Amon's words left Edward momentarily stunned.
The Amon standing before him wasn't the one in Trier—it had to be another avatar.
That realisation didn't delay his choice. He bolted immediately, vanishing in a flash.
"Oh? So you've dealt with another one of my avatars before." Amon adjusted his monocle with a pinch of his fingers. "I was only tagging along with Steph to satisfy a bit of curiosity, but I didn't expect such an interesting surprise."
He turned his head toward the heap of writhing flesh on the ground and shook his head. "Sigh…To be bullied like this by a Sequence 4—how pitiful."
Elsewhere, Edward reappeared outside the black monastery, cursing under his breath.
This damned Amon—why did he have to be everywhere? Just when he'd shaken off one, another had popped up.
The biggest problem now was that Amon's appearance here meant he was physically present in the Sea of Ruins. At dawn, if Edward couldn't teleport away in time, and if Amon decided to make a move…that could really be the end.
Then again, given Amon's relationship with the True Creator, would he take the chance to eliminate Steph, that fanatical zealot?
Tsk. Best to plan for the worst—he might have to deal with both enemies at once.
For the next half hour, Edward kept changing his appearance and clothing, slipping from place to place within the dreamworld.
Steph never reappeared.
Nor did Amon.
It was as if neither of them cared about him at all.
Half an hour later, as the surrounding gloom abruptly brightened, a brilliant white light startled Edward awake from the dreamworld.
The moment he opened his eyes, he summoned the Traveler's Door and looked in Steph's direction—just in time to see the angel awaken. Three pairs of pupils—black, frenzied, cold—all flared with mania and violence, no different from their state within the dream.
Knew it! Amon was never going to kill him for me!
In a single step, Steph appeared right before Edward.
Edward retreated at once, diving into the Spirit World.
"This place forbids Spirit World traversal!"
But Steph's prohibition had no effect. Edward's figure darted swiftly through the Spirit World, vanishing in the blink of an eye.
Steph only gave a cold snort. The flesh-and-spirit blade in his hand slashed forward, sending a scarlet sword light tearing across space. It split the Traveler's Door and the Spirit World within like shards of shattered glass.
Ripples spread across the "glass," thinning, fading, and vanishing—nothing more than an illusion.
Edward had evaporated into thin air.
Not invisibility.
Steph immediately came to that conclusion. One head shifted to the Spectator pathway, searching for Edward's whereabouts—but still, there was nothing.
If teleportation was impossible, then how had he disappeared before his very eyes?
Even if Steph had been in a lucid state, he would not have been able to reason it out.
So instead, he chose madness.
The Sequence 2 angel launched wild, indiscriminate attacks in all directions, obliterating everything within a kilometer.
That was the scene Amon arrived to witness.
"So he really managed to escape?" Amon wasn't disappointed; if anything, he seemed intrigued. He watched the frenzied angel with amusement.
"To think, merging two personalities' flesh within a dream could turn a Sequence 2 into a lunatic."
"Ah, so you've noticed."
The moment Steph spotted Amon, he attacked without hesitation. Though his eyes brimmed with madness, the words he spoke were resolute and sonorous:
"I am the attendant beside the Lord's throne, Steph, the Angel of the Holy Word. I walk this land in my Lord's name."
"Blasphemer Amon—prepare to die!"
Amon pinched his monocle into place, smiling faintly. "Although I do quite like the title 'Blasphemer,' if we're talking true blasphemy, who could rival the one you worship? After all, He was born from the corpse of a god."
Steph paid his words no heed. All three heads switched to different abilities as he closed the distance in a flash, attacking with the most straightforward, brutal strike of all—a cleave from the flesh-and-spirit blade.
Amon retreated leisurely, avoiding the strike. Then, in a series of deft movements, he stole away the current thoughts of Steph's three heads. Only then did he smile.
"Heh. Not going to play with you anymore."
His mind stirred, preparing to steal distance and leave. But just then, his spirituality jolted violently.
The next instant, Amon's consciousness wavered. His first reaction was sharp and instinctive:
Battle hypnosis?
—And potent enough to seize him without the slightest warning.
Who was it?
The expected attack never came. It was as if, in that instant, Amon had simply blanked out.
He brushed his cheek with a fingertip and found a smear of blood. His brows furrowed in mild puzzlement.
"After a hypnosis…just a cut across my cheek? Who was it? Why? What are they trying to do?"
