Flames in the Divination

Though it was called a tree, it looked more like a golden waterfall that had burst from the depths of the earth and solidified between heaven and earth.

For a moment, Klein could not tell whether it was light or something solid. All he could see was countless flowing golden veins pulsing like blood vessels amid its boundless radiance.

In its shadow, all things were as small as dust, like the fleeting glow of the setting sun.

Just as Klein wondered why his divination had shown him this, he saw the enormous golden tree suddenly catch fire.

It was swiftly engulfed by a distorted flame, burning and collapsing. In an instant, the flames rose and swept toward Klein in the blink of an eye.

Klein hurriedly raised his arms to shield himself, but the next second-

Everything went black before Klein's eyes. The vision from the divination abruptly went out like a television that had been unplugged.

Klein's eyes snapped open.

Before he could think, he found that the "Gray Fog" before him was being rapidly consumed by some special force.

Klein narrowed his eyes and saw that the flames from his divination had actually ignited at the edge of the Gray Fog!

Almost in an instant, the flames had completely enveloped the edge of the Gray Fog.

Klein could only watch it all happen in horror and bewilderment, powerless to stop it.

Fortunately, something unexpected happened a second before the flames could invade the interior of the Gray Fog.

"Darkness" quietly appeared near the strange flames, visibly enveloping both the flames and the Gray Fog.

The Gray Fog, which had been on the defensive all along, finally reacted the instant the "darkness" descended, surging wildly in a counterattack.

In just one breath, it completely drove out both the flames and the darkness.

The Gray Fog filled his vision once more, surrounding the exposed hall again.

"Holy shit, that went too far!"

Having come to his senses, Klein gasped for breath, his beautiful brown eyes now filled only with relief at having survived.

He looked up and around. The Gray Fog was still flowing quietly, as though everything that had just happened had been a nightmare.

If only it were a dream, Klein thought with a shudder. What was more, now that he thought about those flames, the more he considered them, the more they seemed like the Frenzied Flame Mr. Stars had mentioned!

And then there was the "darkness" that had appeared at the critical moment. He did not know whether it had come to put out the fire or do something else.

"Could that have been the Goddess?"

Klein found it hard to imagine. Though it sounded unreasonable, the only one he could think of who might have anything to do with that "darkness" seemed to be the Goddess.

Klein silently recalled the Goddess's Honorific Name: She was Evernight, more exalted than the cosmos and more eternal than eternity...

Klein did not dare recite the rest. Or rather, he did not dare do anything at all now. It had clearly been the simplest of divinations, yet it had brought forth such terrifying existences.

Fortunately, the Gray Fog had proved reliable enough to stop the Outer Deity Mr. Stars had said wanted to destroy the world.

As for whether the darkness really was the Goddess, Klein felt it was better not to look too deeply into it.

At least for now, the Gray Fog was still his greatest trump card.

"Uh..." Klein let out a weary sigh, but still did his best to recall the vision from the divination.

After all, he was not dead, so he might as well use the clues he already had to deduce as much as he could. They seemed rather jumbled, but Klein believed there were only a few possibilities.

The first was a problem with his divination statement: its wording had been imprecise and vague, which was why he had received such a metaphorical vision. The enormous golden tree should have represented what had happened to Leon.

The cult called the Erdtree Church had offered him as a sacrifice to an evil god. That might have been the most significant experience of Leon's life, which fit his divination statement, "Leon's experiences."

That was why, although he had only wanted to look at Leon's past experiences, he had accidentally ended up pointing to the evil god behind a cult.

The appearance of the Frenzied Flame puzzled Klein somewhat, but only for a moment before he quickly deduced the most reasonable explanation.

The flames had not been aimed at him. No matter how he looked at it, they had been directed entirely at the enormous golden tree from the beginning, and he seemed to have been caught in the crossfire...

At that thought, Klein nodded slightly. This was the possibility he considered closest to the truth.

The second possibility was much simpler: everything he had seen was something Leon had experienced.

Perhaps Leon had offended both of them, which was why merely divining him had brought the flames down on Klein.

But no sooner had Klein considered the possibility than he immediately labeled it ridiculous.

How could that be? If Leon really were someone like that, would he have joined the Nighthawks?

Would someone like that argue with me over whether a novel was a mystery or a romance? That's absurd.

It was like having a college roommate who never bought toilet paper and mooched even his shampoo off you for all four years, only to tell you at graduation that he was actually the son of a wealthy family.

That was the sort of plot people would criticize even in a novel. It was better not to dwell on it.

Rather than dwell on Leon, he might as well consider whether he could get the answers he wanted at the Roundtable Hold next Monday.

Was Mr. Stars really, as he suspected, a transmigrator from Earth like himself?

Klein slowly recovered from his sense of crisis, and his thoughts began to wander.

Toward the end of his planning, a mischievous idea suddenly occurred to him. Perhaps he could find a way to let Leon hear the Honorific Name by accident and use it to pull him into the Tarot Club.

The scene would surely be interesting. At the very least, this way he could legitimately get some information from Leon without worrying about getting into trouble.

The following morning, after the two had submitted their reports, they were assigned to continue their lessons in the armory.

Because of Old Neil's situation, Klein was now the teacher, and he taught Leon about mysticism.

The two of them, each harboring his own secrets, tacitly avoided continuing yesterday's conversation and genuinely studied that basic knowledge instead.

Klein had thought they would only be going through the motions, but he now discovered that the man before him really did know very little about mysticism. The little he knew had come from his family's collection of books.

As a result, Leon's knowledge seemed quite uneven to Klein. He knew a great deal about secret organizations, as well as things Klein had never even heard of, yet said he knew nothing about certain fundamentals.

So Klein had no choice but to start from the beginning. Time passed, and noon gradually approached. According to his schedule, he was supposed to go to the Divination Club afterward.

But as he was about to leave, Klein could not resist turning the conversation to Old Neil. Before he could bring him up, however-

The armory door was opened from outside. Dunn Smith strode in, looked around, and said,

"Leon, Klein, both of you, come with me."

"Captain, where are we going?"

With a vague premonition, Klein stood up and asked.

"The people from the cathedral are here." Dunn put on the coat he was carrying and donned his hat as he spoke, without looking back.

"We're going to Tingen City's train station. The senior deacon sent by the Church's headquarters has arrived."