"Clang, clang..."
The deep, mighty tolling of bells echoed through Saint Millon beneath the twilight sky, reaching everyone's ears with perfect clarity. Coachmen on the streets, drunkards in taverns, nobles chatting in salons... everyone instinctively looked up toward the source of the sound.
At the top of the towering bell tower in the center of the Imperial Palace, a great bronze bell rang continuously, only falling silent after several dozen seconds.
"Thirty-three tolls in all..."
After counting the tolls, Luther could not help shaking his head.
It seemed the old emperor really was dead.
According to Feysac tradition, when their emperor died, the great bronze bell in the palace's bell tower would toll thirty-three times to inform the entire city. He had still been a step too late. He had failed to stop Ince Zangwill, allowing events to unfold exactly as Ivanova had anticipated.
Looks like something happened on Sophia's end...
The thought crossed Luther's mind.
Holding the notebook, he felt there might still be more written farther back, so he turned another page. A large block of writing in Loenese immediately met his eyes.
As Luther read those lines, his gaze froze:
"Ivanova Einhorn successfully made use of Ince Zangwill, but she will pay a price for it in return!" The handwriting was extremely messy, looking as though Ince Zangwill had hastily scrawled it while fleeing.
The writing below read:
"To accomplish her goal, Ivanova Einhorn has been planning for many years. But precisely because of this obsession, subtle distortions have developed in her psyche. These problems were so slight that they were usually difficult to detect, yet at this moment, they will all erupt at once!"
"For these reasons, together with certain inexplicable coincidences, Ivanova is about to lose control and degenerate into a distorted monster!"
These words