Sandrone had no idea how she managed to shuffle back to that cold, dilapidated rental room.
The immense psychological blow and physical exhaustion left her feeling like a doll whose clockwork had been removed—each step was heavy and unsteady.
She locked the door behind her, slid down to sit with her back against it, and felt the icy chill seep through her thin dress.
Yet, it was nothing compared to the hollow coldness in her heart.
The satchel slipped from her shoulder and landed with a dull thud.
She stared blankly at it.
Inside were troubles she couldn’t comprehend: the eerie mirror that could return home on its own, and that picked-up, unopenable metal box.
On the table lay her entire fortune: 100 Silver coins she had carefully counted over and over, wrapped in an old handkerchief, along with the few dozen coppers she had saved through scrimping and saving.
This was all she had.
Those four gold coins that had offered a brief respite now felt like a fleeting, beautiful dream.
Waking from it only left a deeper sense of loss.
She remained sitting on the floor for a long, long time.
Only when her legs went numb did she mechanically push herself up, walk to the table, and begin taking the items out of her satchel one by one.
The mirror, still wrapped in old cloth, lay quiet as an ordinary object.
The metal box—the twisted, dark patterns on its surface seemed…
a little dimmer in the dim light than when she had first picked it up.
But Sandrone’s mind was in too much turmoil to pay attention to such minor details.
She picked up the box.
It felt cold and heavy in her hands.
She turned it over and over.
No keyhole, no seams—it was like a solid block of metal.
Thinking about how she had lost all her gold coins because of it and gotten entangled in that terrifying supernatural conflict, a surge of Nameless anger mixed with grievance suddenly welled up inside her.
“Even you won’t open!”
She growled in frustration, using all her strength to hurl the infuriating thing hard at the corner of the wall!
*Clang!*
The box struck the wall with a sharper, more brittle sound than expected.
It actually cracked open along a seam upon impact, then sprang apart.
Something inside rolled out—a miniature gear, no larger than a thumbnail, exquisitely crafted and glowing with a faint, warm, yellowish light.
The gear lay quietly in the dust, its light pulsing like a breath.
Sandrone was stunned.
She walked over.
Instantly, an indescribable impulse seized her.
Her throat went dry.
She swallowed unconsciously.
Reason screamed danger, but exhaustion, despair, and the temptation of that light intertwined into a far more powerful force.
Her hand, almost beyond her control, reached out and picked up the slightly warm gear.
Then, under Columbina’s astonished gaze through the mirror, Sandrone—with astonishing speed, as if afraid she might regret it—popped the gear into her mouth!
The moment it entered her mouth, the gear wasn’t the hard metal she expected.
Instead, it melted instantly like the finest cream or some strange gel,
transforming into a warm fluid that slid down her throat.
“Uh…”
Sandrone only managed a short, choked sound before her eyes flew wide open, her pupils dilated, and then her body went limp.
She fell straight back, landing heavily on the cold floor, motionless.
On the moon.
“!!!”
Columbina had been watching through the mirror as Sandrone wandered about in a daze, mentally calculating how to help—should she go out and comfort her directly?
That would probably terrify Sandrone, who was already on the verge of collapse, even more.
Have a believer deliver money?
Barbara didn’t seem well-off either, and that man named Gray wasn’t familiar enough.
Use Primogems to exchange for money in the System Shop?
She was just researching the feasibility of that…
when she witnessed that lightning-fast scene: Sandrone picked up the glowing gear and swallowed it in the blink of an eye, collapsing on the spot.
Under Columbina’s diamond-shaped white eyepatch, her normally closed purple eyes abruptly snapped open!
The eyepatch vanished silently, as if evaporated, revealing the pair of empty, vacant eyes beneath that seemed capable of absorbing all light.
Almost without thinking, she leaned forward and instantly passed through the silver mirror!
In her spiritual form, she appeared in the narrow room, her translucent figure floating above Sandrone’s collapsed body.
She instinctively reached out to check for breath or a pulse, but her fingers passed straight through Sandrone’s body.
“…”
Columbina took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down.
“Reason, Columbina, reason!”
Sandrone must not die!
At least, not so inexplicably right before her eyes!
She was currently the most important person…
at least, the person she was most familiar with right now.
Help!
She immediately directed her thoughts to the system, locking onto [believer management].
Gray’s location was unknown, his status unclear—unreliable.
Barbara!
That nun from the Church of the Earth seemed the most likely to have medical knowledge, and the system showed she was in this very city!
Columbina immediately sent a strong, clear thought through the small mirror on Barbara: This location!
(Simultaneously transmitting the image of Sandrone’s small room and its general area).
After doing this, she stayed by Sandrone’s side, her vacant purple eyes fixed on the motionless girl on the floor.
A rare flicker of frustration stirred within her—if only she had figured out a way to help sooner, or noticed the abnormality of that gear more promptly…
Time ticked by second by second.
In the deathly silent room, only dust danced in the beams of light filtering through the tattered curtains.
Gradually, Columbina noticed a faint, fluctuating yellow phantom appearing above Sandrone’s head.
Its outline vaguely resembled the shape of a gear.
But within this phantom, many fine, hair-like strands were entangled.
“Is this…
the thing she swallowed?”
Columbina guessed.
She tried to touch again, this time aiming not for Sandrone’s body, but for those hair-like strands floating outside.
Her fingertips felt as if they had touched cold seaweed.
She could make contact!
She tentatively pinched a single black strand and gently pulled it outward.
*Pfft—*
A soft sound, like a bubble popping.
The black strand was easily pulled out of the yellow phantom.
The moment it left the phantom, it dissolved like ice and snow meeting sunlight and was absorbed by her spiritual form.
Simultaneously, a system prompt appeared: [Primogem +0.1].
And after that strand of black hair was extracted, the light of the yellow gear phantom above Sandrone’s head seemed to stabilize just a tiny bit.
Columbina’s spirits lifted.
It was working!
Although she didn’t understand the exact principle, it seemed she could clear these.
She immediately set to work, her vacant eyes fixed intently on the hair-like strands, her slender fingers deftly and swiftly plucking them out one by one.
The process was mentally exhausting.
She had to concentrate fully to catch those strands that seemed alive and tried to evade her.
With each strand cleared, the yellow gear phantom became clearer and more stable by a fraction, and Sandrone’s originally faint breathing seemed to steady just a little as well.