After listening, Freya nodded thoughtfully.
“But, aren’t you only Rank 2 now?
How can you already craft such a Beyonder item?”
Leaving aside everything else, this Invisibility Cloak could even block her Heart Sense.
That alone was incredibly impressive.
“Uh…” Euphemia wore a slightly awkward expression.
“Hey, don’t worry about the details.
Anyway, let’s go, let’s go!
First, let’s check inside that warehouse!”
The two left the alley.
The Invisibility Cloak was originally designed for one person.
The only reason it could now cover both of them was because Freya and Euphemia were both quite petite.
Soon, they returned to the entrance of the dilapidated blue warehouse.
But another problem arose: the warehouse’s main door was tightly shut.
Even if they were invisible, the act of opening the door would still be noticed, right?
Besides, they didn’t have the key.
However, Euphemia didn’t stop at the door.
Instead, she pulled Freya along, leading her to the side of the warehouse.
It was pressed tightly against the adjacent warehouse, leaving only a narrow gap.
A normal person probably wouldn’t even try to walk through here.
Even Freya and Euphemia had to turn sideways to squeeze through.
After squeezing into the middle of the gap, Euphemia asked, “Help me check, is there anyone on the other side of this wall?”
“The other side?” Though confused, Freya still ‘looked’ and said, “No one.”
“Good.” As she spoke, Euphemia removed the silver bracelet from her right wrist and pressed it against the wall in front of them.
Euphemia took a deep breath and infused a trace of Spirituality into the bracelet.
The next second, the silver bracelet rapidly expanded until it formed a circle about a meter in diameter.
The section of wall within the circle vanished as if it had never been there.
Euphemia lifted her leg, bent over, and stepped directly into the warehouse.
Freya, still looking bewildered, was pulled inside by Euphemia.
After both had passed through, the bracelet quickly shrank back to its original size.
Euphemia picked it up and put it back on her wrist.
“If the main entrance is blocked, we just don’t use the main entrance, right?
There are always more solutions than problems!”
The warehouse was rather desolate, or rather, this was exactly how a normal, dilapidated warehouse should look.
Euphemia walked around, and the first thing that caught her eye was a pile of large, already opened boxes in the corner, and the floor littered with broken foam.
Freya whispered, “There was a delivery here last night.
These large boxes were filled with strange, peculiar items, likely potion ingredients.”
Euphemia retorted, “The way you say that, it sounds like you were right here watching the whole thing last night.”
Freya said, “Erm…
in a way, that’s not entirely wrong.”
Euphemia was stunned.
“Weren’t you just an ordinary person until this morning?
How could you dare?
And you weren’t even discovered, you just got away!?”
Freya didn’t know how to answer.
After all, she had been discovered, and Captain Nolan had died covering her escape.
But Euphemia didn’t press further.
She suddenly spotted a figure standing motionless in a corner of the warehouse, like a statue, staring straight ahead as if on guard duty.
Then, the two, wearing the Invisibility Cloak, swaggered right past him.
Euphemia couldn’t help but remark, “Tsk, tsk, tsk, the War Pathway…
just a bunch of muscle-headed idiots.
The only thing they have going for them is their strong frontal combat ability; in every other aspect, they’re completely useless.”
“Forget these grunts, even that Rank 5 himself wouldn’t be able to detect us if he were standing right here.”
The two headed straight there, and a small, separate room appeared before them.
Being such important items, they were naturally stored separately.
Two ‘soldiers’ stood guard at the door of this small room, but this still posed no challenge for the pair.
Using the same method they used to enter the warehouse, they approached the side of the room.
Euphemia removed her bracelet and created a hole in the wall, and the two quickly slipped inside.
Unlike the chaotic mess in the rest of the warehouse, the items in this room were arranged neatly.
Freya opened her eyes and the first thing she saw was a fully stocked shelf, holding the very same strange items she had seen being unpacked from the crates in her previous simulation.
Jars filled with murky liquid, twisted goat horns, the bones of some creature, and small pouches containing unknown substances.
Euphemia also stepped forward, a thoughtful expression on her face.
After staring for a moment, she said, “This is a Moses Sea Black Octopus, Lightning Sheep horns, and…
a human forearm bone?”
Creating a potion usually requires one ‘main ingredient,’ two ‘auxiliary ingredients,’ and some ‘supplementary ingredients,'” Euphemia explained.
“From the looks of it, the main ingredient should be this Black Octopus, but I don’t know which part of it.
You can’t just toss the whole thing into the cauldron, can you?”
“The auxiliary ingredients should be the goat horns and the human bone.
I guess they need to be ground into powder.
As for the supplementary ingredients…”
As she spoke, Euphemia opened the last small pouch.
Inside were translucent, crystal-like flakes.
She explained, “These are Spirituality Crystals.
They can be used as supplementary ingredients for almost any potion; the only difference is the concentration and quantity.”
“High-concentration Spirituality Crystals are rare and valuable, but these ones…
honestly, their quality is very ordinary, you could even call them inferior.
Potions made with this stuff probably won’t be of good quality.”
Freya replied, “After all, they’re just mass-producing Demon Pathway potions to hand out to cannon fodder.
As long as they work, the other party probably doesn’t care about quality.”
Euphemia placed the pouch back in its original spot.
“It seems so.
We can take a jar of the Black Octopus as evidence that they’re secretly brewing potions here.
But that alone isn’t enough to make the Special Operations Division call in a Mobile Squad.
We still need to investigate the true identity of the mastermind.”
“A Rank 5 Beyonder can’t possibly be unknown.
If we can find out who he is, that information itself could serve as evidence.”
Freya suddenly remembered something.
She closed her eyes and began searching again.
