Part 2 The Faceless Man Chapter 21 The Night of the Full Moon
It was the same dream divination, but Klein saw more scenes this time.
The first act was still the same small, dark, dirty room and Ian Wright asleep on a high-low bunk.
The second act was the same sewer where both men had been at the same time, and Ian crouched in front of Zeruel’s mutilated body, reaching down and rubbing the two rows of white teeth, removing one of them.
The third act is a bustling, noisy street, where passersby are plainly dressed, even outdated or tattered.
There are gardens and lawns in the center of the street, clustered with low chimneys spewing mist, and Ian in his old overcoat and yarmulke, looking warily about, enters the telegraph office not far from the center of the street, diagonally across the street from the mall-like entrance to the steam subway.
The image faded rapidly until it was transparent, and Klein opened his eyes, tapping his forefinger slowly on the edge of the long bronze table to make a preliminary judgment:
”Judging from that tooth and the tapping telegram, Zerrill and Ian aren’t a detective duo who stumbled into a dangerous incident by accident, there’s an organization behind them!”
”It should be possible to determine where the third act scene corresponds to ……”
Klein didn’t rush to analyze it in depth because he didn’t want to stay above the gray mist for too long.
Leaving the high-backed chair belonging to the “Fool”, he went to the side corner and rummaged through the paper bag he had sent in earlier to find out the extraordinary properties of Merso.
Holding the jelly-like crimson item in his hand, Klein sat down again and wrote a new divination statement:
”Name of the corresponding magic potion.”
In silence, he held the mass of extraordinary properties in one hand, tugged the paper with the divination statement in the other, and with the help of meditation, entered a deep sleep.
In the grayish, psychedelic dream world, that Mr. Ambassador, who was dressed to the point of pomposity and had a thin, stubbled face, appeared in Klein’s eyes once again.
He held out a bottle of crimson liquid and spoke to Meursault:
”Drink it, drink this bottle of ‘Hunter’ magic potion, and you will be able to dominate the Zimmergeist party, of course, money is also indispensable, as Rossel the Great once said, a stick in one hand and a carrot in the other.”
”Hunter? Berkland is a metropolis ……,” Meursault asked back, frowning slightly in confusion.
In his illiterate perception, hunters belonged to the wilderness, to animals.
The middle-aged ambassador chuckled:
”The biggest metropolis is also the biggest dark jungle.”
”Here, everyone has two identities, one is the prey and the other is the hunter.”
”Even the weakest hunter is a hunter, and can harm the powerful prey.”
”Go on, join the great hunt.”
……
As the image shattered aPart 1nto countless shadows of light, Klein looked down at the crimson mass of extraordinary properties in his hand and muttered wordlessly to himself:
”So it’s a ‘Hunter’ magic potion, no wonder Meursault is so capable of fighting and using poisoned blow arrows.”
”No wonder he was able to trace his way to me ……”
”However, it seems that he didn’t really understand the essence of the hunter, didn’t preset traps, didn’t use weapons, and didn’t utilize the appropriate specialties …… This is partly because he didn’t know that I’m also an Extraordinary, and still a Sequence 8 Extraordinary, and had some contempt, and on the other hand, it also shows that he didn’t take the magic potion for long ……”
”The ‘Hunter’ pathway is held by both the Sauron family, the royal family of Caudis, and the Einhorn family, the ruler of the Forsak Empire, and the ‘Iron Blooded Crusade’, a hidden organization that has only appeared in the last two or three hundred years, and together with the style of clothing, that Ambassador’s identity is almost certain …… senior diplomat of the Republic of Intis, ambassador to the Kingdom of Rune ……”
”I wonder what that important item he wants to get his hands on will be ……”
As his thoughts rolled around, Klein wrapped himself in spirituality and plummeted downwards.
Just back inside the room, he immediately examined his surroundings vigilantly and did not notice any unusual changes.
Whew, Klein exhaled silently, feeling a little more confident that he would be able to gather the members of the Tarot Club on time tomorrow afternoon.
He flipped through the map of Birkeland he’d bought on the steam train, looking for the telegraph offices along the subway line, not far from the center of the street.
There were only a few subway lines in Bakerland at the moment, and Klein quickly identified three targets, one in the West End, one in the St. George area, and one in the East End where it intersected with the Bakerland Bridge area.
He thought back to the dress and class positioning of most of the pedestrians in the dream world and got his final answer:
Third Place!
Where the East End meets the Bakerland Bridge area!
There are times when interpreting revelations requires a wealth of knowledge of reality and corresponding reasoning skills …… Klein chuckled to himself as he came near his desk and added another sentence to the previously written statement that graced the paper:
”I do not know the whereabouts of Ian Wright, I have not seen him since the discovery of Zerrill’s body. However, I have learned through my own sources that Ian Wright used to appear at the telegraph office in Branham Street.”
When he had finished writing, Crane did not fold and put away the paper, nor set it aflame with his spirituality, but allowed it to spread out on the desk, revealing its own contents with abandon.
