Kill Lanevus

At the end of the letter, Lanevus also mentioned a "gift" in Tingen City.

"Although I took away your property, I prepared a sufficiently valuable gift for you in Tingen City as compensation." Those were his exact words.

The sentence was utterly baffling. Rachel naturally guessed what the gift Lanevus mentioned in the letter was: most likely Megose, carrying the child of an evil god.

But to Rawlins, it would probably inspire nothing but deep confusion and anger: A gift in Tingen City? What gift? Where was it?

Which meant... this sentence might not have been written for Rawlins at all.

Rachel's eyes lit up as she guessed at Lanevus's scheme. On the surface, the sentence was written in the taunting letter left for Rawlins, but in truth, Lanevus could not ensure who would ultimately see it!

Whether Lanevus had reported me to the official Beyonders or not, I need to get out of here. Kuman City lies on Loen's border, and the Church Beyonder teams stationed here are all elites. Once they set their sights on me, even if I escape, my pursuit of Lanevus will be greatly delayed... Rachel turned and retreated into the hidden passage, running through it at high speed while pondering the implications of Lanevus's letter.

Lanevus was not actually certain that Rawlins could defeat me, because he had no clear understanding of my strength... Besides, if the battle between Rawlins and me dragged on too long, the people who saw the letter might also be the Beyonders who came to search the place. So that so-called "gift in Tingen City" was not left for Rawlins, but for his pursuers!

Rachel quickly crawled back out through the bar's hidden passage. Without paying any attention to the patrons still drinking, she rushed out onto the street before she even had time to recover the box containing Rawlins's belongings and his Beyonder Characteristic.

He was probably trying to use Megose to distract me... But he provided too little information. The official Beyonders might not believe it, and that did not fit his style. So, this sentence may have been added at the last minute! That also meant he had fled in a great hurry and definitely had not left Kuman City yet!

"Lanevus's current location... Lanevus's current location..." Holding the letter in one hand, Rachel ran lightly across the rooftops while taking a lump of black gelatinous substance from a hidden pocket in her dress to perform divination.

This item had come from the stalker Rachel killed yesterday. It corresponded to the Sequence 9 Secrets Suppliant and could somewhat improve Rachel's proficiency and accuracy with certain divination methods. All she had to endure was the occasional chilling sensation in her neck—according to Rachel's divination, its side effect was very likely to constantly give its user the illusion that her neck was about to be cut open.

Thinking of how that unlucky stalker had died, Rachel suddenly felt that being affected by this side effect was simply what she deserved.

As that brief Dream Divination ended, Rachel swiftly determined Lanevus's current location. She controlled transparent threads that continuously stretched across the surrounding buildings, pulling herself along the rooftops like Spider-Man.

After being affected by 2-049, Klein had anxiously considered ways to escape. In the end, he tried taking four steps backward and entered above the Gray Fog.

When he returned to reality from above the Gray Fog, Klein's body finally returned to normal. Through disguise and acting, he deceived the Secret Order's enemies and successfully turned the situation around.

"Mr. Hassen, is there anything you need me to do?" Klein hurried over to Al Hassen, who was too severely injured to stand, and crouched down to ask.

"That Monster was really strong. Good thing it had a weakness... Hm...?" Al Hassen caught his breath, raised his head, and was about to say something to Klein when he abruptly froze.

Klein noticed the strange look in his eyes. He instinctively glanced around and, after confirming there was no danger, asked in confusion, "Mr. Hassen, is there something on my face?"

In Al Hassen's eyes were reflected Klein's pupils, which had somehow turned silver.

"This should be enough to shake that guy..." On a small path beside the border forest, Lanevus lightly pressed a hand to his temple. His face had been disguised so thoroughly that he was nearly unrecognizable, yet his expression remained calm as he drove the carriage, though unease lingered faintly in his heart.

The provocative letter he left behind had actually only been for the purpose of acting as a Swindler. Most of its contents were false. For example, he had not had time to take Rawlins's property away; likewise, the place he reported to the official Beyonders was not his own residence, but Rawlins's Red Moon Bar...

Because he had fled too hastily, he had been unable to take all his valuables. Fortunately, he had anticipated this and had already prepared a route to escape to Intis.

The carriage Lanevus drove was loaded with goods being smuggled into Intis, while he was currently playing nothing more than an ignorant cart driver. Even if the army caught him, they would not keep him under especially tight guard. With a Swindler's abilities, Lanevus was quite confident he could escape from confinement.

