The gathering was still going.
Another voice spoke up. "I have some pages of a journal written by the Emperor Roselle for sale. Anyone interested?"
Roselle's journal? The transmigrator's? And, if my assumptions are true, a transmigrator from China, no less.
Lucien straightened in his seat, suddenly interested, and waited for the man to continue.
"I have three pages here. Five pounds. I can guarantee that they're genuine."
Five pounds. Lucien turned the price over in his head.
"Ha. You're selling something nobody can read. The quality of this gathering's attendees has really gone downhill."
"These were left behind by Emperor Roselle himself. They're genuine treasures," the seller shot back.
"A treasure nobody can read is still worthless." A hoarse female voice cut in.
"I'll buy them." Lucien spoke up through the derision. "But I want to see a page first."
Beside him, old 'Eye of Wisdom' spoke. "It is said that Emperor Roselle wrote his notes in a secret script or set of symbols he invented himself. But centuries have passed, and no one has found the correct way to decipher it."
So he's telling me not to waste my money. Lucien understood the implication.
"I'd like to try anyway." He declined the old man's kindness and turned back to the seller. "Do you agree?"
"Fine." The seller, seeing a willing sucker, agreed at once.
Before long, an attendant brought a single page of Emperor Roselle's notes to the table.
Lucien took the paper. What he saw was a mass of crooked, sprawling characters, but when he looked closely, he could make out that they were Chinese. Simplified Chinese, even.
He had no way of knowing whether the crookedness was the copyist's fault or simply Roselle's own bad handwriting.
Lucien forced himself to read the scrawl.
"January 1st, 1184. A grand New Year's banquet. Madame Flornal is truly a delight."
Lucien's brow furrowed at the first line. This transmigrator really is unreliable.
"January 2nd. The gentlemen of my foreign affairs committee are all idiots!"
"January 3rd. My choice back then was too hasty. Looking at it now, 'Apprentice', 'Seer', 'Marauder', all of them would have been better. Unfortunately, there's no going back."
A diary? Lucien looked at the long string of dates.
"Well? Have you confirmed it or not?" The seller, seeing Lucien stay silent, was getting impatient.
"Alright. I agree to the trade."
"By the way, none of you can actually read this?"
Lucien asked the question out of nowhere.
"I can't. What, are you telling me that you can?"
"Of course not. I was just curious." Lucien denied it quickly.
"Seriously, no one at all?" he muttered under his breath.
He looked around the room and saw nothing but blank, uncomprehending eyes.
Wait. Nobody here can read it?
A thought flickered through Lucien's mind.
If Emperor Roselle's notes were worth this much, could he forge some?
Nobody could read them anyway. If he set up that kind of business, it would be pure profit, no cost at all.
The thought sent a jolt of excitement through him, and his resentment toward Roselle eased a little. It seemed this senior transmigrator had left the juniors a small way out after all.
Lucien had barely finished his trade when another woman spoke.
"I'm selling a weapon. A short sword. It's extremely sharp; it can slice through iron plate with ease. Simply carrying it will strengthen your physical constitution for a short time and dull your sense of pain. At the same time, you'll instantly gain proficiency with all kinds of cold weapons and light firearms."
"What are the negative effects, and what do you want for it?" someone asked, interested.
"Carrying it for long periods will gradually make the user cold-blooded. Over time, it will strip away a normal person's emotions."
"But as long as you don't carry it for more than a day at a time, those problems will recover on their own. There won't be any serious lasting effects."
"My price is 500 pounds, or the Sequence 8 'Barbarian' formula."
So expensive. Lucien marveled internally.
He was somewhat interested in the weapon, but considering how little money he had left, he could only smile wryly.
Her words did, however, give Lucien a rough idea of what a Sequence 8 formula cost: at least 400 pounds, counting the likely premium.
At that price, advancement was still a long way off.
While Lucien was doing the math, the short sword was already bought by a gentleman.
More people offered trades after that.
Some deals went through. Some did not.
After a while longer, the sitting room settled into silence, and nobody spoke again.
'Eye of Wisdom' rose to his feet. "This gathering is now concluded."
Then he started arranging for people to leave. Lucien noticed there were several exits, and everyone left at different times, staggered as much as possible.
Guarding against anyone with ill intentions, huh. Lucien filed that away.
Once the last of them had gone, 'Eye of Wisdom' turned to him.
"You wanted news of the 'Assassin'. I can tell you now."
"Mm." Lucien nodded.
"'Assassin' is the name of a Sequence 9 potion. They all possess extremely strong physical constitutions. As the name suggests, the Beyonders of this pathway have highly refined assassination techniques and very strong tracking abilities."
