Feneboote Noodles she had been craving for so long, sending them into her stomach.

This was thrift... Besides, it seemed that many places had customs of eating sacrificial offerings... Angel found herself an excuse.

That afternoon, since she was not yet a formal member, she did not return to Blackthorn Security Company to play cards and idle away the time with the other Nighthawks who had nothing to do. She also did not know whether the Underground Market at the Evil Dragon Bar had reopened. She could only pass the time making charms she had learned from Old Neil. After wasting several sets of materials, she finally succeeded in crafting a Slumber Charm.

This was a charm derived from the power of the Goddess of the Night's domain. Its effect was similar to the power that had put people to sleep after Leonard recited poetry during the battle against Mrs. Sharon. Since it overlapped with the powers of the Nighthawks in the Sleepless sequence, almost no one among the Nighthawks used it.

But for Angel of the Assassin sequence, who lacked this kind of extraordinary ability, it was an excellent addition to her combat strength.

Both sides of the poker-card-sized silver square were engraved with mystical symbols representing the Goddess of the Night, as well as complex Hermes Language incantations. This was also one of the difficulties in crafting charms, and the pierced marks on the discarded silver pieces beside her were the best proof.

On this successfully crafted charm, Angel could sense the tranquil, profound power within it that represented the Goddess of the Night. So long as she infused it with her spirituality and recited the activation incantation, the charm would erupt several seconds later with a force that put nearby creatures to sleep.

Glancing at her pocket watch, she saw that there was still some time before dinner. She carefully put away the successfully crafted Slumber Charm, picked up another fresh piece of silver, and prepared to attempt another charm from the Goddess of the Night's domain: the Dream Charm.