Since his marionette Christoph was a 'Traveler' who already had the spirit world coordinates of the Intis Republic—Trier, to be precise—it did not take long for Jace to get there.
He had to make a few stops as the distance was quite long, and it took quite an amount of spirituality to travel.
——
Soon enough, Jace arrived in Trier.
In an isolated, two-story building at that.
Christoph materialized in a decent living room that was decorated with old but decent-looking furniture that had a light layer of dust on it.
Jace, who was hidden in a reflection of a metal card held by Christoph, came out of the reflection and stepped into the living room.
He looked around the place; he was familiar with it as he had seen it in Christoph's memories...
In fact, just until over two weeks ago, Christoph was staying here; unfortunately for him, he walked into a trap that was set up for him when he visited his poor disciple...
Nonetheless, Jace kept such sad thoughts aside. "Nice place, Christoph," he said.
"I'm glad you like it, sir," Christoph replied and got to work, cleaning the house and buying groceries from nearby while Jace slept, even though it was afternoon...
When Jace woke up in the evening, he sat at the dining table and ate the dinner prepared by Christoph.
After he took the first bite of the steak that his marionette had prepared, he hummed in satisfaction. "Mm, you are a good cook, Christoph," he said as he savored the flavor and picked up the glass of wine.
"Thank you, sir," Christoph said as he stepped near the table and poured more wine into Jace's glass.
'Haa...' Jace sighed. 'Nah, Christoph, it's me who's the good cook. You are just a marionette...'
Jace sometimes got tired of pretending and having pointless conversations with his marionette as, in truth, the marionette was him.
So he stopped talking, ate the dinner quickly, and got to the part he was waiting for.
"Let's go," he said as he walked down the flight of stairs that led to the basement; his marionette followed him.
He opened the door to the dark basement and turned the lamp on. There were all kinds of dusty old things there, which was unlike Jace's basement, which was clean and filled with chemistry equipment and his own collection of artifacts.
But this messy basement was just a front for the real 'basement'.
Jace turned to Christoph. "Well? Go on then."
Christoph stepped forward near Jace; soon an illusory door opened beneath their feet, and both fell down into a dark room that was situated below the basement—a room which had no door except for the one that was created by Christoph just now.
As soon as he landed on the ground, Jace made a bright fireball in his hand and the dark room was lit up.
The room was simple enough, but that was not the highlight. There was a bookshelf—or rather, a shelf of treasure—as it was filled with artifacts, characteristics, two gold bars, a few wads of cash, and several books.
Jace's eyes lit up as he saw the fortune before him; he chuckled darkly. "Nice collection, Christoph. Nice indeed, haha."
There were about two more such places where Christoph had hidden basements; Jace was quite excited to get to those places as well, but for now he focused on the things that were on the shelf.
The books were about the observations and creatures of the spirit world that were recorded and noted down by Christoph; there were also books about all kinds of Mysticism Christoph knew about and had encountered, and the various types of Beyonder powers that he had witnessed.
There was a classified list of Beyonder pathways and the sequences with abilities that he knew about, and also a small diary of formulas of various different sequence pathways, most of them lower sequences with a few of them being mid-sequence formulas.
There were four Beyonder characteristics of lower sequences and a few naturally formed artifacts belonging to lower sequences, which Jace had no use for considering he had many better ones...
But there was one that had been on his mind ever since he had seen Christoph's memories.
Jace reached out to an upper shelf and grabbed a particular square box. Taking it in his hands, he opened it...
Inside lay a dark red artifact that seemed to emit a serene red luster. It was shaped like a full moon with small red runes embedded along its circumference; it had some runes and mystical labels on it in the middle. The artifact was beautiful...
This was the 'Scarlet Lunar Corona'! An artifact corresponding to Sequence 5 of the Vampire pathway, the Scarlet Scholar!
Jace was excited to see this artifact. It was used by the Beyonders of the 'Rose School of Thought' to suppress their curse of the full moon.
As Jace had stated, Christoph was a veteran Beyonder who had all kinds of adventures. It was during one of those times that he had encountered a 'wraith' from the Rose School of Thought; he killed the wraith and took this artifact off his body.
Speaking of wraiths, Jace looked up at the shelves again and found a Sequence 5 Beyonder characteristic belonging to that particular wraith.
'Christoph really was a menace in his time, huh?' Jace thought admiringly.
With all the things he had gotten from Christoph—and was going to get more of as he explored more of his places—Jace couldn't help but be glad that he had encountered this Traveler and made him his marionette...
But with that thought came guilt as well, as he really liked Christoph—or rather, would have liked Christoph...
But he shook such depressing thoughts aside, as life was going well for him right now.
He was a Sequence 5, he had a great marionette, a baddie MILF like Catherine was his sugar mommy and lover, his potion digestion was going well, and he was in a new country which he had yet to explore... Things were as great as they could be for him.
With these positive thoughts, he got out of the basement and got to studying the 'Scarlet Lunar Corona'.