Chapter 57: Genius
"Priests of the End..."
Sylvia leaned against the back of the chair, narrowing her eyes slightly, and repeated the name in a particularly peculiar tone.
Were these Priests of the End the same group that guided the Full Moon Sect to the City of Alova?
Most likely.
Then what exactly was their purpose in doing so? To create sufficient chaos? Or did they have another scheme?
Perhaps, before long, a new god would be crowned in either the Kingdom of Ulpus or the Kingdom of Savia. Only, this so-called new god would be an evil god.
After some thought, she asked,
"You’ve seen them?"
"No, I haven’t."
Adela shook her head, then fumbled a bit inside her cloak and took out a neatly folded piece of white paper.
Seeing this, Sylvia crooked her finger, and the paper floated in her direction, unfolding itself midair.
By the time it drifted to the front of the gray-haired puppet girl, it had fully opened, revealing two lines of neatly written words:
"Sylvia, City of Alova, Plant District, Kingdom of Savia."
"Danger, be prepared!"
Finding nothing odd, Sylvia shifted her gaze downward to the signature at the bottom:
"Guteland Farians."
The moment she saw this name, she frowned.
It wasn’t because she recognized the name, but because of the intense spirituality she sensed from the ink used to write it!
"Hmm..."
She pondered for a moment, carefully analyzing that trace of spirituality.
But just then, her fingers, which had been gently tapping the armrest, suddenly stiffened for an instant—though they quickly resumed their motion, drawing no attention.
Immediately afterward, although her expression remained unchanged, a storm had already surged within her heart!
She could sense some peculiarities within this spirituality. Thanks to her recent crash course in this world’s esoteric knowledge, she could roughly distinguish between "fate" and "ominousness."
But wasn’t the toughness of this spirituality a bit too excessive?
This had already surpassed the upper limit of spiritual intensity attainable by an extraordinary being undergoing a third metamorphosis!
Of course, there was still a clear gap between it and the apostle tier—even compared to that Child of the Moon whom she had once reduced to a cripple.
But that wasn’t the part that shocked her!
What truly stunned her was the presence of another aura within this spirituality.
Thinking of this, a trace of starlight bloomed at her fingertip, rapidly transforming into pitch black.
This was the mysterious aura she had extracted from that Full Moon Sect corpse. She had fully deconstructed and modified it, giving it the name "Original Sin."
And according to Lakdevo, he had seen this aura in the Divinity Realm!
So, was this Priest of the End the one responsible for that woman’s death?
But how had he done it?
After all, according to the investigation, that woman had never once left the City of Alova from the moment of her birth!
A long-distance curse? Or had he, or one of his subordinates, arrived in the City of Alova together with the Full Moon Sect?
Seeing the puppet girl before her remain silent, Adela nervously pinched at her cloak.
After a brief hesitation, she tentatively asked,
"Is there… something wrong with it?"
Her voice brought Sylvia’s thoughts back to the present.
After glancing at her, the puppet girl spoke with a faint, ambiguous smile:
"Of course there is. But you don’t need to know."
The moment she heard this, Adela’s face turned pale at once:
"Those lunatics who zealously declare the end times didn’t plant a curse in that, did they?"
"Am I… have I already been hit?"
Her voice trembled more with each word she uttered.
Seeing her react like this, Sylvia gave a soft chuckle and then replied:
"No, I’ve checked your body. There’s nothing wrong."
"Well, it’s just that..."
Checked my body? When?
Was it when those pale, slender arms grabbed me just now?
With a confused expression, Adela subconsciously patted herself down, but she quickly caught on to the clearly unfinished sentence.
The next moment, her already-recovered face turned pale once more:
"But… but what?"
This time, Sylvia meaningfully looked at Adela’s chest and pointed with a finger:
"That—what is it?"
Seeing this, Adela raised both hands and pulled out a necklace from around her neck.
On the necklace was mounted a nearly transparent diamond.
Even in the dim room, it emitted a faint white glow.
"You mean this?"
She held up the necklace, and Sylvia gave a nod.
"This is an heirloom passed down in our family."
After speaking, she tucked the necklace back under her clothes and looked at Sylvia with guarded eyes, as if worried the other might try to snatch it away.
At that, the gray-haired puppet girl gave a helpless laugh:
"I’m not going to steal it."
Then her tone gradually turned serious:
"But I want to make a deal for that necklace. You can name whatever terms you want."
When she had touched Adela’s body, her attention was immediately drawn to this necklace.
No—more precisely, it was the diamond set in the necklace!
This gem had actually blocked her probing, preventing her from truly perceiving its nature!
That alone was enough to prove its value.
Moreover, her spiritual intuition told her that it was a diamond that could become her left eye!
Adela clearly froze for a moment, then tentatively asked,
"Could you… give ‘Sylvia’ back to me?"
"No, no, I actually don’t like the design of ‘Sylvia’—nor ‘Valentina’."
"My design philosophy is completely different from my grandmother’s. I prefer puppets that resemble real people."
"Then, how about this—you provide me with materials sufficient to create a puppet of the same grade?"
At this moment, she hadn’t even noticed she had inadvertently used an honorific.
"Of course you can."
Sylvia’s lips curled slightly, but then she suddenly realized something:
"You said your extraordinary path is stuck at the promotion stage?"
"Yes."
Adela, who was inwardly wrestling with herself, answered instinctively, her tone laced with a hint of flattery beneath its respect.
It was an attitude completely different from that of Loruze and the others—more like a miser who had just laid eyes on their favorite coin.
"You… you're at the bottleneck between the second and third metamorphosis?"
At this, even Sylvia’s voice carried a trace of uncertainty.
Judging by the puppet she inhabited, that Lady Camonel Tuya was at least at the second stage, and based on what Adela had just said, Sylvia deduced this result.
"Of course."
Coming to her senses, Adela was a bit puzzled as to why Sylvia would ask that.
"How old are you now?"
Sylvia fell silent for a long moment before asking this question.
"I just turned twenty not long ago."
Twenty years old? An extraordinary being at the threshold of the third metamorphosis?
What the hell, what kind of monster was this?
No—what kind of genius?