In a house with western-style decor, Klein Moretti was slumped in a chair. A gun lay on the floor to his right. He had black hair and an average-looking face with deep lines.
Blood flowed from both sides of his forehead, running down his face and dripping off his hand, falling drop by drop to the floor.
In front of him was a sturdy wooden study desk. In the center of the desk was an open notebook with coarse, yellow pages. To the left of the notebook was a neat stack of about eight books. On the wall beside them were grayish-white pipes, with a wall lamp attached.
The lamp had a classic western design to it. It was about half the size of an adult's head, with a transparent inner glass layer and a black metal grid on the outside. Just below it and to the side was a black ink bottle. A pale red glow surrounded it, and its embossed surface showed a faint, blurry angel pattern. In front of the ink bottle and to the right of the notebook sat a dark-colored pen with a fully circular body.
The room was lit by an eerie crimson glow that seeped through the window covered in a dirty black velvet curtains.
The man's right hand, dangling to the side, suddenly twitched.
Klein Moretti's eyes snapped open, but they were pupil-less. At the top of his head, an illusory black curtain manifested in a burst of gray fog.
It pulsed once, then twisted in on itself. The thin, ghostly curtain reshaped into a pupil-less eye surrounded by partially contorted lines. In the next instant, it sank into his glabella and vanished.
For a moment, his face seemingly melted into countless transparent maggots with strange three-dimensional patterns, squirming and taking the shape of him as they tried to dissipate and fuse into the spirit world. But a strange light appeared from deep within his soul that kept the maggots together. In a flash, his face returned to normal.
His pupils also returned, but they were dark and empty, devoid of any light. Thousands of spirit threads unfolded before his eyes, weaving through the air in all directions. All kinds of abstract information from past, present, and future started to seep through the room as the spirit world descended.
The dark and empty eyes blinked as his eyes came back to brown, and all supernatural effects disappeared as if nothing had ever happened.
"What!?" With a sweep of his gaze, Ryan George looked around the room and became confused.
The room was not very large, with a brown door on each side of the room. Close to an opposite wall was a low wooden bed.
Between the bed and the left door was a cabinet. Its two doors were swung open, and beneath it were five drawers.
To the side of the cabinet, there was the same grayish-white pipe on the wall at the height of a person. However, it was connected to a strange mechanical device with exposed gears and bearings in several spots.
Items resembling coal stoves sat in the right corner of the room near the table, along with soup pots, iron pots, and other kitchen utensils.
Across the right door was a dressing mirror with two cracks. Its bottom was made of wood, and the patterns were simple and plain.
Is this a dream? he whispered, slowly shifting his gaze upward.
In midair, a crimson moon hung high against the backdrop of a black velvet curtain, glowing in silence.
His breath caught in his throat.
"Shit!" He stumbled backward in shock, the chair beneath him tipping over with a loud crash. Its wooden edge struck his shin.
"Ow! No… Wait, that didn't hurt… huh." He picked the chair up from the floor, and sat back down.
So it must really be a lucid dream then. Thinking that, he checked one more time and pinched his cheek with all the strength he could manage.
"Ow!" This time, it actually hurt. "Okay, now I'm getting contradictory signals," he thought as he rubbed the sore spot with his hand.
To be safe, I need to treat this as real. Let's figure out where I am. A crimson moon, that's a massive red flag. A dilapidated house. A gun on the floor. A notebook with an unknown language written on it. His eyes darted from one item to another, When he realized where he was, a nervous chuckle left his mouth.
I know I've fantasized about transmigrating into the world of Mr. Fool, but I didn't actually want to wake up inside it. He glanced at the notebook in the middle of the table, at the unknown language it was written in.
As Zhou Mingrui once said, this is probably what it means to love a fantasy.
If this is real, I hope Klein's memories kick in... As he thought that, fragments of Klein's memories and the memories of Zhou Mingrui began to surface in his mind, bit by bit, without any discomfort.
He remembered being Ryan, sitting nervously in the reception room while waiting for a company job interview.
He also remembered performing the Luck Enhancement Ritual before dinner. Memories of Zhou Mingrui's family, his mother and father, flashed through his mind.
Then, the disjointed pieces of Klein's life began to settle into place.
Okay, so I'm basically a mash-up of three people… How am I even functioning or thinking right now?
And most importantly, how am I not going mad? Is this my transmigration cheat?
He then read the infamous text written in Hermes language. Out of curiosity, Ryan picked up the notebook. But suddenly, the crimson light seeping through the curtains fell into what seemingly was glass under the notebook, that reflected the light into Ryan's eyes.
