Has the knight lady who married into the countryside fallen into depravity today?

Without a moment's hesitation, Klein's eyes flashed with a rare fierceness as he slapped the crystal hub hard with his backhand.

"Buzz—"

The magic supply was abruptly cut off! A turbulent flow of magic surged through the air, creating a visible ripple. The eerie blue aura, like a wild beast being choked, flickered twice in defiance before finally extinguishing completely with a piercing explosion.

The room returned to its original dark and oppressive tone. The air was filled with the pungent smell of burnt magic and the nauseating stench of blood. In the silence, only heavy breathing and the sound of blood dripping onto the floor from the iron-backed chair could be heard.

"Damn it," Klein muttered, tossing the brass hammer back onto the workbench. The crisp metallic clanging was jarring in the deathly quiet room.

He strode to the iron-backed chair, his long, slender fingers deftly moving, quickly untying the blood-soaked restraints.

Losing his support, Karen collapsed forward like a rag doll. Klein reacted quickly, grabbing Karen's blood-stained collar and lifting the heavy man to a steady position, preventing him from landing face-first and causing further injury.

"Hey, can you still see clearly?" Klein held up two fingers and waved them in front of Karen's dazed eyes.

Karen's eyes were half-open, his pupils dilated and the whites of his eyes filled with horrifying bloodshot veins. His chapped lips trembled violently, uttering a few broken syllables that were difficult to form, and his weak, bloody breaths sprayed intermittently onto the back of Klein's hand.

Klein let out a long sigh of relief, his tense shoulders finally relaxing.

As long as he's not dead. With his reserves of refined alchemical potions, he could always pull the person back, even if the ferryman of the River Styx came.

He glanced at the crystal pillar used for testing. With the suppression of the magic array gone and Karen, the "medium," in a deep coma, the liquid inside the crystal had regained its clarity. Those eerie shadows, carrying the chilling aura of the deep sea, had vanished without a trace, as if the terrifying riot had never happened.

Klein half-carried, half-dragged Karen onto the wool blanket beside him, pried open his jaw, and deftly fed him two bottles of potent recovery potions that glowed with a bright green light.

Having done all this, he grabbed a clean linen cloth to wipe his hands and turned to walk to his desk. When he laid out a brand new sheet of parchment, the solemnity on his face had faded, and his expression had returned to its usual calm and serene state.

Klein picked up his pen, dipped it in thick black ink, and the nib fell onto the rough paper, making a soft, scratching sound.

"Experimental conclusion: First-stage stripping failed."

As he wrote, he talked to himself in a relaxed tone, as if discussing the flavor of tonight's black tea. He casually drew a heavy horizontal line under the word "failure," the force penetrating the back of the paper.

He had assumed that these filthy creatures from the deep sea were merely like leeches or some kind of parasite, residing in the human brain, and that he could force them out by using high-frequency magical vibrations in conjunction with his improved rejection array.

But as it turned out, he had oversimplified things; things were far more complicated than he had anticipated.

Karen's self-awareness was indeed fighting desperately; the indomitable spirit of a top navigator was still in his bones. But on a physical level, a part of his body... had been completely assimilated.

This is extremely dangerous. The underlying logic of the stripping array is absolute "rejection". When the array operates to its limit, it has no human emotions. It ruthlessly identifies Karen's assimilated body as a "foreign derivative".

Therefore, the magic backlash from the magic circle directly affected Karen herself, attempting to erase his flesh and blood along with the monster from this world.

This perfectly explains why Karen suddenly suffered a massive hemorrhage, and why she was almost skinned alive by the magic circle that saved her.

"This is really troublesome." Klein stopped writing and turned to look at Karen, who was still unconscious on the couch and whose face was as pale as paper due to excessive blood loss.

If Lyra had been even a fraction slower in severing her magic, she might have had to wait until she had to "atone" by going through the black magic manuscripts on "human transmutation" and "resurrection of the dead," which were considered absolutely taboo by the Empire, to see her beloved fiancé again.

Thinking of this, Klein rubbed his temples helplessly, but a very faint smile appeared on his lips.

However troublesome it may be, this whole ordeal wasn't a complete waste of time; at least one wrong option was eliminated.

