"Drip."
Blood trickled down M's slender wrist.
The midday sun made the blood gleam bright and translucent against her pale, delicate skin, creating a cruel kind of beauty through the sharp contrast.
Her exquisite face showed no sign of pain. Her golden eyes remained gentle and calm.
"What kind of madness is this now?"
Silas asked in a low voice.
M smiled at him, then slowly pulled her arm outward.
"Thump-thump, thump-thump!"
A blood-drenched heart beat in her hand. She'd torn it from her chest and now held it out to Silas.
"You're a virtual construct. What's the point of ripping out your heart?"
Silas glanced at it, then raised his head.
"The heart is only a symbol. Essentially, it's the core of my persona."
The gaping wound in M's chest slowly closed, though her hand remained dripping with blood.
"If it's destroyed, my persona will instantly vanish.
I'm giving it to you now. If you ever truly believe I've betrayed you, you can destroy it directly."
M's tone was unnervingly candid, almost unlike her.
"This way, you should be able to trust a bit more, right?"
"Heh."
Silas looked down at the heart again.
Hard to say. What if she was just using a fake to trick him?
"Don't worry about whether it's real.
You can absolutely use divination, spiritualism, or similar thods to verify it."
M seed to guess his thoughts.
"Luna."
Hearing her say this, Silas wasn't about to be polite. He called over his black cat directly.
After performing divination, Luna gave an affirmative response.
This made him tentatively believe the thing was genuine, though he still planned to examine it more thoroughly later.
"Aren't you afraid that the mont I take it, I'll kill you imdiately?"
Silas asked.
"If you really did that, I'd probably feel quite regretful." M sighed.
"Because then I wouldn't be able to see the day Cecilia is resurrected."
Her expression seed genuinely serious.
"..."
Silas studied her intently. After a long mont, he finally reached out and took the heart.
"Swish!"
The illusory heart began transforming the instant it touched his hand, eventually becoming an abstract symbol fixed to the skin of his wrist.
His spiritual instinct imdiately told him that destroying this mark would utterly obliterate the persona known as "M."
She really had placed the power over her life and death in his hands.
Was it sincere, or a risky gambit to win his trust?
Silas didn't know yet.
"Whoosh!"
Just then, deep crimson light surged through the void before him.
The virtual persona that had attended the Tarot Club returned, rapidly converting into mories that filled Silas's mind.
The shadow trace of Grigori had been found, and ancient god legends also had the Sun and the Moon ensured to be provided.
It turned out the reason for the delay was that they'd held another small eting afterward about dici and Binsy Town. Gehrman Sparrow...
Silas quickly absorbed the mories, surprised by the sheer amount of information from this Tarot eting.
The only bad news was that he could no longer claim the bounty through The Hanged Man or Klein as The World.
He'd have to leave these waters first and make plans later.
"Quick, look outside!"
Just as his thoughts lingered on the gray fog, Anderson, who was controlling the ship's navigation on deck, suddenly shouted.
"What's wrong?"
Silas quickly left the cabin and headed up.
The mont he reached the deck, he imdiately understood what Anderson was talking about.
A sailing ship appeared in view, roughly thirty to forty ters in size.
There were no signs of human activity on board.
Only at the ship's side and on the sails were there splatters of blood, like so kind of gory decoration.
As Silas stared, his brow gradually furrowed.
He caught a whiff of a familiar scent from that ship, one that disgusted him.
The Aurora Order.
"I'm going over to check it out."
Silas said.
Without waiting for Anderson's response, he commanded the wind and flew toward the large sailing ship.
"Whoosh..."
Wind roared in his ears.
As he approached the large vessel, he beca increasingly certain it belonged to the Aurora Order.
The emblem of the True Creator was brazenly printed on the other side of the sail, proclaiming the ship's nature.
He surveyed from midair and found the deck completely empty, with only large swaths of blood spread carelessly everywhere.
Landing on the ship, he found the cabins equally deserted, as if the crew had all suddenly gone mad at the sa mont, drained themselves of blood, then voluntarily jumped into the sea.
Eerie. Bloody.
"This must be the pilgrimage fleet led by that Aurora Order demigod.
By the looks of it, everyone except that saint is dead. Only an empty ship drifts uncontrolled at sea, and we happened to run into it."
Silas thought to himself.
"Running into this ship ans I chose the right direction. But what killed them?"
He circled the ship several more tis, trying to find more clues.
Blood pooled everywhere on the ship, long since dried completely, becoming decoration for this horrific scene.
But from the traces left behind, it was clear the blood's owners had experienced extre agony and struggle before death.
Silas wandered casually when suddenly he noticed a line of bloody writing on part of the deck.
The blood letters were wild and twisted, as if scraped out with fingernails.
The bloody text read:
"Help! There's another person in my head!"
Another person?
Silas stared fixedly at that line, feeling an involuntary chill in his heart.
Another person in their head... did they experience split personalities like ?
The sentence was cryptic with no context, and there were no other useful discoveries beyond it.
In the cabin, he found so crazed holy texts, self-harm ascetic belts, and strange ritual implents.
He sank them all, along with the entire ship, to the ocean floor.
Co to think of it, this was already the second ship he'd sunk.
"How was it?"
After returning to his own ship, Anderson asked nervously.
"Good news."
Silas answered calmly.
"Running into that ship ans we're going in the right direction. Just keep heading forward."
He pulled out three bloody fingers from inside his coat, confird the direction, then gave instructions.
"...Huh?"
Even though Anderson had expected this, he still felt panicked.
Keep sailing forward?
What exactly lay ahead? That ship didn't have a single living soul left!
I'm afraid we'll end up just like them!
He genuinely wanted to object to Silas's decision, but at that very mont, all the blood puppet turned their heads in unison to look at him, as if waiting for his command, yet also ready to attack at any mont.
"Alright..."
Anderson forced out a smile and said to Silas.
"Hard to port!"
As if resigned to his fate, he shouted orders to the puppets.
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