Gazing deeply, Klein returned to his bed and undressed for bed.
Beyond the tightly closed curtains, the red moon burrowed out of the layered clouds, its light bright and complete.
……
Hilston District, inside a house.
Forsyth, who was sleeping separately from Hugh, suddenly sat up, stretched out her hands, and covered her head.
Her fairly good face had twisted to the extreme, hideous as if she were a demon.
Holding down both sides of her ears, Voorhees kept rolling over on the bed and seemed to be fighting off disembodied ravings.
Drops of perspiration seeped from her forehead, and a vein bulged on the back of her hand.
Her body tensed and rolled at times, and her light blue eyes, which originally had a playful and lazy flavor, were filled with pain.
In the depths of those pupils, there seemed to be countless shadows of light changing and cascading.
”No!” Foerth finally couldn’t hold back and let out a low, miserable scream.
Her hands also stopped covering her ears and turned to clawing and pulling at her hair, as if she was trying to fight pain with pain.
After several minutes of her body writhing in contortions, Voorhees finally stopped.
She let go of her hands, saw the handfuls of slightly curly brown hair, and smiled weakly to herself:
”I lied to Hugh when I told her that the ravings of each full moon didn’t have a bad effect on me …… At least losing my hair is a serious problem ……”
Forsyth leaned hard to sit up and looked toward the curtains that half covered the window, and through the gap saw the fantastic scarlet full moon outside.
”It’s getting worse and worse, will it get out of hand next time because of this ……” Voorhees whispered, no longer able to suppress the weakness that was usually buried deep inside her.
She had tried separating the bracelet that allowed one to teleport with the aid of the spirit world from itself, but that no longer translated into the full moon ravings disappearing.
She’d tried tranquilizers, she’d tried chanting the names of the gods of steam and machinery, she’d tried some kind of ritual magic, but none of it had changed her gradual slide into the abyss.
”If only I could understand what that ravings were saying …… I wish to die with understanding, not be buried in confusion …… Perhaps, maybe, after advancing to Sequence 8, I would hear a little better? But I’ve never met anyone selling the formula for ‘Master Juggler’.” Forsyth stared blankly out the window, his eyes colored red by the moonlight.
……
Early Monday morning, Klein, who had not slept soundly, awoke early and rolled out of bed.
He walked towards his desk position, ready to pull the curtain and open the window to let in both the light and the breeze from outside.
Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he swept over the piece of paper spread out on the desk.
It was facing the window and remained spread out in its original form.
However, Klein clearly remembered that last night, before he went to bed, the paper was facing towards the chair and towards the bed!
After only one night’s sleep, it had turned upside down and changed its orientation!
Klein’s pupils clenched, violently reached out and pulled open the curtain, and saw that the convex belly window was still tightly closed, without letting a wisp of wind into the room!
The paper turned itself halfway around with no wind!
No, someone had come in, without my noticing! Crane felt a chill run down his spine to his head.
In his sleep, he was surprisingly unresponsive to this!
This meant that he was pretty much at the mercy of the others, living or dying depending only on the mood and thoughts of the other party!
Was it a member of a special branch of the military, or a powerful extraordinary person sent by the ambassador? Judging from the fact that the paper was not restored to its original state and remained upside down, it was more likely to be the latter, indicating a certain amount of warning …… It’s pretty impressive to sneak in like that without a sound …… Should I thank him for his kindness? No, why don’t you do things by the way, there must be an inevitable reason …… don’t want to alarm the members of the military’s special department who are monitoring the surrounding area? Klein s thoughts surged, and it was hard to contain them.
He wrote those words last night, letting the paper spread out on top of the desk, in order to be seen, so that the ambassador could get what he wanted to know, so that possible retaliation would be delayed until the end of the matter, so that he himself could obtain a more generous preparation time.
However, Klein had originally anticipated that the other party should take the opportunity to infiltrate while he was out of the house and while the military’s special department’s surveillance of the house was subsequently weakened, but who knew that he would be able to bypass the extraordinary people around him and enter the bedroom unnoticed while he was still asleep.
This feeling of life and death being held by someone else was very unpleasant!
”Very powerful, or extraordinary people with weird abilities ……” Klein turned his body, his back to the convex belly window, and pulled out a 1p copper coin.
”Someone infiltrated this room last night.”
……
He mumbled the statement silently and, with the cover of his body, flicked the coin upwards.
The coin tumbled and jumped, falling sharply downward before it went over Klein’s shoulder and landed in his spread palm.
This time it was numbers facing up.
It signaled a denial!
It meant that no one had sneaked into Klein’s bedroom last night!
Paper doesn’t turn to …… for no reason Am I sleepwalking? No, I even managed to stay awake when the captain invaded my dreams …… Klein frowned instantly, thinking of two possibilities:
”One, the divination results were interfered with being misled.”
”Two, the one who infiltrated is not human!”