In a comfortable suite in a hotel in Adria, Dorothy sat upright in a window-side seat, attentively reading the response Beverly had written in her Literary Sea Logbook, and couldn’t help but ponder in her heart.
“Modifying temple symbols and substituting the patron deity… So that’s actually a thing, huh… Thinking back, some of those cults I’ve seen really have done things like that. The Eight-Spired Nest, for example, has been replacing the worship of the Mirror Moon Goddess across Pritt and turning it into worship of their Spider Queen.
“If those Eight-Spired freaks can pull it off, then I certainly can too. Altering an existing temple is much easier than building one from scratch—this might actually work.”
So thought Dorothy as she made up her mind. Then, without delay, she put pen to paper and wrote in her Literary Sea Logbook:
“How much does your method cost? Tell me.”
“It’s not much—just 900 pounds. It’s actually a pretty short document. If you’re sure you want it, I can write it directly onto this page for you. Just go pay at the usual place afterwards.”
Beverly replied swiftly.
Dorothy raised an eyebrow at the price, then wrote back with a chuckle.
“You’re delivering before payment? That’s rare for your people.”
Beverly replied breezily. Dorothy nodded to herself, then responded.
“Alright then. In that case, go ahead and write it over now. I’ll pay afterward.”
“Hold on~” came the response. Then, after a brief pause, Beverly’s handwriting resumed on the next line—this time pouring down the page even faster than a modern printer. In seconds, it filled the entire sheet. Dorothy flipped to the next page only to see the text continuing to rapidly cascade downward until it filled two full pages and finally stopped.
“All done~ That’s the full content. Enjoy! And don’t forget to pay afterward.”
Dorothy replied simply.
“Alright, thanks.”
Having said her thanks, she immediately turned her attention to the freshly delivered mystical text, quickly skimming through it. Within moments, she had finished reading everything. However, after digesting the contents, she couldn’t help but frown slightly.
Although the ritual to temporarily substitute a temple’s patron deity wasn’t particularly difficult for someone like Dorothy, and she met all the conditions needed to carry it out, the real issue lay in the requirements placed on the temple being substituted. She now found herself troubled by the matter of selecting a suitable target temple.
Originally, when she’d first heard from Beverly that another god’s temple could be borrowed for the divine artifact ritual, she’d immediately started racking her brain for candidates—only to realize that she had virtually no options.
The Radiance Church had the most temples by far, but they were also the ones she absolutely could not mess with. All major diocesan cathedrals were guarded by Crimson-rank archbishops. Trying to pull tricks under the nose of a Crimson-rank Lantern was incredibly risky. Even if she succeeded, she could be branded a heretic and end up hunted across the continent. So Dorothy had never even considered touching the Church’s assets.
Outside the Radiance Church, she thought of the shamanic faith’s Wilderness Ritual Sites, but based on what she’d learned from Uta, those sites were deeply sacred to the native tribes of the New Continent. They were not only constantly guarded by dedicated tribal sentries but also protected by some of the strongest wild spirits. In emergencies, the tribes could even call in reinforcements. Not even the mainland colonial powers dared to provoke them lightly. Attempting a profane substitution ritual there would be incredibly dangerous.
Worse still, whether the ritual succeeded or not, it would destroy Dorothy’s relationship with the shamanic religion, cutting her off from the support of tribes like the Tupa. The same applied to the Butterfly Faction of the little fox—if she dared ask to borrow their temple of the Butterfly God, they’d probably snatch the Dreamscale Censer back from her, and she could forget about any help from them in the future.
As for other heretical cults beyond the Radiance Church, Dorothy had no good options there either. Their temples were also guarded by Crimson-rank members, and more importantly, she didn’t even know where they were. If you can’t find them, you can’t plan a ritual there.
That’s why her initial thought had been to use the Temple of Revelation Runes in Yadith. After all, the god Heaven’s Arbiter had long been absent. Besides her own hollow cult, no real church worshiped that god anymore. No one would come after her for using their temple. Plus, the temple was located in the remote North Ufiga region within Addus, which was under the control of Shadi, who had a good relationship with her. Operating in his territory would be relatively safe. Before reading the details of the substitution ritual, Dorothy had considered this her best option.