"Their eyesight is excellent. They can pick out their target clearly in the dark, and they can burst all their strength into a single strike."
He looked Lucien over twice before continuing.
"From what I know, most Assassins are mentally abnormal. If you've angered one, don't even think about facing them head-on. If you can run, run."
"Assassins can track and divine as well, but at the speed of a modern steam train, as long as you get far enough away, one may not be able to find you."
Uh. He figured it out.
Lucien's mouth twitched. He had not expected the old man's reasoning to be this sharp.
He said nothing, just pulled the money from his pocket and handed it over.
'Eye of Wisdom' took it and said, "You've probably only just stepped into mysticism, haven't you? Would you consider buying some knowledge from me?"
"Knowledge?" Lucien frowned.
"That's right. Knowledge."
The old man nodded. "A newcomer like you will go astray without enough of it. Mysticism is full of true and false information mixed together, and newcomers can't tell the difference."
"If you want, I can sell you some basic knowledge about the extraordinary field. Ten pounds.
Trust me, it's worth every penny."
Why do I feel like I'm being treated as an illiterate. Lucien was speechless under that look.
He did not like it, but he could not deny that in the field of mysticism he was indeed half an illiterate.
And the old man seemed decent enough. Getting reliable mystical knowledge from him was a genuine opportunity.
It was just the price. Ten pounds, by purchasing power, was eight or nine thousand.
Forget it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Lucien gritted his teeth and pulled out another ten pounds.
"A wise choice."
'Eye of Wisdom' took the notes and led him into a study. From the desk drawer he pulled a stack of documents and handed them over.
"This is far more detailed and reliable than anything you could dig up on your own."
"Thank you." Lucien took the documents, then let a servant guide him out.
He went back to the Grizzly first to collect his luggage from 'Bottle', then headed straight for Backlund's train station without a pause.
Hearing the description of the Assassin, Lucien understood clearly that he had no chance in a head-on fight. And the silver-haired woman who had given him the potion was almost certainly an Assassin Beyonder herself, at a sequence level that was definitely not low.
This is not something I can handle. I need to get out. He planned to follow 'Eye of Wisdom's' advice and hide somewhere out of town.
To reach the station sooner, he even swallowed the cost and hired a carriage.
Half an hour later, he arrived at Backlund's train station. He did not stop to admire the Victorian architecture. He went straight to the ticket office.
"I want to go out of town. Is there a train leaving immediately?"
Lucien realized he had made a basic common-sense mistake. In an era without even electric lights, almost no passenger steam trains ran at night.
"Then the earliest train tomorrow."
"Hold on, let me check." The clerk flipped through the timetable. "Anywhere is fine?"
"Yes, anywhere, as long as it's out of town." Lucien's voice came out urgent.
The clerk looked up. "Uh, then there's only one destination left."
"That one, then. Print the ticket." Lucien urged before the clerk could finish.
"Alright. Only second class ticket is left for ten soli."
Lucien handed over a ten-soli note. The clerk gave him a second-class ticket, and Lucien took it and headed straight for the platform without stopping.
Watching his hurried back, the clerk muttered to himself.
"What a strange person."
Lucien had spent several hours waiting in the station through the night, and now he saw the sun creeping up over the horizon and heard a whistle from somewhere far off.
The steam train rolled into the station with a deep, rumbling roar.
"Finally." Lucien stuffed the cat back into his bag, hoisted his luggage, and headed for the train.
Just before he climbed aboard, he glanced at his ticket. Only then did he realize this train's final stop was Tingen.
As the steam train pulled out of the station, the knot in Lucien's chest slowly began to loosen.
That silver-haired woman told me to find her tomorrow night. By then, the train should be at its terminus. I've run this far. She shouldn't be able to track me down, right? He wasn't entirely convinced.
I just don't know what'll happen to Mrs. Griffin. She was so confident. Nothing should go wrong, right?
Meow!
The orange cat in his bag started to struggle, as if it had sensed the unnatural movement around it.
"Quiet. I'll let you out when we arrive." Lucien soothed it, stuffing the ham he'd brought as rations into the bag as well. That settled it down.
Once his nerves had steadied, he pulled out the documents he'd paid so dearly for today and began to read.
The first thing he took out was two pages of Roselle's diary.
"December 16th. I have made contact once again with that pitiful fellow trapped in the depths of the storm, lost in the darkness."
"He calls himself 'Mr. Door'. He tried to teach me a complex, difficult ritual so that I might help him return to the real world. He promised to grant me three requests."
"Does he think I'm an idiot? I've lived over sixty years across two lifetimes. Do I not recognize the standard playbook of an evil god or a demon?"
"But the certain history of the Fourth Epoch that he described is truly fascinating."
