So — the Wishing Compass hadn't ever been pointing at Bernadette at all. It had been pointing at Vincent — and, more specifically, at the Nation of Disorder itself, bound to him.
That would explain everything, somehow.
Vincent rubbed his face, muttering, "So this whole time, whatever the Wishing Compass was pointing toward, we already had in our possession? That's incredibly anticlimactic — none of that satisfying feeling of finally clearing a difficult level and getting the reward you earned."
"There's still another question."
Bernadette said, "How did Dad manage to build an extraordinary item that could point toward 'Source Quality' in the first place?"
That was Source Quality — the very thing a god needed to ascend beyond godhood itself.
What logic could Roselle possibly have relied on to build something like that? Was it purely mystic instinct, aiming blind into the void?
Or had Emperor Roselle himself once had contact with — or at least clear knowledge of the location of — the Nation of Disorder, and built a compass pointing toward it on that basis?
"Let's leave those questions for Dad to answer for us in person."
Bernadette's tone carried a note of lightness, anticipation. "It won't be long now — tomorrow I advance to Sequence 2, and the day after that, at the latest, we set out for that primordial island!"
"All right!"
Soon, I'll finally get to meet my future father-in-la— wait, no. Emperor Roselle. Getting kind of excited about this.
...
Backlund's North District, in the cemetery near St. Samuel's Church.
The night had deepened, the red moon casting a faint crimson glow across the ground, lending the cemetery a hushed, solitary stillness.
Before a freshly filled grave stood a brand-new headstone, engraved with three lines:
"Follower of a goddess. Savior of Backlund. A friend, forever remembered."
At the base of the headstone sat a scattering of flowers, fruit, and food — most prominently, Klein's usual "Fool's" order: sweet iced tea and a Dixie meat pie.
Tucked among the flowers was a handcrafted mechanical pocket watch, its ticking seconds carrying faintly through the quiet graveyard.
Suddenly, the stone slab sealing the grave shifted, and a somewhat pale hand emerged from the soil.
Crash!
The slab was pushed aside, and the coffin lid followed, and Klein sat up, blinking, gazing around in mild disorientation.
His memory was still frozen on that final image — sitting at the center of the descent ritual altar, an overwhelming wave of pleasure sweeping away his reason and consciousness entirely. That pleasure had faded now, but a lingering trace of it still echoed in his mind — the kind of "bliss" so intense he'd have gladly died on the spot for it.
He vaguely remembered — right as his own consciousness had been fading, that Witch Pathway demigod had approached him, reaching out and...
Klein instinctively pulled his hips back.
"..."
A wave of overwhelming shame washed over him. He heaved himself upward with effort, standing up out of the grave, dirt cascading off him in rustling clumps.
Klein stood there in that crimson-tinted graveyard, glancing back at the open grave behind him, and froze. "I died again?"
Why "again"?
Because when he'd first transmigrated into this world, "Klein Moretti" had already put a bullet through his own temple — that had been his first death.
The late-autumn wind, already carrying a real chill, felt even colder cutting through the cemetery, sending a shiver through Klein's body.
He gave himself a shake, snapping back to his senses, and muttered with a bitter laugh, "So transmigration really does have more secrets hidden in it, huh."
According to Emperor Roselle's diary, Zaratul had once told him that death and resurrection was, itself, a "miracle" — an ability exclusive to Sequence 2 Fortune Teller Pathway Miracle Workers.
So why had he, only Sequence 7, managed to trigger that miracle? No — the first time he'd been resurrected, he hadn't even been a Beyonder at all.
Obviously, this had to be connected to Beyond the Grey Fog somehow.
"Well. Better this than the alternative, I suppose."
At the very least, everything Beyond the Grey Fog had brought him so far had been a blessing, not a curse — nothing to complain about there.
Klein looked back at the epitaph carved into the headstone, a wry smile crossing his face. "People really are only worth more after they're dead, huh. I never even really knew what was happening back there — didn't stand up and fight the evil god head-on, the way I did back in Tingen."
"And yet somehow I still end up with 'follower of a goddess, savior of Backlund' on my tombstone. Unbelievable."
Van Gogh died penniless, never knowing that one of his paintings would eventually sell for over a hundred million.
If he hadn't crawled out of this grave himself, Klein never would have known his own posthumous reputation had climbed this high.
After a good few dozen seconds settling himself, Klein buttoned up his coat, and realized he was wearing the very same outfit he'd first arrived in Backlund in — though now caked with quite a bit of dirt.
Something heavy weighed down one of his pockets. Reaching in, he found the Faceless item and the "Witch" item, both intact.
"They buried these with me?"
That genuinely surprised him — these two extraordinary items were far from worthless. He'd assumed the Church would've reclaimed them the moment he died.
Looking at it this way, the Church of the Evernight was... surprisingly sentimental?
He lowered his head, brushing dirt off his clothes, and a lock of hair slipped down, falling against the sides of his face.
Klein jumped, snapping his fingers on reflex, fire-jumping a dozen or so meters away — but the hair framing his face remained.
He reached up and tugged at it. The sharp sting across his scalp told him immediately: this hair was genuinely his own.
After disguising himself as a witch for so long, Klein had gotten used to long hair — but right now, he definitely wasn't in his Faceless-transformed state.
Which meant — this long hair really was his?
Huh?
Did I actually turn into a woman for real, somewhere along the way?
"Is this because of the descent ritual?"
Klein quickly landed on an answer.
The Witch cult wanted their goddess — the Primordial Witch — to descend using me as her vessel. And she's a woman, obviously. So, to make the descent go more smoothly, did she reshape my body into a woman's?
Which meant... was "little Klein" still down there?
He immediately reached down to check, and felt his heart, which had leapt into his throat, settle back into place.
Thank god. Thank god. Otherwise, Klein genuinely had no idea how he'd ever face Leonard, the Captain, or Benson again: "Hello, I'm Klein's twin sister, Cleya."
Benson would probably just stare blankly: "Since when did I not know about this?"
After a moment of self-directed humor, Klein looked at the grave behind him where he'd just been buried, and fell into a thoughtful silence: death and resurrection, in this world, wasn't exactly an impossibility. But a Sequence 7 dying and coming back to life? That was anything but normal.
If he just walked back into his old life like nothing had happened, he wasn't worried about Leonard, the Captain, or Benson reading too much into it — but the Church? Would the Church try to dissect him, study him?
No — they wouldn't even need to dissect him. If the Church's upper ranks realized he was carrying something this precious, what fate would await him?
The Church of the Evernight had, up to this point, given Klein a fairly favorable impression overall — but he knew the old saying well enough: possessing something precious is itself a danger, and wealth stirs the hearts of even good men. Especially in a world where true gods walked among them.
After a long moment, another cold gust of wind swept through.
Klein sighed, and quickly walked back to his own open grave, filling it in with dirt, resealing it with the stone slab, restoring it to exactly the state it had been in before he'd clawed his way out.
He stared for a long moment at his own photograph on the headstone, then dissolved into a puddle of shadow, leaping away.
A short while later, a figure in a black dress traced itself into existence before Klein's headstone. She bent down, picked up the mechanical pocket watch, and, without lingering a single second longer, traced herself out of existence once more.
To be continued…
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