Mystery: Good Witch

Chapter 48 Ceremony Success
In the basement of 6 Daffodil Street, Tingen.

Wearing a simple black robe, Angel walked down the stairs carefully holding a plate of Fenebaud noodles. The basement was already brightly lit by several candles and an oil lamp. She walked around the sundries beside the stairs and came to the center of the basement, where there was a square wooden table, which was moved down from the living room in advance.

Paella, white bread, and Dixie pies were already placed on the three corners of the table. The Fenebo noodles in her hand were the last meal needed for the ceremony. They had just been delivered from the Silver Crown restaurant on the corner of the street, and they were still steaming with a strong aroma, tempting Angel's taste buds and making her index finger twitch after lunch.

"This is a tribute required for the ceremony, you can't eat it..."

Resisting the urge to slurp down the juicy noodles, Angel put the plate on the remaining corner of the table, picked up the parchment paper in his hand again, and confirmed that the placement of the four foods was correct.

"In clockwise order, paella...white bread...Feneporte..."

Confirm that the four kinds of food are placed one by one. Although the Dixie pie is no longer the heat when it was just baked, and the skin of the white bread that was bought earlier has been dehydrated and wrinkled, it should not affect the effect of the ceremony.

"Then the essential oils...moon flower, golden peppermint, sleeper flower, golden hand and rock rose."

Of course, there was no way to confirm the mixed essential oils. She could only recall in her heart whether the essential oils she bought were wrong, and then put the small bottle of light blue mixed essential oils aside for later use.

Sandalwood candles have been pre-placed at the four corners of the table, next to the four kinds of food. In order to prevent the candle from falling over due to accidental disturbance, she fixed it with wax oil from another candle in advance.

Lighting four sandalwood candles with a match, under the light of the faint flame, she simply sanctified the carving knife with coarse salt and water, held the knife around the square table that had become the altar, and used the invisible power gushing out from the tip of the knife to create a spiritual wall around the altar that could isolate unclean things.

Under the isolation of the spiritual wall, the area around the square table seems to be a closed space, which seems to exclude all interference and unclean forces.

Angel dripped the mixed essential oils on the flames of the four candles one by one, and as the liquid evaporated instantly, a faint scent permeated the basement, mixing with the original sandalwood scent, adding a touch of mystery to the ceremony.

Licking her lips, Angel, who was dressed like a cultist in a black robe and hood, lowered her head and recited the incantation she had already recited proficiently in Hermes.

"The fool who does not belong to this era, the mysterious ruler above the gray fog, the king of yellow and black who is in charge of good luck."

"I pray for your help, I pray for your favor..."

"...Please pass on the power to my spell."

After reciting the entire mantra taught by the Fool, Angel felt a breeze blowing around, and the flames of the four candles on the table trembled slightly for a moment, then fell silent again.

With a thought in her mind, she raised her right hand and looked at her palm. The teardrop-shaped imprint that had become invisible originally appeared again on the palm after the first Tarot meeting, and the crimson light flickered in it.

The ceremony was a success?
Angel quickly closed his eyes, clasped his hands together, and prayed in a low voice: "Dear Mister Fool, I have completed the ceremony you ordered. Do you have any other instructions?"

After waiting for a while, she opened her eyes in doubt, and saw that everything on the simple altar made of wooden tables, food, and candles was the same as before, and the surrounding breeze had disappeared, and nothing seemed to have changed.

"That's it? Do we need to continue to wait for his response?"

Angel didn't dare to move rashly, but continued to stand in front of the altar until the four candles were more than half burned, and the scent of sandalwood in the basement became more and more intense.

"Maybe Mister Fool is too busy to reply to these trivial things..."

She shook her head, blew out the candles, and started packing the cold food.

----

This morning, the Nighthawks team of Tingen City went out to the underground trading market of the Dragon Bar in the dock area to arrest the wanted criminal "Instigator" Triss who appeared there. Angel followed Sika Thang to the police station to transfer a team of plainclothes patrolmen, and returned to the Blackthorn Security Company according to Captain Dunn Smith's order, waiting for good news from others.

Unexpectedly, the dejected "Midnight Poet" Leonard Mitchell came back first. Under his explanation, Angel and others who stayed behind knew that the arrest operation had failed at the beginning.

The reason is naturally due to the delicate relationship between the major churches that cooperate and compete with each other.

Generally speaking, the three official Extraordinary forces in Tingen City, "Nighthawks", "Punishers" and "Mechanical Heart" are in a state of cooperation. The three belong to the three righteous god churches of the Loen Kingdom, Goddess of the Night, Lord of Storms, and God of Steam and Machinery.According to the principle of belonging to the believers, they handle cases of supernatural factors within their jurisdiction, and rarely interfere with each other.

