Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 90: A Mortal’s Experiment

That figure floated before the enormous black hole.

He wore a loose black cloak, his head hidden beneath a hood, and his build seemed male. A flock of pigeons flew past him, but he didn’t move at all, like a corpse specimen suspended in turbid liquid.

Kalen immediately landed on the nearest grass sphere, gaining a fairly solid foothold. He bent down and placed the dolls and stick people on the grass, then narrowed his eyes at that figure.

“That cloak looks a little familiar.” Tass rubbed his chin with his cloth hand. “Where have I seen it before…”

The person seemed to sense everyone’s gaze and slowly turned around.

His hands were covered in black gloves, without a single inch of skin showing at the wrists.

His face was covered by a tightly fitted mask. There were no holes in the mask. It had been painted pitch-black, with a twisted moon shape drawn in silver lines. The black mask paired with the black hood made the moon emblem seem to float out of thin air in the shadows.

“…Fuck, it’s the leader of the Stargazers Society!”

Tass failed to hold back and cursed. “No, wait, not necessarily. Anyway, that’s the mask of the Stargazers Society’s leader!”

Myss stared so hard that he felt as if his button-eyes would pop out of their socket. He had never longed so badly for his magic to return. The leader of the Stargazers Society was right under his nose, yet he couldn’t discern a thing about him.

“We can’t let him run.” Seeing the head of that damned organization, a rare spark of anger ignited in Kalen’s voice. “Whether or not he’s the real leader, we’ll capture him first, then…”

“Wait. There’s something beside him.” The Salaar doll interrupted.

Myss shook his head and also noticed the thing beside the leader. Rather than a “thing,” it was more like a corpse—a grotesquely deformed corpse.

That corpse floated crookedly in the light. It was too thin and too twisted, easily blending into the disordered environment. Just now, it had mostly been hidden by the masked man’s wide black cloak, and Myss had completely fail to notice.

The corpse wore a United Library scholar’s robe and was withered nearly to a skeleton. Its limbs were curled and deformed, its whole body covered in pitch-black poisonous sores, and its hair was as dry as wild grass. Judging by the corpse’s state, it even looked a little like Salaar in the seal when he had been near death from old age.

Myss was naturally familiar with this “symptom.” His magic had an extremely powerful annihilating property. For some unknown reason, Salaar had endured it, but over the years, Myss’s magic had still corroded Salaar’s physical body.

This corpse was in the human world and shouldn’t have been able to come into contact with his power. If this so-called Divine Blood really was a product of his magic, then…

“Divine Blood Corrosion,” Mag said in a low voice, confirming Myss’s guess.

“With corrosion this severe, that guy is most likely the experimenter who stole the Divine Blood.”

The masked man stretched out both hands and carried the deformed corpse in his arms. His movements were unusually cautious and full of respect.

Once he moved, the corpse was completely exposed before everyone’s eyes. On that library scholar’s robe, a white pewter brooch flashed with flowing light.

“Impossible… This is impossible. How could it be Mr. Tenney?”

Mag’s stick figure took two steps back and nearly fell.

Tass focused fully on this grand scene. “What’s going on, Lady Mag? Who is Mr. Tenney?”

“The United Library’s archivist. He devoted his entire life to the United Library. He was born here!”

For the first time since entering the book, Mag looked utterly distraught Even when she had realized there was something wrong with Salaar, she hadn’t been this shocked.

“Mr. Tenney is already in his seventies. He… doesn’t have much talent and was only responsible for paper records. He…”

Mag’s throat was choked by some sour emotion. She couldn’t help looking at the three dolls beside her. Dust rose in her mind, and a memory sealed away for a long time quietly surfaced.

More than twenty years ago.

“Papa, Mama, where are you?”

Back then, Mag wasn’t yet ten. She shouted loudly with a sobbing tone.

At that time, her parents had discovered her astonishing research talent. They had specially brought her to the United Library to ask acquaintances here for advice about magic education and similar matters.

The United Library didn’t permit servants to enter. Without a familiar maid to watch over her, and with Mag liking to run around, she soon lost her way among countless bookshelves.

“What’s wrong, little lady?”

A gentle voice asked her.

