Mystery: Survival from the Secret Doll

Chapter 311, Section 310: When in doubt, Leo...

A door that connects the inside and outside, and someone is watching it?
Connecting the inside and outside, what does it connect the inside and outside of? The inside of the examination room and the outside of the examination room?
And who's watching the door?
A gatekeeper?

Klein frowned in thought, but his revolver remained aimed at the monster clinging to the wall, showing no sign of letting up.

After all, even if the other party appears friendly enough, it doesn't necessarily mean that they are truly friendly.

Didn't I just slap him? I almost sent him straight to see his great-grandmother.

"You mean there's a Death Path Sequence 5 gatekeeper in the underground of Black Vortex Town, watching over a door?"

“No,” the monster chuckled, shaking its head that was piled on its belly, “the gatekeeper I’m talking about isn’t the ‘gatekeeper’ on the sequence potions list. Well, he’s more special… but the specifics can’t be explained in a few words. You’ll understand once you go down and see for yourself…”

As it spoke, the monster once again used its wet, slippery tentacles to pinch the monocle in its left eye socket.

Klein's expression shifted slightly as he frowned, staring intently at the head hanging from the monster's stomach—a head that looked exaggerated, wore a monocle, and had been severed by Anderson earlier.

This physical structure gave Klein a twisted and absurd feeling, while at the same time giving him a strange sense of familiarity.

"They all wear monocles in their left eye sockets, and they both have this habitual, repetitive movement..."

As a diviner, Klein has always had a strong spiritual intuition, not to mention that he has now fully digested the Sequence 9 diviner's potion. In just a brief contact, Klein sensed a strange sense of similarity.

Klein suddenly had a guess, but the guess was so shocking that Klein himself could hardly accept it.

It's as if Leonard and the monster in front of him have some kind of intricate connection that he's unaware of.

"What...what's your relationship with Leonard?"

Leonard is the Nightmare of Sequence 7 of the Night Path. He was the first Beyonder to approach Klein with Captain Dunn Smith because of the Antigonus Family Notes. This fellow Night Watcher had said some ambiguous things to Klein at St. Peter's Hospital. He seemed somewhat mysterious and usually wore a monocle that looked like it was carved from crystal.

In Klein's perception, this man seemed to be hiding a considerable secret, and he usually spoke in a way that was half-said and half-hidden, giving people a playful "guess what" attitude. He was unserious and made Klein a little scared.

However, as fellow night watchmen, Klein had quite a few opportunities to interact with this eccentric poet. But each time, Klein felt that this strange poet was neurotic (somewhat schizophrenic), never speaking coherently, a rambling, unpredictable fellow.

But since they were both Night Watchers, Leonard's monocle, which he usually wore on his left eye, and the one worn by the monster in front of him in his left eye socket, which, in contrast to the glowing minerals hanging from the church ceiling, gave Klein an extremely similar texture.

This absurd feeling made Klein feel extremely strange and a sense of utter folly rising from within.

How could Leonard Mitchell possibly be related to the NPC monsters in the exam hall? Could it be that the prototype for this exam hall is related to Leonard? Is Leonard being used as a template?

Haha, how could that be?

Klein quickly dismissed his guess, deeming it absurd and more likely a mere coincidence.

"Leonard?"

The monster pondered the name for a moment, then, both unexpectedly and predictably, shook its head and said, "I don't know it, I've never heard of this name."

"After all, I've been here for a long time. Even if there really is such a person, really..."

Sensing the gaze from the spirit realm watching him, the monster chuckled in a low, hoarse voice, "It has something to do with me, but being trapped in this vortex, I have no idea about such things."

What followed made Klein feel that something was wrong, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

Klein frowned. Time was of the essence, so he immediately pressed on, "Trapped in the vortex? What else do you know?"

"Why should I tell you?"

The monster looked at Klein with a strange expression and asked, "How about this? You go down there and take a look first, and then I'll tell you the rest. How about that? It's a very fair deal."

Don't go.

Upon hearing this, alarm bells immediately went off in Klein's mind.

With such a huge, brightly lit pit of fire, he'd have to be a fool to listen to the NPC and go underground to face that huge trouble.

Seemingly aware of Klein's unusually strong opposition, the monster said with a hint of regret, "Really? You're not planning to go?"

"I thought you would want to know about yourself..."

Before the monster could finish speaking, the strangely writhing creature suddenly screamed, and its monocle fell out of its left eye socket, crashing to the ground with a thud.

The monster, whose limbs had grown unusually long, scrambled out of the church door at lightning speed. It was as if it had encountered some indescribable, terrifying monster, and it disappeared from Klein's sight in an instant, giving him no time or chance to react.

Klein was completely bewildered. Holding his revolver, he scanned his surroundings like a cat with its fur standing on end in fright, but he couldn't find anything else that could scare the monster away.

What happened? How did that thing suddenly run away?
Klein was completely baffled, his brows furrowed as he tried to deduce something from the monster's words and his own observations. However, he quickly lost interest in such matters.

The church belonging to the Singularity Cult was located beside Lake Swell. At this time, the water of Lake Swell had already overflowed, and a shallow layer of water mixed with water plants and dirt had entered from outside the church, quickly reaching above Klein's ankles.

Klein immediately had a bad feeling.

Ignoring the fact that the monster had dropped its monocle in the ankle-deep water as it fled, Klein rushed to the church door that the monster had smashed open and looked out.

The typhoon outside was still blowing wildly, and the muffled sound came from the sky, but it was gradually becoming clearer. The typhoon, along with the endless clouds in the sky, was pouring into Lake Swell like water from a drained sink.