However, once she finished reading the mystical text and understood the details of the ritual, her heart sank.
According to Beverly’s document, the temple being substituted must meet several requirements. First, it must not be severely damaged—certain structural elements had to remain intact. Second, and just as Beverly had already told her, the temple must be original. It must not have already been substituted in the past.
The substitution ritual can only work once on a given temple. A temple that has already had its patron deity replaced can no longer be used again. If you want to return a substituted temple to its original god, you must perform a special “conversion ritual,” but after that, whether it’s before or after the reversion, the substitution ritual becomes invalid. In short, a temple gets one shot at substitution.
And that’s where the problem lies.
The Temple of Revelation Runes in Yadith wasn’t original. Its original deity, Heaven’s Arbiter, had long since been replaced. In the Third Epoch, the temple’s patron deity was swapped for the King of Light. In the early Fourth Epoch, it was taken over by the Church of the True Radiant Lord, and after that sect merged with the Radiance Church, the deity was changed again to the Radiant Savior, with the Three Saints added for good measure. Then the Savior’s Advent Sect came in, removed the Three Saints, and now they’re trying to bring them back again.
In other words… the Temple of Revelation Runes had been altered long ago. At first, Dorothy thought the temple’s hidden chambers might have preserved some parts untouched, and that would suffice. But after reading the mystical text, she realized that wasn’t the case. The substitution ritual focuses on the external temple, not the interior. The hidden spaces inside the Temple of Revelation Runes—such as the library and the fortress control center—were separate from the religious system. The parts that mattered had been completely modified. She couldn’t use it.
“Now this is a real headache…”
Rubbing her temples in frustration, Dorothy stared at the copied mystical text. If she couldn’t use the Temple of Revelation Runes, she had no backup plans. All the temples she knew were either off-limits or didn’t meet the criteria.
“Don’t tell me I really have to save up and build my own temple? How long would that take? Or should I throw myself into archaeology and try to dig up a fallen god’s ruined temple somewhere? That’s a huge project in itself and definitely not something I can finish anytime soon…”
Dorothy kept racking her brain. With no other ideas, she contacted Beverly again through the Literary Sea Logbook, asking if it would be possible to borrow a Core of Order temple for the substitution. Beverly immediately replied that it was possible—if Dorothy was willing to pay the price.
But when Dorothy saw the cost, she gave up on the spot.
“Renting a Core of Order temple? I might as well save up and build my own…”
After spending the whole morning racking her brain without any results, Dorothy finally gave up on thinking for the moment and turned her attention back to more immediate matters.
First, she sent her corpse marionette to deliver the payment for the mystical texts to the local White Craftsmen’s Guild, then extracted spirituality from the two newly purchased texts. Since both texts covered highly comprehensive topics, Dorothy obtained all types of spirituality when extracting from them.
From the mystical text on the divine artifact ritual, she gained 4 points in each spirituality, and 6 points in Revelation. From the text on the substitution ritual, she gained 2 points in each spirituality, and 4 in Revelation.
After totaling everything, Dorothy’s spirituality count now stood at 11 points of Chalice, 16 points of Stone, 50 points of Shadow, 17 points of Lantern, 31 points of Silence, and 50 points of Revelation.
Although she had spent a hefty 2,100 pounds, her spiritual gains were quite substantial—and she had acquired critical intelligence. Overall, it was still worth it.
However, after spending that much, Dorothy was now left with only about 500 pounds in cash. Once Edward’s mystical text arrived, she believed she’d be able to push Chalice up to the requirement for advancement. That would leave only Lantern and Stone still below the threshold—likely requiring two or three more mystical texts to make up for the deficit. But with only 500 pounds, she could probably afford just one at most. She would need to find another way to gather funds.
Still, compared to the issue with the temple, money was a small problem—something that could be solved with a bit of effort. For now, her top priority was to figure out a way to find a usable temple for the substitution ritual.
