My eyes!

Lorne returned to the Azure Hotel, his face brimming with indescribable excitement.

"Lucky, I really did pick the right name for you. I'm rich!" Lorne excitedly lifted Orange Cat and spun around a few times.

"Meow~"

Only when Lucky looked displeased did Lorne gently set her down on the bed.

Stroking her head, Lorne muttered excitedly to himself, "And here I went to all the trouble of making a detailed plan.

"I never thought it would be this easy."

The man he had met today, who called himself the Five of Clubs, hosted a Beyonder gathering and had taken him straight to a secret meeting.

He hadn't needed to search for any underground market at all. He had reached his goal in one step.

With this experience, he had also successfully entered the circle, which would make buying and selling ingredients and formulas much easier in the future.

What he hadn't expected was that the Five of Clubs seemed to possess some kind of appraisal ability and had successfully verified that his formulas were genuine.

It was precisely this verification that had made selling Lorne's potion formulas go so smoothly.

Today, he had successfully sold the formulas for Sequence 9 Seer and Sequence 8 Clown.

Lorne hadn't dared to sell the Sequence 7 Magician formula. After all, one person selling three potion formulas from the same pathway at once would draw far too much attention.

Besides, Sequence 7 should already count as a relatively rare level. Selling it outright might attract the authorities' attention.

Even so, after deducting the commission, the two formulas had fetched 650 pounds.

He had originally planned to offer the Monster potion formula as well, but remembering that he himself was a Monster, he had abandoned the idea to keep others from discovering his secrets.

650 pounds was already enough to cover his everyday expenses. His only regret was that he hadn't obtained any clues about Sequence 8 of the Monster pathway at the gathering.

"Still, if I can sell the formulas in Tingen, I should be able to sell them again once I return to Backlund." Lorne had an idea.

There was no reason a potion formula could only be sold once.

He didn't intend to sell them again in Tingen, partly because of the buyers' requirements, and partly because selling the same thing twice in the same area felt rather underhanded.

So he planned to find another opportunity to sell them after returning to Backlund.

"But if the formulas are genuine, then that notebook..." Thinking of his lost notebook, Lorne couldn't help sighing.

"I remember the Divination Club was somewhere around here."

After earning his money and enjoying a lavish lunch, Lorne had wandered onto the street where the Divination Club was located.

"The results of my last divination were a little mysterious. Should I give it another try?"

Before, he hadn't had the money, so there was nothing he could do. Now that he did, perhaps he could try another divination and see whether he could get any guidance... With that thought, Lorne pushed open the door and entered the club.

Meanwhile, inside the Divination Club.

Klein had his Spirit Vision activated. As a newcomer who had only just become a Seer, he still found this way of seeing things novel, particularly somewhere as steeped in mysticism as the Divination Club.

To verify the contents of Roselle's Diary, he had made a special trip to the Divination Club today to experience having someone else perform a divination for him.

Just as he was looking around with his Spirit Vision, the door to the Divination Club opened.

A brown-haired young man with an unusual air about him walked through the entrance, and Klein instinctively looked over.

But before he could make out the young man's face...

Then...

"Ah! My eyes!" Klein immediately covered his eyes and sank into a half crouch.

Tears streamed uncontrollably down his face, his expression contorted in pain.

The instant his gaze had fallen on that person, his pupils had dilated to their limit. It felt as though a powerful light had shone straight into his eyes, making them ache terribly.

"What's wrong with him?"

"Something seems off about his spirituality."

Noticing the young man covering his eyes nearby, Lorne curiously activated his Spirit Vision and turned his gaze toward him.

"What?"

"My eyes!"

"Why can't I see clearly anymore?"

Lorne suddenly discovered that his vision seemed to have acquired a strange filter. Everything around him had become unreal, as though he had been plunged into a layer of gray fog.

Like Klein, he lowered his head and covered his eyes.

Two panicking young men covering their eyes had appeared inside the Divination Club at the same time, drawing everyone's attention.

"Performance art?"

"Are they having some kind of episode?"

"Have they gone mad?"

Feeling that everyone around him was once again treating him like a weirdo, Lorne relied on his intuition and staggered out through the Divination Club's front door.

He left Klein alone, flustered beneath everyone's stares.

"Damn it. I thought he was from the Secret Order, but now it looks like he wasn't." Still looking shaken, the man sat on the ground, cursing as he tended to his wounds.

"Are you all right? That was awfully reckless of you." His companion spoke with concern.

"Well, he was acting so suspiciously, and his spirituality was reacting so strangely."

"I'm not in great shape. Do a divination on his background," the man instructed his companion, who was a Seer.

A few minutes passed.

"Well?" he asked.

"He used to belong to the School of Life, but recently defected to the Rose School. He's currently on the run."

As a Seer, she was quite adept at obtaining information like this.

"He seems to have mistaken us for people sent to hunt him down."

Hearing this, the man grew curious and asked, "Then what are his pathway and Sequence?"

"He's a Sequence 8 Robot of the Monster pathway," the Seer answered with certainty.

"Sequence 8, huh? The same Sequence as me. No wonder he was so perceptive."

"Speaking of which, why hasn't his Beyonder characteristic separated out yet?" He looked at the corpse beside them, his expression puzzled.

This Beyonder had been dead for some time. By all rights, his Beyonder characteristic should already have separated out on its own.

The two grew anxious. The authorities could arrive at any moment, and if the Church discovered them, they would be in serious trouble.

"Wait, it looks like it's about to separate out," the Seer said.

Something faintly translucent

began to appear on the corpse, drawing both their gazes.

But just then...

"Someone's coming."

"This feeling... it's a Beyonder!"

"What do we do? It's probably someone from the authorities." The Seer sounded anxious.

Neither of them was in good condition, and they had no confidence in taking on another official Beyonder.

Looking at the characteristic on the corpse, which had yet to separate out completely, her companion gritted his teeth and said,

"Forget it. Let's retreat for now."

"I suddenly feel so much lighter!"

Lorne felt better than ever. After the strange episode of partial blindness that afternoon, his body felt lighter than it ever had before.

The strange sensation that had once lingered inside his body had also vanished completely.

"Is this what they call a blessing in disguise?" Lorne muttered to himself.

"Huh? Why are there such chaotic footsteps in this alley?"

Looking toward the alley beside him, Lorne walked inside out of curiosity.