Ryan moved his head to the side and looked at the glass. It was a pitch-black rectangular object.
Ryan started to choke on the air as he looked at the rectangular device.
What the fuck is this doing here? With shaking hands, Ryan picked it up and pressed the power button to turn it on.
It was the generic ass wallpaper he had been using, like forever.
It is indeed my phone. He wrote his password, and the phone unlocked. He looked at the apps he had. Ryan was looking for anything outside the norm that would answer him and the phone being here.
And he found it.
The title "Waifu Catalog" was written under the app logo. With shaking fingers, he opened it and found the build he was tinkering with in the reception room of the office he went to interview in.
This build was made with all the Talents and Defenses the Waifu Catalog has, along with the Shroud.
His plan was, as he had chosen to be substituted into this world, he had reincarnated into this world as Zhou Mingrui and only awakened the memories and the defenses right before he had descended from the cocoon. Which meant when the Trace, Information, and Destiny defenses activated, the action of the Door of Light releasing him got muddled.
It made the Evernight Goddess miss the point where she would Graft the Sequence 9 to Sequence 1 characteristics in the form of a black velvet "curtain" into the Forsaken Lands of the Gods. As a result, he became a Sequence 1 Attendant of Mysteries, a King of Angels at the point of arrival. And with all the Defenses working together, he was practically immune to corruption and possession.
Ryan closed his eyes again and noticed the buzzing at the back of his mind. I can feel it. The looming feeling of Mental Imprint of the Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth, right at the corner of my mind. Well, I can easily ignore it, so the defenses work as advertised at least.
A deep breath escaped Ryan's lips.
A moment later, Ryan opened his eyes again and tested whether his plan had worked. He focused, and the air grew heavy. In the next moment, he used the Flame Controlling ability granted by the Sequence 7 Magician of this pathway.
He snapped his fingers, and the gas lamp lit up on its own, filling the room with warm light.
Ryan stood up, then looked at his hands. His right hand was bloody from all the blood that had trickled from his head. He touched the place the bullet went through, and his eyes turned to the bullet stuck in the wall.
This is all real. I really have been reincarnated into this world.
He then walked to the window, drew back the curtains, and looked out at the crimson moon looming over the city as it was setting in the west.
He blinked once and activated his Spirit Vision. As a Sequence 1 Beyonder, he did not need to tap his glabella to activate it.
A shadowy curtain was forming a barrier around the room, but he ignored it.
Beyond the glass, the town lit up with thousands of glowing threads, crisscrossing through the air and creating a breathtaking, almost magical view.
I can really see the Spirit Threads of every being in Tingen, he thought, a little awed. His gaze then turned to Mr. Franky.
From here, I can directly influence someone like Mr. Franky's Soul Body, Astral Projection, Body of Heart and Mind, and Ether Body. Then, by using the Ether Body as a bridge, I can control Mr. Franky's physical body.
He withdrew his gaze as he went to the desk and took out a silver vine-leaf pocket watch. The watch had a photo of an average-looking man that looked like an aged-up version of Klein. A subconscious smile formed on his face. Suddenly it stopped, and it turned into a self-deprecating smile.
His eyes then moved towards the cracked mirror, and the face of Klein stared back at him.
"Sigh… I really have become Klein." With a soft click, he closed the pocket watch. Then, he pulled up the button sitting atop the pocket watch and twisted it a couple of times to start it.
Since he didn't know the correct time, Klein used the Authority of Change to Temper the right time into the watch.
Change was one of the core authorities of the Fool Pathway. It allowed Klein to reassemble many physical objects and even abstract concepts into something new, often with unbelievable effects.
It was like changing something's definition, orientation, logic, or even the rules that governed it.
So, when the watch was perceived to be showing the wrong time, Klein simply changed it, Tempering it to show the correct time instead.
In the next moment, it adjusted itself automatically.
When he opened it again, the time showed 5:45 a.m.
A cape of solidified energy formed around him. It wrapped over his bloody clothes and took on their exact shape and texture, clean this time.
He then looked at the bloody gun on the floor. He picked it up, and his Shroud automatically created a holster for it. His eyes moved to the blood on the floor, and with a twitch of his finger, he made a small wish to remove the blood and the bullet from the room. He then invoked the Authority of Miracles to fulfill that wish.
