novelraw Chapter 32
Chapter 32
Chapter 32: The Eccentric Divine Lady
The first thing that came into view was a mountain of statues.
These statues varied in size and appearance—ranging from Agayele’s Buddha statues to Lundimia’s angel figures, even totem poles from orc tribes and pharaoh statues from the Kingdom of Atum—everything one could imagine was present.
In a corner, Lina also spotted two magical girl figurines. At the very center of the room stood a doomsday mecha model carrying a ship-cleaving blade—Lina recognized it at a glance; these were all special crossover items from ‘Ember Remains’ and other IPs.
Talismans in at least eight different languages and all kinds of exorcism tools densely covered the ceiling—crosses, holy water, shaman masks, relics, Bagua mirrors...
At this point, even if a monkey holding an iron staff suddenly leapt out of the pile and did a couple of somersaults in front of her, she wouldn’t have been surprised.
Suddenly, a black shadow flashed between the statues and swiftly darted up onto the doomsday mecha.
Lina raised her head. Not a monkey—but something even more bizarre.
A blonde girl wearing Yunque Daoist robes, with a string of skull prayer beads hanging around her neck, stood atop the back of the ship-cleaving blade. She held a peachwood sword in her left hand, a cross in her right, and had a macaron clenched in her mouth as she looked down at Lina from above.
The girl was extremely cute. Her fluffy golden hair curled naturally, her slightly baby-fat cheeks looked soft and tender, her willow-shaped brows were slender and delicate, her nose bridge slightly raised, and her lips vividly colored. A pair of small tiger teeth peeked out slightly, and her blood-red eyes sparkled brightly.
“Human over there!” The golden short-haired girl—an eccentric beauty who looked strikingly similar to the Scarlet* Mansion’s second young lady—swallowed the dessert in her mouth and tapped the ship-cleaving blade beneath her feet with the peachwood sword. “I am the Lord beneath the Crimson Moon, the Seventh True Ancestor of the vampire race, Euphemia. Answer me—are you the fated one summoned by my kin to purge that hellish evil?”
Hellish evil? You’re the most unhinged thing in this entire room, okay! If there really were any evil spirits, they’d have been scared off by you already!
If not for her strong mental fortitude and top-tier professional discipline, Lina would have shouted on the spot.
“Uh... yes... you are the owner here, Miss Euphemia, right?” Lina forced control over her expression. “I’ve completed the preliminary preparations. Next, I’ll need you to take me to the ‘haunted’ location.”
After that, Lina explained her plan in detail. Euphemia listened attentively the entire time and did not interrupt.
“...That’s the plan. Do you have any questions?” Lina took a deep breath and looked into Euphemia’s eyes.
“Oh, none. You’re far more reliable than the people who came before,” Euphemia jumped down from the blade and casually stuck the peachwood sword into the arms of a Buddha statue. “The haunted place is this room... mm, as you can see, I’ve already tried quite a few methods, but none were very effective.”
“Um, can I ask where you got all these things...?” Lina couldn’t help but ask. She truly couldn’t imagine how this girl had managed to gather so many strange and peculiar items—some of which were even ‘crossover items’ that, in theory, only players possessed.
“Most of them I bought from all over the world,” the vampire girl shrugged. “As for the rest, even if I told you, you wouldn’t understand.”
Lina blinked, forcibly suppressing her curiosity. Probing too deeply into a client’s secrets was not something a witch should do.
After thinking for a moment, she continued, “Where exactly is the haunted room? I need to conduct a summoning ritual inside it. My soul can’t stray too far from my body.”
“It’s this room,” Euphemia looked somewhat embarrassed. “This place might be a bit messy... if you don’t mind...”
“I *do* mind!” The veins on Lina’s forehead were practically popping. The room was already crammed full with all sorts of dubious deities from unknown origins—there wasn’t even a place to stand, let alone complete a ritual.
“The ritual requires a complete closed formation. There can’t be anything nearby interfering,” Lina explained with forced patience. “At the very least, you need to clear out enough space for me to lie down.”
“…How about I get you a hammock…”
“No!” Lina felt her blood pressure shooting through the roof.
