Tingen City.
In the small hours of the morning, deep underground in a ventilated but utterly still space, Klein sat in the watch room. He was idly leafing through a stack of newspapers, magazines, and books piled in front of him, keeping half his attention on the corridor outside to guard against anyone rushing the Chanis Gate.
Across from him, Melissa sat with a small antique mechanical creature she'd managed to get her hands on, a monocle fitted over one eye, studying it with focused interest.
Tonight was Melissa's turn to watch the Chanis Gate. Klein had been worried enough to specifically apply to join her.
"Ahh—"
Melissa let out a long, melancholy sigh. "Klein, you should have told me about Beyonders and the Beyonder world a long time ago. If you had, I'd have chosen the Savant Pathway without a second thought."
Klein set down his newspaper, serious. "I'd rather you stayed an ordinary person. You've seen what happened to Old Neil. The Captain told me early on — we're guardians, yes, but we're also a pack of poor wretches who live in constant struggle against danger and madness."
"But you're only thinking about the risks of a Beyonder losing control. Did you consider what it's like for an ordinary person who runs into a Beyonder or a monster?"
Melissa met his gaze. "If I'd already been a Beyonder that day, Old Neil might never have been able to get hold of me."
...She had a point, actually.
Both paths had their advantages.
How am I going to pass on the Acting Method to Melissa? Klein turned the problem over in his mind. Knowing the Acting Method would cut the risk of losing control dramatically. But that Sword of the Goddess who showed up yesterday made me swear on a holy relic never to reveal it to anyone. If I'd known it would come to this, I'd have told Melissa the day she became a Beyonder.
He was full of regret.
"By the way," Melissa said, looking up. "That elderly gentleman — Old Neil — has he been any better lately?"
"He's the same."
Klein sighed. "His body is badly depleted, but he should still have a few years left in him. It's his spirit that seems to have given up. That said, this is already the best outcome he could hope for — Lady Crestet, the Sword of the Goddess, made it clear: if Old Neil hadn't expelled his Beyonder characteristic, the Church's purification would have been the only thing waiting for him."
"Ah."
Melissa stuck out her tongue. "Just thinking about him makes me shudder a little. When he and I were alone together, I was terrified he'd notice something off about me and take that bone sword to me."
"Luckily, in the end he didn't do anything at all. He actually approved my formal induction into the Nighthawks."
She perked up with a touch of self-satisfaction. "My salary is the same as yours, you know~"
Klein grinned. "Hate to break it to you — I've already advanced to Sequence 8. My pay went up with it."
Melissa pulled a face. "Hmph. I'll catch up to you soon enough!"
Then something crossed her mind. "Klein, can we try to bring Benson into the Nighthawks?"
"..."
Do you think the Night Church is the Moretti family business? That we let in whoever we feel like?
Looking at the longing in Melissa's face, Klein felt something complicated stir inside him. Melissa genuinely had no sense of how dangerous being a Beyonder was. If she kept approaching it with this mindset, she would get hurt eventually — and in the Beyonder world, getting hurt often meant something fatal.
"Melissa, promise me."
His voice was serious. "No matter what happens in the future, whenever you face danger, you will—"
"Run first and ask others for help. Right?" She cut him off. "You've told me that a hundred times!"
"Don't worry. I've got plans to see you and Benson married and settled down with a family — I'm going to take very good care of myself."
Then she paused, suddenly puzzled. "Wait — can Beyonders get married and have children?"
"That's..."
Bang! Bang! Bang!
A fierce pounding erupted without warning, reverberating through the dim, quiet corridor — through a basement that was nearly empty of people. Klein startled, every nerve snapping taut.
Melissa jumped out of her skin too. The antique mechanical creature slipped from her hands and hit the floor with a sharp crack. She rushed to crouch down and pick it up — but the instant her palm touched it, a flash of deep crimson exploded across her vision, swallowing everything in an instant.
Her body went completely rigid.
At the same moment, Klein felt a stir from above the grey fog, but he had no time to pay attention to it. His gaze had already shot toward the source of the sound — the great iron double doors painted with seven sacred emblems.
"That came from behind the Chanis Gate?"
He narrowed his eyes. "Melissa, ring the bell — warn the others."
"Melissa? Melissa?!"
He turned his head and found her crouched on the floor, utterly motionless, staring blankly at the mechanical creature in her hand. Alarm shot through him and he ran over.
"Melissa!"
The moment his hand touched her, she shuddered and snapped back. "What is it?"
Klein's tension eased a fraction. "You just froze."
"What?"
Melissa looked faintly dazed. "I thought I saw a flash of red light fill my whole vision, and then... nothing."
"???"
Klein went still. Why does that description sound so familiar?
The next morning, Bernadette passed through the Spirit World and returned to Backlund, preparing for the swap that was due to take place shortly.
"Are you certain you want to keep this cross on you? This thing might mean the True Creator's gaze is on us constantly."
Bernadette looked again at the cross wound once around her wrist on a silver chain, and asked once more.
Vincent said, helplessly, "It wasn't my decision — that was what He told us before He left. Do I really have the option of ignoring it?"
"Apart from being watched, does it have any other use?"
He wasn't entirely sure. "Well... it could probably be thrown at someone as a weapon? Theoretically, the level of corruption in this thing is significantly higher than what was in those Beyonder characteristics before."
"..."
Bernadette fell quiet for a moment. Ever since this man had come into her life, she had to admit, things had become progressively less controllable — and progressively more absurd.
But what could she do?
She could only forgive him.
At eight o'clock that morning, Bernadette and Vincent completed the swap on schedule — only to find that the exchange was still between their two souls in this world.
Neither of them was particularly shaken. They had both seen it coming.
There was no denying it — having a body of his own again, being the one in control, felt genuinely good. Unlike before, where he could only watch as an observer, borrowing sensation — touch, taste, smell, feeling — second-hand from Bernadette, with a persistent, nagging sense of unreality.
Still, at least he had the Nation of Disorder to retreat to. Bernadette was simply stuck here, always. That had to be far harder on her.
"Stop daydreaming," Bernadette said. "We've accepted the situation — no point dwelling on it. Go advance in the Nation of Disorder."
"Right."
Vincent glanced at the cross on the table and smiled. "May the True Creator watch over us."
"..."
With the familiar sensation of weightlessness and the flood of black, white, and grey, Vincent found himself standing again on the stone platform of the Nation of Disorder. Before him, the balanced scales held a single grey crystal roughly the size of a fist, glowing and shimmering in the aqua light.
Crack.
The crystal shattered. A stream of grey light seemed to flow into his body.
In that instant, a powerful drumbeat thundered in his ears — like fists hammering against a drum, like a wooden staff striking a hard surface, directly against his eardrums.
The sound was overwhelming, near-deafening, setting his whole skull ringing. A wave of intense nausea hit him — as though he'd taken a blow to the head and the world was spinning.
Then his vision became a whirling lantern of images, cycling from slow to fast: his life before the transmigration, then the Harry Potter world, then the Lord of the Mysteries world — from childhood to boyhood to youth to now.
Each image was a wrong he had done. Big and small alike. Small ones: lying to his parents for money to buy snacks. Large ones: using living subjects for magical experiments, killing indiscriminately and disposing of bodies, and worst of all, blasphemy.
Together these images assembled themselves into a kind of confession of crimes — and with each "crime" that flashed before him, it brought with it a deep spiritual reckoning, forcing him to acknowledge each transgression fully, wringing out a pain like a soul being torn apart.
"I... am guilty."
"I am guilty."
"I deserve punishment."
"I deserve to be put to death."
To be continued…
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