He stretched out his long, slender fingers and pulled the parchment filled with dense data in front of him. His gaze, sharp as a torch, swept over the leaping peaks in the data.

It is noteworthy that the frequency of the shadow's activity within the crystal pillar perfectly coincides with the timing of Karen's physical bleeding. What is recorded here is not merely the inhuman suffering Karen endured, but also the most authentic energy fluctuation pattern when the will of the deep sea materialized.

If it's just about passive defense, or simply saving Karen's life, it's a minor problem for Klein to solve with a little time.

However, looking at the magical folds on the parchment that represented the unknown and madness, a flame of almost greedy thirst for knowledge, belonging to an alchemist, flickered deep within Klein's eyes, which always held a gentle smile.

Simply expelling them? That would be a terrible waste.

What Klein really wanted to do... was to use Karen as the perfect "medium" to truly understand, analyze, and even deconstruct this so-called "deep-sea will" from its underlying logic, and see what these monsters that could stir up bloodshed on the West Coast really were!

Klein's fingertips lingered on the ink stains on the parchment. He gently stroked them, the undulating peaks looking somewhat familiar.

This was certainly no coincidence. Klein closed his eyes and searched his vast memory bank. Within his sight was a small frequency that had appeared in his research log before.

The dragon in my dream.

The third dream Ophelia brought him.

"Raymond," Klein called softly.

The heavy old wooden door was pushed open, and the butler, who had been waiting outside, walked in. He was wearing a sharp tailcoat, and his leather shoes stepped precisely on the stone slabs, avoiding the bloodstains scattered on the floor.

Raymond glanced at Karen on the ground, his gaze lingering for a couple of seconds on the deep, bone-revealing gashes and torn flesh. His eyes, accustomed to life and death, remained unmoved, and his tone was still rigid and stern: "Sir, what are your orders?"

Klein pointed to Karen, who lay unconscious on the ground, his tone as relaxed as if he were ordering someone to sweep up fallen leaves: "Take him away and clean him up. He has quite a few wounds. Use the healing balm from cabinet number two, both externally and internally. Be careful."

Raymond bowed slightly, his movements meticulous, not even a wrinkle forming on his clothes. He stepped forward, requiring no extra movements; pure white, high-level battle aura coiled out like a tangible ribbon. Karen, along with the blood-soaked blanket beneath her, was lifted into the air by his domineering yet steady battle aura.

The old butler turned and walked towards the door, his leather shoes landing on the floor with a steady rhythm, and his breathing remained unchanged.

Lobby.

Regular footsteps echoed from the stairs. Raymond used his fighting spirit to lift Karen into view.

Karen's clothes were already tattered and torn, with horrifying tears everywhere. Dried dark red blood mixed with fresh bright red blood dripped down the edges, making it look quite gruesome.

"Karen!"

Lyra, who was waiting downstairs, let out a piercing scream and rushed up without thinking.

Lyra rushed to Karen's side, her hands trembling violently. She wanted to touch him, yet she was afraid to touch his horrifying wounds. Her eyes were red with anxiety, and large tears streamed down her face. The silver anchor pendant around her neck made a soft clinking sound as she trembled.

"He's still alive." Raymond stopped, his tone dry and devoid of emotion, yet carrying a reassuring certainty. "His injuries are severe, but not difficult to treat. The master will heal him."

Lyra hastily wiped away the tears and sweat from her face, nodded vigorously, and took the initiative to move half a body away, closely following Raymond's side, not daring to blink even once, for fear that Karen would disappear in the blink of an eye.

Not far away, Ophelia stood quietly in place.

Her bright golden eyes narrowed slightly, her gaze sweeping over Karen's wounds without betraying any emotion. Just moments ago, during the sudden rupture of the magic array on the third floor, her left hand, bound with strips of cloth, had experienced a long-forgotten stinging and throbbing. It was the resonance of the deep-sea pollution from the same source.

But the proud knight merely snorted, his powerful will instantly suppressing the surge of emotion.

She stood up, took a step with her long, straight legs, and looked up at the tightly closed door on the third floor. She knew what kind of dangerous deep-sea power Klein was facing inside, but after thinking for a moment, she smoothed out the wrinkles on her skirt and ultimately did not go upstairs.

