After using the facilities, taking a bath, and receiving the three-hundred-pound reward for reporting a cult, Ais cheerfully bade farewell to Cormac Terrence and returned to the cell behind the Chanis Gate — lying down with a considerably cleaner conscience.
Ais hadn't been particularly worried about the church's handling of things, but the Nighthawks ' efficiency still gave her a pleasant surprise. She'd expected to be in for two or three weeks.
The days that followed settled into a routine: besides the daily exercise hour, Ais gradually adopted the existence of a content pig — eat, sleep, sleep, eat. The Mirror Illusion's images were too limited in their controllability to hold interest for long.
That said, Ais did make use of the lying-around time to think seriously about a few things. How to minimize the chance of being found again by the Witch cult. How to use her new abilities to find legitimate work. How to make Mirror Illusion useful in combat.
And a few less serious questions — like whether Witches gained weight. After discovering in the bath that she couldn't scrub off any dead skin, Ais had wondered about this. Lying so thoroughly flat was, in part, a way to test the question empirically.
As the days passed, she became increasingly confident the answer was no. Her skin and hair seemed locked in place regardless of time — unchanged no matter how much she didn't care for them. She was starting to wonder whether she needed skincare at all.
This was simultaneously making her feel she'd stepped into a two-dimensional world — and letting her quietly relax. Even without changing her previous habits, she apparently could live without raising suspicion.
Even more gratifying: she wasn't finding herself resistant to the possibility of getting fat, or spending time admiring her own Mirror Illusion image and being pleased about her looks.
It seemed… beyond the change of body, nothing else had really changed.
Three days later, morning.
Ais, barefoot again, found herself facing Terrence for the third time with a flash of embarrassment:
"Isn't it before noon, sir? Why are you here already?"
She answered her own question before he did:
"Time to go to Beklund?"
Terrence nodded silently.
The slight grogginess vanished from Ais's face instantly. She pulled on her shoes at speed, collected the leftover dinner she'd frozen into ice, and looked at the ice block on her stone bed:
"Sir, do I need to dispose of all of this?"
"Every landlord should wish for a tenant like you, ma'am."
He offered the compliment in a perfectly composed tone, then said: "Move it to the corner."
She did as instructed, directed the ice into the corner, then sent a ball of black flame to neutralize it into ordinary ice.
Done, she stepped out of the stone cell and walked with Terrence:
"Sir — was the follow-up investigation productive?"
"Not especially. Outside of contact with you, that Witch's recent suspicious activity all falls back to last October."
"I see. By the way, sir — could you give me some advice? Is there any reasonably legitimate work I could find in Beklund using Witch abilities? Other than supernatural means, I genuinely have no skills left that would earn honest money."
"Why don't I hear the slightest hint of shame in your voice? Hmm… a private detective, or a bounty hunter. With divination, you probably won't starve. Speaking of which — any interest in moonlighting as an informant for us?"
"Is there pay?"
"No. But if you bring the church a lead of genuine value, we won't be ungrateful."
"That works."
In conversation, Terrence led Ais out of the Chanis Gate. After a brief exchange with the colleague in the duty room, he headed for the large room used for rituals a short distance away.
Ais could hear someone reciting a ritual incantation in Hermes before she'd even gotten close. Unfortunately, her Hermes vocabulary came entirely from the ritual knowledge embedded in the Witch potion — so apart from the few standard lines common to all rituals, the rest was incomprehensible. She had no way to determine what this ritual was for.
"I really am a badly educated mage. I'll have to study properly when I get to Beklund."
She added another item to her mental to-do list.
Unlike Ancient Hermes, regular Hermes had no supernatural effect outside of ritual contexts. Having been widely used in ancient ceremony and prayer, it was accessible to ordinary people.
Ancient Hermes, on the other hand — even used without a ritual — easily attracted the attention of unknown entities just through direct use, potentially putting the speaker in danger. Not only was it inaccessible to ordinary people — even untrained Extraordinaries struggled to master it completely.
By the time Ais entered the room, the ritual was nearly complete.
Already somewhat puzzled, she recalled the arrival of the five Red Gloves on their first meeting and felt a small flutter of excitement:
"Is this ritual actually going to send us directly to Beklund? From this far away?"
Beklund was located in the central-southern part of Ruen. Even as the crow flew, the distance from Moen was six or seven hundred kilometers at minimum.
Since the ritual was active, Terrence didn't chat with his nearby teammates. Ais kept her question to herself.
"Praise the Goddess!"
Warren touched the star pattern on his chest and began extinguishing the altar candles. Ais sensed the ritual's power dissipating — and yet apparently nothing had happened. The five Red Gloves remained completely calm.
She was about to ask what was happening when the floor beside the altar began to glow — a large, ethereal doorway, covered in intricate patterns, materialized from nothing.
Terrence stepped forward and took hold of the handle. He turned to his four teammates:
"Let's go. Time to head back."
Once the four disappeared through the door, Terrence looked at Ais, smiled, and gestured:
"After you, ma'am."
Ha. You think I trust that?… Ais suppressed a slight eye-roll and stepped through into the strange landscape of overlapping colors inside the door.
Similar to what you see in meditation — is the transmission principle borrowing the spirit realm for rapid movement?… The moment she stepped inside, an invisible force took hold of her and drew her, without any effort on her part, in a particular direction.
The whole process was brief. Before Ais had time to look around, a sense of falling arrived, and the surrounding colors rapidly faded.
She instinctively reached for Featherfall — and then her feet landed on solid ground.
She looked up. No similar ethereal door above her. Around her: a similar but considerably larger room.
"Welcome to Saint Samuel Cathedral, Miss Ais."
Terrence's voice came from behind her. She turned — the ethereal door was positioned just behind him.
Terrence rested his hand on a black stone monolith nearby — about two meters tall, its surface covered in intricate patterns — and the ethereal door slowly dissolved into the air.
Remarkable. So the ritual was only for communication and providing coordinates… Ais stared at this miraculous stone that could transport people across hundreds of kilometers, and could only confirm that a portion of its carvings resembled the surface patterns on the ethereal door.
"Gareth, Sutherland — please introduce Miss Ais to Beklund. Eleanor, Bereke — once you've handled the follow-up, you're free."
After assigning the four teammates, Terrence walked ahead out of the room.
A little while later, Terrence came to the area where Nighthawks worked, knocked on one of the doors, and entered on receiving permission.
Looking at the dark-haired, green-eyed, strikingly handsome man inside, Terrence offered a greeting:
"Good morning, Deacon Mitchell."
Author's Note (this chapter): In the days that followed, besides the daily exercise hour, Ais gradually adopted the existence of a content pig — eat, sleep, sleep, eat.
书友20250513464 Playing pig, eating pig chow.