Seeing Bernadette nod, Audrey's eyes went even wider. Wow! Miss Lovers was a powerful demigod, famous across the high seas, the "Queen Mystic" everyone knew by name!
She never would've imagined — never would've imagined meeting her in person, in reality, so suddenly. And come to think of it, they'd actually known each other for a while already.
But curiosity quickly won out. "So — is Mr. Lovers here too?"
Bernadette lowered her eyes, choosing not to hide it. "I actually came to find you because of him. Mr. Lovers has suddenly disappeared."
Her reasoning for not hiding this was simple: by the next Tarot Club gathering, everyone would realize it wasn't Vincent attending, but her instead.
"???"
Audrey couldn't stop herself from blurting out, "Disappeared?! Why?"
"Not clear yet. I'm currently trying to find out myself." She paused. "All I know for now is that it might be connected to Lord of Chaos somehow."
Fors looked alarmed. "Lord of Chaos — why would he do something to Mr. Lovers?"
Audrey offered a suggestion right away. "Have you asked Mr. Fool? He might know something about Mr. Lovers's situation."
Xio raised her hand again, still lost. "Could someone please tell me who this 'Mr. Lovers' actually is?"
"I'll ask him."
Since Bernadette already knew the Fool was Klein, she immediately ruled out that particular "wrong answer," brushing off the question and moving on. "Do the three of you still have the abilities Lord of Chaos granted you?"
The three girls each demonstrated their "Broker" Pathway abilities in turn, confirming Lord of Chaos's "gift" was still intact within them.
Herself, Vivienne, and now Audrey and the others — the sample size wasn't huge, but it was enough to draw a few conclusions.
Either the "Broker" ability, once granted, persisted indefinitely unless actively revoked — regardless of whether Lord of Chaos, or even the Nation of Disorder itself, remained in this world at all.
Or, the Nation of Disorder was, in fact, still present in this world.
Or, even if the Nation of Disorder had moved to the other world, some connection to this one still remained.
Bernadette obviously hoped for the last possibility — because as long as some connection remained, there was still hope.
Seeing Bernadette lost in thought, Fors asked, cautious, "Lov— Miss Natasha, why are you checking whether we still have our abilities? Is something... wrong with Lord of Chaos?"
She'd wanted to use words like "gone mad" or "lost control," but worried about offending the god in question — though, given that Mr. Lovers had already vanished because of him, this was already terrifying enough as it was.
"Not clear yet."
Bernadette said, "All I know is that Lord of Chaos suddenly chose to withdraw from the world entirely, isolating himself from it. Mr. Lovers happened to be praying to him at the time, and seems to have been swept away along with him."
The pirate queen's lies, naturally, came easily — she'd chosen a reasonably plausible explanation for Vincent's (Lord of Chaos's) disappearance.
Xio nodded, realization dawning. "So that's why — no wonder my prayers to Lord of Chaos went unanswered these past couple days."
"All right, I've confirmed what I needed to know. Time to go. We'll talk more when there's a chance — goodbye."
Bernadette's figure dissolved into a burst of water bubbles, vanishing, leaving the three girls staring at one another.
After a moment, Xio crossed her arms, giving a cold laugh. "Audrey. Fors. Don't the two of you have something you'd like to say to me?"
She paused. "Oh, wait — I mean 'Miss Justice' and 'Miss Magician'!"
...
After leaving Earl Hall's estate, Bernadette wasted no more time, pulling out the sea route chart and stepping into the Spirit World, heading toward the coordinates marked on the chart.
But as she drew closer and closer to the destination, the world before her suddenly grew chaotic — try as she might to push forward, she found herself pulled inexorably backward instead, and attempting to move backward to compensate only left her utterly disoriented.
After several failed attempts, Bernadette had no choice but to withdraw from the Spirit World temporarily, returning to reality above the Fog Sea.
Much like the Berserk Sea that had once cut off the Northern and Southern Continents from each other, Spirit World travel alone couldn't grant free passage through the Fog Sea either — which was exactly why Beyonders capable of Spirit World travel still had to form ship fleets when exploring the Five Seas.
It wasn't that they enjoyed sailing — it was that vast stretches of the Five Seas simply couldn't be reached any other way. (This draws on the original story, where Bernadette needed to sail the Dawn for a considerable stretch of time to reach that same primordial island.)
"Well, if the Spirit World won't work, I'll just fly there directly."
After advancing to Sequence 2, "Sage," unless she found herself in a battle against another Sequence 2, burning through massive amounts of spirituality in a short span, her spirituality could theoretically sustain her flying all the way around the globe without so much as breaking a sweat.
As for whatever extreme weather she might encounter along the way — that, too, was something she could simply ignore entirely.
This was the real gap between Sequence 2 and Sequence 3 — the reason Sequence 2 earned the title "Angel." Back in the distant Second Epoch, Sequence 2 could reasonably have been considered "gods" in their own right.
Bernadette dissolved into a stream of information, invisible to the naked eye — from a distance, little more than a streak of starlight cutting across the sky — and shot toward the location marked on the sea route chart at a speed rivaling a falling meteor.
Gradually, as the fog around the ocean thickened, obscuring her vision, dulling her senses, Bernadette nearly lost all sense of time and space entirely — if not for the precise compass in her hand, she might well have lost her bearings completely.
At some point, the thick fog began thinning, replaced instead by driving wind and rain, and lightning even more violent than the storm she'd summoned that day shouting "Leodro!" The sea and sky alike were swallowed in pitch darkness, as if the apocalypse itself had arrived.
Bernadette said nothing, simply flying onward. In her information-stream state, she was immune to nearly all physical harm — wind, rain, and lightning posed no threat to her at all.
No telling how long passed before the storm finally began to settle.
Just then, dark shapes began emerging in the distance, gradually resolving into a fairly sizable island. Across it, towering trees, a deep green bordering on black, rose high into the sky, blanketing the ground, obscuring the mountain peaks beneath them.
Whether by the markings on the sea route chart, or by her own Fortune Teller's intuition, everything told her: this was the place she'd been searching for. The primordial island where her father waited.
Half a minute later —
Bernadette stood on the island's beach. She pressed her lips together, recalling what Vincent had once told her — in the "story" he knew, she'd only been able to safely explore this island with the Fool's help, eventually reaching her father.
But the current Fool was still only a mid-tier Sequence 7 Beyonder. Even with Source Quality's boost behind him, there was little chance he could offer her any real help.
Which meant she'd have to rely entirely on herself.
Bernadette gave a light toss of her right hand, releasing a vividly colored, not-quite-real ball of yarn.
The ball rolled off into the void, trailing a single thread behind it, extending deep into the island, marking a path to guide her way back.
Rather than rushing forward, Bernadette first cautiously let her ocean-blue eyes deepen, losing focus for a brief moment, drawing on her Fortune Teller's ability to scout ahead for whatever dangers this island might hold.
Instantly, her vision pierced through reality, into something illusory — a black mausoleum, and within it, a figure with a bowed head. Dad?!
And then, right at that moment, boundless crimson surged in from every direction, rapidly spreading, swallowing the figure, swallowing the entire mausoleum, drowning her vision in solid red.
The next instant, Bernadette saw something colossal descending from the sky.
That was... the red moon?!
To be continued…
Guys, kindly support me on Patreon as it helps me in buying the chapters and also it helps me alot.
Advance 100 Chapters are up on my Patreon!
pat reon.com/AlphaSenatus