“Where I heard it from?”
On the banks of Lake Starbind, upon hearing Aldrich’s earlier remark, Dorothy froze for a moment, then responded with a hint of surprise.
“You’re asking me that way... Don’t tell me the ’Core of Order’ isn’t the name of the Craftsman God your guild worships?”
Dorothy asked Aldrich directly. At her words, Aldrich paused slightly, then continued with a furrowed brow.
“Well… not exactly… How should I put it? Even among the upper ranks of the Craftsmen’s Guild, very few people know that name. As for Forge, ‘Core of Order’ is an exceedingly rare divine title—virtually never used in any formal guild occasions.
“And why that is… I shouldn’t say too much. I don’t know the full details myself. Could you first tell me where you heard that title?”
Aldrich asked seriously, brows knit as he stared at Dorothy. Seeing his expression, Dorothy didn’t intend to hide anything.
“Beverly told me. Back when I went to Tivian, remember? The one you introduced me to—didn’t she say she was one of your creations?”
Dorothy replied frankly. At her words, Aldrich was visibly taken aback. His eyes widened slightly as he muttered.
“What do you mean? Is there something wrong with Beverly? Isn’t she your creation?”
Seeing Aldrich’s reaction, Dorothy followed up. After a moment of silence, Aldrich slowly responded.
“Ah… she is indeed my creation, there’s no doubt about that. You can continue to trust her on that front. No issues there. It’s just… things are a bit complicated. I’ll need to verify a few things before I can say more. Right now, anything I tell you would be premature…”
Aldrich explained to Dorothy. Hearing this, she could more or less tell that Aldrich wasn’t keen on discussing this topic further. Realizing that, Dorothy tactfully shifted the subject.
“Speaking of which, didn’t you say before that you were traveling to find a way to restore your power? It’s been a year now—any progress?”
“Haha, Miss Mayschoss, you’re still as impatient as ever. A year is but the blink of an eye for a Crimson or Gold-rank Beyonder. For the issues they face, it’s barely any time at all. Not everyone can be like you…”
Aldrich chuckled in response, then added.
“Normally, one year wouldn’t be enough to find a solution to my condition. But this time, I was lucky. I did find a few clues. There were some troubles along the way, sure—but nothing that outweighs the progress I made. So yes, there’s hope now.”
“Oh? So there’s a real chance you’ll fully restore your Gold-rank? Should I give you a hand when the time comes?”
Dorothy asked with a playful tone. Aldrich laughed and replied.
“Miss Mayschoss, I wouldn’t dare to owe you another favor lightly. I repaid your kindness from when I was a student after you reached Crimson. If I owe you again now that you’re Crimson too… what will I do if I have to repay it when you’re a full Apostle? Face a deity head-on?” he joked.
Then, after a brief pause, his expression grew more serious.
“Still… if I run into a problem that’s too thorny, I might really need help. I’ll try to avoid such a scenario, but the world is unpredictable. No one can say what lies ahead.”
Aldrich’s tone grew more solemn. Dorothy nodded in agreement.
“Yeah, fate is fickle. Having extra backup is never a bad thing. So let’s at least stay in touch from now on. Who knows—we might need each other again one day.”
Dorothy suggested. Aldrich thought for a moment, then nodded in agreement.
…
After the battle with Gossmore, Dorothy awakened Vania and the others to go rescue the severely wounded archbishop who had come from afar. Then, she had a brief exchange with Aldrich to confirm a way to stay in contact before seeing off her old headmaster as he once again set off on his journey.
After that, Dorothy tidied up the aftermath at Lake Starbind, retrieving scattered corpse marionettes and other items, before making her way back to Glamorne alone.
Due to the mass hypnosis triggered by the Mirror Moon Golem earlier, the streets of Glamorne were utterly silent—no sound, no movement. Nearly all of the citizens were still sleeping peacefully in their homes, completely unaware of the fierce battle that had just occurred above Lake Starbind.
“I wonder what kind of reaction these ordinary folks will have when they wake up tomorrow morning and see the signs of destruction by the lake… The authorities will have to put in quite a bit of effort to cover this up. Good thing that’s not my responsibility.”
Dorothy mused inwardly as she walked along the deserted, dimly lit streets.
She made her way back to the hotel she had originally been staying at, ascended the stairs, and returned to her room.
Afterward, Dorothy took off her clothes and had a proper bath in the room. After giving herself a brief cleanup, she didn’t rush to sleep. Instead, after lightly drying her hair, she sat down in the armchair provided in the room, wearing a white nightgown. Rocking gently, she began to reflect on the events of the night—so much had happened that she needed to organize her thoughts.
First, Dorothy turned her attention to herself. After more than half a year of effort, encountering one trouble and crisis after another, she had finally succeeded in her advancement and become a Crimson-rank Beyonder. This filled her with genuine joy—after all, she had finally achieved a long-standing goal, and all her hard work had not been in vain.
“Finally Crimson… The difficulty of this advancement was several magnitudes higher than Black Earth or White Ash. It really took everything I had—this wasn’t easy…”
“Now then… I should have a base life expectancy of around 300 years. From here on, I don’t have to rush—just proceed step by step toward Gold-rank. I can finally afford a bit of relaxation.”
So she thought to herself. Next, she began focusing on the new powers she had acquired from advancing to Crimson-rank. Given the traits of the Pure-Color Revelation Path, Dorothy had gained quite a few new abilities upon reaching Crimson.
First came the abilities from the Spiritual Threads Path. With the Fate-Binding Spindle now acquired, Dorothy’s corpse marionette control had made a huge leap forward. The maximum control radius had extended to sixty kilometers, and within thirty kilometers, she could now control up to a hundred corpse marionettes with no significant spirituality consumption. The size range of controllable marionettes had also expanded—though the exact size limits would still require testing.
