The Faceless Man Chapter 138 – The Question and Answer “Game”
After a full half hour of undisturbed quiet, Klein opened his eyes and rose slowly.
He took his cane, put on his hat, and left the church, returning in the darkness of the night in a hired carriage to Minsk Street.
By this time, the guard and sweep of the surrounding area had inevitably relaxed and become that of a shadow under the glow of the gas lamps.
Not long after zero hour, Klein pulled out his key, unlocked the door to his house, and went ahead into the few empty guest rooms in search of the Book of Secrets.
It didn’t take much effort, and he spotted the ancient book, bound in thick parchment, directly inside the closet of the first floor room.
The hard cover of the book was a deep black color with two lines of Hermetic script written in scarlet shades:
”The Book of Secrets.”
”Karaman.”
Phew …… Klein exhaled, not rushing through the pages, but right here in this room, quickly creating the Wall of Spirituality, holding up the ritual of summoning himself and responding to himself, and then dropping the items of the Aztec Copper Whistle, the Universal Key, the All-Black Eye, the Extraordinary Bullet, the Vial of Biotoxin, the Werewolf Extraordinary Trait, and the Book of Secrets, along with the container One by one, he threw them on top of the gray mist, ready to wait for the resulting commotion to die down before deciding at his discretion which ones to take out and bring with him.
After doing this, he didn’t even bother to study the specifics of the Werewolf Extraordinary Characteristics and the Biotoxin Bottle, and simply washed up before lying down on his bed.
This was because researching items and flipping through books was too time consuming, and could easily cause trouble for his body that was in the real world on this not-so-peaceful night, and secondly, Klein profoundly realized one of his current shortcomings, which was that his own spiritual growth rate was unable to satisfy the increasing number of extraordinary abilities and magical items.
Just after fighting so fiercely once, he was now spiritually depleted, his head ached, and he was drowsy.
Well, the biggest burden on his spirituality was the “Paper Man Substitution Method”, followed by the “Sun Holy Water” created through the brooch, but he didn’t use it tonight, followed by the “Summon Holy Light” and the “Flame Jump”. “Flame Jump”…… Klein yawned, using meditation to get rid of the state of being too tired and too tense to sleep.
In less than ten seconds, he went into a dream state, alternating between various fragmented scenes.
……
In the open space surrounded by the abandoned warehouse, the “Mechanical Heart” came and went, and came again, and the person in charge of this incident had changed from a team leader to a strong deacon.
Ikonser Bernard’s brown hair was always disheveled and stubbornly stretched out, even if he wore a hat, he could not hide it.
So much so that many members of the “Mechanical Heart” secretly joked that this deacon might be using a bomb to cut his hair.
At this moment, Ikonser, whose face was hard and clear, was holding a silver mirror with an ancient pattern.
The mirror was decorated with an eye-like ornament on each side, and they looked ethereal and mesmerizing with their black jeweled bases.
Ikonser looked around the room and said:
”While those sewer rats are experts at interfering with divination and seances, and have done an effective job of treating the scene, this is the mystical, transcendent world, and nothing is guaranteed to work one hundred percent of the time.”
As he spoke, he looked to the silver mirror in his hand and stroked the surface three times with his right palm.
After a two-second pause, Ikonser took a deep breath and spoke in a deep voice:
”Honorable Arodes, my question is, what were the participants in what just happened in this place?”
The surrounding darkness suddenly became dense, and a watery light swirled on the surface of the silver mirror.
Soon, a picture emerged within the silver mirror:
Amidst the rising flames, there was a figure floating in mid-air, dressed in a long black double-breasted tuxedo and a half-height silk bowler hat, with a twisted and uncertain figure, and a face so blurred that it was difficult to make out and was painted with greasepaint.
At his feet, tongues of fire move upward, engulfing him.
With a flash of watery light, the scene changes and a middle-aged man in a dark red cloak appears, his arms burning with brilliant flames, his head hidden in darkness.
A scene alternated, and Ikonser and the others saw another woman with an elaborate black court dress and pale blonde hair falling in a messy fashion, but her face was completely transparent, as if it did not exist.
Next to this lady were two men whose bodies were covered in black hair, backs pulled by a bizarre arm.
Finally, the change ended, and it was fixed on the image of a bunch of flames roaring into the air, “fireworks” blooming brilliantly, and light shining on one side.
In such a fantastic scene, the man in the black double-breasted long dress appeared again.
His body was twisted and stretched horizontally, he faced forward, and with the hand holding his bowler hat, he pressed it against his chest, bowed slightly, and made a bow.
His face not only had the extreme blurriness of being disturbed, but it also vaguely exhibited the color of oil paint.
Ikonser was about to ask the team what they thought when a few lines of ancient Versak words suddenly appeared above the silver mirror:
”In accordance with the principle of reciprocity, it is my turn to ask questions.”
”If you answer incorrectly, or lie, you will be punished.”
The word “punishment” was red as blood, as if it were still dripping liquid!
The expression on Ikonser’s face first twisted for a moment, then became unusually solemn.
