On the carriage the knight lady had prepared for him, Mozo held the revolver transformed from a Sequence Five characteristic and returned home in a daze.
Only after entering his apartment did he finally recover from the shock.
Then he stared at the revolver with an extremely solemn expression.
Mozo was currently considering a very serious issue:
Should he sell this money-devouring gun?
True, the official compensation would arrive soon, and the amount would definitely be enormous.
But Mozo still did not believe he had enough spare money to actually use this thing.
One shot cost one hundred gold pounds...
He had heard that even a high-grade estate only generated forty or fifty gold pounds in profit each month!
And that was already a life most people would not even dare dream of.
Yet this thing could not even afford a single shot with that income.
Are you really a Sealed Artifact from a righteous deity pathway and not some evil god pathway disguised as one?
Will using you too much eventually drive people insane from poverty???
And was that knight lady trying to dump you on me precisely because you consume too much money???
Mozo looked at the revolver with intense suspicion.
After examining it for a long while, he finally sighed and gave up on the idea of selling it.
First, it would be difficult to find a buyer.
Second, he genuinely needed a powerful Sealed Artifact for self-defense.
Besides, judging from his personality and the plans he had set for the future, he probably would never need to use this gun anyway.
After storing away the money-devouring revolver, Mozo took out the slip of paper the knight lady had given him.
It contained a method for contacting her through the Spirit World.
As for what exactly the Spirit World was...
Truthfully, even Mozo found it difficult to explain clearly.
The best vague description would be:
A bizarre world dependent upon the material world.
It was a strange realm filled with emptiness and countless incomprehensible entities.
There was once a theory claiming that the Spirit World was the manifestation of the Primordial Dream itself.
That theory perfectly explained why the Spirit World was so absurd and bizarre.
Because dreams themselves were nonsensical things.
However, the theory possessed one fatal flaw.
After the Sublime Rebellion, the Primordial One had long since died.
And speaking of the Sublime Rebellion...
One inevitably had to mention...
Mention... mention what exactly?
Mozo's eyes gradually filled with confusion.
It felt like he had forgotten something extremely important.
Yet after confirming that even the Nameless Book contained no record of it, Mozo realized this was not merely an illusion.
He truly had forgotten.
And realizing that changed absolutely nothing.
So he simply stopped thinking about it.
Although usually separated from the material world, the Spirit World still possessed many practical applications.
The most common was using it to transmit messages.
Thinking of Spirit World communication reminded Mozo of the dream-opera where he had played Saint John.
In that dream, the final act of the great Saint John Connor had been sacrificing his own life to seal the Ageless Witch within the Spirit World.
So many years had passed since then.
He wondered whether that flesh-eating witch had escaped yet.
Hopefully not.
Otherwise, Mozo's list of potential enemies would gain yet another terrifying addition.
After all, the Ageless Witch was an infamous sadistic lunatic who delighted in tormenting others.
If she ever caught him...
Just imagining it made Mozo shiver violently.
He hurriedly shifted his attention away and instead focused on the knight lady's note.
It described the method for summoning her contracted Spirit World messenger.
The earlier steps were fairly simple.
One only needed to enter a meditative state and silently recite a specific incantation.
"Messenger of Molly Windsor, I call for your arrival from the far shore of reality."
"May you cross storm and wave alike to deliver the thoughts within my heart."
Oh.
So the knight lady and Miss Windsor really were family.
Mozo had already suspected they looked somewhat alike before.
Everything up to this point seemed normal.
But the final note made Mozo's brows furrow deeply.
Additional Note: Each summoning requires payment of one gold coin as compensation. Payment must be mutual and cannot be made unilaterally.
One gold coin???
After confirming he had not misread it, Mozo sucked in a cold breath.
What kind of outrageous fee was this?!
Are you some four-headed beautiful spirit messenger or something?!
After memorizing the contents, Mozo burned the paper with visible disgust.
One gold coin per summon, and there was no guarantee the other party would even help.
What a terrible deal!
Wait...
Should he reactivate one of the messengers he used to contract?
Mozo clearly remembered that among his former messengers, there had been one especially cheap option that only required an apple each time.
But almost immediately, he abandoned the tempting thought.
Those messengers were far too famous.
Or more accurately, far too noticeable in the eyes of certain beings.
If those ancient messengers suddenly resumed delivering messages again, the relevant gods and entities would probably trace the connection straight back to him and personally come beat him to death.
Mozo had no desire to get hunted down because someone "tracked his network connection."
That would be far too ridiculous.
Thinking about it made him regretful.
Why had all the messengers he contracted in the past been so flashy?
Why could he not have chosen some low-profile and inconspicuous ones instead?
Just look at what he had contracted.
Among the Seven Rainbows representing the highest ranks of the Spirit World, six had been his personal messengers.
And every single time they moved, they left massive traces across the Spirit World.
Beyond them, there were also Void Whales that stirred storms merely by moving...
And Hundred-Eyed Giants whose standing bodies resembled mountains...
The more he thought about it, the more absurd it seemed.
What kind of mindset had he possessed back then to contract all of them?
Mozo fell into deep contemplation.
Then suddenly slapped himself across the face.
He remembered the reason.
Because it looked cool.
Forget it.
The old messengers could not be used anymore.
And contracting new ones required at least Sequence Seven, otherwise entering the Spirit World would simply be too dangerous.
One gold coin per summon it is.
It was not like he would necessarily need to use it anyway.
Mozo comforted himself like that.
At the same time, he planned to visit the bank tomorrow and exchange for several gold coins just in case.
What Mozo did not know was that at the exact moment he considered contracting a new Spirit World messenger, within a shattered prison somewhere deep inside the Spirit World.
A witch suddenly raised her head.
Chains bound her wrists, ankles, and collarbones.
She possessed seven different faces and wore tattered clothing.
The seven faces continuously fought for dominance.
One moment came furious roaring.
The next, mournful sighs.
Then diligent struggling.
Sorrowful crying.
Starving gluttony.
Silent justice.
And seductive ecstasy.
The cycle repeated endlessly until finally the face representing sorrow seized control.
The Ageless Witch, forever trapped in grief and eternal youth, wept endlessly within the ruined prison.
For her fate.
For her suffering.
And for the regrets of long ago.
But very quickly, sorrow was replaced by rage.
The witch who would never age and would never forget her hatred abruptly raised her head and stared toward a distant point within the Spirit World.
Filled with fury, she growled in a low voice:
"Damn this world. Damn the gods. Damn John!"
"I'll find you eventually!"
"You damned bastard... I'll kill you... one thousand times over!"
Yet before the furious roar could fully fade, another face replaced it.
This time, it was Ecstasy.
All rage and killing intent vanished instantly, leaving behind only a seductive charm capable of melting a man's bones.
Even after being tortured into such a miserable state by imprisonment, the Witch of Ecstasy merely licked her cracked, colorless lips and radiated overwhelming temptation.
"Ah... ah! John, my John... the only man who ever rejected me..."
"Just wait. I do not age, and I do not die. I will find you eventually!"
"And when that day comes, please allow me to savor you forever and ever..."
Before she could finish speaking, the face of Gluttony emerged.
The witch who would never age and never know satisfaction revealed herself.
"Allow me to forever feast upon your delicious flesh and blood!"