After extracting all the information she wanted from Bloody Mary, Everly ignored her and focused on cleaning up the aftermath.
Sara, lying on the ground, had already frozen stiff.
Worried that any further delay might cause Sara to freeze to death, Everly imdiately had Bloody Mary lift the sleeping spell. Then she hoisted the girl onto her back, leapt across rooftops, and once again slipped into the sorority activity room she had visited before.
The room had heating, ensuring Sara wouldn’t freeze. Since it belonged to the sorority, n rarely entered, so even while Sara was unconscious, there was no need to worry about her being hard.
As for minor details—like what Sara might think upon waking up, finding herself in a filthy nightgown in a distant sorority classroom, starving, thirsty, and missing a day and a half of mories—that was beyond Everly’s concern.
She had more important tasks to complete.
After turning on the heater and settling Sara, Everly quickly returned to the drama club’s storage room and, without stopping, began a thorough cleanup.
The scattered junk on the floor didn’t matter—hardly anyone ca to the storage room, and no one would rember where things originally belonged. But the spilled blood on the ground and the shattered mirror fragnts—those things absolutely shouldn’t be there. She had to do her best to erase all traces.
She worked tirelessly for quite a while, and by the ti it was close to 4:30 a.m., Everly had finally finished cleaning up the scene.
Now, only one task remained: to carry Bloody Mary’s mirror out of the storage room.
Natalie still hadn’t sent the shipping address. Before receiving it, Everly needed to move the mirror out, avoid the surveillance caras near the main campus roads and the occasional patrol cars, and—like playing GTA or a thief simulator—secretly transport it to a car several kiloters away…
…Wait, seriously? Why is her life so miserable?!
Everly didn’t really want to recall how she had carried a full-length dressing mirror—taller than she was—on her back, sneaking across the vast campus like a ninja on a mission before finally making it back to her car.
She felt that this experience was even more exhausting than when she had faced Bloody Mary’s mirror alone.
Fortunately, everything turned out fine in the end.
Everly placed the chattering mirror onto the back seat, got into the car herself, and leaned back, resting while enjoying the air conditioning.
Once she had ward up, she stepped on the gas and left the parking lot. She returned to the hotel, packed up her belongings, checked out of the room, then went back to the car to rest for a while. After her fatigue eased a little, she hurriedly drove off with the endlessly noisy mirror, leaving Concord City behind.
By this ti, chaos had already broken out at Mouster College.
An early-rising mber of the sorority ca to the activity room and discovered the unconscious Sara. Seeing the torn and dirty nightgown she was wearing, the mber mistakenly assud Sara had been assaulted and imdiately called the police.
Police officers and dical personnel soon arrived at the scene. They administered glucose to Sara, who was mildly dehydrated. When she slowly regained consciousness, she was extrely alard to find herself in a hospital wearing her nightclothes.
Her last mory before losing consciousness was waiting at the police station to be questioned. But in reality, more than one person could confirm that Sara had left the station normally yesterday afternoon, returned to campus to attend a party, and after going back to her dorm late at night, had spent quite a while watching videos.
“Around 11:30 p.m., I started to feel sleepy, so I turned off the lights and went to bed. I’m sure Sara was still lying in bed using her phone at that ti. As for when she actually left the dorm, I have no idea,” Sara’s roommate said.
The police pulled surveillance footage from the entrances and exits of the student dormitory but found no record of Sara leaving. Along the route from the dorm to the student activity center, none of the caras captured her either. It was as if she had teleported—suddenly appearing at the activity center a kiloter away without leaving a single trace.
This eerie phenonon not only sent chills down the spines of all the officers involved in the investigation, but also completely shattered Sara’s ntal defenses.
“It was Bianca! It must have been her!” she cried, clutching her head and curling up on the hospital bed. The others from her b*llying group who had co to visit didn’t even have ti to stop her before she blurted everything out in public. “I lied! I’ve actually been secretly b*llying Bianca all along. Before she died, Kevin and the others and I even beat her… Bianca must have co back from hell for revenge out of resentnt!”
…
While Mouster College was in an uproar because of Sara’s case, Everly had already driven at high speed into the urban area of Dalami City.
Along the way, Bloody Mary kept chattering nonstop, acting like a know-it-all—one mont comnting on a male celebrity’s physique, the next claiming a certain male model’s body was “divine,” and before long, ranting like so self-proclaid expert, criticizing the U.S. governnt. Her language was crude and sleazy, her tone greasy and patronizing—completely at odds with her appearance as a little girl.
Of course, considering this evil spirit had existed for several hundred years, it wasn’t entirely appropriate to treat her like a child.
Still… wasn’t this mirror a bit too noisy? It was practically like having hundreds of ducks quacking at once.
At first, Everly could keep her in check by invoking Natalie’s na. But the silence never lasted long—Bloody Mary would quickly revert to her old ways. After it happened several tis, she seed convinced that Everly was all talk and wouldn’t really report her. Emboldened, Bloody Mary adopted a completely shaless attitude, chattering on endlessly without pause.