Faced with such a natural disaster, there is little doubt that this church, belonging to the Singularity sect and believing in "stars," will soon be unable to withstand the sudden increase in wind and the growing lake water.

Before Klein could even steady himself, he was lifted up a second time by the sudden downward pressure and increased wind force, and was sucked into the typhoon.

The suction force, so powerful it seemed capable of tearing a person apart at any moment, made it extremely difficult for Klein to pull out the ritual magic talisman from his pocket. However, this time, the ritual magic was far less effective against the gale than before.

"Because...the effect of this thing...is also increasing?"

He was flung away, flying a great distance, surrounded by buildings, people, and monsters being swept up in the gale. All of these things were converging towards the eye of the typhoon, pouring into the lake in the center of Black Vortex Town.

It was obvious that the lake was the center of the entire Black Vortex Town. Klein even suspected that the passage leading underground, and the culprit behind the anomaly that had occurred in the entire Black Vortex Town, was located beneath this lake.

Protected by ritual magic, Klein was thrown out, surrounded by clouds surging towards the center of the lake, gales, rain, buildings, and monsters. But soon, in this stormy weather, Klein discovered traces of lightning.

"lightning?"

Klein's mind went blank for a moment. Wait, if he got struck by lightning here, he'd die instantly, right?

wrong……

Klein looked over sharply.

The suction force of the typhoon was partially offset by the reaction force generated by the ritual magic. He had left the core area of ​​Black Vortex Town, like a ball thrown from a height, watching the entire Black Vortex Town pass beneath him in a parabolic trajectory from mid-air.

The surrounding clouds had thinned considerably, and the view gradually opened up.

Klein looked in the direction he was heading. Clearly, if he were to fall like this, his destination would be the mountains with strange trees next to Black Vortex Town.

On that mountain, large areas were charred black, and flames spread everywhere. Almost the entire mountain had been completely destroyed by a tremendous force.

The dark clouds that had been completely absorbed by the typhoon still lingered above these mountains, but Klein quickly realized that these clouds were different from the ones they had seen in Black Vortex Town.

The original dark clouds over Black Vortex Town only brought wind and rain, but never thunder.

Klein's pupils dilated as he stared intently at a bolt of lightning striking down from the sky and crashing into the forest below.

One after another, strangely shaped trees in the mountains and forests were chopped into pieces, leaving only scorched earth and no sign of life.

Soon, with the help of ritual magic, Klein landed steadily without any injury.

Just as he was about to leave this obviously problematic mountain range, by sheer coincidence, a figure with a completely blackened face, whose features were obscured, suddenly rose from the ground beside him. Klein was so startled that he almost jumped up and fired two bursts of bullets at the unidentifiable creature.

"you--"

"Ahem, it's me, it's me."

Fors coughed again, looking at Klein with surprise, then at the forest that had been cleaved beyond recognition, her face filled with suffocation, on the verge of tears.

"what have you done?"

Klein was also speechless, looking at Fors with disbelief, as if to ask, "How did you do that?"

"Ah, well..."

Fors awkwardly pinched the hem of her own clothes, which also looked tattered.

"After we separated, we were left in the forest outside the town..."

She briefly recounted her experience before explaining what she did after getting lost and realizing she couldn't get out of the forest.

“I recited a spell… It’s a mystical spell I saw in a book before, but I didn’t expect it to be so powerful…”

Klein looked at Fors with a "What the hell did you chant?" expression. Fors was also shocked; how could she have known that the incantation would have such a huge impact?

If she finds out... well, even if she finds out, she'll still chant it to get rid of this forest.

After all, according to reliable sources, reciting this mantra is the right thing to do when in doubt.

"So, Ms. Wall, what is that incantation?"

After the initial shock, Klein became interested in the spell that Miskatonic had mentioned, recorded in his book on ritual magic, which could destroy an entire forest in an instant.

Does this common incantation really have such great power?
Klein went through all the books he had read in his mind and confirmed that none of the ritual magic described there could establish a connection with the beings that could cause such terrible consequences simply by reciting a name.

“It’s Leo…”

Boom——

Another rumble of thunder sounded in the sky, and Fors instinctively shut his mouth, saying awkwardly, "Well, it seems even Rune language can cause problems."

Even without using the Rune language, which can manipulate the power of nature, the corresponding effect will still be triggered. This is because the ritual magic is still in existence, and the ritual magic automatically responds to the activation incantation. As long as the incantation is pointed to correctly, even without the Ancient Hermes language acting as a "key" to open the connecting door, the ritual magic can still produce a certain reaction.

This is a manifestation of the delayed effect of ritual magic.

Although Klein didn't quite catch the name Fors said, he quickly went through all the things he knew that could be connected by a respectful name, having only heard the first few words.

Unfortunately, he didn't find it.

When Fors heard Klein say that he had never seen a book that recorded a similar honorific name, he looked completely bewildered, as if to say, "How is that possible?"

"Wasn't it in the book 'The Basic Applications of Ritual Magic'? Page twenty-seven, I remember it very clearly."

When Fors saw the example of the ritual master being nearly killed by the incantation, she was so surprised that she memorized the page number perfectly. It was almost impossible for her to make a mistake.

Klein leaned against a dead tree that had been struck by lightning, somewhat dazed.

How come he doesn't remember that this kind of thing was written in the book "Basic Applications of Ritual Magic"?
How could such a wide-ranging and destructive spell be written in such a basic magic book?
Klein expressed skepticism about this.

(End of this chapter)