Above the Gray Fog, Klein sat in the high-backed chair belonging to the Fool, lightly tapping the edge of the Ancient Bronze Long Table with his fingers as though contemplating something.
He had just met with Lina, the Demoness of Pleasure, and Shoko, the Instigator who could be considered his believer, using the identity of the Gentleman Thief Black Emperor. From them, he had obtained some of the intelligence he needed.
It turned out that Lina herself had been a "sacrifice," or rather, a token of "sincerity," offered by certain members of the Royal Family in their dealings with the Demoness Sect.
It turned out that after joining the Demoness Sect, she had also participated in human trafficking. However, she had not been particularly enthusiastic about it and had merely left it to the subordinates she developed.
It turned out that Lina had no idea who had been helping her from behind the scenes. She only knew that after leaving Tingen, she had encountered many fortuitous opportunities, and those opportunities had "just so happened" to let her learn about Sealed Artifact 0-08 and obtain an item capable of resisting 0-08's arrangements to a certain extent, along with the corresponding ritual setup.
At first, she had not understood how she had come by those things. She had been extremely wary for a time, believing that she might have been drawn into some conspiracy. But when she discovered that Prince Edessak might also have become a token of "sincerity" in the collusion between the Royal Family and a mysterious organization, and had been arranged by Sealed Artifact 0-08, she realized that she had long since become someone else's pawn—a pawn that needed neither coercion nor direction, one that would willingly act according to the other party's wishes...
However, she did not know