There's no need to bother him.

In the room on the third floor, two sheets of parchment were laid out side by side on a large oak table.

On the left is the waveform of the deep-sea magic power just extracted from Karen, and on the right is the previously recorded tone of the dream dragon roar.

The jet-black ink outlined extremely complex geometric lines on the rough paper, with peaks and troughs intertwined like a messy ball of yarn.

Klein reached up and rubbed his temples hard, trying to relieve the soreness in his eyes. His gaze was fixed on the small frequency segment where the two sets of data overlapped.

Dragon, a deep-sea monster.

Conceptualization.

In fact, when Klein first heard this word from the sage, he already had a guess in his mind.

Clearly, finding the complete correspondence between these two will completely unravel the mystery of the will of the deep sea.

However, to sift through this massive amount of chaotic information with just a pair of naked eyes and a quill pen, the workload is comparable to numbering and registering every grain of sand on the beach of Silverscale Harbor.

In my previous life, even if I had to put this level of data processing on a large machine, it would have taken a considerable amount of time.

"I really should make an alchemical computer," Klein muttered under his breath, throwing his quill pen into the ink bottle with some annoyance, splashing a small black ink blob.

Klein sometimes wanted to learn how to create clones or something.

They created seven or eight versions of themselves, lined them up at a table, and distributed a piece of data to each of them, comparing them day and night.

However, he promptly nipped this tempting thought in the bud.

That thing is extremely strange. When you practice it to the end, you often lose sight of the main body and the secondary body. The several clones fight for control of the body, and their brains become a boiling pot of porridge.

Klein would never make a losing proposition like turning himself into a schizophrenic just to save himself some trouble. He would resolutely avoid venturing into the fringes of dark magic unless absolutely necessary. It was simply too much of a waste.

In that case, we need to create an alchemical matrix to assist in the calculations.

"Raymond," he called out to the door.

The corridor was empty, with only echoes; no one answered.

He then remembered that the old butler had just taken Karen downstairs to treat her horrific wounds.

Klein stood up, stretched vigorously, and his joints cracked a series of crisp sounds.

It is better to ask for yourself than for others.

He turned and walked to the row of solid wood bookshelves against the wall. His slender fingers swept over the rows of thick, heavy books, and he skillfully pulled out a book called "Elementary Rune Array Deduction".

As he turned the yellowed pages of the book, he quickly searched for the basic array diagrams he needed, while mentally calculating how much mithril was left in the materials warehouse.

To construct such a high-intensity computational matrix, the consumption of mithril is definitely a major factor.

The surprise Karen brought was so great that he didn't even plan to give himself a moment to sleep tonight.

First, set up the basic framework, then throw the remaining massive amounts of data into the magic circle and let it run on its own.

This is the proper, respectable way an alchemist should work.

……

After an unknown amount of time, the mithril powder on the oak table had been completely used up.

Klein was engrossed in his calculations, the quill pen scratching rapidly across the paper. Outside, it was already dark, and no lights were on inside. The unfinished magic circle on the table emitted a faint blue glow, barely serving as a temporary light source, casting flickering light on his face.

His stomach was growling uncontrollably. He had planned to finish calculating the last two key points before worrying about dinner.

Just then, the door hinge made a slight turning sound.

Ophelia entered carrying a silver tray.

She wore a well-fitting long dress and walked with light steps. She walked to the table and carefully placed the warm stewed potatoes and meat and the golden-brown bread in the corner of the table. The rich aroma of the food instantly diluted the smell of ink in the room.

Then, she leaned slightly forward and casually gathered the discarded manuscripts scattered on the table. The two were very close; Klein could even smell her faint fragrance.

Neither of them spoke much, as if they shared an unspoken understanding. Ophelia's bright golden eyes scanned the intricate array on the table, so complex it was dizzying. She didn't ask what it was, but simply pushed the plate closer to him.

"Eat it while it's hot." Her voice was cool, yet it carried a subtle hint of gentleness.

She turned around and walked straight toward the door. But before the door closed, she paused and added a sentence.

Don't stay up too late.

As the door closed gently, Klein put down his pen, picked up his bread, and took a bite.

The crust is crispy, the inside is soft, and it's baked to perfection.