Transaction Complete

After leaving Jack's residence, Aster touched his thinned wallet and suddenly felt a little bleak.

"Being transported here is one thing. Having a panel is certainly nice, but if I had a choice, I'd rather trade the panel for the more than three hundred million gold pounds in my backpack..." Suppressing his complaints, Aster returned to the inn and prepared to rest.

He truly could not remember Old Neil's address. In fact, part of Neil's contaminated residence in the game had already separated from reality and merged with the Spirit World. This meant that the instance location known to players in the game differed from Old Neil's actual residence.

In other words, even having read the plot did him no good. After all, he was not a player of the Mystery Pryer Pathway and had no need to deal with Old Neil. The game plot he had experienced also had little to do with Townsend Neil.

"I need to advance to Spirit Medium as soon as possible..." Lying on the bed, Aster once again felt a faint sense of impatience well up within him.

Only after advancing to Spirit Medium and raising his level to 30 would he have the confidence to achieve his goal.

While using meditation to calm his negative emotions, he stared at the ceiling. Before he knew it, Aster had fallen asleep.

"Susie, what are you doing..." Having just sent away the maid who had come to bother her, Audrey stared at the golden-haired dog sticking out her tongue to lick up the last drop of potion, as though she had turned into a statue.

Susie licked her nose with her pink tongue, looking utterly innocent.

"This ghost ship is yours now." A bishop bowed to Alger. "Praise the Storm!"

"Praise the Storm!" Alger struck his chest with his fist, hiding his impatience on the surface.

Why hasn't that Lover guy come yet...

In a few days, I'll have to put out to sea. If I want to come back for the Ghost Shark's blood then, I'll have to wait a long time again...

"That damned commoner!" The man in a vest abruptly stood up and pointed at the blonde girl's nose as he cursed, "Hmph, foolish child, regret your ignorance and recklessness! Tonight, I'm going to seize Pirikov's mother, wife, and daughter! I'll sell every last one of them to the Red Theater!"

Opposite him, the petite girl in knightly attire dangerously narrowed her eyes.

"Mm, based on my observations, Old Neil should be fine. At most, he's a little unhealthy... But I can't trust my own judgment too much. I'm still a mysticism novice, after all. I'll observe him for a few more days..." After finishing a day of mysticism lessons, Klein closed his Spirit Vision, rose to his feet, and looked at Old Neil, who was putting away the equipment.

During his earlier observation, Old Neil had displayed no abnormalities whatsoever.

Perhaps I'm overthinking it. How could there be such a coincidence?

Letting out a breath, Klein shifted his gaze from Old Neil to the stack of papers in the cabinet covered in simplified Chinese characters. Recalling the high-sequence scenes described in Roselle's diary, his motivation to collect Roselle's diary increased considerably.

Pritz Harbor, The Brave and the Sea tavern.

Although this was one of Loen's busiest and most important ports, the high demand for labor and the opportunities to earn money through physical work still gave Pritz Harbor an enormous, mixed crowd.

"Old Git, I'm warning you. If you dare fart in my tavern again, I'll stuff my socks up your ass!" The burly, gray-haired old man furiously hurled an empty glass bottle in Old Git's direction.

The scrawny old man was driven out of the tavern in a sorry state. Before leaving, he still shouted from the doorway, "Then come at me right now if you've got the guts! Let's see whether you can catch me!" Before he could finish speaking, Old Git scampered away.

"Ptui!" The old man spat heavily in Old Git's direction, then summoned a tavern waiter and told him to clean up the shattered bottle on the floor. Although a farce seemed to have just taken place, most of the surrounding patrons turned a blind eye to it. Some drank and chatted, while others played cards.

"Excuse me, are you Mr. Williams?"

The old man had only just leaned back over the counter when he heard someone calling him. His eyelids twitched as he studied the young woman before him.

She had brown curly hair and looked somewhat nervous. Even in Pritz Harbor's July weather, she was wrapped in a loose trench coat.

"What do you want with me?" Williams snorted unfriendly. "You'd better get straight to the point. Don't waste my time."

After hesitating for several seconds, the woman said at a rapid pace, "I'm here to collect the item the Captain left here!"

The curly-haired woman deliberately lowered her voice, seemingly afraid that someone might discover the secret transaction between them. Williams crossed his arms and squinted at her for several seconds before tossing out a few words. "Wait here."

The woman watched Williams turn and disappear through the wooden door behind the counter. Not long afterward, he pushed the door open again, a metal box clutched in his dry hand.