Under Lina’s arrangement, Annie and Seriel went to the market to purchase ritual materials, while Lina and Euphemia stayed behind to clean the room together.
During this time, Lina noticed that Euphemia kept pulling sweets out from all sorts of places and stuffing them into her mouth, which surprised her quite a bit.
In theory, vampires couldn’t consume human food, but… Euphemia and Seriel seemed to be exceptions.
Just moments ago, this vampire girl had somehow produced a piece of chocolate from nowhere and popped it into her mouth again.
“…Can’t you leave at least some of them?” The vampire still looked somewhat reluctant. While clearing away the clutter, she continued muttering, “These are all treasures I spent a fortune collecting… sigh…”
“This came from a settlement in the backlands of the Stokuwa United Kingdom. It was personally blessed by the 38th-generation shaman of the Tutur religion,” Euphemia lifted a rather eerie-looking totem pole and introduced it to Lina. “I bought it at an underground auction for fifty gold dragons…”
“The Tutur religion only has seven generations of shamans. Where did the 38th come from?” Lina replied without even turning her head, holding a Buddha statue with a labeled base in one hand and a magical girl crossover figurine in the other. “You got scammed.”
“Th-then what about this cross from the Saint Noris Church from two thousand years ago…”
“The Saint Noris Church was founded five hundred years ago. Oh, I’ve seen that thing in the antique market—original price fifty thousand gold dragons, discounted to five silver lions, and they even throw in a stainless steel basin…”
“And this! The first brick of the New Holy City!”
“This brick was freshly manufactured in New Calendar year 1875. The serial number on the back isn’t even worn off yet. If you believe that, you might as well believe I’m an S-rank witch.”
“And this—the tooth of the First True Ancestor of vampires!”
“Are you sure this thing is even meant to ward off evil—wait, the size doesn’t match, does it? Look how much bigger it is than the one in your mouth! Uh, why is it flaking… okay, yeah, it’s made of plaster.”
The more Lina interacted with this eccentric vampire, the more a deep sense of helplessness washed over her.
Not a single statue in the entire room was authentic. There was no telling how much money this nouveau riche had been scammed out of… at the very least, one or two thousand gold dragons.
“And this… uh, alright, this one’s probably fake too… but I didn’t pay for it. The previous owner of the house left it behind.” Euphemia took down a gold coin from a cabinet and muttered softly, “They said it was a gold dragon from two thousand years ago… looks like the previous owner wasn’t much smarter than me…”
“Sigh… at least you’ve got a bit of common sense…” Lina took the coin from Euphemia and weighed it in her hand. “Hmm, the weight checks out. At least it’s not counterfeit.”
Lina flipped the coin over and saw the minting date on the back: “Holy City Calendar, Year 337.”
The “minting date” printed on the back of gold dragons issued by Celestis did not use the widely adopted “New Calendar system.”
The New Calendar system took the day of victory in the Fifth Holy War as Year One, whereas the Holy City Calendar counted from the founding of the New Holy City as its first year.
The current Holy City was not the original one. It was said that before the Fourth Great Cataclysm, the Kanniat civilization had also established a Holy City, and it had likewise used the Holy Calendar system.
The year inscribed on the back of today’s gold dragons did not merely represent the time of minting—it was also an epitaph for a civilization long buried in the dust of history.
Just as Lina was about to toss the coin into the pile of clutter by the door, a strange feeling suddenly flashed through her mind.
She paused. “Euphemia, if you don’t mind... I’d like to buy this gold coin.”
“Huh?” Euphemia, holding a string of gleaming Buddhist prayer beads, looked puzzled. “Isn’t this thing fake too? If you want it, I can just give it to you.”
“I just feel like it has some kind of connection with me, alright...” Lina couldn’t explain the feeling, but she still took out a gold dragon and slapped it into the vampire girl’s pale palm. “I’m not short on money.”
“But your expression clearly looks—”
“Do your work!”
“Oh.”
……
“By the way, Euphemia, do you have an older sister with short blue hair?”
“No? Why do you ask?”
“Nothing, nothing…”
The two of them worked for quite a while longer and finally cleared out an open space about two meters in diameter in the center of the room.
