Though his heart was full of doubt and vigilance, Karl quickly approached the doctor, crouched down, and tried to help him up to check his condition.
"How are you? What happened?!" Karl asked urgently.
But when the doctor saw Karl's face, his eyes no longer held the fawning and respect from before, but were full of strangeness, fear, and pain.
As he convulsed from the intense pain, he struggled to squeeze out a few words from his throat, speaking intermittently.
"You... who are you?! I... I don't know you! Why... why are you breaking into my house?! Ah!!"
When Karl heard this, he was completely stunned—what was going on?! Was this man schizophrenic? Or had he suddenly lost his memory?
He had been gone for less than ten minutes, so why did this man not recognize him at all? And how could the beggar have disappeared out of nowhere?
Before he could continue questioning or examining, the doctor's body suddenly tensed, struggling in pain on the ground.
His hands, covering his abdomen, weakly fell limp, and the light in his pupils quickly faded, and he fell completely silent.
Karl frowned and immediately used his clairvoyance to carefully examine the doctor's body.
When his vision penetrated the skin and muscles and saw the situation inside the doctor's body, his whole body was struck by lightning, stunned.
He saw all the vital organs—the heart, lungs, etc.—in the doctor's chest and abdominal cavity...
Everything had turned into cold, heavy, metallic gold.
These golden organs retained their original shape but had completely lost their vitality, frozen within the body.
"...?! What kind of situation is this?!" Karl exclaimed.
He stood up, his gaze quickly scanning the entire house, penetrating through walls and obstacles, scanning several times.
There were beggars, but none matched the previous one.
The doctor, who had suddenly turned his internal organs to gold and died, and the doctor's inexplicable "I don't know you" before his death.
All this strangeness seemed to have started from the moment he met Iris outside the door.
Not only had the doctor died inexplicably, in such an incredible way,
but the beggar, who had been seriously injured, unconscious, and unable to move on his own, had also mysteriously disappeared along with the purchased food.
Most importantly, with his super hearing powerful enough to cover the von Everec Estate, he hadn't caught any unusual or suspicious sounds from inside the room after the anomaly occurred.
All of this had happened quietly, as if a higher level of existence
had easily erased, changed reality before him, and completely blocked his perception.
Karl stood still, his thoughts returning to all the details from the moment he met the beggar.
Especially the moment he had turned his head to find the doctor...
An abnormal change in the beggar? No, his perception hadn't detected any deviation at the time.
A guess, like lightning in the darkness, suddenly illuminated his thoughts.
The beggar? The beggar whose wounds were so severe that he would surely die in a few days, yet who had called for help just as he "happened" to pass by?
The beggar who might have changed something when he looked away for a moment? Who had now mysteriously disappeared along with the food?
Able to disguise himself so perfectly, easily hide from his perception, strangely manipulate reality and fate, and act in accordance with his memory...
Karl suddenly raised his head, his eyes full of seriousness and vigilance, and a name escaped his lips: "Gaunter O'Dimm?!"
He stood there, frowning, his heart full of doubt.
The Master of Mirrors... Since he had taken the initiative to contact him, even openly distorted reality and punished a doctor before his eyes,
why hadn't he shown himself and hadn't even bothered to say a word to him?
This was somewhat inconsistent with the image he knew, one who loved using contracts, playing with human nature, and setting verbal traps.
He remembered that there seemed to be a noble lady who had spoken ill of the Master of Mirrors disguised as a beggar, even threatening to feed the leftover food to the dog rather than give it to him.
Soon after, that young lady suffered a terrible curse, turning into a monster that constantly collected spoons, a being Geralt had once encountered.
And the fate of the doctor before him... goldification, although different in form, was also a punishment meted out based on a "crime."
Karl's expression became complex, and he slowly exhaled, finally solving the puzzle.
It turned out... it was because of his timely kindness—not hesitating to help the beggar and being willing to pay for his treatment.
In the eyes of the Master of Mirrors, such pure goodwill, expecting nothing in return, could actually constitute a kind of "release."
The Master of Mirrors hadn't attacked him directly, not out of jealousy, but because he had inadvertently "conformed" to some kind of rule of the game,
making the other party lose the reason to attack on the spot, or perhaps finding it not interesting enough.
The other party had simply punished the doctor before him in an almost ostentatious manner and blocked his perception as a silent warning and display of power.
"I see through you and could easily do this, but this time I'll 'let you off.'"
Thinking this, Karl didn't feel the slightest relief, but became even more vigilant.
Dealing with such an existence, coincidences don't mean safety.
The opponent is like a dealer sitting across the table, knowing all the rules.
You never know what his next card will be, or when he might suddenly change the rules of the game.
"It seems that the necessary precautions are absolutely essential." Karl's eyes were stern.
He raised his hands and pressed them to his chest, his thoughts very focused, drawing on the droplet of divine power within his body.
Divine power, like an awakened stream, burst from his palm, intertwining and outlining in the air.
A rune with a complex structure, composed of countless fine golden threads, gradually took shape.
This was not a flat pattern, but a three-dimensional structure, with a prismatic, clover-like structure in the center.
The edges were solar, vaguely radiating an aura of solitude, protection, and stability.
This was the spell Melitele had taught him, called "Zaydel's Protection."
The moment the rune was about to fully solidify, far away in Melitele's divine realm,
Melitele, who was stroking a moose, seemed to sense something. She looked up, her gaze penetrating layers of cosmic barriers, and saw the rune Karl was constructing.
With a light touch of her slender fingertips, a more compressed and life-bearing divine power quietly dissolved into the void.
The next moment, before Karl, behind the suspended rune, the void swirled like water waves.
Melitele's divine power penetrated space and was woven into the rune.
BOOM! With the blessing of Melitele's divine power, Zaydel's Protective Rune suddenly shone brightly.
The entire rune seemed to come alive; its lines became deeper, and its protective power instantly increased by several levels, becoming a sacred and inviolable spell.