Bernadette said, flat, "Isn't it called the 'Wishing Compass'? Isn't granting me one tiny little wish the least it could do?"
No side effects, an item capable of standing up to a Sequence 1 — that's what you're calling a "tiny little wish."
Fine, whatever.
"...You're right. So my wish is — that your wish comes true."
With that, he channeled spirituality into it.
The compass's needle immediately began spinning rapidly, leaving a faint afterimage trailing behind it within the device.
Even though they no longer needed the compass to track down Emperor Roselle, neither Vincent nor Bernadette could help their hearts racing as they watched.
After all, this had been the very goal they'd both fought so hard to reach with their recent advancement — now that the "results" were finally about to reveal themselves, how could anyone stay calm?
"Damn it."
Vincent suddenly smacked his forehead, annoyed. "I should've had the great serpent and the little snake bless me with some good luck before doing this!"
"..."
Bernadette: Do you genuinely think this is a lottery draw?
Over ten seconds later —
The rapidly spinning needle began slowing down.
One rotation. Two. Three...
Slower and slower, until finally, it began creeping forward degree by degree, eventually settling on a single direction, and stopping there entirely, without so much as a flicker.
"???"
"!!!"
Vincent and Bernadette both froze at the exact same moment, staring at the compass, their faces full of confusion.
After a brief silence, Vincent turned his body, holding the compass and facing a different direction — and at the same instant, the needle inside rotated along with him, settling once more on that same fixed point.
He immediately slipped into the Spirit World (now that he'd advanced to Sequence 4, he no longer needed the "Ambitionist" state to travel through it) and, keeping his eyes on the compass, began heading toward the coordinates of the remote island where Mr. Z had once been. But this time, the needle didn't move at all.
Thud.
Vincent landed once more on that same remote island. He thought it over, then rotated the compass a half-turn — and instantly, the needle rotated along with it, settling, as it always did, on one particular direction:
Vincent. Or rather — Bernadette.
Yes. Once activated, the "Wishing Compass" had, from the very start, locked onto a single direction — pointing straight at Bernadette herself.
"...Your father, it seems, just pulled off a genuinely infuriating 'gag' on us."
Bernadette understood exactly what he meant: when Roselle had first created the "Wishing Compass," he'd said it would point toward whatever the user's heart most deeply desired.
Which meant, apparently, this thing wasn't pointing at the user at all — it was pointing at whatever its creator, Emperor Roselle, had most desperately wanted, most cherished, in his own heart. His daughter.
For a moment, Vincent felt something caught in his throat, a prickling sensation crawling up his spine: Roselle, Roselle — I get it, you love your daughter, but pulling a stunt like this? That is genuinely messed up, man.
Wasn't this basically the same as spending an entire book building up some grand treasure, only for the payoff to be "actually, the real treasure was the friendship you made along the way"?
Just then, Bernadette spoke up. "No. There might be another explanation for this."
"Don't you remember? When Dad handed the Wishing Compass over to Nast, he specifically warned him never to let it fall into the hands of Solomon's, the Night Emperor's, or the Blood Emperor's descendants."
"If it simply pointed to me, how would that warning even make sense? And Nast also said he'd sensed something unsettling, something genuinely dangerous, radiating from the 'Wishing Compass' itself."
Hearing this, Vincent nodded. "That's true, actually."
He gave the compass a light shake, channeling more spirituality into it. "So what secret is this thing actually hiding, then?"
"Maybe..."
Bernadette said, "We could try bringing it into the Nation of Disorder, see what happens?"
"Yeah, that's what I was thinking too."
Without wasting time, Vincent set about praying to himself to open the sacrifice/bestowal gate. As the lapis-gold light burst forth and the illusory door swung open, something occurred to him, and he asked, "Oh, right — do you know where the Arbitrator card is?"
"No idea."
She threw the question back. "You don't know either?"
"Er, in the 'story' I know, only four or five Cards of Blasphemy actually make an appearance — and the Arbitrator card isn't one of them."
Bernadette answered, "Of the twenty-two Cards of Blasphemy Dad originally made, I only ever held two — the Wheel of Fortune and the Hermit. The rest, he deliberately, or semi-deliberately, scattered elsewhere long ago."
