46 · Gone Mad

Gallo controlled the platinum-colored humanoid and extended a finger made of Radiance, gently tapping Sacia on the forehead.

The gesture immediately put Agent Clovin on alert. His gun muzzle rose slightly, but Director Damon stopped him with a stern look. Before they understood this "Spirit Realm entity's" intentions and strength, acting rashly would be extremely dangerous.

The moment his fingertip touched Sacia's brow, Gallo drew on his vast store of knowledge—not information from the world he currently inhabited, but mostly knowledge he had encountered in the previous world, before he crossed over. It was a flood of information utterly unlike the Iron Glory Empire's technological and cultural systems.

His Memory was already at lv2, allowing him to recall many things he had studied before crossing over, though he had never mastered them. He carefully selected a few fragments that seemed profound but were, in truth, chaotic and disorganized: snippets of the mass-energy equivalence formula from relativity mixed with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics; the Big Bang theory spliced together with the Buddhist view of reincarnation; a distorted connection between binary computer code and the ancient hexagrams of the I Ching; even some nonsensical pop song lyrics and internet memes...

Gallo forcibly injected this vast, chaotic stream of knowledge—utterly beyond the comprehension of this era—deep into Sacia's mind using Psionic power.

"Ugh... Ah—!"

Sacia let out a short, pained shriek. Her eyes rolled back, and her body began convulsing violently.

Her gaze grew unfocused and dazed. It was as if Gallo had tossed a compressed information package into her head, its contents vast and disordered, and it had exploded in her mind in an instant. The sheer volume of information made no allowance for whether her brain could fully absorb, categorize, or process it.

Clovin, who was restraining Sacia, felt her body go limp, as if all her bones and strength had been drained away. Gallo slowly bent down to observe her reaction. Across from him, Clovin swallowed and did not dare make a single move that might be misunderstood.

Sacia began mumbling broken words unconsciously. At first, she spoke softly, but soon Clovin, standing beside her, could hear her, though he had no idea what her ravings meant.

"E=mc²...

Wave function collapse...

Singularity...

Amitabha...

010101...

Qian is Heaven, Kun is Earth...

I'll walk alone through the dark alleys...

Odd changes, even stays the same...

PHP is the best language in the world..."

Her expression shifted between ecstatic joy, terror, and deep confusion. Her brain clearly couldn't process this sudden explosion of information, and her logical thinking had been utterly overwhelmed.

To Clovin's senior investigators, these were classic symptoms of a mental breakdown caused by a powerful Psionic attack on the mind—Psionic contamination, or permanent insanity brought on by suddenly acquiring a vast amount of incomprehensible knowledge.

With the Empire's current technology, damage of this kind was almost impossible to reverse.

Agent Damon's expression grew even graver.

This Spirit Realm entity's behavior was impossible to fathom. They couldn't even tell whether it had bestowed a gift of knowledge on Sacia or inflicted a punishment.

Gallo watched Sacia and listened to her mumbling, quite satisfied. This way, even if Clovin had Sacia in custody, they wouldn't be able to get any information about him from her.

If Gallo had just injected information from this world into Sacia's mind, Clovin might have been able to find clues about him in her ravings.

Moreover, the main reason Gallo had chosen to drive Sacia mad rather than kill her was that the channel created by the Red-Robed Cleric's ritual was too narrow to accommodate a projection of his Psionic power. Killing someone outright through a Psionic projection would consume more power than the Red-Robed Cleric could bear.

In other words, the man was too weak. And if Gallo's Psionic projection had killed Sacia outright, it would have seemed too deliberate in Clovin's eyes, as though Gallo were especially worried Clovin's people might find important clues about him through Sacia.

Having done all this, the platinum-colored humanoid withdrew its finger and no longer looked at Sacia, who lay on the ground in a dazed, vacant state.

It slowly turned toward the altar.

By then, the Red-Robed Cleric's life burned like a candle in the wind.

He had fulfilled his mission and summoned the "Holy True Lord" he had worshipped. A look of deep satisfaction rested on his face, but his breath was faint, and the Spirituality burning within him was almost spent.

The platinum-colored humanoid "watched" him silently for a moment. It said nothing and made no further gesture, as if merely confirming that the process had come to an end.

At last, Gallo's Spirituality controlled the humanoid as it slowly surveyed the group of Clovin agents standing ready for action. Its gaze lingered briefly on Damon, but it gave no sign at all—no threat, no communication, no goodwill, no hostility. Only an unfathomable indifference.

Then the platinum-colored figure began to dim and turn transparent, quickly fading away like a thin mist in the morning light.

The immense Psionic pressure that had filled the entire space receded like a tide, as though it had never been there.

A few seconds later, the living room returned to "normal." All that remained was the smell of gunpowder and blood, Sacia lying limp and mindless, the dead High Priest, the cult's survivors still in shock, and a group of Clovin agents with grim expressions.

"Clear the scene immediately! Seal off all information! Take all the survivors away, especially Sacia Taylor. Keep them under the strictest supervision!"

Damon quickly recovered from her shock and issued a string of orders, her voice cold as ice.

She knew that although the operation had destroyed a site where a group had tried to contact a Spirit Realm entity through a sacrificial ritual, its outcome was unquestionably a failure for Clovin.

The Spirit Realm entity had still descended successfully. They hadn't managed to stop it at all, and they might even have caused irreversible damage.

What exactly was that platinum-colored entity that had appeared and vanished so suddenly? What was its purpose?

Though it had quietly disappeared at the end, who could guarantee it had truly returned to the Spirit Realm? Perhaps it had merely found another way to hide in the physical world.

Damon took a deep breath. Everything that had happened during this operation needed to be reported to headquarters immediately.

Far away, outside the Moonlight Cafe on Lubo Lane, Gallo slowly opened his eyes. He picked up the white bread on the table, its surface smeared with butter, and took a bite, as if everything that had just happened were merely a fleeting hallucination.

Only his slightly accelerated heartbeat and the clear memories in his mind proved that it had been real.

It seemed Clovin's people were unlikely to trace anything back to him through Sacia and the others, though there were still a few loose ends.

He wondered how Clovin regarded unaffiliated Psionic users like him.

He had never used Psionic power to hurt an ordinary citizen of the Empire. He had even saved the life of a Clovin Psionic user. Perhaps Clovin actually viewed him favorably.