Even Though Guidance Has Long Been Broken, Please Become ■■■■■

In a daze, Klein felt as though he had returned Above the Gray Fog, but beyond the fog was not the ancient palace he knew so well.

Instead, there was the Erdtree, beautiful beyond compare, its countless brilliant rays falling upon him and the ground beneath his feet.

It seemed as though heaven and earth would grow ever more beautiful as the tree flourished, but then a crisp shattering sound rang out, and everything before Klein's eyes abruptly went dark.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw that he had become a resurrected corpse at the foot of the tree, waking in a pitch-black dungeon.

His body swayed as he stepped through a dark chamber piled high with corpses, heading toward the light in the distance. Though he was in a world steeped in decay, he felt no emotion whatsoever.

Only a deathly calm carried him forward. He passed through a pitch-black tunnel and rode an elevator whose workings he did not understand, until he came upon a woman who had been dead for a long time, just before the exit.

He had expected to ignore her as he always did, but his body walked toward the dust-covered corpse of its own accord.

The moment his fingertips touched it, a line of text surfaced in his mind.

[Even though guidance has long been broken, please become ■■■■■]

When his consciousness saw the final five characters appear, Klein felt his spirit body assailed by countless pieces of incomprehensible information.

Not even the dream could stop the piercing pain that reached deep into his soul. The instant Klein passed out in the dream-

He woke up in reality.

He recalled everything in the dream. It had been so real that he could reproduce every detail, one by one. Yet he could not, for the life of him, remember the last few characters of that final sentence.

As his senses gradually returned, Klein felt what seemed to be a blanket covering his forehead. His vigilance kept him from getting up in a hurry.

He worked to relax his body, making it seem as though he were still unconscious. He smelled the aroma of black tea drifting through the air and faintly heard two people talking.

"I didn't expect to see you there, Mr. Kaspar," a gentle, resonant voice said.

"Uh, to be honest, Mr. Azik Eggers, I have no recollection of you."

Looking at the middle-aged man before him, who was of average build, had bronze skin, and had addressed him by his surname right away, Leon rubbed the spot between his brows and spoke somewhat apologetically.

"If you hadn't politely introduced yourself, I wouldn't even be able to address you by your surname."

"That's perfectly normal, Mr. Kaspar. I know of you, but you don't know me." The man named Azik Eggers nodded gently in understanding.

He smoothed over what could have been an awkward situation with great gentility, then continued, "I remember it was a salon hosted by a noblewoman. The hostess introduced you to everyone separately, calling you a famous detective."

"And I was just a nobody in the audience who quietly committed you to memory."

But actually, that was just a title made up on the spot to make it easier for me to act. The only reason she was willing to lend me the backing of her noble status was to make it easier to find evidence of her husband's infidelity, so she could get a larger share of his property.

Leon leafed through his predecessor's memories, feeling somewhat embarrassed, but kept his face calm.

"You're too modest, Mr. Azik Eggers. It's an honor to meet you. Please, just call me Leon. Anyone who can remember a stranger after such a brief encounter could hardly be a nobody, no matter their field."

"The honor is mine, too. It's just that our auras seem to have inadvertently affected our mutual friend."

Azik smiled, poured black tea at just the right temperature into the empty teacup in front of Klein, and spoke to the person whose face was covered by the blanket.

"It's just the right temperature. Are you sure you don't want to try your favorite Xibo Black Tea?"

"Klein, next time you eavesdrop, remember to slow your heartbeat," Leon chimed in.

Realizing how ridiculous it was to pretend to sleep in front of the two of them, Klein sat bolt upright, quickly picked up the teacup on the table, and hid most of his face behind it to ease his embarrassment.

Looking at the simple, austere furnishings and the soft sofa around him, he concluded that, as expected, this was Mr. Azik's home.

I think I passed out. So why am I at Mr. Azik's home?

Klein drank the sweet, refreshing black tea as information and the dream he had while unconscious flashed wildly through his mind.

"The two of us carried you back here," Leon said, seemingly having read Klein's question.

"Then..." Klein was just about to say that would attract attention when he heard Leon speak again.

"Dragging an unconscious person out of a bar is perfectly normal. Not even the police stopped to ask us about it along the way."

"All right..." Klein was left speechless, but then another thought occurred to him.

"Then what's going on with you two? What was that aura? Why did I pass out?"

Klein knew that Mr. Azik had secrets, but he really couldn't understand what any of this had to do with Leon.

"Your friend has an aura that feels both familiar and unfamiliar to me. That aura stirred the mystery within me," Azik explained gently to Klein.

"Although we both did our utmost to keep it under control for a time, you were still inevitably affected, being a Seer with powerful spiritual perception."

Klein could hardly believe it, but he saw Leon nodding beside him, confirming that it was true.

He was completely stunned.

What the hell is this?! Klein felt like crying, but had no tears.

"So I was just an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire?"

"Not necessarily." Azik considered it and said, "I also saw a discordance in your friend's fate, just as I did in yours."

"You mean you also think Leon has been influenced?"

Sure enough, even Mr. Azik says so! Klein's eyes widened.

The reason he had first thought there might be supernatural forces behind those coincidences was that Azik had once told him he had divined a discordance in Klein's fate.

That was what had led him to use the Gray Fog to divine clues and try to enlist a private detective to investigate for him.

"But how can you tell? My divination can only reveal quite limited surface details." Klein hesitated before asking.

"No, Klein. You don't understand. It isn't difficult for divination to reach that level. Of course, what I call divination is really just an excuse."

"Some people are always special, born with certain strange abilities. I and your friend-now my friend too-Leon, should both be such special people."

"Should?" Klein picked up on the uncertainty in Azik's words.

"Yes, should." Azik nodded, a trace of sadness entering his world-weary eyes.

"I don't know whether I was born with it either. Perhaps the price of this ability is forgetting myself, forgetting my past, and forgetting my family."

By now, it wasn't just Klein who grew more confused the more he heard. Leon was puzzled too.

"You mean you have no memories of your past, right?" Leon, who had been silent all this time, suddenly spoke.