If the Plague Followers aim to seed disease—infect and cull humans, harvest life and soul energy—then it’s usually a Summoning Magic Array, like ink spreading in cold water.

A Sacrificial Magic Array can’t hold a storm of power; it’s a candle, not a bonfire. One follower offers a small portion, praying for a Blessing from a Dark Deity.

A Summoning Magic Array drinks deep. It lets a Dark Deity descend for a breath, like a tide surging through a gate. If the power can’t snap its chains, the void hooks it and reels it back.

But there’s a snag. The array on the parchment doesn’t prove it’s a summoning one. The inked lines coil like serpents, yet it could be a simple sacrificial array—one that gave Gendi parasitic worms and the Blessing to command beasts.

Then another snag. Without a Summoning Magic Array, how does the Plague God drink all that energy? Wouldn’t the people killed be like spilled wine soaking into dust?

It felt wrong; a burr snagged at Lucimia’s thoughts.

So, weighing the scales, she judged this was likelier a Summoning Magic Array, the heavier side sinking like a stone in a river.

She also had a way to test it. Kill someone who deserves it, use their life and soul as the offering, and trigger this worm array. If it answers, it’s sacrificial; if it won’t spark for lack of fuel, it’s summoning. A door either opens with a click—or stays shut, iron-cold.

After a quiet pause, she left the parchment where it was, branding the pattern of the array into her mind like a seal pressed into wax.

Resolve settled like a pebble at the riverbed. She’d disturb the current of history as little as she could, watch what came next, then move.

“Well, saying that… it’s already disturbed,” she breathed, setting her small statue back atop the parchment like a paperweight, then standing.

As she turned to go, she glanced back. A few seconds of silence gathered like dew. She lifted a hand and drew a black Fuzzy Orb from the room’s shadows.

It wasn’t the one from the Town of Tranquility. This one had a single, moon-big eye. Lucimia patted its head like smoothing a leaf and whispered, “Watch this place for me.”

The Fuzzy Orb tensed like a drawn bow, its gaze sharpening; its tail snapped into a neat salute.

Then it smeared into a streak of night and tucked itself into the hut’s corner, a patch of shadow among shadows.

“Kinda cute…”

Yeah. Cuter than Elyssus’s octopus or the worms of the Plague God Niral, like a kitten beside rot.

With that done, Lucimia turned into a mosquito and slipped out, a needle of dusk threading the air.

She reset a Magic Array in passing, a web tugged taut, and flew toward the gathering point like a dark mote on the wind.

“Hm. I share vision with the Fuzzy Orb,” she mused, thoughts braided like threads. “I’ll plant another at the meeting spot and see who comes.”

Before the second Reversion, she’d focus on gathering information and watching the river’s flow, hands off when she could.

Before the first Reversion, Emongaha had likely held similar gatherings. They failed like a fire doused in rain, and the Plague Followers won.

Now I’ve upset the Plague Followers’ scheme by accident, and I helped the count seize Gendi. Who takes the board next? The chesspiece hung above fog.

Think. Her brow pinched like a knot. What do the Plague Followers want?

By their creed, they hate lockdowns. Behind Jaha Town, a high wall stands like a clay cliff, raised by a high mage with earth. Will they try to break that wall?

They also seed disease to calm their god, so they laced the town’s water with worms—clear spring hiding snakes—so everyone who drank it got infected without knowing.

Mystic Return Smoke and the Mystic Return Effervescent Tablets can’t remove the worm, but they can smother the illness it causes, like damp over an ember.

That means, if someone carries a worm and keeps smoking Mystic Return Smoke, or drinks water dosed with the Effervescent Tablets, their body hits a balance. The illness never flares, and yet it never leaves—a seesaw frozen midair.

The Plague Followers won’t like that. They want sickness to grind a body like a millstone, to please their Dark Deity.

So odds are, they’ll try to torch the Mystic Return Smoke and Effervescent Tablets at the source—workshops and raw stock, granary to ash.

The locals say the Count of Jaha invented them, so the production site probably sits near his manor, a stone nest behind hedges.

“I can guess their targets… I just don’t know how they’ll move.” The path stayed hidden under fog.

While she thought, Lucimia reached the gathering site: a cave between the great tree and the town, the soil outside bruised with footprints.

She shifted back to a girl, laid a Magic Array nearby like a net under leaves, then became a mosquito again and slipped into the cave like a drop of ink.

She made a slow loop. Aside from a few stone blocks serving as chairs, there was nothing; at this hour, no one came. The cave felt like an empty gourd.

Finding nothing, Lucimia shaped another Fuzzy Orb, molding darkness with her palm.

This one had three eyes—one a vertical slit on its brow—and two tails fanned behind it, a totem come alive.

“Keep watch here for me.”

What she didn’t expect: the Fuzzy Orb turned its head away in a small sulk, its two tails crossing like a person folding their arms.

Huh? A quick prick of surprise. Angry?

She thought a beat, then reached out and patted its head, smoothing ruffled fur.

At once, its eye curved in delight. It hopped, turned into a black shade, and darted into the cave like a pebble skipping into water.

“...”

Watching that, Lucimia found no words, silence like a held breath.

Because I petted the first one and not this one, it got jealous? Two cats on a windowsill came to mind.

Ah… these Fuzzy Orbs have minds of their own. They’re not mindless beasts at all—a sharp contrast to Elyssus’s octopus.

Except the Blue Ringed Octopus, the plain black ones just babble, aba-aba, like ink bubbles burbling.

Ready, Lucimia planned to return to the city, bracing for either recruitment or assassination to come like twin blades.

Emongaha will send someone to contact her—no doubt. He won’t let an outsider roam his “kingdom” like a stray wind.

Maybe hide with Desty? The thought rippled.

Not impossible, like stepping into fog.

Her priority now was to observe, to trace the current while seeking a way to break the game—and to find the pale-green girl. A chessboard under water.

It couldn’t be helped. She’d promised Desty only temporary safety for the town, so that’s the knot in the red string.

“Tch. Feels a little unlike me.” The taste was wry, like bitter tea.

The old Lucimia would’ve dropped Desty without a word—cold as frost, a blade cleanly sheathed.

She didn’t know why, these days, she kept helping Desty—granting her requests, worrying for her safety. Fighting side by side once wasn’t enough to thaw the old, selfish Lucimia like this. Yet here she was, ice meeting a shy sun.

As she pondered, a silhouette rose in her mind like mist off a lake.

She wore long pink hair, her eyes veiled by a black blindfold, her lips lifting in a sweet smile—cherry petals on midnight silk.

“Lucy, sister.” The voice chimed like a silver bell.

Light and lovely, it felt far as a mountain and close as breath, an echo under a moonlit bridge.

The vision shifted. The pink-haired girl opened her arms, that same sweet smile. Her soft voice brushed Lucimia’s ear: “Devouring—use it on me, Lucy… then you can… live on… go live the life you want, go eat… all the food you crave…”

“Ugh…” The sound fell like cold rain.

Lucimia swayed and stopped flying, dropping beside a rain-filled pit and taking her girl form again, wings folding like a wet moth.

She stared at the black-haired girl reflected in the water. Seconds of silence rippled out. Then she let a voiceless laugh curl across the surface.

“Heh. Maybe I haven’t changed at all. Maybe I’m just… hunting for a little comfort.”