She paused, then added, "But going by the Beyonder Characteristic gathering effect, my guess is the 'Arbitrator' card is most likely in the hands of one of those families with a Sequence 1 Arbitrator."
Meaning the Augustus, Castia, and Tamara families.
Heh. Those three families that had used him as a plaything, tossing him back and forth, trying to kill him at will — Vincent hadn't forgotten that. Sure, mortal enmity between beings of the same or neighboring Sequence was practically baked into how this world worked, but that grudge... would get settled, sooner or later.
"Of course, it's not guaranteed. Just like how I've held onto the Wheel of Fortune this whole time — once you're at their level, the Cards of Blasphemy don't really carry much practical value anymore. Holding onto one becomes more about keeping it out of someone else's hands."
"Right, I understand. And going by that same logic, there's also a decent chance the Arbitrator card ended up in the War God's church."
"Why's that?"
"Because the Arbitrator Pathway's Uniqueness resides with the War God's church."
"No wonder."
Realization dawned on Bernadette. "No wonder those three 'Hands of Order' have gone thousands of years without any of them managing to pull ahead, without a single one of them ascending to Sequence 0."
Then a question occurred to her. "But if that's the case, wouldn't the War God's church — or the War God himself — have thought to back an 'Arbitrator' as an ally?"
The animosity and conflict between the War God's church and the Church of the Evernight wasn't a matter of mere years or decades. Ordinary people had no idea what lay behind it, but Bernadette knew exactly why: at the end of the day, it came down to the Goddess of the Evernight and the War God being neighboring pathways — whichever one of them wanted to push further would need to absorb the other's Authority to do it.
Which meant these two true gods had been destined to be mortal enemies from the very start.
Vincent offered the Wishing Compass into the illusory door, sacrificing it to the Nation of Disorder, then thought it over. "That's probably because... the Arbitrator Pathway's Uniqueness has been corrupted somehow..."
He paused mid-thought. "And the thing that corrupted that Uniqueness... sounds an awful lot like the Nation of Disorder."
The reason those three Sequence 1 'Hands of Order' can't hold the Uniqueness is that they can't withstand the Nation of Disorder's own corrupting influence. But I already control the Nation of Disorder myself — that changes things entirely for me.
I already own the Nation of Disorder. What's a little corruption to me?
Well, well. This thing and I really are meant for each other.
Within the Nation of Disorder, the instant Vincent picked up the Wishing Compass — before he'd even channeled a drop of spirituality into it — its needle began spinning wildly, exactly as it had the very first time he'd found it broken.
He settled back against the stone chair, waiting patiently for several minutes, but the needle showed no sign of slowing at all. He tried channeling spirituality into it directly — but all that accomplished was making the needle spin even faster. Nothing else happened.
"Is the 'magnetic field' inside the Nation of Disorder just too strong, and it's short-circuiting the Wishing Compass?"
That would actually make sense.
No matter how important the Wishing Compass was to Emperor Roselle and Bernadette, at the end of the day, it was still just an extraordinary item Roselle himself had crafted — and in the presence of something on the scale of the Nation of Disorder, it was bound to malfunction somehow.
Looking at it this way, Bernadette's earlier reluctance to sacrifice the Wishing Compass to the Nation of Disorder had actually been rather prescient.
"Hm."
Vincent rubbed his chin, thinking for a moment, then stood and walked over to the scale, letting spirituality spread out, drawing golden mist from within it, and held the Wishing Compass directly within the mist.
The Wishing Lamp's been quietly absorbing this golden mist on its own — maybe the Wishing Compass could too?
Oh. Nothing happened at all.
He weighed the compass in his palm for a moment, then finally tucked it away alongside the Black Emperor card, and left the Nation of Disorder.
"The moment the Wishing Compass entered the Nation of Disorder, its needle started spinning like crazy, and it hasn't stopped since. Like putting a real compass somewhere with a chaotic magnetic field."
Bernadette said, thoughtful, "A compass's needle goes haywire because its whole function relies on magnetic fields. Following that same logic — could the Wishing Compass actually be connected, somehow, to the Nation of Disorder itself..."
"..."
After a brief silence, the two of them said, in perfect unison, "That's actually plausible."
To be continued…
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