Late at night, three people took their seats in the room. Only Cattleya stubbornly insisted on standing behind Bernadette.
"I just happened to come here to travel and relax, and coincidentally ran into the matter involving the Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun."
"Whether it was coincidence or chance isn't important. What matters is that once you arrived, things started happening." Bernadette looked meaningfully at Hastur. "In the mystical world, symbolic significance far outweighs practical significance."
Hastur did not refute those words and tacitly accepted them.
Had Trier become even more chaotic because of his arrival, or had the chaos here attracted him to come? The symbolic significance he possessed far exceeded Bernadette's speculation.
Even if he had not come, Trier would still have experienced a period of turmoil, but the scale would have been relatively small.
His arrival, however, would cause the scale of this turmoil to rapidly expand, turning a minor disturbance into a major disaster.
"For you to become a believer of the Stars, you must possess some little-known trait, or perhaps a secret." Bernadette seemed to have seen through something. "I have no intention of prying into your privacy. I'm simply curious about just how much change your arrival will bring to this place.
"Will you be the spark that happens to ignite the powder keg, or are you yourself a raging flame?"
Hastur smiled mysteriously. "Perhaps I'm a sun."
"A sun? There are many believers of the Eternal Blazing Sun in this city. They often proclaim themselves incarnations of the sun."
"You misunderstand. That's how someone I met last night described me. Hmm, it was a joke."
Bernadette teased, "Someone from the Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun? They always like to exhaust their tongues trying to recruit believers."
"His name is Ross Hurley."
Hastur did not conceal the matter. He also wanted to obtain some information about this person from Bernadette.
Upon hearing the name, Bernadette instead became serious. When she had been on the Southern Continent, she had once encountered a young man from the Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun. That person had called himself Ross Hurley.
"He also said that if I joined the Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun, I might have a chance to become the Pope in the future. What a tempting proposition."
"Perhaps it wasn't a joke."
The smile faded from Bernadette's face, but she did not tell Hastur much. She was not familiar with this person either and only knew that he was no simple individual.
As the night grew deeper, they chatted briefly for a while longer before Bernadette followed Cattleya back to the room opposite theirs. Before leaving, she deliberately leaned close to Sharron's ear and whispered, "I didn't expect little Sharron to get carried away by someone after all."
Little Sharron?
Cattleya's ears were sharp, and she immediately caught this key affectionate form of address. Her calm gaze changed as she stared at Sharron with complicated emotions in her eyes, envy, curiosity, disappointment, and wariness.
Her little hands, which had been hanging naturally at her sides, unconsciously clenched the corners of her clothes. Inwardly, she couldn't help wanting to shout, "I want an exclusive affectionate nickname like that too!"
Sharron also keenly noticed Cattleya's unusual gaze, but she neither explained anything nor paid any attention to Bernadette's teasing.
She had already grown accustomed to Bernadette's habit of sometimes being serious and sometimes joking around.
After Bernadette left the room, Cattleya, who was walking behind her, glanced back at Sharron. She seemed to want to ask something, but in the end, she merely raised her chin slightly and left with an unwilling-to-lose gleam in her eyes.
Hastur took in every one of Cattleya's little expressions and found it rather amusing.
As the saying went, three women were enough to put on a play.
Sharron, Bernadette, and Cattleya could just barely put together a drama with the script of "But I was clearly here first."
Cattleya was the pitiful one whose love went unrequited.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Imagining a drama."
"The Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun?"
"No, something involving you."
Sharron did not ask any further. Her intuition told her that whatever Hastur was imagining wasn't anything wholesome.
...
The next day, Hastur was planning to stay in bed and rest for a while longer to make up for the sleep he had lost the night before last.
But early in the morning, Cattleya, who was staying in the room opposite theirs, came knocking on the door.
Sharron was hiding inside the mirror and had absolutely no intention of opening the door.
Hastur could only get up, tidy his appearance a little, and then open the door.
Cattleya, whose eyes had originally looked somewhat aggrieved, instantly changed her expression when Hastur opened the door. With an indifferent face, she said, "The Queen ordered me to accompany you in your activities for the next few days."
"Activities?" Hastur was surprised, then smiled. "I came here on vacation. For the time being, I don't have any other plans."
"I only obey the Queen's orders."
Cattleya walked into the room and naturally sat on the stool in the middle. Her gaze swept around before settling on the mirror on the table.
"Something you need?"
Sharron's figure gradually emerged on the surface of the mirror.
"Wraith?"
"Astrologer."
The two revealed each other's Beyonder Sequence. One sounded somewhat uncertain, while the other was quite confident.
