Heaven’s Proud Daugh Chapter 64

Ch.64 Spin the Web to Snare the Moth — and End Up Cocooned Within It

Luo Nan set aside the arrogant manner he usually adopted with Anya, and addressed the Cheat Device Miss with a tone that carried a faint note of flattery.

Based on his assessnt, the Cheat Device Miss was not rely a cold, dispassionate announcer of Worldline disturbances — she was sothing more, a mysterious entity with her own feelings, and a personality that could be described as……sowhat aloof.

Every ti Luo Nan needed sothing from her, it took multiple attempts before she would respond. By now he had a reasonably good read on the Cheat Device Miss's temperant.

She responded to a soft approach. A hard one got him nowhere.

'Heh heh — I knew the Cheat Device Miss would never just stand by and watch

get cursed to death.'

[……]

'Right?'

[Luo Nan, I cannot intervene too much in the world's chain of cause and effect……the cost is too great.]

[I can only give you a small hint. Whether you find your way out of this crisis depends on you.]

'Yes, yes……please go ahead, Cheat Device Miss!'

[The ans to break through lies within you — make good use of your greatest asset.]

[Spin the web to snare the moth — and end up cocooned within it.]

[Good luck, Observer of the World.]

[Good luck, Luo Nan.]

'Wait……Cheat Device Miss — is that it?'

'……'

'Looks like that really is it. The Cheat Device Miss gave

two hints. The first is 'the ans lies within ' — which should an that I currently have a real possibility of evading or even turning this curse back on them, and the key is sothing I already have on .'

Luo Nan paced back and forth, arms folded across his chest, turning it over in silence.

"Hey, Luo Nan — what does the map say? Where do we go next?"

A certain future hero had, with characteristic poor timing, broken through his train of thought.

The girl had just finished recounting her battle exploits to the female knight, and upon receiving what was very obviously a polite complint, Anya showed no sign of caring — or rather, there was simply no way to read Tanya's expression from behind that full-coverage visor.

She raised an eyebrow, her golden eyes glinting with self-satisfaction.

'Looks like soone around here can appreciate true heroism after all! Unlike a certain Luo Nan von dillion who has his head buried in who knows what.'

The girl stepped forward and clapped Luo Nan on the shoulder, neatly severing his train of thought.

"Let's take a short rest here — we're close to a key juncture." Luo Nan furrowed his brow slightly. He had half a mind to snap at Anya, but thought better of it. This person had just taken on five opponents single-handedly and still looked unsatisfied — letting her burn off a little more energy was probably the wiser choice.

"Ooh, ooh! So we're almost at the Boss fight?!" At Luo Nan's words, the fla of battle-readiness that had been settling in those golden eyes instantly reignited.

"Yes — so take a rest first." Luo Nan reached into his jacket and produced several high-grade Recovery Potions, tossing them to Anya. "Don't keep them all to yourself. Split them with Miss Tanya."

"Are these actually……" The girl caught the bottles Luo Nan had thrown, and turned them over in her hand for a closer look. "Top-grade Recovery Potions?! These go for seven Gold Faras apiece on the market, don't they? Typical of you — thanks!"

"Also — I'm not the kind of self-serving person you seem to think I am. You didn't have to tell . I would have split them with Miss Tanya on my own."

Sothing must have surfaced in her mind, because Anya, who had already started to turn away, halted in her tracks and looked back to add this in Luo Nan's direction.

"Mm." Luo Nan replied absently.

Anya felt she had been looked down on by Luo Nan again. She was not a selfish person, thank you very much.

She genuinely wasn't sure why she'd bothered explaining herself to Luo Nan. She had just done it naturally.

'It must be that my own moral standards have risen to the point where I simply cannot stand by and let a debauched young scoundrel like him impugn my character without cause.'

'Honestly, wretched nobility — no matter how handso the exterior, the interior is always this rotten~'

The girl, having successfully reclaid the moral high ground in her own mind, decided she was done wasting energy on Luo Nan the scoundrel. She walked back over to the female knight in a few quick steps, and the two of them drank down the potions, restoring their injuries and replenishing their energy.

Luo Nan, finally at peace, resud his earlier train of thought.

'The Cheat Device Miss's first hint told

there is a viable solution and gave

a sense of its scope. The second hint should be pointing

in the specific direction.'

'Spin the web to snare the moth — and end up cocooned within it.'

Luo Nan quietly recited the riddle hint the Cheat Device Miss had left him.

'If I map the first line of the riddle onto the positions of myself and the curse-caster, and read the second line as foretelling the final outco……'

'The curse-caster has made extensive preparations — going so far as to expose their mole within the Duke Manor — all for the purpose of spinning a vast net.'

'And I……am the 'moth.' That net was woven for .'

'By conventional logic, under such thorough preparation by the one who wove the web, this moth has no chance of escaping.'

'But this is only conventional logic.'

Luo Nan opened his Spatial Storage Magic Device almost on instinct, sweeping his gaze over the various items stored within — and then his eyes settled on the black skull.

'Unfortunately for them, this young master is a 'Foreseer'!'

mories of The Shining Myriad Trails flickered through Luo Nan's mind in rapid succession, coming to rest at last on a spell known as the 'Counter-Ritual.'

The Counter-Ritual — a Tier Zero spell that required no contact with Magic from its caster. One needed only to follow a specific sequence of steps to complete the construction of the ritual, at which point it would activate.

Despite the considerable power of this technique, its activation conditions were extrely demanding — and as a result, it had never been widely disseminated after being developed.

The reason was simple: if you already knew the target of an enemy's curse, and knew both the thod and the ans they were using, then seeking protection from a deity or the Church, or simply going after the caster directly, were both more practical options than this Counter-Ritual.

Because the Counter-Ritual required you to possess a casting dium identical to that of the curse-caster.

'In my mory, the dium for the Soul-Devouring Curse is a black skull — and as luck would have it, I happen to have a black skull of my own, satisfying the core condition for the Counter-Ritual.'

'What a coincidence.'

With that, Luo Nan had already cracked the riddle hint the Cheat Device Miss had left for him, and now knew exactly how to counter their cursed assassination.

He imdiately produced the black skull, drew blood from a cut finger, and let a single drop fall onto it. At the sa ti, he retrieved the Voidwood Carving Knife he had used when crafting the Truth-Piercing Star Spike in the Refining Chamber, and began carving certain magical runes into the black skull's surface.

A short while later, Luo Nan completed the construction of the Counter-Ritual.

He held the black skull up in front of him and examined it carefully. 'Mm……a fairly clean rune inscription — within the acceptable margin of deviation.'

He stored the black skull away again, then turned to the two won, who had also finished resting. "Anya — stop bothering Miss Tanya. Can't you see she's not particularly interested in entertaining you?"

"Do you have any idea how to hold a conversation? Don't you know that a proper exchange requires both a speaker and a listener?" Anya shot to her feet and fired back at once.

"Ah, yes, yes, you're absolutely right — but it's ti to move. The secrets of the mine shaft……are still waiting for us."

Luo Nan rembered once more the other reason he had co here — the key Plot Item tied to the Imperial Storyline.

He had to obtain it. Once he had it, whether to hand it to Serela to push the storyline back toward its original trajectory, or to keep it as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Serela — either way, the initiative would fall into his hands.

"We're heading out? I've been ready for ages!"

Anya stretched her limbs, drew the silver-gray longsword at her hip, and let the fla of battle and excitent ignite once more in her eyes.