Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

"Right, we should count the last battle as our win, right?" Shiller spoke to the Transcendent in his mind, "After all, Madeline has already been burnt to ashes, you don't still expect her to turn the tables, do you?"

The Transcendent seemed to remember just now and said, "Oh, right, I got some more Skill Points, it's time to upgrade a skill again."

Before Shiller's eyes, the skill list appeared again, and this time he didn't plan to upgrade Document Reading because he found out that people here also used English, and those obscure documents, who knows at what level one might encounter them—upgrading it another level seemed meaningless.

He saw a very magical skill called "Clairvoyance." He asked the Transcendent what this skill was for, and even the Transcendent didn't explain it very clearly, but just gave an example.

"You saw that Wind Blade that hit the wall from the monster before, didn't you?"

"Yes, what about it?"

"Clairvoyance can glimpse into these invisible entities."

"Can it see the monsters themselves?"

"If you upgrade it to the highest level, maybe it's possible," said the Transcendent. "But this thing can't immunize you from the mental harm of looking directly at invisible entities."

"It's fine, I have a skill to restore my mental health value anyway."

"Are you sure you want to upgrade it?"

After Shiller was certain, he acquired the first level of Clairvoyance. He found out it was also an active skill, but its cooldown time was roughly 10 minutes, indicating it could be used outside of battle as well.

"Can I see through this who has been possessed?"

"Maybe, but I doubt your mental health value can handle it."

"The worse, the better," Shiller said. "I'm finding even being healthy unsettling; I'm eager to get back to my usual state."

"You're really crazy," the Transcendent commented.

"That's nothing," Shiller said. "If the Wandering possesses me, then I'll turn one of my teammates into a great piece of art and then commit suicide. Let him fulfill my last wishes—I want to see if this Wandering possesses even a fraction of my ability."

The Transcendent couldn't help but curse.

Shiller ignored him and activated the Clairvoyance skill.

Instantly, the world transformed completely, everything became wavering and blurry, but Shiller suddenly settled down. He looked towards his few teammates.

Suddenly, the others saw Shiller bend over and scream, clutching his eyes, blood trickling down through his fingers.

Everyone immediately took up a combat stance.

"Hold on," the Transcendent suddenly said in the mind of the Universe Batman. "Why a combat stance? He's your teammate, shouldn't you be trying to help him?"

"Then why don't you help?"

"I'm not with you..."

"If you were, would you help?"

The Transcendent shut up.

Shiller knelt in the snow for a while, took several deep breaths, and after he recovered, he didn't rush to stand up but used animal skin to wipe off the bloodstains from his face. He blinked his eyes and found his vision unaffected, so he sighed with relief.

"What happened?" Universe Batman asked.

"Nothing much, I was testing out a new skill," Shiller stood up, brushed the snow off his trousers, and loosened his Roman collar even further.

"What skill did you upgrade?" Greed asked.

"Clairvoyance," Shiller honestly replied, then he proceeded to explain, "I wanted to see if I could directly spot which one of us the monster had possessed."

"Did you see anything?"

Shiller shook his head and said, "I guess my inspiration wasn't enough; I couldn't make out any signs."

Universe Batman narrowed his eyes slightly; he remembered the feeling like being stricken when he first saw the detective's body. If Shiller hadn't seen anything, then why would his eyes bleed?

Universe Batman believed Shiller had plenty of reasons to conceal the truth. Whether the monster was on himself, on another version of himself, or on Bruce, it was possible he wouldn't tell.

"What are we doing next?" Night Owl was the only one among them who seemed a bit impatient; he might not have expected the game's pace to be so slow.

But in reality, the game's pace wasn't slow but had been steered into a dead end by the two Shillers' leadership.

Under normal circumstances, Madeline's death and the Wandering possession of a player were almost inevitable.

But the players could use curtains, carpets, and firewood to make torches for warmth, take survival supplies found in the house, cross the vast snowy plains as quickly as possible, and head to the village to find a way to remove the possession.

There was a wilderness survival expert in the team who could help them preserve fire, and they would also have to share the scant supplies during the long journey. They might even encounter other dangers, and only by sticking together and cooperating could they reach the next mission point.

But Shiller had set the house ablaze, and all the survival supplies were gone. As the fire raged on, nobody seemed to plan on getting some branches to make torches; they just stood around and watched.

Once the flames died down, without any means of warmth, they wouldn't survive a night on the snowy plains—all of them would freeze to death.

Yet, they seemed not to care at all.

"Don't be in a hurry," Shiller said to Night Owl. "There are only two kinds of living things here, humans and monsters. If the humans are not in a hurry, it's the monsters' turn to be anxious."

Shiller took a seat on the steps in front of the house, followed by Greed. The house still burned fiercely, and heat constantly billowed out. Shiller bowed his head, engrossed in examining the piece of Beast hide he held.

