Lord of the Mysteries

He quietly let out a breath of air and changed the topic.

“I have divulged the whereabouts of the manuscript to MI9 and everything else. They also mentioned your predicament in passing. Heh, they didn’t suspect me of lying, nor did they send anyone to watch me. All of them went to vie for the manuscript. However, with that kind of pressure, no one can lie.”

Having said that, Ian stood up and gave a deep bow.

“Please allow me to apologize again.

“Sorry to have involved you in this. Actually, you don’t need to hide anything for me.”

Having understood the entire situation, Klein smiled and said, “No, the main problem in this matter was because I made a mistake that made me end up in my current situation.”

As he was listening, he used Ian’s description of the entire situation and his reflections of the past few days and confirmed that he had made two mistakes.

When I discovered that Ian’s matter ran deeper than it appeared, I still accepted the request. That wasn’t a problem since I only felt that it involved gangs, and there would be, at most, one or two Beyonders who wouldn’t dare expose themselves. But the divination lacked enough information and ended with a failure… This was within the limits of what I could’ve resolved by myself, and typically speaking, there wouldn’t have been any trouble. I could even take the opportunity to come into contact with Backlund’s Beyonders.

After finding Zreal’s corpse and confirming that the matter ran deep, I should’ve considered the sensitivity of my identity and decisively extricated myself from this case. I should’ve let Ian deal with the subsequent matters himself. This wouldn’t be problematic and would be a rather careful choice.

One of the mistakes I made was that I didn’t flinch or reveal anything about Ian when Meursault came to me. I only thought that he was from a gang, and that there were some Beyonders behind that gang. Who would’ve guessed that it would involve a figure like the Intis ambassador; even more so, I never expected Meursault to be so rash. After failing his mission, he didn’t threaten, intimidate me or proceed with other options. Instead, he came straight to kill me so that mediumship could be performed. He didn’t even give me the chance to regret my decision. As a result, my situation worsened.

So, this isn’t too subjective or too serious a mistake.

The one mistake that really caused me to be in such a passive situation was a tiny mistake I made from the very beginning. I had rented the house and accepted the mission as Sherlock Moriarty without donning a disguise!

This resulted in me not being able to flee after my identity as a Beyonder was exposed to the ambassador. Even as I acted horrified and frantic, making MI9 and the police department believe that my taking flight would only be normal, I didn’t dare flee. I was afraid that when the ambassador failed to find a target for revenge, he would inform the officials about me. And according to my experience as a Nighthawk, most official enforcers like the Nighthawks, Machinery Hivemind, and Mandated Punishers harbor animosity towards uncontrolled Beyonders. They definitely wouldn’t ignore me just because I’m a Low-Sequence Beyonder and would begin an investigation.

In time, my looks will be clear evidence. I will then be pursued by High-Sequence Beyonders from the Church of the Goddess because I resurrected despite having been involved with a Grade 0 Sealed Artifact.

There’s no chance for such matters to be suddenly forgotten or thought of as nothing by others. I had to plan for the worst case scenario in advance, and if I only reacted when the ambassador took action, it would definitely be too late. Whether it’s an assassination, finding a bodyguard, or buying items, all of them will require time.

Only if the ambassador and his assistant dies or attention is diverted to the investigation of his death will I be able to resolve this latent danger. His assistant doesn’t have an official status, so he can’t interact with the officials. For a mere Sequence 9 or Sequence 8 at best, someone whose whereabouts are unknown, there’s no reason to go through the effort to report me.

Of course, his death is the best outcome, then there won’t be any latent danger.

Compared to finding Mr. Azik for help or having attention placed on me because of 0-08 again, as well as being pursued by High-Sequence Beyonders, assassinating the ambassador is the relatively simpler choice… Even it fails, I can only bear one of the two outcomes…