But the greatest improvement offered by the Fate-Binding Spindle was that corpse marionettes could now actively use skills. Dorothy could now make her marionettes use White Ash-rank active abilities, cast sigils, and perform rituals. If Dorothy possessed any passive spirituality traits, she could pass them onto all her marionettes at no additional spiritual cost—making it trivially easy to form a powerful undead army.
That said, this ability came with a limitation: for active abilities to be fully effective, the corpse marionettes needed to be humanoid. Non-humanoid corpses would see a reduction in effectiveness, the further from humanoid form, the weaker the abilities—eventually reaching a point where activation was impossible.
Another major function of the Fate-Binding Spindle was Spiritual Thread Manifestation. In short, Dorothy could now shoot spiritual threads directly from her hands toward living targets within range. She could forcibly control or redirect damage onto linked targets as living marionettes, without needing a Marionette Mark to establish the link.
The manifested spiritual threads were essentially a form of ranged attack. Highly maneuverable, they weren’t bound to straight-line trajectories like projectiles. Dorothy’s main body could simultaneously emit up to ten manifested threads, which could seek and strike targets within a fifty-meter radius. Each corpse marionette could emit one manifested thread, targeting enemies within fifteen meters. Including her main body, Dorothy could control up to ten threads at once. Once a manifested thread had successfully subdued a living target and turned it into a living marionette, that thread would convert into a regular spiritual thread and no longer count toward the limit of ten.
That said, while flexible, these manifested threads weren’t fast. Compared to elemental attacks from an Elementalist, they were noticeably slower. Successfully linking with a target thus required strategy. Each thread had a cap on how much spirituality it could channel, so subduing stronger enemies required multiple threads to link at once, ideally while inflicting additional negative effects.
There was another key point: compared to Threadweaver Shamans, the Fate-Binding Spindle offered greatly improved forceful control. Against ordinary civilians, a single thread was enough for instant domination while fully conscious. For Apprentices and Black Earth-rank Beyonders, a single manifested thread could still overpower them—it just took a bit longer. For White Ash-rank Beyonders, multiple threads were needed to subdue them while conscious. And to forcibly control a Crimson-rank Beyonder, Dorothy would need to land all ten manifested threads and layer on significant debuffs just to stand a chance.
“This Fate-Binding Spindle’s power… is actually really useful for me. As an Omni-Law Mentor, I’ve got three active branches. I have a ton of skills—which means my marionettes can have a ton of skills too. If I were using the original version of the Fate-Binding Spindle, I’d need to prepare lots of sigils and mystical items to make the most of it—otherwise I’d be stuck playing corpse-command-and-control. Still, that version could apply all of a third-stage Chalice’s spiritual passives onto its whole army of marionettes without cost… which basically means forming an army of a hundred tanky brutes at once. Pretty terrifying, now that I think about it…”
“As for this thread-manifestation ability—with it as an active offensive option, I won’t have to keep thinking of ways to forcibly tag enemies with marks. The number of threads is sufficient, they’re maneuverable—so as long as I solve the speed issue, this could perform very well in actual combat…”
That was Dorothy’s reflection. After thinking it over a bit more, she shifted her attention to her other branch: the Bewitching Dreams Path.
Since this was a new branch she had picked during her advancement, she needed to work through its stages from the beginning.
At the Black Earth rank, the Bewitching Dreams Path was known as Dream Interpreter. Dream Interpreters had two core abilities: personality profiling and hypnosis. The hypnosis was somewhat similar to those from the Dream Devourer Path and the Blood Shade Path Vampires, allowing targets to fall asleep unconsciously. Among the three, Dream Devourers had the strongest hypnosis, Bewitching Dreams came second, and Blood Shade was the weakest.
Dream Devourers, at White Ash-rank, could already hypnotize any perceptible target within range and even perform area-wide hypnosis. Vampires from the Blood Shade Path, meanwhile, needed direct eye contact plus words and gestures—and even then, it only worked in close range.
The Bewitching Dreams Path fell between those two. At Black Earth-rank, it had about the same hypnotic strength as White Ash-rank Blood Shade Vampires, though it wasn’t as powerful.
Beyond hypnosis, Dream Interpreters also had personality analysis, a power that required interaction to fully manifest.
They could turn on and off an aura of attraction derived from their mysticism. This charm made others subconsciously trust them and want to communicate. Through ongoing dialogue, Dream Interpreters could read someone’s personality on a deep, spiritual level—constructing a personality profile of the target in their own consciousness.
With this, the Dream Interpreter could learn the person’s temperament, habits, personality type, and interests. While they couldn’t read memories like a Dream Intruder, they could clearly identify all of a person’s traits and tendencies.
And importantly, this didn’t require direct contact with the target. They could also converse with someone familiar with the target—friends, colleagues, or acquaintances. As long as the person knew the target well, the Dream Interpreter could gather progress on the profile through them. Every such interaction added to the profile’s completion.
Once the profile was complete, the Dream Interpreter gained not only a full psychological read—but also mental leverage over the target. In any future interaction, the Interpreter could use suggestive phrases to influence the target’s behavior—even without using spirituality. The target would subconsciously follow the guidance, unaware they were being manipulated.
As the Dream Interpreter advanced to White Ash or Crimson, this power evolved further—they could begin subtly shaping the target’s personality like molding clay. Worldviews, values, and life perspectives could be gradually altered through seemingly casual conversation. The process was imperceptible.
More terrifyingly, even if the target became an enemy, the profile’s influence didn’t vanish. The Interpreter could still issue subtle verbal cues during battle: causing the target to miss a shot, swing at the wrong person, forget to dodge, or misstep—just with a few words, no gestures, no spirituality.