Mystery: Survival from the Secret Doll

Chapter 277 276 The Diviner's Club
After reading through the entire document Leonard had given him, Klein felt somewhat confused.

"This is……"

"It was something I wrote on the spur of the moment, what do you think?" Leonard smiled nonchalantly. "After all, sitting in a carriage without any entertainment can be a bit boring, right? I used to be a midnight poet, so I have a very thorough understanding of poetry."

are you sure?

Are you really sure you understand poetry?
After considering it for a moment, Klein said frankly and incisively, "The inspiration is good, but the content needs improvement."

Spiders, roses, poison, and all sorts of other nonsense make the whole poem seem incomprehensible and give you goosebumps for no reason.

Klein handed the paper back to Leonard, but Leonard refused, seemingly having no intention of taking it back.

Leonard shrugged, making no attempt to hide anything, and said, "You can keep it."

He adjusted the monocle on his left eye socket, gave Klein a cryptic smile that gave Klein a strange, unsettling feeling, as if the man was watching a good show.

What would I do with this?
Klein was about to blurt out those words, but in the end, he opened his mouth but didn't say what was on his mind. Instead, he folded the paper with the strange poem on it, put it in his pocket, and kept it safe.

Leonard didn't mind Klein's actions. When the carriage came to a smooth stop in front of the gate of 47 Golden Rose Street, he nodded to Klein and said:
"Go upstairs and get your things, I'll wait for you here."

"If you don't come down in fifteen minutes, I'll come up to you. There's a large-scale ritual magic monitoring system set up by the Tingen City Government nearby, so generally speaking, there shouldn't be any problems. Is that alright, our fortune teller?"

“Okay.” Klein was somewhat surprised that the Tingen city government had some kind of monitoring ritual magic in the vicinity, but he didn’t have much of an opinion on Leonard’s arrangements.

He's not a giant baby who needs someone to watch over him all the time...

After watching Klein walk through the doors of Golden Rose 47, Leonard leaned back leisurely, crossing one leg over the other knee.

He habitually adjusted his monocle, which had become slightly crooked due to his movements, and then casually reached into his pocket.

As if by magic, a piece of paper reappeared in Leonard's hands.

Looking at the poems above, which were not written by him at all but were simply repetitions of some wicked guy's prophecy, Leonard's lips slowly curled into a bright smile that stretched all the way to his ears.

“The Fool’s prophetic poem, no wonder my paranoid brother actually cooperated with you.”

"The realm of destiny, amidst chaos and disorder, emphasizes the inevitable outcome, the predetermined fate... It's truly fascinating..."

The paper fluttered even without wind. Leonard casually pinched it, and the paper transformed into a blooming, clean, and neat red rose, bathed in sunlight.

“Although there is more than one blooming rose in the flowerbed, it is almost impossible to have two identical roses.” Leonard paused for a moment, glanced at the observation window of the public carriage, and saw himself wearing a monocle reflected in the glass.

As one of the world's top decipherers, with a considerable amount of useful information, Leonard could easily guess what the symbols in the prophetic poem actually represented.

He lowered his voice slightly, sounding thoughtful: "So that's why we need to utilize the concept of a mirror?"

"Is this also the reason why the Red Priests were promoted to godhood, and why Alistair Tudor and Salinger, the two former Red Priests, were completely destroyed?"

Of course, this was clearly not in Leonard's paranoid brother's plan, or even in his paranoid brother's plan. The Red Priest, one of the two paths of calamity, should have his godhood postponed for a long time.

"Is it because they compromised after discussing it? After all, the end of the world is approaching, and many things cannot be perfectly resolved without paying a price. Making necessary sacrifices is a reasonable thing to do."

"Destructive natural disaster, the root of all evil..."

Leonard casually fiddled with the thorny rose stem in his hand, a faint smile playing on his lips.

"Tinggen is a very interesting city."

"This is a good use of my clone, after all the trouble I went through to get here."

Seeing Klein emerge from 47 Golden Rose Street, Leonard crushed the rose in his hand, letting it turn into scraps of paper that fell to the ground and disappeared.

He subconsciously adjusted his monocle, and then a rather pleased smile reappeared on his face.

"And ah..."

-

After the carriage left Golden Rose Street, Klein and Leonard arrived at the Fortune Teller's Club at 17 Blue Moon Street.

"Do you need me to accompany you, our fortune teller?"

Leonard asked with a hint of sarcasm.

“No, it’s not necessary,” Klein said rationally. “There are intermediate-sequence Beyonders with the Diviner pathway in the Diviner’s Club, so I think it should be quite safe.”

It's much safer than being with you.

Klein muttered to himself.

Klein was completely baffled by Leonard's logic. Since leaving Blackthorn Security Company today, Leonard hadn't done anything strange except give him a self-composed poem that made no sense at all.

He was like a perfectly normal teammate, so normal that Klein felt that he was the abnormal one.

Leonard didn't seem surprised by Klein's refusal. He shrugged and, without saying anything, prepared to have the coachman take him back to Blackthorn Security.

“Alright, since you insist on this... I’ll come find you in four hours, or I can have Pedigris come find you when he gets back. As for lunch, our fortune teller can just have a simple meal here.”

Seeing that Leonard actually waved and left, Klein stood at the entrance of 17 Blue Moon Street, lost in deep thought.

"Could it be that he really just wants me to appreciate his poetry?"

However, Klein immediately realized that the probability of this being thrown into the air by the truck and transported back to his original world was probably about the same...

This mysterious guy always speaks in a piecemeal fashion, like squeezing toothpaste, and what he says seems crazy and strange.