However, fate did not seem to favor him.

A piercing sound rang beside him. In a single instant, the two horses pulling the carriage had their necks tugged by invisible threads, forcing them toward the trees beside the road. Their cries of agony stabbed into Lanevus's eardrums.

Seeing the carriage about to overturn, he immediately crouched slightly and protected his head. While ensuring his safety as much as possible, he pretended to be terrified and crawled beneath the horses.

As he screamed, Lanevus shouted in tearful Intisian, "Don't, don't kill me! Someone paid me to do this!"

But his begging and weakness were useless. The next second, invisible threads wound around his body, and black flames rapidly began to consume him.

A Demoness?!

An accomplice of that silver-eyed man from the Numinous Episcopate? Or another pursuer?

Damn it, this Lunatic intended to kill me from the beginning. I can't resist at all—I can't even take out a charm... Lanevus could only writhe desperately on the grass as black flames burned across his body. This was also the second time he had so directly realized the power of high-ranking Beyonders—his prideful eloquence and talent for deception were utterly useless before absolute strength.

Without even giving him a chance to cling to life, a transparent thread hooked around his neck while he was still struggling and screaming.

As the spiritual energy supplied to it diminished, the transparent thread became finer and sharper.

With a dull thud, Lanevus's head separated from his body.

Large amounts of black flames also burned across the carriage. A Demoness's flames burned spiritual energy as fuel, so they had no destructive effect on materials and objects without spirituality.

Rachel dispelled her Invisibility and jumped down from a tree, rolling across the ground before getting to her feet—Witch's Kiss had not granted her the Assassin's Featherfall ability.

She had chased all the way from Kuman City's East Borough to the outskirts near Intis, and naturally, she had not relied solely on her own two legs. Rachel had directly commandeered a horse from a nearby inn and ridden it here. After quickly confirming through divination that Lanevus was in the carriage ahead, she decisively sent out a spirit body to scout the carriage. She then leaped from the horse and used the Demoness's spider silk to swiftly travel between the roadside trees, catching up to the carriage.

But Rachel quickly received an abnormal signal. The scouting spirit body sent back information: there was only one driver in the carriage, and no other living person.

Rachel's first reaction was that she had been deceived. She instinctively stopped the carriage, intending to force the driver to reveal Lanevus's location, but the man's screams stirred her memories. Even though he was speaking Intisian, she could tell that this was Lanevus's voice!

It could not be helped. Back then, their party had wiped so many times in the dungeon that she could not have been more familiar with Lanevus's voice.

Combined with the information that there was no one else in the carriage, if she still could not guess that this was Lanevus, Rachel might as well join the Aurora Order and believe in the True Creator.

Tormented countless times in the dungeon by Lanevus reciting his lines, Rachel's anger surged. She unleashed a full barrage of attacks and killed the driver on the spot.

Standing before the corpse, Rachel quickly began a pendulum divination:

"The deceased is Lanevus."

"The deceased is Lanevus."...

After the pendulum gave an affirmative response, Rachel finally breathed a sigh of relief, as though a massive stone had been lifted from her heart.

That lunatic who had caused chaos in the game and killed countless civilians and Beyonders was finally dead. She no longer needed to worry about him endangering her life.

Covering her throbbing forehead, Rachel took a deep breath. At last, exhaustion appeared on her face. She had repeatedly used Beyonder Abilities to travel all the way here and had not rested properly at all. On top of that, she had fought Rawlins not long ago... Her combat style had always been to end fights quickly without considering how much spiritual energy she expended—in simple terms, she would unleash a burst, then stop. If the opponent died, everyone was happy; if the opponent did not die, she would be out of energy. If she was out of energy, she would run, then return to fight once her energy had recovered.

So, she truly had very little spiritual energy left at the moment.

With a wave of her arm, Rachel extinguished the black flames burning on the carriage. She instinctively wanted to remove the Witch's Kiss gloves, but she could not bear the consequences of taking them off. Once she changed back into Aster, there were no men's clothes for him to wear here.

Although Aster's thick skin meant wearing women's clothing would not embarrass him much, the problem was that this outfit was not only expensive, but also too small—at nearly one meter ninety tall, there was no way Aster could fit into Rachel's women's clothes, made for someone under one meter sixty.