On the deck of Future, Nina handed Cattleya two items she had retrieved from the underwater ruins and was rewarded with a bottle of Sonia blood wine for the day.
"Long live the Captain!" Nina excitedly hugged Pace and cheered on the deck, then, ignoring Pace's resistance, took it into the cabin.
Cattleya glanced at Klein, who was leaning against the ship's rail, then quickly withdrew her gaze and walked towards her captain's cabin.
Inside the cabin of Future, layers of emerald vines suddenly retracted, throwing Leyton out of that peculiar space.
He looked deeply at the room, which had completely returned to normal, then his figure rapidly turned transparent, transforming into sparkling starlight that surged upwards to his own room.
Thump~ Thump~
Klein stood in the room next to his, reaching out and gently knocking on the door, but there was no response from inside. Just as he was about to return to his own room, a picture suddenly appeared in his mind.
On the other side of the door, specks of starlight reassembled inside, revealing Leyton's figure.
Did he just leave Future? Is it related to the feeling of being watched I just felt? Are there any other hidden secrets on Future?
As thoughts flickered, Klein heard a creaking sound; the door in front of him was opened from the inside by Leyton.
Leyton scrutinized Klein for a moment, then chuckled and said, "The underwater ruins have been fully explored?"
Klein nodded and repeated Nina's description of that underwater area. At the end, he added, "The rusted iron block, whose original appearance is unrecognizable, and the seabed soil are with Cattleya. If you're interested, you can go find her."
Leyton nodded slightly, his gaze lingering on Klein's chest as he said, "You're sick. You can go ask Frank for some healing fruits. Although he sometimes acts a bit absurd, as the best physician on Future, he is still very reliable."
"Healing fruits?"
Klein was stunned for a moment; he found it hard to associate medicine with fruit. Could these two unrelated things be crossbred? In Frank's eyes, is everything capable of pairing?
"The effect is quite good," Leyton shrugged, responding.
Klein nodded and turned to walk towards Future's dining hall. It was almost noon, and Frank would usually be busy in the dining hall at this time, replacing some of the ship's ingredients with his experimental products.
At 8 PM, in Empress Borough, Backlund, inside the luxurious Hall family villa.
Audrey sat at her desk with great interest, flipping through a very old-looking notebook. This was a notebook she had just received today, from a Loen soldier during the Twenty Year War, a task from the Psychology Alchemists.
"Aside from a grammatical habit similar to Dragonese, there aren't any major issues, and no traces of hidden clues can be seen. Why are the Psychology Alchemists looking for it?"
"If the content of the notebook is not the problem, then what the 'Psychology Alchemists' are seeking is the notebook itself?"
"I remember Mr. Tower seems to have a good understanding of dragons. Most Beyonders prefer to use ancient hermes, but he is accustomed to using Dragonese. This should be a habit he retained from his low sequence days, meaning he must have come into contact with a lot of dragon-related information back then."
"I can ask him to help me study this notebook. If there's still no discovery, then it means the 'Psychology Alchemists' need the notebook itself."
After muttering to herself for a moment, Audrey's eyes sparkled, and a joyful smile spread across her face. She couldn't help but turn to look at the golden retriever squatting beside her.
"What's wrong, Audrey?" Susie responded with a puzzled look, barking.
Audrey blinked, suppressing the emotions in her heart, and turned to the golden retriever beside her, saying, "Susie, I plan to use mystical methods to study this notebook. Please stand guard outside the door for me and don't let anyone disturb me."
"Mystical methods? Didn't you just use them?"
Susie's knowledge had increased, and she was becoming harder to fool. Audrey sighed inwardly, then said, "It's a new method. If it still doesn't work, I plan to try 'Magic Mirror Divination'."
"Don't worry, I have a safe object of prayer."
"Okay." Susie hesitated, scrutinizing Audrey for a few seconds, and only after confirming she was telling the truth did she nod and get up to walk out of the room.
Once Susie left the room, Audrey began to pray to The Fool, expressing her thoughts.
On Future, Klein, hearing layers of illusory prayers, skillfully walked into the washroom. After setting up a mystical shield using Mr. Azik's copper whistle and Will Auceptin's paper crane, he walked four steps counter-clockwise and entered Gray Fog.
Leyton, who was teasing Pace in the next room, paused. As if sensing something, he looked up at the wall to his left, his gaze easily penetrating it, seeing a mist intertwined with pale white and mercury. The mist was not dense, and he could vaguely make out Klein's figure.
Soon, he withdrew his gaze and restored the gravity in the room to normal, allowing Pace to successfully retrieve the small dried fish floating in mid-air.
Pace meowed, landing lightly, and while licking the dried fish, asked curiously, "Meow~, what kind of ability is this? I've never seen a Beyonder ability that can make things weightless."
"This is an ability outside the twenty-two Sequence pathways, drawing power from the stars, and it's extremely dangerous."
Leyton briefly explained, his hand quickly grabbing Pace's tail. The Kuroneko's tail felt somewhat fluffy upon initial touch, but once gripped, he could feel firm muscle.