Steph, likewise emerging from the haze of hypnosis, launched into another frenzied assault. "Blasphemer—die!"
"Tsk. Troublesome."
———
In a boundless world of snow and ice, Edward suddenly appeared.
All around him stretched endless whiteness, blizzards howling with shards of ice and thick flurries of snow that bit into his bones.
At once, he switched into spirit form, retraced four steps against the gray fog, and entered the Sefirah Castle. Inside, he flipped two coins in quick succession:
"Has Steph discovered I hid here?"
"Has Amon discovered I hid here?"
Both times, the result was a number on top—negative.
Edward let out a long sigh of relief. It seemed his plan had worked.
Yes.
That snowy world outside was none other than the Book of Groselle's Travels.
This had been the best solution he could think of before leaving the dreamworld: use False Reality to conjure an illusion to briefly mislead Steph, and while stepping into the Spirit World, smear his blood across the cover of Groselle's Travels, slipping inside the book's world.
As for the book itself, he had let it fall deep into the Spirit World.
Of course, Edward had prepared for the possibility of being discovered. His backup plan was simple—reverse four steps on the spot, enter the Sefirah Castle, and pray to Roselle or Pallez to open a Sacrificial Door. From there, he could sacrifice himself out of the Castle and back to Trier.
But that would mean losing Groselle's Travels, and his advancement to Sequence 3 would become extremely troublesome.
Luckily, fortune was with him. None of them had noticed.
Since that was the case, the next step was to follow the book's storyline as intended—leave the world alongside the "heroes," fulfilling the regret he'd once had as a reader of Lord of the Mysteries, and at the same time completing the ritual for his Sequence 3 advancement ahead of schedule.
And yet—
Edward gazed past the swirling snowflakes into the distance, and an inexplicable unease tugged at him.
Why, when everything had gone according to plan, did he feel no joy at all?
Why did it all feel…out of tune?
As though he had made a very foolish decision.
But in that situation, hadn't this clearly been the best option?
He pondered in silence for a long time, but found no answer. Finally, he turned his focus back to the matter at hand.
"According to the book's setup, I'm still two people short of reaching the end."
If I were to slay the dragon known as the King of the North under these conditions, what would happen?
Would I clear the story immediately?
Or would the dragon never appear at all?
Would it appear, but prove unkillable?
Or, even if killed, would it fail to trigger the ending?
Worse still—might it cause a bug in the story itself?
Surely the Dragon King who crafted this book must have accounted for such possibilities. After all, it made no sense that, across centuries, every Beyonder who stumbled into Groselle's Travels had to be below demigod.
Best to follow the story for now. If things truly became stuck, then perhaps Roselle—or someone else—could use an Undetectable Extension Charm suitcase to smuggle in two extra people as sacrifices, to see if they could be counted toward the tally.
With his decision made, Edward didn't rush to descend. Instead, he waited patiently within the Sefirah Castle for half an hour.
Another round of divination confirmed no danger.
Only then did he return to the snowy world.
The gale roared. His vision was filled with thick sheets of snow; it was impossible to see more than four or five meters ahead. In such a world, trying to locate the protagonist's party was nothing short of a fool's dream.
Fortunately, Edward had made preparations. He had Pallez sacrifice a Worm of Time beforehand. With it, Edward could use dowsing to divine the position of Pallez's great-grandson, Mobet Zoroast, and then follow the trail.
——
Dusk fell.
Perhaps because it was the book's world, Edward experienced something for the first time in the Lord of Mysteries world—night without the crimson moon.
The storm only worsened with darkness. Snow and wind became walls of pitch black, and if not for the lantern he conjured, not even spirit form and dowsing would have been enough to move forward.
Guided by his staff and the divinations, Edward finally reached a mountain.
Circling around a massive rock sheathed in thick ice, he spotted a yawning cave mouth. At the entrance stood a woman holding an ancient bow.
Her black hair gleamed softly in the lantern light, tied back simply in a ponytail. Her features were delicate, gentle. There was no doubt—she was the "Elven Songstress," the very one who had developed feelings for Pallez's descendant.
If elves in the Lord of Mysteries world truly had ties to the Chinese bloodline, then this elven songstress was, in all likelihood, a Sichuan-Chongqing girl.1
———
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In China, girls from the Sichuan-Chongqing region are often regarded as some of the most beautiful.