The Speedrun Manual of Miss Witch - Chapter 287

Ciel and Avena gazed at each other. Suddenly, a faint ringing sounded in Ciel’s ears, and everything before her eyes became blurry with double vision.

At this moment, all the visuals in Ciel’s eyes began to dim. Avena’s body, meanwhile, seemed to be enveloped in several halos, appearing exceptionally bright in this strange visual field.

Avena did not speak, but her voice appeared in Ciel’s mind.

“I will connect you to her subconscious. Her brain won’t last long; time is limited,” Avena looked directly at Ciel and slowly said, “If any danger occurs, I will disconnect immediately.”

Ciel could neither nod nor speak, but Avena seemed to know her answer and nodded gently.

Avena subtly raised her hand, her palm facing downwards, flat above Cora’s head. With an ethereal grip, Cora’s brain suddenly ignited with purple flames, slowly melting.

And Ciel, too, felt the surrounding gas lamps flicker. Everything before her eyes grew dim. The blood vessel patterns from the plate were projected onto the surrounding walls. The entire room seemed to become a cathedral of flesh and blood linked by bloody nerves, and Ciel, looking down, stood atop the central altar forged from a giant brain.

Sizzle sizzle——

Before Ciel’s eyes, a phantom figure was flickering—that was Cora’s projection.

At this moment, Cora was walking towards Ciel step by step, and Ciel could not move. She could only passively watch as Cora drew closer and closer, until Cora stood before her, her head broken, her eyeballs fallen out, and countless blood threads extending from her dark, bloody eyes, directly inserting into Ciel’s eyeballs.

Ciel’s consciousness plunged into a brief darkness.

Meanwhile, from the perspective of others beside Ciel, Ciel just stood there blankly. Slender, almost invisible nerve threads of blood connected Ciel’s eyeballs to the brain, which burned like a brain-oil candle.

…

Falling…

In a pitch-black world, Ciel experienced the sensation of constantly falling.

She still maintained thought. This thought had little substantive meaning; it was more about maintaining her “self.”

After an unknown period, finally, the darkness before Ciel’s eyes tore open a slit. Ciel stood in a dark starry sky.

Purple mist swirled around her, and before her eyes was a connected patch of different colored light spheres.

This situation… Ciel had encountered before.

In a previous spiritual summoning, Ciel had once summoned an Other Side creature that used the same ability.

And that Other Side creature had allowed Ciel to enter the memories of the “Touch of Fate’s Betrayal,” which was the quill pen.

Looking at the spreading light spheres before her, Ciel recalled her previous experience.

The light spheres still had a predominance of blue, white, and orange. Ciel did not hesitate. Her consciousness moved swiftly, searching for light spheres with a high orange ratio among the spreading, continuously disappearing ones.

Finally, Ciel stopped before a light sphere where orange accounted for almost sixty percent. She directly raised her hand and touched that light sphere.

The light sphere burst, radiating dazzling light that engulfed everything before Ciel’s eyes.

A blurry image appeared before Ciel’s eyes.

Still unable to control her body, Ciel’s gaze, as before, began to move, following a certain main perspective.

This seemed to be a spacious office. On the desk before her, a beautiful, openwork metal box was placed.

The object within the box glowed with a red halo. The halo shone through the openwork gaps of the metal box, forming the religious symbol of the Divine Advent Church.

Ciel felt herself slowly raise her hand, then casually open the metal box, and take out the item inside.

It was that red crystal… The intact red crystal, embedded in its setting, emitted a crimson halo.

Was this the scene when Cora first obtained this crystal?

In Ciel’s vision, Cora simply took out a dice, rolled it on the table. The number shown on the six-sided dice was one.

“Oh?”

A somewhat flippant and curious voice came from “Ciel’s” mouth.

The overall trend of “Gamblers” is to seek benefits and avoid harm. After “divining” with dice that it’s not advisable to go out, they would likely not choose to go out, unless the profit was truly too great and worth the gamble.

“Adventurers,” on the other hand, are a group of people unwilling to be bound by fate. They disregard gains and losses, taking defiance of fate as their destiny.

Under Ciel’s gaze, her hands reached forward. Her fingers gripped the red crystal and slowly rotated it, seemingly intending to pull the crystal from its setting.

Buzz——

A terrifying buzzing suddenly sounded in her mind. Cora abruptly looked up and saw a bloody figure standing before her.

That figure, simply by existing, seemed to distort everything around it. It slowly turned around, its scarlet eyes looking at Cora.

The figure twisted. Invisible flames seemed to be wildly expanding. With just a flicker, the figure teleported before Cora, almost pressed against Cora’s face.

“Ciel…”

A voice containing terrifying echoes and whispers exploded in Ciel’s mind. The next moment, that sensation of falling returned.

…

“Hah… cough cough…”

Ciel abruptly opened her eyes, gasping violently. She looked around, her gaze fixed on Avena.

“There was danger just now…” Avena looked at Ciel and said, “I brought you out.”

“Alright.” Ciel’s gaze fell on the brain, which had burned down by a small portion. She said, “Continue.”

Avena seemed to want to say something more, but looking at Ciel’s eyes, she swallowed the words of persuasion she had originally intended to say.

Avena’s eyes once again showed a pale purple glow, and Ciel, once again, fell.

This time, in a path of light, Ciel focused her gaze on the light spheres behind the orange one, searching. Soon, she stopped at a light sphere that was almost ninety percent blue.

Before, when she was probing the memories of the quill pen, she had also entered a deep blue light sphere.

In that light sphere, Ciel took on the perspective of the quill pen, experiencing its first moment of opening its eyes—that was the quill pen’s first eye-opening, when it was given life, filled with curiosity about everything around it.

Blue meant transformation—Ciel reasoned.

The orange light sphere clearly contained memories of conversations with Sadhana, representing unspeakable power.

Ciel could barely touch these memories—Sadhana could actually directly observe Ciel in reverse through memories, issuing warnings to her…

It was as if simply observing Them would make Them aware… truly like a god.

Could Sadhana truly be a god?

No… if she were a god, and harbored such intense hatred towards an ordinary person, she would definitely crush the other party instantly.

Sadhana was definitely not a deity, but a more powerful Other Side creature—at least, that’s what could be inferred from the indifferent attitudes of the Pure White Knight and the Grim Worm towards Sadhana.

Since she couldn’t pry into Their conversation with Cora, Ciel could directly observe what changes Cora underwent after conversing with Sadhana.

Ciel’s finger touched the deep blue light sphere—

The light sphere burst, and blue brilliance engulfed Ciel’s entire body.