This page is dense. 'Mr. Door' sounds powerful. According to the diary, he's sealed?
But none of this is any use to me! Is there anything more practical?
The substance was there, but the knowledge was still far beyond Lucien's reach. He flipped to another page.
This one was very brief. Only two sentences.
"October 26th. Miss Solent made me feel young again."
"October 28th. I know Duke Lot is in the room next door, listening at the wall. Frankly, the feeling isn't bad."
This utterly devoid of integrity? Lucien pressed a hand to his forehead. Roselle's rampant plagiarism had already told him the man was not a paragon of integrity, but Lucien had still clung to a sliver of fantasy about this senior transmigrator.
And now this.
There shouldn't be anything more explosive, right? He wasn't sure.
Right, that earlier page said he regretted not choosing 'Seer', 'Apprentice', and 'Marauder'. Could those three pathways have something special about them?
Damn it. If only I'd seen this page sooner. You can't change pathways once you've chosen. That's just too unfair. Lucien had already been unhappy with the 'Monster' pathway. Roselle's diary only made it worse.
I really was too hasty. He sighed.
Pushing the unpleasantness aside for the moment, Lucien pulled out the knowledge he'd bought from 'Eye of Wisdom' and started to read.
"Sequence 9 is the starting point of the extraordinary, the beginning of one's pathway. Each advancement raises you by one sequence.
Once a pathway is chosen, there is no going back. Consuming a potion from another pathway will lead to unimaginable and terrifying consequences.
Advancement is gradual. If one consumes a potion across sequences, it will lead to loss of control or even death."
Basic, but practical. Lucien noted internally.
There was more mystical knowledge further back, but he didn't read on. He needed to steady himself first and digest what was already in his head.
Each advancement raises a sequence. Sequence 9, Sequence 8, and upward. So what happens higher up?
All the way to Sequence 1? Or is there something beyond Sequence 1?
Godhood? Could the gods also be Beyonders?
A blasphemous thought surfaced in his mind.
Let me make a bold assumption. What if the seven gods are also Beyonders?
Ha. A crazy idea. If the fanatics heard that, I'd be beaten to death. Lucien smiled wryly at himself.
No. I can't let this world's conventional values scramble my own thinking.
If a Beyonder can become a god just by advancing all the way up, then wouldn't gods be everywhere?
But they're not. So there has to be a limit. Does it just get harder the higher you go? Or does this world simply not support it, like Qi Refining where the world's spiritual energy only sustains so many people becoming gods?
And the division of the pathways themselves.
Could it be that materials grow rarer the higher you go, and one pathway can only support a single god?
Lucien frowned, a feeling creeping over him that he was onto something.
If that's the case, maybe the supply of extraordinary materials is finite, or production can't keep up with consumption. Either way, over a long enough timeline, the knowledge of how to advance would be lost entirely.
Of course, it's possible high-sequence Beyonders live a very long time, maybe even indefinitely. That's not impossible.
But if a high-sequence Beyonder dies in an accident, and the materials for that pathway are gone, and the lower sequences can't advance, then over time the pathway will still disappears.
Unless… unless Beyonder characteristics can be inherited! That way, even without natural materials, the pathway wouldn't be cut off.
Then there are the gods. They're different from the gods of my old world. They each represent a specific domain. The Lord of Storms represents the sea, the Goddess of the Night represents tranquility, and the God of Steam and Machinery probably represents technology.
Does that mean a god is the embodiment of a concept itself? And a concept is unique, so there can only be one.
Lucien sifted through his memories, and a sudden flash of insight struck him.
Wait. Historically, Roselle was always close to the Steam Church, so he was most likely on a pathway controlled by them.
As a transmigrator, I can't believe he wouldn't want to become a god. But he didn't. The seven gods didn't become eight.
Does that mean that with the God of Steam and Machinery already existing, he couldn't advance any further?
And Roselle regretted not choosing the 'Seer', 'Apprentice', and 'Marauder' pathways. Does that mean those three pathways don't have a god yet, and so the opportunity to ascend is still open?
Then I've lost out even more!
Following that line of thought made Lucien feel the loss acutely. He hadn't chosen one of those three more promising pathways, but 'Monster' instead.
So it's confirmed. Once a pathway is set, you really can't go back. Even Roselle couldn't switch. And he was Emperor! He had all those resources and still couldn't do it.
Lucien looked up and out the window, hoping to change his mood with the scenery. But the sight of that crimson moon brought him no peace. If anything, it only sharpened his irritation.
It was completely different from his old world. A different era, a different landscape, a different moon.
Combined with the blasphemous thoughts still churning in his head, Lucien felt as though he truly had become a monster. A monster that did not belong in this world at all.