Too Late

Finding Black Wolf was much easier than finding Rawlins.

With the experience from last time, Aster quickly learned Black Wolf's whereabouts from a drunk in the bar.

Black Wolf, who had been sought out by Rachel, very intelligently agreed to help her kill Rawlins. Aside from his fear of Rachel, he also coveted the Beyonder gathering under Rawlins's control—he had tried several times to hold Beyonder gatherings himself, but had always failed to get them off the ground because he lacked connections and the like.

Thus, after a brief one-sided exchange, Black Wolf arrived outside the Red Moon Bar ahead of time, preparing to help Rachel kill Rawlins.

He naturally had his own ulterior motives, but Rachel did not care about Black Wolf's little schemes.

Based on the information she had obtained during her brief contact with Black Wolf, Rachel judged that he was at most Sequence 8, and the kind of low-Sequence Beyonder whose combat abilities had not improved much.

Seeing that Black Wolf knew how to read the situation and had not raised the slightest objection, Rachel could not be bothered to threaten him further.

Among the undead under her control was one that could accelerate the extraction of Beyonder Characteristics by possessing a corpse. As that undead entered Rawlins's body, black characteristics soon began to solidify on the dagger in his hand, causing it to radiate a sense of defilement.

Rachel raised her hand slightly, making the dagger fly into it. Then her entire person vanished.

"What a terrifying Beyonder... I wonder what Sequence she is... Rawlins seemed to mention a Demoness of Pleasure and a Demoness of Affliction just now... Could those be Sequence names?" Black Wolf shuddered slightly as he watched the terrifying woman disappear before him.

He took a deep breath, hurried forward, and pulled a large saw knife from his backpack, dismembering Rawlins's corpse.

Black Wolf was a Sequence 8 Robot. When doing this kind of work, his hands were always quick and steady.

As he cut up Rawlins's corpse, Black Wolf finally relaxed a little. In fact, when facing Miss Rachel Jones just now, he had been suppressing immense fear and unease the entire time.

He could sense that beneath Rachel's petite body lurked something utterly terrifying and indescribable!

If I see it, I'll definitely die. I'll absolutely die... After wiping the cold sweat from his brow, the rugged-looking middle-aged man shuddered again.

What Rachel took away was not only Rawlins's Beyonder Characteristic, but also his spirit body. In fact, she had not gone far at all. She had directly used transparent threads to pull herself up to the second floor of the bar and returned to Rawlins's room.

Rachel carefully placed Rawlins's Beyonder Characteristic on the table. She had not yet figured out the dagger's negative effects and did not dare hold it for long. As for brief contact, she believed there would be no problem. Based on the information obtained from the battle just now, Rachel could determine that his Sequence should be the Sequence 7 Serial Killer of the Devil Pathway. Given Rawlins's level, the negative effects of the item produced after his death would not be beyond what she could bear.

The Devil Pathway was likewise a very popular profession among players, but as a Sequence 7, Serial Killers were not difficult to deal with. They generally focused on only two abilities: the Sequence 8 Broken Wing Angel's Broken Wing and the Sequence 7 Serial Killer's Frenzied Feast.

Broken Wing could reduce an opponent's speed and increase the pressure they had to endure. Frenzied Feast allowed a Serial Killer to gain temporary enhanced strength through killing. It could simply be understood as a Killing Book.

In the game, Frenzied Feast was described as: [For every humanoid creature killed within 30 m of you, all your attributes increase by 1% of their initial values for 1 minute. Stacks, but the duration cannot be refreshed.]

This ability had also been weakened. When Frenzied Feast was used by an NPC, a certain amount of restrained killing was enough to grant physical abilities rivaling those of some mid-Sequence Beyonders. In a player's hands, however, it required an enormous amount of monster grinding to stack enough attributes.

Still, players could always develop special ways to use abilities. Some Serial Killers had worked out a method of gathering monsters: lure a large number of wild monsters together, then wipe them out with one area-of-effect attack. This could raise a target player's strength to a terrifying level in an instant. Even if it lasted only a minute, it was enough to accomplish many things.

Besides that, Serial Killers possessed some strange abilities that could only be obtained by sacrificing to a Devil. The most iconic one, and the most common among NPCs, was the True Name Curse.

Aster had seen this ability countless times already and had plenty of tricks for avoiding the trouble caused by the True Name Curse. Rawlins's imagination could not compare with that of the players. Compared with those shameless players who triggered True Name Curses through all sorts of linguistic traps, he was far behind.

Clutching the pendant around his neck, Aster quickly released his spirituality and formed a Wall of Spirituality that sealed the room.

"Why did you have someone follow the Silver Eyes man?" Rachel asked Rawlins's spirit body her first question.

