Chapter 27: The Secret in the Candlelight

Adeline stared at the clock on Lein’s card, her brow furrowing tighter.

The hands were spinning wildly.

The slender hand swept across the dial at a speed she had never seen, completing a full rotation in the blink of an eye.

Before Adeline could react, the clock pattern dissipated from the card’s surface.

In the next instant, a new clock emerged.

The hands spun rapidly again, disappeared after one rotation, and then another clock appeared.

One after another, without pause, without rest.

Adeline leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest, staring at the constantly appearing and disappearing clock pattern.

‘I have no idea what Lein is going through over there,’ she thought.

‘The card isn’t giving any textual description, only this endlessly appearing and disappearing clock spinning futilely.

But judging from this eerie rhythm, something is clearly wrong.’

From a gameplay perspective, this looked a lot like a Card Judgment.

That meant Lein was trying to decipher the diary, but the difficulty and requirements were too high, and his own Attribute Values were too low, so the judgment kept failing.

Once this judgment started, it couldn’t be interrupted, so it fell into an infinite loop of repeated judgments—fail, judge again, fail again.

At least that was how Adeline understood it.

It was somewhat similar to certain Board Games she had played in her past life.

So the question was: how could she help Lein pass this judgment?

She didn’t have Lein’s Attribute Panel, had no numerical values to reference, and didn’t even know what attribute this judgment was checking.

The only thing she could see was that clock spinning frantically, disappearing, and reappearing, like a broken machine idling meaninglessly.

Just as Adeline was wondering, the box let out another soft click.

click—

A crack appeared on the side of the box, and a new card slid halfway out.

Adeline reached out, pulled the card out, and flipped it over.

The face of the card was pitch black, no pattern at all.

It was pure, complete blackness, as if someone had coated the surface with a thick layer of black ink, then added another layer, and then another, until the black became dense and profound, devouring all light and texture.

Adeline flipped the card to the back.

A line of script appeared on the pure black background, white strokes like cold light streaking across a night sky:

[Deciphering unfamiliar documents is usually a dangerous task. I need something to overcome fear, ignorance, and my own weakness.]

Adeline stared at the line for a few seconds, then tried rubbing the surface of the card like before.

The card split into three.

Three brand-new cards lay neatly arranged on her palm.

Each had the same pure black face, but the backs had different text.

The first:

[Choice: Authority: Power, weapons, resorting to violence, bringing about change… These always invigorate a person.]

The card’s face depicted a blazing red flame, with a hammer and a short sword crossed upright within the fire.

The lines were rough and powerful.

The second:

[Choice: Origin: My existence, my foundation, my origin, everything about me… Nothing makes me feel more at ease than this.]

The card’s face was the silhouette of a tree, its roots buried deep underground, its branches extending to the edges of the card.

Several heart-shaped fruits hung from the branches, tinged with a blood-red crimson.

The third:

[Choice: Inner Essence: That which drives me. My will shines bright because of it, my obsession burns like fire. Nothing can stand in my way.]

The card’s face was an open eye.

Inside the pupil was something that looked like an upside-down human figure.

Adeline’s gaze swept across the three cards.

Besides the text and images, she also noticed a small detail: a tiny symbol appeared on the upper right corner of each card.

The symbol looked like some kind of Roman numeral.

The Authority card had Ⅵ in the upper right corner, the Origin card had Ⅰ, and the Inner Essence card had Ⅲ.

Adeline stared at those three symbols for a long time.

‘Roman numerals?

Does this world have Roman numerals too?’

She recalled the content she had seen in A General History of the Kingdom of New Clare and other books.

The gilded characters on the spines, the printed fonts in the newspapers—all used a curvy, intricate alphabet system she was familiar with.

She had never seen any trace of Roman numerals.

‘So, are these just symbols that happen to look like Roman numerals?

Or are they actually Roman numerals, but have a different meaning in this world?’

No.

From a game logic perspective, these symbols should represent numbers.

If so, what did the different numbers mean?

The difficulty of passing the judgment?

Ⅰ, Ⅲ, Ⅵ.

If smaller numbers meant easier judgment, then Origin’s Ⅰ was the best choice.

If larger numbers meant easier, then Authority’s Ⅵ was the correct answer.

But if the numbers didn’t represent difficulty, but something else?

Like cost?

Or time?

Or the degree of impact on Lein himself?

Adeline didn’t have enough information to make a judgment.

Based on these strange descriptions alone, it was hard to choose.

The Authority card talked about power and violence—it sounded useful, but the phrasing “resorting to violence” made her uneasy, especially since Lein’s current situation involved deciphering a document, not fighting someone.

The Origin card’s description was about existence and foundation—it felt reassuring, but if the number Ⅰ meant the highest difficulty, choosing it would throw Lein into the fire.

To be safe, Adeline chose Inner Essence.

The reason was simple: its symbol was Ⅲ, the median among the numbers.

In a situation where she was completely uncertain about the relationship between the number size and the judgment difficulty, choosing the middle value was the safest strategy.

It wouldn’t miss the opportunity by being too small, nor bear excessively high risk by being too large.

Adeline pinched the card named Inner Essence and pressed it onto Lein’s card.

The moment the two cards overlapped, the ink writhed violently like ignited lamp oil.

The edges of the Inner Essence card began to melt; the eye-like pattern peeled off the card’s surface, turning into a scorching black stream that seeped along the contact edge into Lein’s card face.

Unlike the previous smooth mergers, this time the ink flow was exceptionally intense, as if something was churning and struggling beneath Lein’s card’s surface.

The whole process lasted about ten seconds.

When the last trace of ink disappeared into Lein’s card, Adeline noticed that the constantly appearing and disappearing clock on Lein’s card, after its hand completed a rotation, finally stopped appearing.

With a click, a new card was ejected from the box.

Adeline picked it up:

[First Ritual: The Secret in the Candlelight]