And so, Dorothy continued resting in Adria while contemplating how to find a suitable temple. Since she had to stay in the city anyway while waiting for Edward’s mystical text, she couldn’t go elsewhere for now.
The day after she had learned about the divine artifact ritual, in the afternoon, Dorothy was reading in the Adria public library when she suddenly sensed a faint abnormality from within her magic box. Upon closer inspection, she realized her Literary Sea Logbook was reacting spiritually—someone was trying to contact her through a sub-copy of the logbook.
“Someone’s trying to contact me… I wonder who it is?”
With curiosity, Dorothy took out the Literary Sea Logbook and flipped to the page where new writing was appearing. After confirming the identity, she was surprised to find that the person contacting her was that royal knight from the Serenity Bureau in Pritt—Gregor’s superior. She had written: “If you can see this, please respond.”
“It’s… that royal knight named Misha? She’s actually reaching out to me now? Could it be that she found something in her investigation of the Eight-Spired Nest?”
Dorothy thought, intrigued. Before leaving Pritt, she had handed over all the research notes on Barrett—collected under her detective alias—to Misha for further investigation. Now, six months later, Misha was suddenly contacting her again. Did this mean there had been a breakthrough?
With this in mind, Dorothy picked up her pen and replied in the Literary Sea Logbook.
“I’m here, Ms. Misha. Go ahead and speak. Have you made progress in your investigation into the Eight-Spired Nest?”
Not long after, Misha’s reply appeared on the page.
“More or less... After a long period of stagnant results, we finally gained some leads recently. Since we might need your help, I decided to contact you using the method you gave me—Detective.”
“Oh? There’s been progress? Tell me everything.”
Dorothy responded with curiosity. Misha then began recounting her recent investigation.
“Ever since you gave me the research notes of Duke Barrett, I’ve been reviewing them daily. Due to the need to guard against cognitive poison, my progress was quite slow. It took me four to five months to read through all the material once. I only truly began actual research about two months ago.”
Reading this, Dorothy couldn’t help but sigh at how taxing cognitive poison was for ordinary Beyonders. Even for someone like Misha, a royal knight with strong anti-poisoning abilities, just reading her compiled documents took nearly five months.
“Although I did manage to get through all the notes eventually, I found it extremely difficult to extract any meaningful insight from them. Most of Barrett’s data consisted of obscure folk stories and legends from various eras of Pritt—dense and difficult to decipher. I’m not some erudite scholar, so it was hard to make progress. I didn’t discover anything useful until early June.
“One day, while rereading the materials at home, I came across a book titled Topography of Yuwen County, which hadn’t been laced with cognitive poison. It felt familiar, like I’d seen it before. After thinking for a while, I remembered reading it back in my university days at Royal Crown University. Since I’m originally from Yuwen County, I used to borrow related books from the library there.
“So, seeing it among Barrett’s research notes meant he must have visited the Royal Crown University Library to gather information. That particular book must have been borrowed from there. Given that, I decided to go try my luck at the library.”
“You previously told me that your intel was gathered by your informant through photographing some documents the Eight-Spired Nest was planning to destroy. That means the original copy of this book is already gone—it’s no longer at the library. So I searched through last year’s loan records and found an entry for Folk Customs of Yuwen County—it was borrowed in October and never returned. The borrower was registered as ‘Richard,’ so I deduced that ‘Richard’ must have been the alias Duke Barrett used when borrowing books.”
“Then I stayed at the library archives for a few days, going through all of Richard’s borrowing records. My idea was simple: read everything he read and see if I could find any clues. But while sifting through those records, I discovered something interesting.
“Among Richard’s borrowing history, there was one book he had checked out repeatedly. It was a niche title called Agricultural Chronicles of Pritt. Driven by curiosity, I went to the stacks to find it—almost no one else had ever borrowed it. When I opened it… I found something unexpected.”
“What was it?” Dorothy asked, now fully intrigued.
The answer appeared at once.
“It was a note—not in Barrett’s handwriting. The message read: ‘Richard, I’ve found the temple.’”