Cattleya's gaze shifted slightly, and the wariness in her eyes deepened.
"Someone from the Rose School of Thought?"
"Something you need?" Sharron repeated.
Cattleya fell silent for a while, then shook her head and looked away, turning instead toward Hastur, who was waiting to watch the show.
"You two continue. I'll go out and get some breakfast for you."
Hastur very consciously left the room, allowing Cattleya and Sharron to be alone together.
Silence. Not a sound.
After a while, Cattleya finally took the initiative to ask, "What is your relationship with the Queen?"
"Partners."
"Just that?" Cattleya's tone became noticeably more relaxed and cheerful.
Inside the mirror, Sharron calmly said, "She grants me anything I ask of her."
"..." The brightness in Cattleya's eyes instantly dimmed.
"My relationship with her is only ordinary."
"Really?" Cattleya's dimmed eyes immediately lit up again, their sudden brightness almost dazzling Sharron.
When Hastur returned with two breakfasts, Cattleya had her head resting on the table and was whispering with Sharron inside the mirror.
Noticing Hastur's arrival, Cattleya immediately straightened her posture and returned to her calm and aloof appearance.
Tsk, she sure changes faces quickly.
Hastur placed the breakfasts on the table and glanced at Sharron inside the mirror. He found that she seemed to be in a very good mood, with the faint hint of a smile flowing through her eyes.
...
Run. Keep running. Whatever happens, don't get caught, or I'll be burned to death at the stake!
Deep within the maze of complicated alleys, Ulrich, wrapped in a black robe, was fleeing in a desperate hurry.
When he caught sight of a patrol passing by, he glanced around and hurriedly hid himself inside an empty garbage bin.
The stench was so foul that even rats were unwilling to linger there for long. When the patrolling soldiers passed by, they quickened their steps and even spat in the direction of the garbage bin.
Only after the footsteps had completely faded away did Ulrich climb out of the garbage bin with one hand covering his nose. He cautiously surveyed his surroundings, ran a good distance away, and only then took deep breaths of fresh air.
Upon reaching the river, he plunged straight into the water, submerged himself, and drifted downstream along the waterways within the city. In a place where it was difficult for anyone to spot him, an air tube allowed him to breathe while underwater.
After drifting downstream to an area where the current was gentle, he slowly raised his head above the water. After confirming that there was no one suspicious nearby, he climbed ashore and hid in a small grove beside the river, leaning against a tree trunk as he gasped heavily to recover his strength.
He was extremely grateful that he had not chosen the Sun pathway back then, but had instead chosen the Seer pathway, and had even been fortunate enough to advance to Sequence 7 Magician.
Otherwise, there was absolutely no way he could have escaped the Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun alive.
So many people in the church, even a Bishop himself, had been sent to the stake. Fortunately, Ulrich had divined in advance that his life would be in danger. Because of that, he had made some preparations and kept an extra eye out, giving him the chance to escape all the way here.
"My dear Bishop, if you were going to die, then just die. Why did you have to drag me into this mess too?"
As Ulrich spoke, he felt around his body until he touched a hard, round object in the pocket of his shirt. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.
Fortunately, he hadn't lost this thing. Otherwise, his defection from the Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun would have been for nothing.
After resting for about twenty minutes, Ulrich stood up with one hand supporting himself against the tree trunk. With his other hand, he took out a miniature astrolabe from inside his clothes and used divination to guide himself toward the correct path ahead.
He gradually made his way through the small grove. Through the gaps between the trees, he could already see rows of buildings outside.
He was still within Trier. He had merely escaped from a dangerous area to a relatively safe one.
After observing for a while, he retreated back into the grove and hid again. He planned to wait until he had fully recovered before using divination to find himself a suitable path to survival.
Late at night, when everything was quiet, Ulrich slipped out of the grove. He deftly avoided inhabited areas and proceeded in the safe direction indicated by his divination.
Whenever he encountered patrolling soldiers, he concealed himself within the dark shadows, spread out his black robe, and raised both arms horizontally in front of himself. In this way, he successfully blended into the darkness and fooled the patrolling soldiers' searches.
This kind of magic could only work at night. During the day, it would be easily seen through, making it impossible for him to hide successfully.
Hiding here and there while following the guidance of his divination, he smoothly avoided both the patrolling soldiers and the people from the Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun.
"Huh? Why did it suddenly stop working?"
Ulrich, who had originally planned to use the cover of night to leave Trier, stared in terror at the result of his latest divination.
The needle on the divination astrolabe had suddenly stopped moving, as though it were being interfered with by various forces.