On the metallic sheen of the card, the faint glimmer of a dancing joker was drawn.
Orin shifted his eyes away from the card, then looked at Lucien.
The Clown's Gambit formed a grin on his face. It was a stupid smile. A confident smile.
Raising his hand to brush back his hair, Lucien jumped, tipping onto his toes, spinning around.
With a closer gesture, his hand near his face, he clapped twice—a flintburst of red flowers exploded into the air.
As soon as it came, it disappeared, revealing the face of the joker: the Clown's Gambit.
The flint colors on Lucien's face mirrored the joker on the card. The dressing, the distinction—it was no longer just on paper. It was alive.
"Let the circus begin," Lucien said with a playful tone, twitching his leg and dancing around.
Orin, dumbfounded, could only smile. His hands twitched. He was slightly afraid—for no reason he could name.
Then he laughed, a thin grin on his lips.
"For a moment there, I was afraid… but now I've come to my senses."
He pointed the sleek long revolver at Lucien, its red and yellow designs clinging to the corner of the gun.
Lucien fired—two bullets at once. Orin dodged each shot with a flick of his body.
The last bullet grazed his right side, leaving a faint scratch.
"I've had—hey, I just got this body," Orin muttered, pressing a hand to the wound.
Lucien's eyebrow twitched as he composed himself, then laughed.
"You're quite funny."
He charged, bullets streaming over and over. Hours seemed to pass in a blur of motion.
Orin dodged every shot, yet scratches marked his body everywhere—hands, shoulders, waist, legs. It was precision chaos.
Orin muttered under his breath, almost smiling.
"For a gesture so unfounded… your bullets were aiming for something else. But anyway…" He shook his head, thinking, I thought I was dodging.
Lucien tossed the firearm to block Orin's vision. Before he could react, the Clown's Gambit closed the distance, landing punch after punch on Orin's stomach.
Orin spat blood, wiped his lips, and steadied himself.
The fight wasn't about spirituality—it was testing Percy's strength.
The bullets were gone. The firing had stopped. The real game had begun.
Looking around, Orin noticed the entire area was blocked by a spiritual force. Every gunshot fired was confined within its bounds.
With a sharp glance, he spoke aloud:
"Fair game… you're quite wise for a silly clown."
The echo of the clown whispered a word, barely passing his lips, following that same strange, mocking cadence.
"Let the gesture of the clown become the trickster… let the peace of the manuscript become madness."
The words faded—and the ground erupted.
A swarm of worms—huge, writhing, endless—spilled across the floor. They surged toward Orin, climbing, coiling, crawling over every inch of his body. His nose, his ears, his flesh, his eyes—nothing escaped their touch.
He could feel them inside him, sliding, wriggling, consuming.
Every twitch, every flicker of the swarm tore at his spirituality, devouring it with a slow, deliberate hunger.
As he sank into the writhing mass, swallowed by the squirming ground, the Clown's Gambit laughed—a sound that crawled beneath his skin, slithering into his bones.
Light vanished. Darkness pressed in from every direction. Only Percy's eyes remained visible; the rest of Orin's body had already been swallowed, dragged into the worm-thick abyss.
Inside the void, the emptiness pressed close, suffocating, thick with worms and shadow.
He could feel the relentless weight, the writhing mass devouring everything he was—spirituality, flesh, identity—until nothing remained but the echo of himself inside Percy.
Once again, he had lost control of Percy's body, appearing in the mechanism, moving through the faint echoes of spirituality.
He approached the throne of blades and sat down, watching.
Percy's body, dragged by the writhing worms, was consumed—entangled in the darkness as the swarm crawled through him.
The Clown noticed the connection, the eruption of body and spirituality ripping apart.
He released him, bringing him back to the stony ground. Percy's body lay there, lifeless, unable to move.
Lucien stepped closer, using his leg to kick it lightly, testing whether the connection had vanished, whether the spirituality had died.
But the leg struck something stranger—something unfounded. Percy's body had been dead for nearly two weeks. The sight was almost unbelievable to Lucien as the corpse slowly rotted.
Orin watched as Percy's body decayed into a proper corpse. It was knowledge—knowledge that came with the price of touching the court of his spirituality: when spirituality leaves a body, the body returns to its original, decayed form.
He had no time to waste. The manuscript lingered within the Clown's body, fragmented but potent.
"I need answers," he said to the mechanism.