Immediately afterward, a new line of words appeared in a watery flash above the silver mirror:
”Your sexual orientation is?”
Ikonser froze for a moment, only to realize that the gazes of the surrounding team members were all cast over.
……
It was six in the morning, just after dawn.
The sleeping Klein awoke to the punctual ringing of the church bell.
As usual, he would roll over and go back to sleep until close to eight o’clock, but this time, he sat straight up and examined his surroundings.
”Well, no door-to-door reading of the gas meter ……” He sighed with relief, and, not bothering to wash up, he took four steps backwards from his bed and entered the gray mist above.
He would study last night’s haul!
Sitting down where fools belong, Klein began with the simple ones.
He picked up the black-green fang and observed it for a few seconds before materializing a pen and paper and writing down the divination statement:
”It works.”
This didn’t mean that divination could be used as a substitute for experimentation, Klein simply felt that because he had a physical object, and because he knew a lot of information from Sharon and Maric about the Prisoner, the Madman, and the Werewolf, that it was a good idea to have it beforehand. He had enough information from Sharon and Marich about “prisoners”, “lunatics” and “werewolves” to try to see what revelations he could get.
After meditating, he quickly entered the dream world and witnessed a scene:
”Werewolf” Tyr’s abdomen appeared a hideous wound, intestines were flowing out, dragged to the ground, but he just washed it with water, stuffed the intestines back in, and pinched the sides of the gap with his hands, and in the end, the wound was healed just like that… …
Under the full red moon, he looked up to the sky and whistled, his body surface grew inches of black hair, and his mouth fangs were clear ……
He waved his claws and scratched through the not-so-thin steel plate with a creak ……
He ran wildly through the wilderness, leaving the pack of gray wolves chasing behind him at full speed farther and farther away ……
He made the wooden-eyed but cold waiters rush towards the enemy as if they had no fear of death at all ……
He also used all sorts of artifacts to kill people, including bombs, and became even more powerful when he lost his mind in a fit of rage ……
……
Opening his eyes, Klein roughly understood the characteristics of the “werewolf”, and grasped the hidden danger of this extraordinary characteristic:
That is, “werewolf” Tyre was under the light of the full moon at that time, the desire to be exceptionally indulgent, and accordingly left a relatively strong spiritual imprint after his death, using this extraordinary characteristics of the magic potion to promote the extraordinary must be resisted at the initial stage of the influence, otherwise there will be a sign of loss of control.
However, this negative impact has not yet reached the level of the seal, “werewolf” left behind the extraordinary characteristics can still be directly used as the main material of the magic medicine.
”Fortunately …… it’s a pity that ‘Walking Corpse’ Jason’s extraordinary characteristics were swallowed by that weird door …… I don’t know where that door leads to, is there any way to pick it back up …… “With a pang of regret and a pang of heartache, Klein put down the black-green fang and picked up the brown, translucent vial of biotoxin.
He did the dream divination as he had just done, but this time, he didn’t have the confidence to gain a detailed revelation, so he modified the divination statement to:
”Its positive and negative effects.”
In the gray and dark dream world, Klein once again saw a tragic scene:
Someone fell to the ground, clawing at themselves, scratching off skin and flesh and clawing out ghastly white bones ……
Someone covered their head, eyes out of focus, breath getting weaker and weaker ……
Someone vomits and vomits, and at the end of the day, convulses and dies ……
Someone suddenly laughed so hard that he couldn’t breathe ……
Someone in the middle of a fierce battle with their opponent, suddenly both stop and look at each other, then they hug and kiss ……
The scene changes to the end, the translucent brown vial is placed in a cup with water, the transparent liquid inside gradually turns to amber and is drunk by the person …… The person holding the vial of biotoxin first weakens, then coughs, then touches his forehead, only to feel that it is hot to the touch, and his condition is getting worse and worse… …
The dream ended quickly, and Klein tapped his fingers on the edge of the long table, interpreting the revelations with a considerable headache:
”Combined with Steve’s words, those previous revelations mean that after the cap of the biotoxin vial is opened, it will keep diffusing the poison to the outside, and as for which poison the opponent will get, it’s purely random and not even the holder can control it? There are some pretty nasty poisons in there ……”
”The effective range of the toxicity can’t be deciphered from the revelation …… Hmmm, soaking it in water and drinking that amber-colored liquid ahead of time can prevent poisoning? But how many minutes to soak it ah? Even if the person holding the biotoxin bottle doesn’t open the lid, their body will gradually deteriorate, slowly contracting diseases that slowly become serious? Eh, what’s the exact time dividing line ah ……”
Klein rubbed his forehead, planning to experiment on the gray mist to confirm, but he didn’t know if the “Biotoxin Bottle” would work here.
For example, in his current spiritual state, he wasn’t afraid of being poisoned at all.
Let’s leave it at that, and we’ll look into it later……. Klein turned his attention to the parchment-bound Book of Secrets in front of him, and casually flipped to the first page.
It was a title page with only a simple floral pattern and nothing in it ……
Flipping again, Klein finally saw the beginning of the Book of Secrets:
”We worship the moon, not the goddess of night.”