"Where's your item? This is an exchange." Williams gripped the box in his palm, looking somewhat impatient.

"It's, it's here..." She took a translucent little bottle from her clothes. It contained dark red, almost black blood. The two exchanged their items. Williams held the bottle up to the tavern lights and shook it. Once he confirmed that the contents were fine, he waved at the woman. "You can open it and inspect it too."

"No, no need. I should leave." The woman shook her head, turned, and quickly departed from The Brave and the Sea tavern. The elderly Williams casually stuffed the little bottle of blood into the cabinet beneath the counter and fell into thought as he watched her retreating back.

She was different from the thin, black-haired, black-clothed man with a Backlund accent described by the Captain... Judging by her behavior, this woman was probably only bait he had entrusted to handle the transaction in his place... Forget it. There was no need to investigate. The Captain had also said that person might be dangerous, so I shouldn't try to pry into him.

Giving up on the idea of sending someone to follow the woman who had just come to trade, old Williams continued resting behind the counter.

"Here is what you wanted." The curly-haired woman handed the metal box she had just obtained in the trade to Aster, who wore a pair of black-rimmed glasses.

"No problem." Aster accepted the box and slipped it into his pocket without even opening it for a look. Seeing the curly-haired woman's highly suspicious attire, he could not help but laugh.

"Fors, you really didn't need such a clumsy disguise. It will only make some people suspicious."

"You were the one who kept exaggerating how dangerous this transaction was!" Fors Wall patted her chest in a decidedly unladylike manner, calming her rapidly beating heart. "I thought there would be a fight between Beyonders. I kept choosing escape routes... though I didn't end up needing them."

"If something had gone wrong, you could have escaped with that bracelet of yours, couldn't you?" The cold aura brought by the gravedigger made Aster's smile somewhat sinister.

Fors rolled her eyes and held out her palm toward Aster. "I've already given you one stone! I only have three left now. Each one might let me escape Death's grasp once. How can I casually waste one here?" Around her wrist was a silver bracelet strung with three greenish stones. Their uneven surfaces were full of scorch marks. "Where's the ticket? I need to hurry back. I don't know whether Xio has noticed that I didn't come home on time. She'll definitely ask me a whole bunch of questions!"

"The train leaves in an hour. You'd better hurry." Aster handed her a ticket and glanced at the somewhat gloomy sky. "As for Xio, I don't think she'll notice that you've slipped away to repay my debt again anytime soon."

"Why?" Fors asked in surprise. She took off her trench coat, packed it into a handbag on the ground, then grabbed the bag and jogged toward the nearest steam train station, showing no intention of hearing Aster's answer.

"You'll know when you get home." Aster unhurriedly replied to the already distant Fors, then slowly took a pair of black gloves from his pocket and put them on. He flexed his fingers before clenching them tightly.

Two screams rang out from different places. A figure burning with black flames fell from above. Aster calmly watched the wailing man rolling on the ground and begging for mercy as he increased the supply of spirituality to the Witch's Kiss gloves.

Black flames burned fiercely across the man's body. Soon, he was entirely reduced to ashes by the black fire, leaving only a set of worn-out clothes behind.

Aster swiftly ripped the gloves from his hands, not daring to wear them for even another second. He suddenly felt a trace of coolness on the top of his head. Only when he looked up did he realize that it was about to rain. Raindrops soon soaked the small pile of clothes on the ground. Aster quickly walked out of the alley, glanced at another small pile of clothes beside his leather boots, and frowned slightly. "They're all ordinary people. Not even one Beyonder... They should be a local gang, but the chances of them going to Backlund to take revenge on us are very low, unless their leader is also a Beyonder..."

"There's another guy following Fors. She should be able to handle him. She's the future Magician, after all, and she has a Spirit World Traversal charm she can use... If everything goes normally, that gang enforcer won't even be able to block her path."

"Letting his subordinates follow us carries a lot of malice. It doesn't seem like a test from the Hanged Man. It should just be a simple coincidence." Aster removed a pendant from around his neck and performed a simple pendulum divination. The conclusion was that the three stalkers had followed Fors into this alley entirely by coincidence.

"Then there's no problem... To avoid unforeseen complications, I should quickly prepare the Spirit Medium Potion and seek advancement." Feeling the raindrops growing more numerous, Aster performed a simple anti-divination and dispersed the spirit bodies lingering nearby—this was to prevent Beyonders skilled at Spirit Channeling from discovering his identity. "Fortunately, I brought the other ingredients for the Spirit Medium Potion this time. Otherwise, I'd have to wait until I returned to Tingen before advancing..."