"..."
Not going to let it go, are you.
Klein looked at him quietly for a moment. "What are your plans going forward?"
"Find someone to latch onto, obviously."
Vincent's expression was a picture of helpless resignation. He scratched his head. "There's maybe a decade or two before the end of the world. Either become the big leg yourself, or grab hold of someone else's — otherwise you're definitely going to die."
"What did you say?!"
Klein's expression shifted. "End of the world? What end of the world?"
"You don't know about it? Ah — probably your Sequence isn't high enough yet, or you haven't had the right contacts." Vincent explained: "It's basically an open consensus among high-sequence Beyonders at this point — in ten or twenty years, the world will reach its end. When that happens, anything below Angel-tier probably won't make it through. Even Angels might not survive."
"What kind of end?"
"That I don't know. Just that it's called 'the end.' No specifics."
Klein's mind went into freefall. He'd heard the word "end times" before, but every time he'd assumed it was cult rhetoric, a scare tactic used to recruit the desperate. Something you didn't take seriously.
But according to this "Charles" — it was real?
The End Times. What a terrifying phrase.
"Huh?"
Klein suddenly frowned. "You can't be high-sequence yet. So how did you learn about it?"
"From the hidden organisation I joined."
"What organisation?"
"The Aurora Order!"
"!!!"
Klein nearly jumped to his feet. "You joined the Aurora Order?! Don't you know they're an evil god cult that stages terror attacks?"
"I know."
Vincent nodded, exhaling slowly. "But I had no choice. There aren't many 'big legs' in this world worth grabbing, and the Aurora Order happens to be one of them."
He lowered his voice: "Besides — the True Creator… is also a fellow countryman of ours."
"!!!"
Klein was struck speechless.
"He seems to have lost His mind, gone completely mad — but who knows, maybe He'll recover one day. And when He does, maybe He'll throw a fellow countryman a hand up."
"How… how do you know the True Creator is a fellow countryman?"
"Because I've heard His ravings. Chaotic, yes — but I could still make out that what He was speaking was Russian. So the True Creator is almost certainly a Slavic."
"..."
Klein leaned back and felt the weight of it settle. He genuinely hadn't imagined that the evil god so frequently discussed at the Tarot Club had come from Earth.
And an early arrival at that — probably the Third Epoch. A thousand years later, He'd become a terrifying evil god, rejected by every Church and nation on the continent.
According to "Charles," the True Creator became what He was because He lost His mind.
But how does a god lose His mind?
Something heavy settled in Klein: Among the known transmigrator countrymen — the True Creator went mad, Emperor Roselle was assassinated, the Lord of Chaos seems to have retreated from the world…
None of them ended up very well.
What about me?
Was this the world's particular hostility toward transmigrators?
"Oh — speaking of which," Vincent said. "According to what I learned inside the Aurora Order, Emperor Roselle actually didn't die."
Klein already knew that. "Do you know where he is?"
"How would I? Not a clue."
He shook his head. "What I do know is that at the time he was assassinated, Roselle had already advanced to Sequence 0 — the Black Emperor. And the Black Emperor Pathway has a special quality: even after falling, there's still a path back to resurrection."
"But the condition is — no new Black Emperor can be born first."
Klein's face went carefully still.
"And," Vincent said, voice dropping, "it might not be long before a new Black Emperor arrives. If that happens, Roselle will be gone permanently."
"Who's going to become the new Black Emperor?"
"The Loen King. George III."
"Is all of this from the Aurora Order?"
"Yes." Vincent nodded. "Because George III wanted to hide the truth of his ascension, he's planning to cause a catastrophic disaster in Backlund. The Aurora Order is one of the evil god organisations cooperating with him."
He sighed. "The Demoness Sect is the other. Though I'm so weak there's nothing I can do about any of it."
"..."
What a 'surprise' this all is.
The Church had sent Klein to infiltrate the Demoness Sect, to determine what they were actually up to in Backlund. He'd spent weeks getting tangled in it without uncovering anything concrete — and now a fellow countryman had accidentally handed him the full picture in one sitting.
Klein took a slow breath and flicked a coin. Heads — positive. Still telling the truth.
He turned the coin between his fingers. His mind went to the Tarot Club session yesterday — the Lovers had revealed that Miss Lovers was Emperor Roselle's daughter, and then had privately passed along her question: what is your attitude toward Bernadette?
He'd assumed she was simply probing whether the Fool could help her find Roselle. Now that felt too narrow. Bernadette almost certainly already knew about George III's plan. She wanted to stop it, but couldn't manage it alone — so she was trying to pull the Fool in.
The problem was that only Klein himself knew how much the Fool actually had to offer. If she was counting on him, Roselle was finished.
Tch.
If before he'd been grateful to Roselle for the diaries, now — knowing about the End Times — he had his own reasons to want a Sequence 0 around. A fully revived Black Emperor would be a genuine god.
He couldn't give Bernadette substantial help directly. But reporting everything back to the Church might accomplish something, even indirectly.
Having sorted through all of that, Klein brought his attention back to the man in front of him.
"Now that you've confirmed I'm a transmigrator — what do you plan to do?"
Vincent spread both hands. "Stay in contact, and we each get on with our lives. Right now neither of us is in a position to do much — pooling our uselessness would still just be two useless people."
"But if one of us gets lucky down the road and actually makes it somewhere — don't forget to pull the other one up."
Klein studied him carefully, trying to read how much of that was genuine. But the man hadn't shown clear hostility, and there were no real grounds to do anything drastic.
The Lord of Chaos had said once: in a strange world that doesn't belong to you, suddenly finding a 'fellow countryman' is genuinely a delightful thing. Because it means there's finally one person who can understand what you're saying, who gets where you're coming from. Their existence makes you feel as if you're no longer alone, no longer abandoned by the world. That feeling is something no amount of power can replace.
After a long silence, Klein said in a low voice: "I'm going to use the bathroom."
To be continued…
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