Trap

The bartender of the Red Moon Bar carried a kerosene lamp into the bar's basement.

He pushed the shelves along one side of the basement aside and pulled open the hidden door behind them.

The bartender slipped through the hidden door and restored the shelves to their original position. Behind the door lay a long, narrow tunnel. Holding the kerosene lamp, he walked through it for about a minute before reaching an iron door.

He knocked on the iron door twice, and a wary voice sounded from behind it. "Who is it?"

"It's me, Rawlins." The bartender answered calmly. "Lanevus, a silver-eyed man came to ask me about Beyonder gatherings today, but he didn't have black hair. I told him that if he wanted to find one, he should come to the bar's basement tomorrow night. I've already sent someone to follow him, but I can't guarantee any results."

"I understand." There was a trace of cruelty in Lanevus's voice. "Whether he's the person searching for me or not, he can't be allowed to leave Kuman City alive."

"Then when are you leaving Kuman City?" Impatience seeped into Rawlins's voice. "You've wasted too much of my time and resources. I'm already starting to regret asking you for help back in Intis."

"Don't worry. Once tomorrow comes—once that silver-eyed fellow is dead, I'll leave Sivellas County at once." Lanevus's voice came from behind the door. "Whether he's a real pursuer or bait thrown out to lure me in, he won't catch me!"

"You'd better keep your promise." Rawlins narrowed his eyes, turned around with the kerosene lamp in hand, and left. "I need to get back. The Steam Church seems to have noticed something unusual about me lately. At a sensitive time like this, I can't act too abnormally."

"Why not try drawing them into the investigation and let that silver-eyed idiot from the Numinous Episcopate fight the Steam Heart?" Lanevus sneered, openly disdainful of Rawlins's caution.

"Because the True Creator hasn't eaten my brain yet, unlike yours." Rawlins coldly tossed out those words and left, leaving only Lanevus behind the iron door and his low laughter.

Someone bears me ill will... Aster's boots stopped moving. With a bloodstained hand, he drew a twisted symbol on the windowpane of a closed bakery. "I, in my name, summon the spirit body that wanders the higher realms..."

Aster had little spirituality left after Alidibus's extraction, so he could only use his own spirituality-rich blood as a substitute offering.

An undead spirit wrapped in bandages emerged from the glass's mirrored surface and floated after Aster as he gradually quickened his pace.

"Aloka, help me gather the other undead spirits bound to me by contract. Use my blood as the medium." After quietly issuing the command in the Feysac language and watching the undead spirit Aloka sink back into the mirror image, Aster reached into his coat pocket and removed the Wall of Spirituality sealing Witch's Kiss. At the same time, he gripped the Crawley Family pendant around his neck with one hand and infused it with spirituality.

As spirituality flowed into it, Aster's viewpoint rapidly rose, allowing him to observe his surroundings from an overhead perspective like he was playing a third-person game.

No sign of anyone following me for now, but perhaps this pendant's effective range is too small... After checking for more than ten seconds and finding nothing amiss, Aster stopped using the pendant and turned onto another street.

About five minutes later, a furtive man jogged over to the bakery. He looked around for a moment and only carefully studied the symbol Aster had smeared and ruined after confirming no one was nearby. Taking out several divination tools from his pocket, he began to divine:

"The location of the person who drew a symbol here just now."

Yet to the man's confusion, the divination produced no result.

He changed the wording of the divination several times in succession, but his tools gave him no corresponding imagery or answer.

"What's going on? Didn't the boss say he was just an ordinary person? Is this Anti-Divination?... Does he have Beyonder accomplices?" After repeatedly failing to obtain a result, the man could only choose to leave. While following him earlier, he had suddenly sensed something terrifying and vast spreading from the silver-eyed man, forcing him to keep his distance and hide... By the time he drew close again, he had already lost the silver-eyed man's trail and could only return to report.

"I should head back first... Urgh!... Ugh..." But the instant the Stalker turned around, his head suddenly flew into the air. Blood spraying from his neck dyed his clothes and the ground red.

The headless corpse slowly collapsed onto the deserted street. The severed head rolled twice across the ground before stopping beside a pair of men's leather boots.

A petite girl in ill-fitting men's clothing stood silently by the street.

Rachel Jones.

When Aster had turned into the alley earlier, he had already put on the gloves and transformed himself into a Demoness. He had used Invisibility and remained hidden in the alley, watching the situation nearby.

And what he gained was far more than a Demoness's appearance and abilities. He also gained the corresponding fate and virtual personality!