Klein could perform Miracles for both others and himself, allowing him to achieve many different effects. The strength of those effects depended on the number of similar wishes he had granted for others in the past. However, because this was a trivial wish, it did not require any stored or accumulated wishes. And Klein, being a special case, did not have any accumulated wishes to begin with.
As a result of his wish, anything unusual in the room, such as the bullet lodged in the left side of the wall and the blood on the floor, vanished without a trace.
"It's time to get to work," he said as he stepped into the center of the room. With a burst of gray fog, four types of staple food appeared out of the Historical Void wrapped with the talismans, one at each corner of the room.
He took his first step and began to chant in Hermes, "The Immortal Lord of Heaven and Earth for Blessings."
He took the second step. "The Sky Lord of Heaven and Earth for Blessings."
The third step followed. "The Exalted Thearch of Heaven and Earth for Blessings."
He took the fourth and final step. "The Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings."
After finishing the ritual by making a square, he returned to the original spot and closed his eyes. The air around him turned thick and filled with a strange presence.
Immediately after, a low whisper could be heard in the far distance. It was so low that he couldn't make out what the whispers were saying.
When he opened his eyes and activated his spirit vision, he saw a majestic door with crimson light seeping through the opening.
When the door opened, it released a burst of crimson light that shrouded his whole field of view completely.
The next moment, he found himself standing within a world of endless gray fog.
The fog flowed like water and was filled with countless crimson stars. Some of them were large, while others were small. A few felt hidden deep within the fog, while others floated near the surface.
Klein looked out into the distance and took a step forward. In an instant, he stood at the foot of a staircase. He climbed the steps without hesitation.
At the top, his eyes landed on a grand and illusory door with a bluish-black glow. It was made of countless layers of spherical light. Inside each light, translucent maggots squirmed slowly. Beyond the door, bluish-black fog moved quietly. Hanging from the top of the door were many thin black threads. Transparent cocoons were suspended from them. Each cocoon held a soul from all kinds of different places from modern times.
This was the true Sefirah Castle, the Door of Light, one of the Nine Sefirot and a legacy left behind by the Original Creator.
Klein has a plan that would give him the authority over the Sefirah. Just as Amon did at the end of the first book, awakening the Psyche of the Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth within oneself grants the authority to control the Sefirah through the Law of Similarity.
He closed his eyes and whispered to himself.
Defenses, don't fail me now.
A wave of madness entered his mind. Vastness. Cruelty. Bloodthirst. Cold indifference. All of it surged inside him. The Mind Defense helped him keep himself together from getting overwhelmed, while his Polymorph Defense and Corruption Defense worked without pause, holding back the intelligence and the thoughts of the imprint.
The Door of Light shuddered for a moment, along with the gray fog starting to churn around him.
The layers of spherical light rippled like a pond, and the translucent maggots squirming merged together, creating a tentacle that reached out toward him.
Klein lifted his arm and grabbed it.
He immediately felt the connection. The mental imprint's ownership over the Door of Light.
In the next moment, using the authority over Change, he reassembled the ownership of the Door of Light from the mental imprint to himself. Being a mindless imprint with the defenses suppressing it, it didn't resist.
Klein felt a pulse in his mind. The polymorph defense was stopping him from automatically turning into his mythical creature form. He flipped the 'switch', and his body melted into a vortex of transparent and translucent maggots with strange three-dimensional patterns.
In the middle of the maggots was the symbolism of the Fool, the pupil-less eye with the contorted lines behind it.
The pupil-less eye pulsed, as a rather blurry phantom emerged from the Door of Light and floated toward him. It merged with the pupil-less symbol at his center as it mutated into a complicated symbol, the symbol of the Door of Light.
The entire spirit world began to gently shake as though they had encountered an earthquake from afar.
The symbol at the center of his mythical creature form pulsed as his human body reconstructed around itself.
Now Klein could feel it. He had full control over the Sefirah. He had reached the status of a king of King of Angels. He could also use the abilities of neighboring pathways that matched his current sequence, like the Sequence 1 Key of Stars from the Door pathway, as well as Worm of Time from the Error pathway. All that remained was to become The Fool and fully accommodate the Sefirah.
After getting the ownership from the mental imprint, his surroundings turned dark as illusory stars appeared one after another. They surrounded the strange door of light as though they wanted to lump together.
In these illusory stars, the largest two overlapped and corresponded to an area in the real world, as the Sefirah tried to show him the location of the Uniqueness and Sequence 1 characteristics of the corresponding pathways, so he forcibly stopped that.
Not yet. I know where all the characteristics are anyway. And I can't let them know that I exist just yet.