Primary Universe Batman, the two Jokers, and Bruce stood at a slightly more distant spot. Even Night Owl finally grew impatient.

"How long must we wait here? Even if we don't set out for the village today, shouldn't we at least make some preparations?"

After speaking, he looked at Bruce, who had been daydreaming ever since he finished allocating his Skill Points and never really focused again.

Shiller figured he must have chosen the Spiritual Analysis Skill of the second level.

What effects the second level of Spiritual Analysis could have, Shiller didn't know, but there were only three levels of the skill, and the second level should be a significant improvement.

If the second-level Spiritual Analysis Skill could give him part of the correct answer, that would be quite good.

As the sun set, the fire in the house finally began to extinguish. The wooden structure of the entire house had completely collapsed, turning into a pile of charred wood which still emitted thick smoke.

The good news was that the snow had finally stopped.

Whether it was the Transcendents who had had enough of the waiting, or something else, the continuous heavy snow that had been falling for several days miraculously stopped, and the endless white clouds dispersed, revealing the blue sky and casting the snowy ground in a cold hue. The sunshine that fell upon them carried not a trace of warmth.

Shiller stood up, and Primary Universe Batman approached the ruins of the house. After the wooden structure had burned away, most of the remaining debris was oddly shaped: there were fragments of metal kitchen structures, mounds of blackened synthetic products that had melted together, and a faintly discernible stone fireplace.

Primary Universe Batman casually picked up a metal railing that hadn't been destroyed and used it to turn over the debris.

Shiller also rummaged through the ruins looking for something while the pale knight stood by, realizing that they were waiting here not to waste time but because there was a real task at hand.

"Found anything?" Shiller turned and asked Primary Universe Batman.

Primary Universe Batman gazed at the ground. Shiller's eyes followed his line of sight, landing on a clump of blackened marks that seemed to be left by some sort of organic material that had been incinerated.

Shiller walked over, wrapped the piece of burnt, blackened wood beside him with the Beast hide, and then scraped it against the marks a few times.

A hole appeared.

More precisely, a cellar door.

Shiller looked up and quickly deduced that this should have been where a carpet once lay. The carpet burnt away, the wooden floor burnt away, and the door was exposed.

Above the door was a thin layer of dirt that had hardened into clumps due to the fire. If it weren't for Primary Universe Batman's observation, one might have stepped on it and fallen through.

This new discovery drew everyone's attention. Night Owl looked at Shiller in surprise and asked, "Did you know there was something odd about this house all along?"

Shiller shook his head, "I'm more suspicious of the diary owner."

"What do you mean?"

"The village was plagued by Wanderers. He called his friend to deal with the problem, so why didn't the two of them go to the village, but instead, his friend came here to find him?"

Night Owl fell into contemplation.

Shiller wasn't just being wise after the event; during their discussion on a series of questions about the monsters, they had deliberately avoided one person—the owner of the diary.

If we assume the diary owner was the corpse in the kitchen, his death was undoubtedly problematic.

A detective possessed, a detective dead, a monster accompanied by the detective seeking him, the monster possessed him, the monster took him to fish by the creek, he returned to the house, the monster then possessed Madeline, Madeline committed suicide.

Looking at the death sequence of the three, there seemed no issue, but as Shiller said, the detective coming here to find him was a problem in itself.

His diary mentioned that when the Wandering event had just erupted, a villager had sought him out. He had gone to the village with this villager and later witnessed a tragedy of people going mad after drinking mutton soup.

If his intention was to stop the Wandering event, then when the detective arrived, they shouldn't have agreed to meet at their home; they should have met in the village. That way, they could immediately begin the investigation.

Suppose the village had become exceedingly dangerous, and it was difficult for living people to survive there, then the diary owner certainly would have warned his detective friend not to go to the village and instead to come directly to his house. That, in turn, would mean the detective wouldn't have been possessed.

These two locations were not just a mile or two apart, but very far from each other, and with the mountain roads blocked by heavy snow, modern transportation was useless. They had to walk on their own legs, and it was normal to walk all day in such climatic conditions, the entire journey being very unsafe. In the face of a significant threat, anyone with a bit of sense wouldn't waste time like this.

Either the detective or the diary owner had a problem.

Shiller was inclined to believe it was the latter, for it was the diary owner who invited the detective here, and no one knew exactly how he invited him or what was written on the invitation.

The likely cause of the detective's strange route could well be the change in the diary owner.

For instance, they could have arranged to meet in the village, but when the time came, the diary owner did not show up, leaving the detective waiting in vain and forcing him to risk coming to the diary owner's house to find him.

If that were the case, why didn't the diary owner go to the village to meet as scheduled?