In the third simulation, the one where she drank the War Pathway potion, the Boss of the Broken Axe Tavern had told her to come to this warehouse to advance after killing 100 people.
So, could there be a Rank 2 War Pathway potion in this warehouse?
However, Freya ‘looked’ for a long time but found no trace of finished potions in the room, nor any hidden compartments.
“Nothing…” She opened her eyes, her expression tinged with disappointment.
It seemed that even in the third simulation, after she had completed the task of killing 100 people and come to this warehouse, the Obsidian Boss would have likely sent one of his ‘soldiers’ to fetch a Rank 2 potion for her from another location.
So why not just trade at the Broken Axe Tavern?
Why insist she come to this warehouse?
The answer wasn’t hard to guess.
Perhaps he admired her little psycho tendencies, or maybe for some other reason.
In any case, it was to recruit her, and to do that, he naturally needed to show her something.
Freya said, “The mastermind behind this probably has more than just this one base of operations.”
This current base was simply the ‘least important’ one, which was why it was chosen as the reception point for new recruits.
Euphemia said, “A cunning rabbit has three burrows.
As a Rank 5 Beyonder, he’s no fool to have come this far.
It’s perfectly normal for him to have multiple bases.”
After confirming there was nothing else of value in the room, the two retraced their steps.
Then, Euphemia pulled Freya along for another tour of the warehouse.
Freya asked, “So, what’s the plan now?”
“Let me think…” As she spoke, Euphemia lowered her head and rummaged through her satchel again, pulling out a small pouch.
Seeing this, Freya asked curiously, “Is this another Beyonder item?”
Euphemia shook her head. Get faster updates on g.com.
“No, these are Spirituality Crystals I brought myself.
Their quality is far superior to the ones we just saw.”
Then, Euphemia scanned their surroundings, found a spot with a good vantage point, and quickly pulled Freya over.
Using her index and middle fingers, she pinched a small Spirituality Crystal from the pouch and pressed it against the wall.
The Spirituality Crystal then seemed to melt, turning into a pool of colorless slime.
Euphemia dipped her two fingers into the slime and began to draw.
After about three or four minutes, a slightly eerie pattern took shape under Euphemia’s fingertips: a circle enclosing a triangle, with an eye-like oval in the triangle’s center.
Interspersed between these three shapes were strange symbols, some resembling text.
When Euphemia finished drawing, Freya clearly saw the oval in the very center—the eye—suddenly twitch.
Then, the entire pattern slowly turned invisible and vanished before her eyes.
Of course, if Freya used her Heart Sense ability, she could still clearly perceive a distinct Spirituality Fluctuation here.
Euphemia said, “Eye of Surveillance, complete!
I’ve linked its vision to my monocle.
If that Rank 5 Beyonder comes to this warehouse, I’ll see him immediately.”
Freya couldn’t help but ask, “So, what exactly is this thing?”
Euphemia said, “An Occult Magic Circle.
Using Spirituality as a foundation and combined with some materials, it can achieve powerful effects: reconnaissance, attack, defense, teleportation, summoning—all sorts of things.
It’s just that I don’t know many of them yet.”
A Rank 1 Scholar Pathway Beyonder can quickly master skills that already exist in reality, like Euphemia’s “Micro-expression Observation.” At Rank 2, the Scholar Pathway allows them to learn this occult knowledge and draw various magic circles.
Euphemia continued, “I’ll rent a place nearby and stay here.
If any suspicious individuals appear, I can immediately head out to tail them and see if I can uncover their other hideouts and true identities.”
Afterward, the two left the warehouse the same way they came and returned directly to the alley where they had first donned the Invisibility Cloak.
After removing the cloak, their clothes looked somewhat disheveled, likely from being pressed together the entire time.
Freya straightened her clothes as she walked toward the alley’s exit, while Euphemia, busy putting away the Invisibility Cloak, fell a step behind.
Then, watching Freya’s figure ahead, she suddenly thought of something and couldn’t help but blush.
In other words, if someone had been watching them, they would have seen the two women walking, suddenly duck into a deserted alley, and then reappear twenty minutes later with their clothes disheveled?
Hmm, it’s hard not to get the wrong idea!
While Euphemia was brainstorming, Freya noticed she hadn’t followed and turned to look.
“What’s wrong?”
Euphemia quickly coughed and said, “Nothing,” before walking out.
Next was renting a house.
As long as you had enough money, it wasn’t difficult at all.
Euphemia soon found a suitable place nearby.
She initially wanted to rent for just one month, but the landlord refused, citing the short duration.
So…
Euphemia rented it for half a year.
After all, Euphemia’s attire, along with her pile of miscellaneous wondrous gadgets, proved she was no ordinary person—at least, not someone short on cash.
Freya took a tour of the new house.
Although it wasn’t exactly luxurious, it was at least very clean, and it happened to have two bedrooms.
So, she pointed to the second bedroom and said, “So, I’ll sleep here from now on?”
Euphemia froze.
“Huh?
You’re staying here too?”
Freya immediately put on a pitiful expression, blinking her lovely green eyes and deliberately acting cute.
“Is…
is that not okay?”
Her main goal for this simulation was actually to try and get the Church of the Earth’s help, but that objective was already complete.
She had already become the Church of the Earth’s Saintess.
Now, she just needed to reveal the potential disaster, and the Church of the Earth would surely come to help.
At the Special Operations Division, she would have had to explain her intelligence sources, but in the Church…
there was no need for that at all.
Since her main goal was accomplished, and she had coincidentally run into Euphemia, the “Great Detective,” Freya decided to “push her luck a little.” It would be great if this simulation could also uncover the Obsidian Boss’s true identity.