Everly really couldn’t go bothering soone over every trivial little issue. So, seeing that only the final stretch of the journey remained, she chose to endure it in humiliating silence.
Because Bloody Mary was simply too noisy, after returning to Dalami City, Everly gave up the idea of going back to her school dorm. Instead, she drove the mirror to the ranger’s cabin.
After parking, she logged into Chatter and saw that Natalie had already sent the address. Along with it ca a silencing rune.
Having been nagged at the entire way, Everly felt like her nerves were on the verge of breaking. The mont she saw the ssage, she sped things up—following Natalie’s instructions, she shot a crow in the forest and used its blood to draw the silencing rune on the mirror.
As the final stroke was completed, a faint red glow flowed across the rune. Bloody Mary inside the mirror wore a look full of malice, her lips moving as she cursed nonstop—but no sound ca out.
At last, the world was quiet again…
With the remaining ti, Everly gathered so wooden sticks, boards, and foam paper, carefully wrapping up Bloody Mary’s mirror. Then, carrying the heavy package herself, she made a trip to the post office and mailed off this troubleso, dangerous burden.
About a week after the package was sent, Everly received a delivery from Natalie.
[Curse Witch: I’ve sent the item to you.]
Everly opened the parcel and found a hand-drawn map and a crystal-clear column-shaped crystal inside.
The map was drawn on old parchnt. Judging by the land contours, it matched Central Arica in the real world. However, along the edges of the map were several rings of strange red symbols. Everly recognized so as zodiac constellations, but the rest were incomprehensible—altogether giving off a strong aura of mystery.
As for the crystal, it was a standard hexagonal white crystal, about the size of an adult’s little finger. One end tapered into a sharp point, while the other had an irregular fracture. Each face of the prism had two engraved constellation patterns, which looked like the twelve signs of the zodiac.
Tied to the edge of the crystal’s fractured end was a strand of golden-red hair. It gave off a strange tallic sheen all over—one end wrapped around the crack and knotted around the crystal, while the other end hung down smoothly, looking at first glance almost like a piece of string.
At first, Everly had no idea what this thing was for, until she searched around and found an “instruction sheet” at the bottom of the package.
[Within seven days before the island appears, unfold the star map under the moonlight, suspend the crystal, and recite the incantation—it will guide your direction.]
Below the instructions was a string of incantation written in Latin.
Following the directions, Everly spread out the map, then lifted one end of the hair, letting the white crystal tied to the other end hang above the map. Suspended in midair, the crystal swayed slowly due to inertia, its pointed tip sotis drifting to the left, sotis to the right.
So that’s it—this was pendulum divination!
Pendulum divination is a thod of fortune-telling that uses a suspended weight. This weight can be a pendulum or any object with so mass. Beneath it is usually a board—depending on the diviner’s needs, it might have a map drawn on it, or like a spirit board, display the 26 letters and phrases such as “yes/no.”
During the process, the diviner holds one end of a string, letting the weight hang in midair, and sincerely chants an incantation. Guided by spiritual forces, the weight begins to move on its own, swaying without wind, pointing to a specific area on the map below or to certain letters on the board.
Where the weight points is the answer the diviner seeks.
Finally obtaining the long-desired item, Everly was overjoyed.
Although the item given by the Astromancer Witch could only be used within the seven days before the transit of Venus—and couldn’t be used yet—seven days was more than enough ti for Everly to prepare in advance and arrive near the island on ti, so it didn’t affect her much.
From the mont she obtained Orff’s poem until now, after more than a year of pursuit and puzzle-solving, Everly had finally deciphered the ti, location, as well as the entry path and key to access the Fountain of Youth.
At present, the only thing she still hadn’t figured out was what “at the foot of the mountains surrounded by the world” actually ant. However, Everly felt that this line might not be all that crucial.
In Alexander Magni in Heaven, there was once a passage: “…although before that, he did not know what a mountain surrounded by the world should look like, the mont he saw it, he imdiately understood…”
Based on this, Everly believed that the aning of that line might only beco clear upon truly arriving at the location and witnessing the scene in person.
Of course, until everything was fully settled, she would continue to persist and do her best to research related information.
Before that, however, in order to draw a close to more than a year of hard work—and to thank her friends Misha and Orff, who had quietly supported her all along—Everly decided to take a short break and celebrate a little.
After consulting with the two of them, she reserved a table at a high-end buffet restaurant, invited Misha and Orff, and the three of them enjoyed a satisfying al together.
After the gathering, Everly also gave Orff three drops of the Elixir.
This was sothing she had long wanted to do.
The more she dealt with supernatural events, the more she realized that, in many cases, the essence of such cases was an information war. Whoever possessed the most accurate and comprehensive information could pierce through the fog and find the path to the truth.
And in the information age, as a hacker, Orff naturally held the key to the vast treasury of information. What was rare was that this forr film protagonist also had a decent character. Such a valuable asset in solving cases needed to be well protected—lest he encounter danger and die, costing her a powerful ally.
And so, with this final little episode concluded, the commission entrusted by the Curse Witch Natalie finally ca to an end.
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