That was why the Stalker's divination had failed outright. The target of his divination no longer existed in essence!

Rolling up the oversized trouser legs, Rachel slowly dispersed the transparent threads she had summoned.

At Sequence 6, Demonesses of Pleasure could summon transparent threads that were difficult to notice with the naked eye as weapons. They were quite useful whether for binding and restraining enemies or as part of a defensive system, but that was how NPCs used them.

Demoness Pathway players with stronger offensive instincts had developed a combat system centered on enhancing the sharpness of those threads. The Stalker's neck had just been severed by two threads in an instant, and he had been directly beheaded.

At present, only Aster, as a player, knew how to use this special technique. The native Demoness NPCs of this world had yet to develop such a method.

It was not because they lacked the ability to develop it, but because techniques like this consumed too much spirituality and demanded a certain level of skill from the user.

Compared with such a flashy instant kill, Demoness NPCs preferred simple, direct offensive abilities—transparent threads still could not compare to Black Flame and plague in destructive power.

"We can't stay here too long. Take his spirit body, and let's go somewhere else." Rachel grabbed the Stalker's corpse. Her figure gradually faded into the night until she vanished completely. Another undead spirit likewise seized the man's muddled spirit body and slipped into the Spirit World, disappearing from where it stood.

Silent Black Flame ignited the blood on the ground and the severed head, serving as Anti-Divination.

Rachel, having removed Invisibility, appeared at the end of the block. The golden color in her pupils grew increasingly pale. She tossed the Stalker's corpse aside and pressed one hand against the spirit body's head.

"Who told you to follow the silver-eyed man?"

Rachel had not yet removed her disguise, so she could not directly ask, "Why were you following me?"

"It was Boss Rawlins."

The spirit body answered with vacant eyes. Having been taken through the Spirit World by that undead spirit, the Stalker's spirit body was already on the verge of dissipating. Rachel could only ask the most important question. "Why did he tell you to follow the silver-eyed man?"

"I don't know." His spirit body revealed a pained expression, and half of it had already begun to dissipate.

Seeing this, she hurriedly asked her final question. "What were you going to do at the Beyonder gathering Rawlins is holding tomorrow?"

"Attack..." He only managed to spit out one word before his spirit body completely dissipated.

Attack... Rachel fell silent for several seconds, then revealed a mocking smile and turned her gaze toward the Stalker's corpse.

By then, a jet-black gel with a silvery reflective layer had condensed on the corpse. She stepped forward, picked it up, and seemed to be thinking about something.

The blast wave hurled Klein high into the air before slamming him down heavily. Dizzy and nauseated, he struggled to get to his feet and saw Monster Bieber transformed into chunks of rotten, disgusting flesh. He saw Dunn and Lorotta lying more than ten meters away, seemingly unconscious.

Al Hassan, Borgia, and Leonard Mitchell had also fallen to the ground, either groaning in pain or struggling unsuccessfully to rise.

Just as Klein was about to relax, he suddenly spotted something familiar two or three meters away: the box containing 2-049 had stopped rolling, with its cracked side facing the sky.

A thin, brownish arm stretched out from there.

Sealed Artifact... 2-049... Damn it! Klein's heart tightened, and he immediately tried to throw himself in the opposite direction, away from the range of the Sealed Artifact 2-049.

That explosion had actually tossed the iron-black box close to him!

But he was still a step too slow. Klein's head buzzed, and his thoughts immediately became sluggish.

He watched helplessly as the small puppet slowly crawled out through the crack in the box. It grinned at him, revealing a comical smile.

Just as he had seen before, the puppet had yellowish-brown limbs, a painted face, and a pair of silver eyes.

Silver eyes!

Its eyes... were black when it was searching for Ray Bieber just now... What's going on...

Klein's surprise was trapped in his mind by his increasingly sluggish thoughts. He knew very well that if he did not find a way to save himself soon, he would likely never have another chance to investigate the secret of this Silver-Eyed Marionette!

Aster opened the door to his home and took off his coat, hanging it on the coat rack—he had just returned from the post office after mailing a letter to Fors.

Sunlight outside the window spilled beside the mirror, refracting specks of light.

Aster slowly walked toward the mirror while removing his clothes. By the time he reached it, he was completely naked save for the light gray gloves on his hands.

Second by second, Aster watched pinkish-white skin and flesh buds gradually spread from beneath the wrist of his gloved hand, continuously devouring his arms and wrapping upward past his elbows.