Bernadette looked at Klein. "As an expression of goodwill, I can give you another scroll. Activate it as you did just now, whenever you find yourself in need of assistance."
"Rest assured — this stays between the two of us. No one else will know."
She cast a glance at the black notebook lying amid the wreckage of blood and flesh, reached for it — then felt her heart give a sudden lurch. It was her spiritual intuition, sounding a warning: Take that, and face something catastrophic.
She left it.
Besides, she had already found a member of the Ascetics.
"Then — goodbye."
The moment her words faded, Klein snapped back into the flow of normal time. The chessboard was gone. The vines were gone. The woman and the clown had vanished entirely, as though they had never existed — as though everything he had just witnessed was a hallucination.
Only the scroll that had appeared in his coat proved the woman had truly been there.
Klein stood in place for a moment, his feelings in a tangle — irritated by the woman's high-handed behaviour, relieved that she had harboured no real malice, and at the same time unsettled by this new scroll.
Last time, though he had quietly informed his captain of the woman's appearance, he had kept the scroll to himself — because his divination through the Grey Fog above had confirmed that holding on to it would be beneficial.
As it turned out, the 'benefit' of the first scroll was simply acquiring another one.
A set of nesting dolls, is it?
Elsewhere, Bernadette had taken the clown from the Ascetics to the outskirts of Tingen City.
The moment his freedom was restored, the clown bowed deeply. "My most esteemed lady, I thank you for saving my life."
"You are a member of the Ascetics."
"I am."
"Can you contact your superiors?"
"That is…"
The clown produced a thin smile. "My most esteemed lady, I am no more than a low-ranking member of the Ascetics."
"Then was this entire operation your decision alone?"
"Yes."
Bernadette said evenly: "You're telling me the Ascetics sent a single Sequence 7 to retrieve the Antigonus family's notebook?"
"That notebook was something Zaratul once went to extraordinary lengths to obtain from the Church of the Steam God. Even with Him missing for so many years, a text of such value — why would it have slipped out of the Ascetics' hands in the first place?"
The clown faltered, then said haltingly: "A member named Reggins carelessly sold the book among a batch of ordinary texts not long ago. Fearing punishment from his superiors, he kept the matter hidden — and so no one else in the Ascetics was aware of it."
"When I happened to learn of this, I searched for a time… tracked down the Antigonus descendant, Riel Bieber, and then… what you witnessed just now."
Listening to the account, Bernadette felt a creeping unease. The chain of events sounded plausible enough on the surface — so why did it feel riddled with coincidences and gaps in logic?
She considered, then asked: "Where, exactly, did you 'happen to learn' this?"
"From… from…"
The clown's brow suddenly creased. He strained to remember, but nothing came — it was as though a stretch of memory had simply been cut away. And yet, if that memory was gone, why did he know where the notebook had ended up? What was in those missing memories? Why had they been taken?
His pupils slowly filled with blood. The veins beneath his exposed skin bulged and swelled. His eyes snapped to wild.
"He's losing control."
Bernadette's heart seized. She snapped her fingers immediately, casting a gentle mantle of starlight over him, and said firmly: "Tell me — where can I find other members of the Ascetics?"
The clown's face was already twisting. His body began to tear itself apart, strips of flesh pulling away like writhing worms. He screamed through shredding lips: "Next month… Trier… a gathering… come with the badge… avenge me—!"
Bang.
The clown detonated in a spray of crimson. The starlight that had enveloped him contained the blast, and none of it reached beyond.
Bernadette's gaze stirred. She opened her Eye of Secrets — and found no trace of the clown's spirit.
"Even the soul was obliterated?"
Not even leaving a window for a séance.
At this point, Bernadette could see all too clearly that something was very wrong.
"Someone used hypnosis on him — set it so that the moment he tried to recall certain memories, he would enter rapid loss of control and be destroyed, soul and all?"
To accomplish that, the one responsible would need to be at least a demigod-level Audience member. But why?
Why hypnotise a member of the Ascetics and send them to steal the Antigonus family's notebook? If they had truly wanted it, why not come themselves? With demigod-level strength, wresting the notebook from a handful of mid-to-low-Sequence Extraordinaries would have been trivially simple.
Therefore, the real target was likely not the notebook at all. And whatever it truly was, it most probably had something to do with the night watchmen in Tingen.
But then, what?
Just as the thought formed, Bernadette shook her head. Why am I even entertaining all this? My goal is the Ascetics. The Faceless One's Extraordinary characteristic.
His dying words — 'next month in Trier, a gathering, use the badge'. What badge, though?
As the thought struck her, she noticed something gleaming within the shredded remains of the clown.
A pea vine uncurled from the earth, coiled around the glinting object, and brought it to her: a dark grey badge.
Bernadette's eyes grew deep and distant as she gazed through the badge into the traces of the future. After a moment, her gaze returned to normal. She had seen no possibility of capturing other Ascetics members.
"It seems I'll have to wait a little longer."
At that moment, a small sphere of blood seeped out from the clown's shattered remains, tinged with faint blue — a Sequence 7 Magician's Extraordinary characteristic.
On the outskirts of Tingen, inside a house surrounded by a verdant lawn.
A quill raced across parchment:
"…In the end, working in concert, the seasoned night watch team dealt with the monster Bieber — only to find themselves immediately facing an attack from an Ascetics member."
"But just then, Klein activated a scroll. The woman who had briefly appeared in Tingen some time ago returned. She had come, it seemed, for the Antigonus family's notebook. This was evidently outside Ince Zangwill's plans — he still needed the notebook to corrupt Dunn."
"And yet what could he do? Summon a spirit world entity by force? That would only send the situation completely off the rails. Fortunately, for reasons unknown, the woman did not take the notebook — she simply took the Ascetics' 'clown' away with her."
"Ince Zangwill had barely begun to breathe a sigh of relief when he nearly died of fright — for the woman had appeared less than a kilometre from his position. And from her conversation with the 'clown', she was on the verge of discovering Ince…"
To be continued…