Tingen, the Klein household, kitchen.
A young man with a somewhat scholarly air was cooking.
He had black hair and brown eyes, wore an off-white linen shirt and an apron, and had a slender build, ordinary features, and deep-set contours.
His name was Klein Moretti.
Looking at the pot before him, Klein opened the jar in his hand, scooped out a spoonful of lard, tossed it into the pot, and casually put the lid on.
"Alright, now I just need to let it stew for twenty minutes," Klein muttered to himself.
He was making tender peas stewed with lamb.
Klein walked out of the kitchen, untied his apron, and planned to sit on the sofa and rest for a while.
Suddenly, he sensed a faint sound by his ears and thought he saw a crimson flash before his eyes.
"Hm? What was that?" Klein paused, then looked around in confusion.
But there was nothing beside him.
At that moment, he remembered the Tarot Club he had established today.
Klein instinctively felt that it might be related to the mysterious palace Above the Gray Fog.
Since he happened to have some time, he simply set down his scarf, pushed open the door to his room, casually shut and locked it, then walked four steps backward, reciting a phrase with every step.
"The Immortal Venerable of Blessings from Heaven and Earth, the Heavenly Lord of Blessings from Heaven and Earth, God Almighty of Blessings from Heaven and Earth, the Celestial Worthy of Blessings from Heaven and Earth."
The next moment, Klein felt his soul leave his body and rapidly rise, passing through layers upon layers of mad ravings before arriving Above the Gray Fog.
The towering, magnificent palace stood quietly there. The ancient, mottled bronze long table and twenty-two high-backed chairs had not changed in the slightest.
Klein appeared directly at the head of the table, looking down at the bronze table before him and at the crimson stars within the Gray Fog.
He discovered that one dark crimson star was faintly contracting and expanding.
Klein looked curiously at the star. As a veteran internet user, having a red dot in front of him that he could not click was truly torturous.
So, he tentatively reached out and lightly tapped it.
This time, he did not drag it with the same force as when he had accidentally touched the two crimson stars representing Justice and the Hanged Man. He merely gave it a light tap.
The crimson star immediately expanded, and through the crimson light, Klein vaguely saw a figure.
He narrowed his eyes, but he could not see clearly at all. He could only make out a blurry human shape, and judging from the rough outline, it was probably a man.
He seemed to be a tattooed man as well, with strips of fluorescent tattoos across his body.
As for anything more detailed—what the person looked like and what he was doing—Klein could not make it out clearly.
Under Klein's gaze, the man seemed to raise a cup, tilt back his head, and drink what was inside.
Was this the Potion Mr. Hanged Man and Miss Justice had mentioned during their conversation?
Klein thought.
The next moment, he noticed a change in the scene.
After the man drank the Potion, Klein saw a pair of eyes appear before him.
The man seemed to freeze, failing to react in time as he stood blankly in place for several seconds.
Then, the man tore off a mask hanging from the side of his face and slapped it toward the eyes before him.
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
Aboard the Clover, in Morien's room.
Morien tilted his head back. The Potion slid into his mouth like an entire block of jelly, passed down his throat and into his stomach, leaving not a trace on the walls of the cup.
The next instant, a strange sensation immediately filled Morien's entire body, especially his eyes.
Morien lowered his head, rolled his eyes, and looked around.
He suddenly discovered that his surroundings had become incomparably clear in his eyes, while his ears had become extraordinarily sensitive.
All kinds of information flooded into his eyes. Every corner within his sight was crystal clear; meanwhile, hazy whispers of unknown origin and meaning drifted into his ears.
When he looked toward the wall beside him, Morien noticed that many colors had appeared on it.
They were outlines of human figures, constantly moving.
Morien knew that he was directly seeing the spirit bodies of the passengers next door through the wall.
Perhaps not just the ones next door.
Maybe even the people next door to them.
Morien continued observing and found that there were not only spirits of the living here; there were even more spirits of the dead aboard this ship.
That was understandable. After all, the Clover had just experienced a massive riot not long ago, and more people had died than remained alive.
As the scene before him grew clearer and clearer, Morien's eyes began to ache and his head started throbbing.
At the same time, what Morien saw began to lag. He tried shifting his vision and found that although the image before him was exceptionally clear, it was terribly choppy.
The sense of familiarity was rather strong. Morien remembered how, as a child in his previous life, he had always liked cranking game graphics to the highest setting and maxing out all the special effects.
But the computer he had used was an old one his family had bought when they were young, older than little Morien himself had been at the time.
The feeling of maxing out the graphics while the computer could not keep up was very similar to what he was experiencing now.
"Damn, this optimization is awful." Morien raised a hand, pinched the bridge of his nose, and closed his eyes, intending to first calm the overly active Spirituality caused by his recent advancement.
He quickly sketched a mask in his mind.
This was the Meditation method of this world.
First, quickly imagine something common, simple, and easy. Then, once the image took shape, empty the mind and replace the initial imagined object with something that did not exist in this world, something imagined out of thin air.
The mask quickly took shape, and Morien swiftly replaced the imagined mask.
But what to use as a replacement gave Morien some trouble.
After all, he had difficulty making choices.
"Something nonexistent... something nonexistent..."
Morien suddenly had an idea and quickly sketched a face in his mind.
It was the face of "Cuttlefish That Loves Diving," the author of the original Lord of Mysteries novel.
"This definitely doesn't exist in this world, right?"
Morien mused.
But he soon found that Cuttlefish's face would not work, because there really seemed to be a character in this world similar to Cuttlefish.
A round face, small eyes, someone who looked easy to talk to, with a shy personality like a girl's...
Wasn't that Tris?
So Tris was Cuttlefish's counterpart all along.
Seeing that Meditation on Tris would not work, Morien changed his approach.
He imagined a pile of toys made up of masks, playing cards, balls, dolls, and other objects, along with a pitch-black figure hidden behind those toys.
Although all these were fairly common things in this world, the thing formed by combining them did not exist in this world.
He directly used Meditation on the Aeon of Elation.
Sure enough, this time, he succeeded.
His Spirituality gradually drew in, and Morien slowly let out a breath.
He opened his eyes again...
Then, he saw a pair of transparent, nearly illusory eyes without eyelashes, cold and devoid of emotion.
Those nearly unreal eyes were quietly watching him.