Pace, who was licking the dried fish, froze for a moment, then its tail suddenly burst with power, pulling itself out of Leyton's hand.
"Meow!"
Pace glared at Leyton in dissatisfaction, then, holding the dried fish in its mouth, quickly ran out of his room.
Leyton chuckled, summoned an invisible hand to close the door, and then lay directly on the bed.
Just as he closed his eyes, preparing for a short nap, a thick Gray Fog suddenly surged into his vision. Within the Gray Fog, scarlet light flowed, then instantly condensed into a somewhat blurry figure, and the voice of "Justice" Audrey echoed in his ears.
After calmly listening to "Justice" Audrey's narration, Leyton pondered, casting his gaze towards the figure seated serenely on the high-backed chair, obscured and blurred by the dense Gray Fog, and said, "Can you materialize that notebook from the Twenty Year War before me?"
As soon as he finished speaking, a peculiar fluctuation accompanied by crimson water light flowed past, and Leyton instantly felt a strange and unique connection established with a great will infinitely high above.
"Mind Connection" from the War Bishop!
With the establishment of "Mind Connection," some memories not belonging to him surfaced in Leyton's mind. These were Klein's recollections about that notebook.
"Mind Connection" is indeed convenient. This way, I don't have to pull you to Gray Fog, and it can also help me keep an eye on my main body on Future.
"..." After a moment of thought, Leyton settled his mind, recalling the notebook that Klein had presented in his mind, bit by bit.
So this is how Sonia blood wine is brewed. I'll ask Frank to try it another day.
Ask Frank to try? Hasn't he already cultivated fish that can produce wine? Do you want him to replace the fish with cows or mushrooms?
Don't think along Frank's lines; you'll be led astray. There's a fruit in the Southern Continent similar to a coconut. Wouldn't it be great to have Frank cultivate a plant that replaces its juice with red wine? Freshly picked and drunk, guaranteed fresh.
If Frank had your mindset, he'd already be an archbishop in the Church of the Earth Mother, not a pirate on Future.
I've finished reading. There's nothing wrong with the content of this notebook. The person who wrote it should have had direct contact with a Mind Dragon of a not-low Sequence, and it might have even lingered in his mind and dreams, which is why some influence was left behind. You can try divining it; most dragons are not skilled in the domain of fate, so they can't conceal their traces very well.
Divination? That's what I'll try next.
The age of dragons has passed for too long. Those who can survive until now must be old-timers. Finding that dragon won't be easy.
I understand. The voice belonging to Klein in his mind pondered for a moment, and then the "Mind Connection" was severed, and the dense Gray Fog before him quickly dissipated.
Leyton, who was lying on the bed with his eyes closed for a short nap, suddenly opened his eyes. Using the crimson moonlight filtering through the window, he surveyed the room and muttered, somewhat speechless, "He really does use and discard."
Above Gray Fog, Klein sat on The Fool's high-backed chair, using dream divination to investigate the notebook's past.
In his dream, he saw a village with a dragon-worshipping custom and a graveyard behind a Church of the Evernight Goddess.
The scene in the dream finally froze on a tombstone in a corner, where the carved words had long become blurred and illegible.
"A village with dragon-worshipping customs, and that last tombstone is where the notebook's owner was buried?"
"During the Twenty Year War, that soldier encountered a Mind Dragon for some reason, and that Mind Dragon hid deep within his mind, coming with him to Loen, to his hometown, and under the influence of this Mind Dragon, a dragon-worshipping custom gradually emerged here…"
Klein pondered, organizing the story's outline, and quickly guessed the Psychology Alchemists' purpose in having Justice get this notebook: they wanted to use it to find the place with dragon-worshipping customs.
The scene Klein obtained through dream divination appeared in the mirror before Audrey, following the ritual connection of "Justice" Audrey's "Magic Mirror Divination."
After watching the revelation given by The Fool, Audrey suppressed her excitement, politely greeted The Fool, and ended the ritual.
Looking at the mirror that had returned to normal, Audrey couldn't help but let her thoughts wander.
The scene that appeared in the "Magic Mirror Divination" just now was that place with dragon-worshipping customs. There was indeed a Mind Dragon there, but Mr. Tower had already found it first. It also seemed to have left that place, so the Psychology Alchemists would only conclude that a dragon once lived there after they arrived.
However, my task is complete. As long as I hand over this notebook to the Psychology Alchemists, I won't miss out on any of my rewards.
Audrey curved her lips with a rather good mood and began to clean up the remnants of the ritual.
On the sea, where dark clouds layered, silver-white lightning continuously struck down. Dense heavy rain swayed in the strong wind, creating a heavy, oppressive, Apocalypse-like atmosphere. A dark, massive object intermittently appeared and disappeared in the storm under the silver-white lightning.
As the lightning from the sky became denser, the dark, massive object gradually revealed its form within the silver-white electric light. It was a huge sailboat, with its front and back raised high, resembling a crescent moon.
The surface of this massive sailboat was painted a deep black, with three rows of neatly arranged cannons on its sides. On this extremely large ship, there was only one sail, painted with a black tombstone, as if raising this sail was not for navigation, but to declare its identity.
Death Announcer.