"I have traced the spiritual currents into at least three bodies, and there is a swamp of energy emanating from the unknown figure behind the Clown and the red-haired lady," Athena replied, calm but sharp.
"It is unfanged… impossible to fully control the manuscript while it is shattered," she added.
Orin pressed on. His concern was not the behavior of the mechanism—it was returning to Percy's body.
"Athena," he demanded, "how can I transfer my spiritual connection to the dead body? How can I reclaim control, hold the memories of the officer?"
The mechanism paused, shifting its tone.
"Master," Athena said, "repeat after me."
Orin hesitated for a fraction of a second—suspicion tugging at him. The mechanism was hiding something, likely the reason he had wasted so much spirituality and the fragments of the manuscript—but there was no time.
He repeated the words aloud, voice firm, deliberate, willing himself to follow through.
Once again, he moved through the mechanism, seeking total control of Percy's dead body. He needed to trace the spirituality that had once inhabited it.
He repeated the words whispered by the mechanism.
Athena spoke. "It is not a spell. It is a pathway, connected to the knowledge deck. Those who work as part of the Seekers, who whisper knowledge… they are connected to spirituality more than the average person."
She paused, then added, "It is called acting."
"Acting?" Orin echoed in his mind.
"Yes," Athena continued. "It is as though you have the trace of another person's spirituality. You cannot truly control it… but for you, who is bound to the mechanism, it is a finite price to pay. Acting allows you to mimic, to steal, to inhabit."
Understanding the words, Orin stood and walked toward a door that appeared before him. This was the price of acting: truly gamifying the memories of the dead, connecting to the former spirituality of Percy Thornfield.
Inside, he passed through the door and saw a swarm of echoes, memories, and legacy.
The legacy had not yet turned into an Oracle, yet he recognized the accident at the church—the beginning of the transformation, the ritual death of Percy, the forbidden contract performed in shadow.
He scanned the traces of echoes and memories. A huge light pulsed with attention, heavy with spiritual weight—but that was not why he came.
Following the spiritual trace, he found the proper connection, the original spirituality of Percy.
He stretched his hand, touching it. The trace wrapped through his own spirituality, connecting the two, twisting and merging them into one.
He whispered the words Athena had given him:
"Acting is stealing. Taking what does not belong to you. A piece of madness. The blaspheming sin. Blessed to the Mother of Mysteries. To the ear with no belonging, to the fragmented pieces that claim they are god."
Echoing the words softly under his breath, he returned into Percy's body.
At the same time, Lucien confirmed Percy's death and the state of his spirituality. The Clown walked away, leaving the lifeless corpse behind.
The swarm of light enveloped the mechanism, swallowing Orin, and he blinked twice—appearing once more inside Percy's body.
Without a sound, he sat, watching Lucien retreat.
He brushed his hair back, placing his left hand on the stone floor to steady himself, and smiled. He had learned the brief connection to the mechanism—acting.
"So… all I needed was to act," he muttered. "Hmm… quite easy."
Standing, he bent slightly, his left hand at his back, his right hand covering his lips—a slight echo of laughter. The sound made the Clown turn.
Lucien shifted back, staring at the corpse he had worked away from before. His gaze filled with fear, lips pressed together, trembling.
Orin Morvane's heart now properly connected to Percy Thornfield's spirituality. By acting, he had stolen, inhabited, and mastered the dead officer's essence.
He removed his hand from his face, standing straight. Imagining a gun in his fingers, he willed a revolver to appear in his left hand.
Lucien stared, dumbfounded. The stance, the structure, the colors on Percy's face—the same as the Clown's.
Mimicking the Clown's voice, Orin said, "I am the Clown's Gambit."
Lucien's fear surged. He tried to run, unsettled by the blood loss and corruption of spirituality pouring from Percy's body.
"Run! Run!" he shouted, turning.
Orin spun, laughing and dancing as the Clown had laughed. He had become the Clown.
"Pick a card… any card," he said, voice dim, hand raised with the revolver pointed at Lucien. "Heads or tails."
He fired. The bullet passed clean through Lucien's forehead. Crimson poured as the man collapsed, face down.
His eyes slowly closed, his last breath escaping. Lucien Harrow was dead.
Orin approached the corpse. The colors and identity he had taken—face, attire, mannerisms—faded, returning to their original form of Percy.
He dragged the body into a small corner, then through the door behind him, leaving the space as it should be—clean, silent,