That afternoon, Mag met Mr. Tenney for the first time.

He wasn’t tall, and there was nothing special about his appearance. He belonged to the sort of person who you could easily lose in a crowd. Fortunately, his appearance wasn’t the harsh and cold kind. He was rather gentle-looking, at least not enough to frighten a lost little girl.

Little Mag blinked her slightly red eyes and examined this thin little old man. She didn’t really remember Mr. Tenney’s face, but she remembered the white hair at his temples.

Mr. Tenney quickly contacted Mag’s parents.

Her parents still had some matters to discuss, so they simply entrusted her to Mr. Tenney’s care for a little while longer. Mr. Tenney had enough seniority, and his workplace was an open area with people coming and going, so her parents felt fairly reassured.

Thus, a few minutes later, Mr. Tenney brought Mag to his station. It was beside a bright enchanted window. Brilliant “sunlight” passed through the window lattice and spilled across the desk, illuminating the parchment and ink bottle on it.

From time to time, researchers came over with books or application forms to have Mr. Tenney register them. Mag sat by the desk, eating the sweet biscuits provided by the United Library while studying the researchers coming and going.

“Everyone’s brooch is different.” She quickly found the pattern.

“What keen observation skills. You’re a promising talent.”

Mr. Tenney praised her with a chuckle. “Those are all issued by the United Library. Every one is unique, even more recognizable than a nameplate.”

“Actually, the gemstone pairings and brooch styles all have meaning too. After working here for a long time, you only need to glance at a brooch to know which department a person belongs to and what level they are.”

“Grandpa Tenney, why doesn’t your brooch have any gemstones?” Mag asked again.

“Because I’m too ordinary, child. I’m only an archivist.” Mr. Tenney still smiled cheerfully. “I’m not as clever as you. I’m not capable of conducting groundbreaking research.”

His tone was mild. There was no resentment or dissatisfaction in it, only the calmness of something long accepted.

Mag spoke frankly. “Then how did you get into the United Library?”

“There are three reasons.”

Old Tenney gave her a playful, mysterious wink. “First, I was an abandoned baby picked up by the employees here, and I grew up here. Second, although I’m not smart, I’m exceptionally meticulous, and my memory is reasonably good… so they let me work here.”

“What’s the third reason?” Mag asked.

Mr. Tenney pulled open a drawer and took out an adorable doll. The doll was made of the most ordinary rough cloth. It had a pair of lapis-lazuli button eyes, and its hair was yarn dyed gold.

“Third, because I’m especially good at making dolls.”

Mr. Tenney announced, “Come, little girl of the Karns family. This is a Saint Salaar doll. Does it look like him?”

Mag reached out both hands and was just about to take the doll when she heard her parents calling from not far away.

In the end, she never touched that doll. She happily said goodbye to Mr. Tenney and ran toward her parents. Before leaving, she had turned back slightly to look. Old Tenney smiled as he watched her go, just as he watched those talented people hurry away with application materials and documents.

Several years after that, Mag entered the United Library. When she saw Mr. Tenney again, she would habitually smile and nod at the old man. Other than that, they had no deeper relationship.

For the researchers rushing around, Mr. Tenney was almost part of the United Library itself. To put it more coldly, Old Tenney was no different from a magic artifact with body warmth.

Because this old man couldn’t understand the complex theories they discussed, his words couldn’t be called witty, and what he did was only the most rudimentary tasks.

This wasn’t some deliberate isolation. They simply respected him, and at the same time ignored him, because everyone knew there was an invisible gulf between them.

On the old man’s chest, there was only a simple white pewter brooch. No one was willing to spend time understanding his views, sorrows, joys, or hobbies. Everyone had more important, more extraordinary things to do.

Mag was the same.

She was one of the heirs of a great noble family, the young prodigy Magnolia Karns. Before her lay countless profound topics.

Everyone who stepped into the United Library could see that extraordinary Saint Salaar. She also longed to become like her heroic ancestor, forging a sword with knowledge and becoming a hero of the new era.

And now, in this absurd moment more than twenty years later, she suddenly remembered.

So that was it. Mr. Tenney was very good at making cute little dolls.