Not long after, Annie and Seriel pushed open the door and returned to the mansion, bringing the ritual materials Lina had instructed them to prepare to the doorway.
“Hmm... let me see...” Lina crouched down and checked the items. “Twelve candles, one portion of incense, evening primrose, a brush, chicken blood, black bread... Annie, why did you also buy a black bread stick?!”
“I—I saw it on the roadside and just bought it...” Annie turned her head away guiltily.
Lina eyed Annie suspiciously, thinking to herself that this girl couldn’t possibly have developed some strange hobby after getting used to knocking people out with a club.
But her attention quickly returned to the ritual.
She dipped the brush into chicken blood and carefully began to draw the magic circle on the ground according to what she remembered.
The other three girls watched Lina’s process with great interest. Lina didn’t mind, and as she drew the formation, she explained:
“A summoning ritual is a relatively advanced form of ritual magic,” she said as she carefully outlined the base pattern of the formation. “But at its core, it’s essentially a form of prayer ritual—similar to the prayer magic used by various churches, except the object of prayer is replaced with one’s own spiritual intuition.”
She placed the candles evenly along the outer nodes of the formation. “The difficulty of a summoning ritual lies in finding the dividing point between the soul and consciousness. In other words, the caster needs to learn how to observe ‘themselves’ from another perspective.”
“The purpose of the magic circle is to help the caster maintain the continuity of their mana circuits even when their consciousness can no longer control the body, so its design must match your own mana state,” Lina ground the incense into powder and sprinkled it into the center of the formation. “As for the incense, it’s to stabilize your consciousness... to put it simply, it just helps you sleep more soundly.”
Finally, Lina plucked a leaf of evening primrose and stuffed it into her mouth. Chewing as she spoke indistinctly, she added, “Lastly—and this is where most people mess up—take some kind of substance that keeps your spiritual intuition sensitive.”
“When your soul leaves your body, your spiritual intuition will be your only means of protecting yourself. If you can’t detect danger in time, you’ll never wake up again... ptoo! So bitter!”
Lina spat out the stem and swallowed the bitter juice. Almost immediately, her vision began to double, and fine static-like noise gradually filled every corner of her consciousness.
She focused her mind and silently recited: “The danger level of this ritual.”
Divination activated, and almost instantly she received the feedback: “The ritual will proceed smoothly.”
It seemed the “danger” she had divined earlier did not lie within the ritual itself... but she still couldn’t let her guard down.
A small flame ignited at Lina’s fingertips, quickly condensing into a compact fireball. With a “boom!”, it lit the incense at the center of the formation.
Euphemia gave Seriel and Annie a look. As the ritual began, the three of them quietly exited the room and closed the door, leaving Lina with a silent environment.
Lina didn’t notice their departure. Her vision was already almost entirely overtaken by overlapping images and bizarre, shifting colors. The world before her gradually twisted into an impressionist watercolor—this was a sign that her spiritual intuition was about to break free from the limits of the body.
She sat cross-legged before the formation. The incense filling her nose caused her consciousness to sink, while the juice of the evening primrose kept her spiritual intuition in an active state.
She slowly poured her mana into the formation. One by one, the candles at each node lit up, their faint flames flickering in the dim room.
She could clearly feel that part of her body was sinking, while another part was continuously rising.
At that very moment, she concentrated her mind and cast divination on the sinking part!
Buzz!
A faint mark appeared within her consciousness.
It was a trace left behind by Seriel! And that trace pointed toward a “world fragment” floating within the cracks of reality!
Without hesitation, Lina plunged straight into it. The scenery before her eyes changed rapidly—the colorful world stretched like ribbons, fluttering, intertwining, fading, sinking, and disappearing...
At last, she felt as though she had “stepped” onto a piece of land shrouded in mist.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the flames of the incense and candles gradually took on a crimson, blood-like hue.
Lina took a deep breath. She shifted her attention to the “rising” part—and opened her eyes.
She had returned to Euphemia’s room.
Outside the window, a crimson blood moon hung high in the night sky, silently gazing down upon her.
The summoning ritual had succeeded.