After getting to know more... or rather, knowing more about Leonard, Klein really didn't know how to have a "normal" conversation with him until Leonard revealed his true purpose.

"Well, let's just take it one step at a time."

Klein stepped into the fortune teller's club.

The receptionist at the Diviner's Club had changed; this was likely a puppet, signifying that the person on duty today wasn't the puppet master who had generously provided the potion recipes before. Klein politely followed the smiling guidance of the receptionist and registered his name in the register. He planned to use a room on the third floor for his upcoming readings, further enriching his already extensive collection of Diviner's Potions.

"That's right, Mr. Moretti. As an organized, formal, and church-recognized fortune teller's club, our venue, drinks, meals, annual fees, and general infrastructure costs are all paid for by the Tingen City Council."

"As for you, as a professional diviner, we will comprehensively consider the minimum and maximum fees for a single divination based on the diviner's potion sequence, the types of divination they are good at, and other factors. You can set your own fee for a divination within a reasonable range."

This is to protect the legitimacy of the fortune tellers' fees, and Klein expressed his understanding.

"Of course, since the Diviners' Club is a legally recognized occult organization in Tingen, those who come here seeking divination are not only ordinary people with special connections, but also individuals from other organizations and through other means. Therefore, we also need to sign a restrictive document prohibiting unauthorized divination of others' privacy within the Diviners' Club..."

As Klein listened to the receptionist explain the specific rules of the fortune teller's club, and after learning about the existence of role-playing, Klein quickly gleaned some of these rules from the documents the fortune teller's club had prepared for the fortune tellers. These rules should also be the guidelines that the role-playing method of fortune tellers needs to follow.

"This is to help the fortune tellers in the club quickly summarize the corresponding rules."

Klein realized this and then signed his name, "Klein Moretti," on the fortune teller's club statement that the receptionist brought him.

The receptionist, with an unwavering smile, led Klein to a room on the third floor. The room was decorated in a relatively conservative style, but it was fully equipped with all the items needed for divination.

"Based on your sequence and potion name, we recommend a fee of 4 to 8 sulph for a divination. Of course, if your divination results are quite accurate, or if the diviner's potion has been significantly digested, and the number of divinations and the effect have increased, we will also increase the price of your divination within a reasonable range."

Although the fortune teller club takes 10% of the fortune telling fee, it's still quite reasonable.

Klein considered the cost of his divination and cautiously offered a compromise: "Then let's go for 6 sule."

Ah, so this is how you make extra money using the abilities of extraordinary individuals?

Klein muttered to himself. The receptionist smiled and nodded, then wrote down the quote Klein wanted before leaving the room.

Klein let out a sigh of relief, then casually took out the piece of paper with strange writing on it that Leonard had given him from his pocket.

I have a feeling that Leonard followed him this time just to hand over this piece of paper with the strange poem written on it.

Klein now deeply suspects that Leonard, this mysterious fellow, may have hidden some information in this poem.

Interpreting symbols is actually a fairly common occult practice in the field of divination. Divination itself involves obtaining various abstract information from the spiritual realm, and the interpreter's ability sometimes indicates the level of content they can extract from this abstract information.

From a fortune teller's perspective, everything that appears in Leonard's poem has a certain symbolic meaning.

Ah, of course, if it's just complaining without cause, that's a different story...

Klein pondered the two sentences that contained the word "you" and felt something was off.

"Your hope is not here. The spider's silk has already bound you. The process of transforming from prey to hunter is itself a process of breaking out of the cocoon and becoming a butterfly."

"When your voice reaches the ears of the stars, destiny will guide you to your inevitable end."

"Awakening in falsehood, sleeping soundly in reality, the spider weaving its web lovingly caresses its prey's body, injecting it with a poison for which there is no antidote."

"The spider's silk binds you, from prey to hunter, the sound falls into the ears of the stars, awakening in falsehood, sleeping soundly in reality..." Klein pondered these words, his brows slowly furrowing.

"Is this suggesting that my destiny itself is flawed? Whose prey am I? Is something false?"

Is it related to the gray fog?

No, not necessarily. Maybe Leonard is just having a fit of madness and is just whining for no reason.
Moreover, this strange way of speaking makes one want to punch him.

As Klein pondered this, there was a sudden knock on the door.

Klein looked over and thought, "Someone's here? So fast?"

He quickly and loudly said, "Please come in."

The door opened with a click, and the first person Klein saw was the receptionist who had brought him up. Then, Klein noticed a woman behind the receptionist who looked somewhat worried.

"This is Miss Anna. For some special reasons, we would like to ask you to do a divination for her."

us?

Klein immediately caught the word.

Miss Anna didn't find the fortune teller's club herself; rather, the fortune teller's club sent her to Klein.
"Yes."

The receptionist politely said, "Her husband went missing after going to sea a while ago, and now the ship has returned to Tingen."

Carrying countless corpses.

-

Tingen, Port District.

The merchant ship was docked at the pier, and the stench of blood wafted from the ship, making the ordinary police officers on duty feel nauseous and almost want to vomit.

"It's been confirmed that there were no survivors on the entire merchant ship; seven people are missing."

Pedigre stepped onto the stinking deck, stained with black, dried blood, and stared at the group of skeletons and rotting corpses exposed by the sea wind, waves, and the carving of seabirds.

The merchant ship was completely wiped out.

"That doesn't seem like the style of pirates."

"Pedigre said."

"Yes."

The policeman, suppressing his nausea, followed him onto the deck. He covered his nose and said in a strange voice, "It doesn't seem like an evil god's ritual, and besides, the ship came back on its own."

A ghost ship.

(End of this chapter)