"Lanevus told me to do it." His spirit body's eyes were blank.

Lanevus!

What a coincidence!

Rachel had matured considerably by now. Casting aside her delight, the first thing she actually thought of was, Could this be a coincidence arranged by someone?

"Where is he?" Suppressing her raised brows, Rachel asked her second question.

Regardless of whether it was a coincidence, this was an open scheme, because Rachel would absolutely not give up investigating Lanevus's whereabouts.

"Number 34 Amanda Street. There is a secret passage in the basement of the Red Moon Bar that leads directly to his residence." Rawlins's spirit body answered mechanically.

"What is his current condition?" Rachel asked her third question, and the answer she received was fairly satisfactory:

"His condition is strange. He seems unable to control himself." Rawlins's spirit body's mouth opened and closed. "Sometimes he gives me a very powerful feeling. At other times, he makes me feel that he is only a Sequence 8."

"At today's Beyonder gathering, did you set a trap for the Silver Eyes pursuer?" Rachel began asking some less important questions.

"Yes." Rawlins's spirit body spoke calmly. "I had my subordinates lie in wait at the gathering, preparing to assassinate that Silver Eyes man. They were Juvinal, Henei..."

"What did you have in your box? Were there any dangerous items?"

"My spare clothes, the wealth I accumulated, and..."

Rachel asked a few more questions, and Rawlins's spirit body finally began to dissipate. She did not linger there. After simply using the Wall of Spirituality as a seal, she activated Invisibility and followed the secret passage she had learned of from Rawlins into the tunnel leading to Lanevus's safe house.

The tunnel was narrow and pitch-black, but this had no effect on Rachel at all. She was less than 1.6 meters tall and could move freely in the cramped space. As for the darkness, it was even less of a problem—the Spirit Medium Pathway granted night vision.

Rachel had already maintained her Demoness form while doing many things earlier, and all of them had taken time. She did not dare stroll over leisurely anymore. She ran quickly through the tunnel and reached its end—a metal door—in less than half a minute.

The Red Moon Bar and Number 34 Amanda Street were not very far apart. Combined with the speed from the Demoness Pathway that Rachel had obtained from the gloves, the journey took her very little time.

She could not afford to waste time. Once she maintained her Demoness state for more than three hours, her mind would be permanently influenced by the artificial personality residing in the gloves. By now, more than half the available time had already passed.

"There's danger behind the door. There's danger behind the door..." Rachel brushed her drifting curls behind her head, pulled the pendant from her chest, and pressed one hand against the door as she quickly performed a divination. The result, however, was beyond her expectations: the pendant rotated counterclockwise.

This meant there was no danger behind the door!

But how was that possible? How could there be no danger in a place where Lanevus had lived?

Rachel, whose spirituality had once been contaminated by the True Creator at the hotel, instinctively thought that Lanevus was interfering with her divination. But she quickly realized that this possibility was very low.

Given the level Rachel had attained, how could a Sequence 8 Swindler like Lanevus interfere with her divination? And if he had already been devoured by the True Creator's divinity within him, how could that mad god, with its arrogance, possibly interfere with her divination?

Rachel looked behind her and signaled for an undead spirit to pass through the wall and investigate whether there was any danger in the room.

About a minute later, the undead spirit sent a message back through the contract: "There is no danger. There are no living beings here, either."

"No living beings?!" She immediately thought of the reason. Taking a deep breath, Rachel pulled back her fist, tensed her entire body, twisted her waist and hips, and punched the metal door.

With a muffled bang, Rachel covered her swollen, reddened fist with tears in her eyes and squeezed through the gap in the blasted-open door.

Sure enough, the simply furnished rental apartment was empty. It seemed no one had ever lived there. There was only a letter on the coffee table.

Suppressing her frustrated anger, Rachel raised her hand and drew the letter into it. The moment she opened the envelope, a line of writing caught her eye:

"Rawlins, my dear and foolish friend, forgive me for leaving without saying goodbye. When you refused to lure the Steam Heart here, I already saw through your thoughts: you must have wanted to betray the contract and slip away early, right? It doesn't matter, because I had the same thought! Hahahahaha..."

"What an irritating fellow..." Narrowing her eyes, Rachel skimmed through the letter at a glance:

"You no longer need to worry about how to take away the wealth you hid in Sivellas County, because kind-hearted Lanevus has already helped you transfer it ahead of time. Ah, I imagine that by the time you read this, you should already have suffered a fairly serious injury, right? You'd better flee quickly, because the official Beyonders will soon surround this place. I'm truly worried about your safety... You ask how I know? Because I'm the one who reported that a Beyonder was hiding here!"