But before that, he turned his spirit vision inward to observe his soul body. With the Soul Talent at work, he could feel it, as well as tell what was wrong with it.
Strange tumors appeared and vanished across his soul body in brief intervals. A slight grimace formed on his face.
Only because of the defenses am I not losing control. I need to digest the characteristics as well.
Klein thoughtfully frowned as he sat on the stairs. I can use the Information Defense to hide the fact that I'm a Sequence 1 Beyonder, and slowly digest the potions. But for that I need to use the acting method. It will take a lot of time, which I don't think I have.
The defenses are not infallible. I can think of a couple of ways to go around it. So I have to assume my enemies do too. I need to become Sequence 0 before Amon and Adam know I'm also playing the game. Sitting on the stairs, he took out the silver vine-leaf pocket watch from his pocket and started to open and close it rhythmically.
Thinking about it some more, his attention went to the silent mental imprint buzzing at the back of his mind. He willed the mental imprint to be crushed and destroyed by using Corruption Defense. Suddenly, he stopped as he got a warning from the defense that if he wanted to destroy the mental imprint, his Beyonder Characteristics would be destroyed as well, severely injuring him.
Hmm... It seems an Indestructible Psyche cannot be destroyed, even with the help of Defenses…
His eyes became dazed as his spirituality gave him a warning. With a burst of gray fog, he vanished from the stairs and materialized back in his room in the City of Tingen.
The next moment, the door opened, and a girl walked in. Her face was thin and a little pale, but her skin was clear and soft. She had the quiet look of a serious girl.
It was his sister, Melissa.
She saw Klein waking up and stretching as he got out of bed.
"Are you really this confident about your interview? You seem to be in a good mood," she said, glancing at him curiously.
A fond smile spread across Klein's face.
"I just have a good feeling about today, that's all."
Melissa gave him a look, her eyes filled with mild exasperation. She turned and walked over to the cupboard, grabbed her towel and toiletries, and stepped out to head for the public bathroom.
When she came back, she found Klein at the dining table, pouring tea into two cups. The stale rye bread from the day before was already laid out.
He had taken out breakfast on his own.
Melissa sighed. "Remember to buy fresh rye bread today. All we need is eight pounds. There's meat and peas too. Since your interview is soon, I'll make you mutton stewed with peas. Oh, and Benson might come back on Sunday."
After finishing breakfast, she took a sip of the tea and paused. It was surprisingly decent, especially considering it was made from inferior tea leaves. Her eyes narrowed. She stood up, walked to the cupboard, and opened the lowest drawer.
Klein watched her, confused.
"What gives..." he said, frowning as he leaned slightly to see what she was doing.
"How many tea leaves did you use? These cost a whole five Soli. If you wasted it..." She trailed off when she saw the rest of the leaves still there. Letting out a small sigh of relief, she closed the drawer.
Klein couldn't help but laugh. Melissa, ever the penny pincher. She shot him another sharp look.
"You're going to be late," Klein said, still smiling, as he picked up the tattered veil cap and handed it to her.
Melissa snatched the cap and put on the tattered veil cap their mother had left behind. She picked up the self-sewn bag she used to carry her books and stationery, then got ready to leave.
Just as she opened the main door, she paused and turned halfway around. It looked like she was about to say something, but stopped when she saw Klein smiling at her. He stepped forward and held something out.
"Oh, and take this." He placed the 1 Soli note in her palm. "Use it to take the public carriage to school."
Melissa looked like she was about to say something, but Klein spoke before she could.
"I earned a little money helping others at the university. And I got permission to use Welsh's carriage to go to the interview, so don't worry about me."
He looked more serious now. "You're still growing. Walking 50 minutes every day isn't good for you. Please take the carriage. I'll know if you don't."
He paused, then added with quiet confidence, "Once I get this job, we won't have to worry about money anymore."
Melissa let out a quiet sigh. Her eyes shimmered slightly. She didn't say anything, just nodded, then turned and closed the door behind her.
She's not going to take the carriage, is she… he muttered in his mind with a sigh.
One step away from godhood and I still can't make a family member listen.
He let out a small chuckle as he took out the brownish-yellow coat and the felt hat with the rounded edge, both the same color.
The shroud reached out and absorbed the clothes. In the next moment, it shifted and changed from the linen shirt and pants into the brownish-yellow coat and matching felt hat.
He then took the key along with a dark brownish paper bag.
Pressing the hat down lightly, he smiled and headed out to buy bread.