Chapter 37
Chapter 37: Leave This Place
Funis had originally come to the cemetery to test the Gravedigger’s extraordinary traits, but when preparing to leave, she caught sight of a figure suspected to be Charlotte. However, just a few steps into the pursuit, she fell into a strange space shrouded in mist.
And then, now.
She encountered this snow-white, beautiful girl before her.
Her gauze dress was hazy, but one could still glimpse her slender, graceful legs. The girl placed the porcelain-white flower bouquet at her feet, leaning close to touch various small items on Funis.
Funis was bound by living souls and could only let the girl do as she pleased.
But she didn’t feel tense or endangered, because this girl before her had an inexplicable familiarity.
Especially that gentle face—she had probably seen it somewhere before.
However, in Funis’s memory, whether in her former male life or current female form, she had never known a girl with snow-white hair. From a rational perspective, she judged this to be her first encounter with this girl.
“When you say you can see them, do you mean these living souls?” Funis regained her composure and asked carefully.
“Living souls…” The girl looked left and right at those bone-white spirits clinging tightly to Funis, smiling gently. “Yes, they always look so lonely. Perhaps it’s because they can’t be discovered by people.”
Living souls were a type of spirit, and only those on the Wrath and Patience pathways could see such spirits.
Both the Great Demon Samael and the Archangel Sariel had granted their followers the extraordinary trait of soul perception, which was why Funis could see these special spirits that were similar to living soul radiance yet bone-like in appearance.
“You’re not an ascetic from the Temperance Abbey. Why do you have the ‘Spirit Medium’ potion?”
Funis endured the girl sniffing and nuzzling her like she was playing with some cute little animal, questioning in a cold tone.
Spirit Medium—the seventh sequence of the Patience pathway, corresponding to the seventh sequence Gravedigger of the Wrath pathway. Only from this point did Beyonders on the Patience pathway initially possess the extraordinary traits of repairing undead and guiding living souls.
The Temperance Abbey, one of the seven abbeys under the church, mastered all potion formulas of the Patience pathway and strictly forbade their transmission. Extraordinary traits related to creating living souls were also strictly monitored and controlled by the church.
Because if these abilities were abused, they would inevitably involve desecrating the dead, the Temperance Abbey was the institution with the most severe regulations among the seven abbeys. One had to pass numerous tests and become a devout ascetic personally recognized by the Pope to be granted potions.
And this girl before her might not even know what living souls were, relying purely on instinct to display her extraordinary traits, using the cemetery as a foundation to create a ghost sanctuary.
Every living soul visible here was a brick of the ghost sanctuary, jointly constructing this foggy maze.
Those eerie ghost stories in the newspapers were all single-handedly created by this unfamiliar “Spirit Medium.”
“Ding-a-ling—”
The girl played with the silver bell hanging from the base of Funis’s horn.
“So serious, so earnest… yet those beautiful brows always droop slightly…” she said in a low voice, her tender fingertips gently climbing the transparent horn.
“Please… please don’t touch there…”
Electric shock-like stimulation spread from the horn’s connection point throughout her entire body. Funis’s delicate form trembled slightly, her glassy light purple eyes misting with vapor, and her previous elder-like cold tone immediately crumbled.
The girl chuckled softly, embracing Funis’s swan neck and leaning close to touch the vulnerable, sensitive horn with her warm, moist tongue tip.
“Eek♡—!”
Soft, cool, slightly damp.
The strange sensation left Funis’s mind completely blank.
Her unconscious legs nearly went weak and collapsed, but those living souls hadn’t released her yet, forcing her to stand steady in her heels, her knees pressed together and trembling slightly.
Cessia had warned her to protect her horns when out, but Funis hadn’t been particularly wary of the same sex and didn’t know what would be done to her when approached.
Moreover, there were very few people in this world who knew about dream demons’ weaknesses.
“Such a cute reaction… I’ve wanted to try this for a long time…”
“Hmm… for a long time?”
Funis was dazed and confused.
The living souls released her one by one. As she swayed and was about to fall, she was embraced by the girl, held gently, surrounded by heart-stirring fragrance.
“You shouldn’t have come here, Miss Crystal,” the girl whispered in her ear.
Miss Crystal.
This address was familiar yet strange—familiar because it was deeply memorable, strange because she hadn’t heard it in so long. She hadn’t heard this address for over half a year.
Gentle face, soft voice—she seemed to return to those reassuring nights when the girl fastened bells for her and taught her to sing with a girl’s voice.
Only one person would address Funis this way.
The girl’s name was Moira.
Funis became alert and clearheaded.
However, solving one puzzle revealed an even greater mystery.
She looked at the white-haired girl before her, the bone-white living souls surrounding them, and this mist-filled oak cemetery. This was clearly no longer the gentle Moira she knew.
The gentle, kind Moira she knew wouldn’t playfully toy with her sensitive horns for amusement.
Like this…
This was exactly like an evil witch…
That snow-white, beautiful girl was still chuckling, laughing together with the bone-white living souls following her. White lilies bloomed in the grass at her feet, but those porcelain-white petals were clearly all sinister bone fragments.
A witch who had advanced to the seventh sequence and switched to the Patience pathway, thus obtaining the “Spirit Medium” class.
Funis almost forgot that Moira was originally a witch. All the girls of the Black Rose Society were witches, taken in and raised by Cessia, becoming sisters who depended on each other.
And the Whisperer continued to torture every witch’s mind and sanity without discrimination.
The essence of witches was chaos and madness.
“Miss Crystal,” she said.
She took a white lily made of bone fragments from her bouquet, stepped forward lightly, and placed it in Funis’s stunned hands.
She kissed Funis’s cheek.
“Leave Gray Cloud Fort. Leave this place,” she said.
She pushed Funis away.
Pushed hard.
“Don’t come back.”
She said.
Before Funis could react, just as she reached out to grab the girl’s hand, she only touched a mass of empty phantom. Darkness surrounded her, and that mist-shrouded cemetery and the snow-white girl under the oak tree became as ethereal as reflections in water.
Little by little.
Growing more and more distant.
Until the wind drowned out all the noise in her ears, cold air stinging her skin like needle points.
Funis was standing outside the cemetery. The night in Blackwater River District remained thick, clouds obscuring the moonlight, a gentle breeze brushing the streets.
The iron gate was tightly closed, as if she had never entered.
Looking down.
A white lily lay gently cupped in her palm