They had known he was missing. People found several letters on his desk and thought he had gone out to visit old friends, so they never investigated deeply. Who would suspect an old man who had lived in the United Library for more than seventy years and regarded it as “home”?

Why? Mag couldn’t understand.

Mr. Tenney was gentle and kind, had a very good reputation, and had never shown any signs of resentment toward society. Why would such a person steal Divine Blood in his later years and even become connected to the Stargazers Society?

She looked at the endless sea of faint light, at concepts and knowledge sedimented over a hundred years, at the enormous legendary figures… and at a withered, tiny corpse.

Mag stared blankly at that corpse, as if it could give her Mr. Tenney’s answer in his place.

“I have no intention of clashing with you. I only wish to take away the remains of a mortal.”

The masked man finally spoke.

His voice had been processed by a magic device. It sounded like the voices of men, women, old, and young all speaking at once.

“…You must have encountered ‘Redding’ earlier. I apologize for him. He merely didn’t want you to discover me.”

The masked man’s voice could be called courteous. “Since someone from the United Library is present, it seems I have no need to give hints in secret.”

“What are you talking about?” Mag couldn’t help speaking, her voice still stained with shock that hadn’t yet faded.

“I surmise that your research into Divine Blood had completely reached a bottleneck.”

The one who answered her wasn’t the masked man, but Salaar.

For the first time, Myss heard Salaar use this kind of tone. At this moment, the Great Hero sounded like another old man.

“The United Library wouldn’t allow living people to come into contact with extremely dangerous Divine Blood. But Divine Blood was created from the beginning to ‘combine with living bodies’… If things continued that way, the research would inevitably stagnate.”

Mag abruptly turned her head.

“I think Mr. Tenney must have discovered this point from the Night Scourge records.”

Salaar continued, “So he decided to use his own body to conduct a Divine Blood experiment.”

Myss blinked.

If the old man had used his own body to perform a Divine Blood experiment, then the effect of Divine Blood was very similar to the Abnormal Fruit.

They bestowed the possessor nearly godlike power, manifesting their deepest wish, and from there nurtured a Divine Realm.

He didn’t know whether the effect of Divine Blood was insufficient, or whether a mortal couldn’t withstand the weight of a Divine Realm. The old man named Tenney hadn’t attained a divine body. He was like a stillborn child that failed to form, perishing within the newly born Divine Kingdom.

No wonder this place had seemed so much like a Divine Kingdom, yet he had never found the existence of its master.

Could it be that V.O.R had always targeted geniuses because mortals simply couldn’t become gods?

Wait. Before that, why would the effect of Divine Blood be so similar to the Abnormal Fruit…?

“Yes, Tenney used himself for the experiment. He recorded all changes after consuming the Divine Blood and used all of that power to construct this space.”

The masked man spoke calmly, interrupting the thoughts bubbling like boiling water in Myss’s mind.

“Whether it’s the record of changes after he consumed Divine Blood, or this sea of concepts, both will ultimately belong to the United Library.”

“The power of that Divine Blood can allow this space to last about five years. Now that Lady Mag knows the method to enter the ‘sea of concepts,’ it’s only a matter of time before the United Library controls this place.”

“I came here first to take away his body, and second to take away the information we ought to know. Whether you believe it or not, the Stargazers Society has no hostility toward the human world.”

“Liar!” Brief jumped on the grass. “That Redding nearly destroyed our world! You’re all bad people!”

The tiny stick figure was almost swallowed by the grass, and his voice wasn’t very loud. But the masked man seemed to see and hear him. He was silent for a long time, then slightly tightened his arms around the corpse.

“I don’t deny it.”

His tone carried a chilling, unnerving calmness.

“When humans fight bloody battles, they don’t care how many patches of grass they flatten. To protect ‘our’ world, we’re willing to pay any price. Before the apocalypse, we don’t have the spare energy to care about a mere fairy tale.”

“…After all, we’re only a group of the most foolish and most hopeless people.”

In that instant, Father Kalen stopped breathing.

[Kalen, remember this.]

The voice of young Hermit still echoed in his ears.

[The most foolish and hopeless act in this world is ‘stargazing’.]

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