However, the "Clover Massacre" involved double-digit victims, and many believers of the three major churches were involved. In such a complicated situation, the usual rule is to divide the management according to jurisdictional territories. The Nighthawks are in charge of the Jinwutong District, West District, and North District of Tingen City, the Mechanical Heart manages the University District and the outskirts of Tingen, and the Punishers handle cases in the East District, South District, and Dock District.

This time, the "instigator" Triss, who caused the passengers on the Clover to kill each other, appeared in the dock area. It stands to reason that the punishers of the Church of the Lord of Storms were responsible, but the Heart of the Machine also had a reason—the most casualties on the Clover were believers of the God of Steam and Machinery, and the informant who witnessed Tris's reappearance was an offline development of the Heart of the Machine.

So Mechanic Heart, who received the tip, quickly dispatched the Extraordinary team, and even brought a team of armed forces equipped with high-pressure steam rifles, vowing to arrest the wild Extraordinary who dared to attack believers.

Unexpectedly, "The Instigator" Tris was extremely vigilant, and left the scene before the encirclement was formed, leaving the Mechanic Heart's brigade empty-handed. He could only vent his anger on the ordinary people in the Dragon Bar, comparing their appearances and asking for clues over and over again.

According to Leonard, until he came back, the underground market did not resume normal trading. Dunn Smith, who rushed to the scene with him, was also pulled to assist in the investigation of several key suspects, and he couldn't get away for a while.

"Why don't you try divination?"

The "Seer" Klein, who also stayed at the company, was eager to try. Last week, he assisted Angel in resolving a commission to retrieve the ring, and received a reward of 30 pounds. He also rescued a kidnapped boy with Leonard Mitchell through the divination staff and obtained another generous extra income. Now he is very proficient in the use of divination.

Leonard shook his head and rejected this method: "There were members of the 'Mechanical Heart' and 'Punisher' team present, and many of them were senior Beyonders who were proficient in divination. Two of them tried divination respectively, but unfortunately they all failed. Maybe there were too few clues, or there might be other Beyonders who interfered with the results of the divination."

Interfering with divination again...

Angel was a little troubled by this. She originally thought that divination was a very useful means of obtaining information in occultism, but she didn't expect that all kinds of wild Beyonders seemed to have methods that could interfere with the results of divination. Except for the two commissions completed by Klein, she has not seen any successful cases of divination.

In any case, after such an alert, the official Extraordinary plan to use the time difference to arrest Tris, who had not yet discovered that he was wanted, was completely bankrupt before the arrest warrant was posted everywhere.The next step is nothing more than extensive inspections and arrests based on the wanted warrants. If you are lucky, you can find clues about Tris's haunts.

Since there was no hope of catching Tris, Angel lost the interest in waiting.Before she became a full-time member, she didn’t need to be on guard at the Chanis Gate all night. Now she has quite free working hours. Remembering that she still had to complete the tasks ordered by “The Fool” today, she found an excuse to leave the Blackthorn Security Company. Before the noon dining peak, she bought all the food she needed and successfully completed the ceremony in the basement.

It's a pity that "The Fool" didn't answer her prayer on the spot. I don't know if it was because the other two members of the Tarot Society hadn't completed the ceremony, or because "The Fool" didn't bother to reply at all. In short, Angel thought he had successfully completed the task he had given him. He tidied up the ceremony site with peace of mind, and packed the long-coveted Fenabol noodles into his stomach.

This is saving... and it seems that many places have the custom of eating sacrificial offerings... Angel made an excuse.

In the afternoon, since she was not yet an official member, she did not return to the Blackthorn Security Company, played cards and fished with other nighthawks who had nothing to do, and was not sure whether the underground market at the Dragon Bar would be reopened. She could only spend her time making the spells she learned from Old Neil. After wasting a few pairs of production materials, she finally successfully completed a "Sleep Charm".

This is a spell derived from the power of the "Domain" of the Goddess of the Night. Its effect is similar to the power that Leonard sang a poem to make people fall asleep during Madam Sharon's battle. Because it overlaps with the power of the Nighthawks in the "Sleepless" sequence, basically no one uses it within the Nighthawks.

But for the "Assassin" sequence, Angel, who lacks such extraordinary abilities, is a good supplement to combat power.

The front and back of the poker-sized silver squares are engraved with mystical symbols symbolizing the goddess of the night, as well as complicated Hermes spells. This is also one of the difficulties in making spells. The various piercing marks on the discarded silver pieces are the best proof.

Angel can feel the quiet and deep power contained in this successfully made charm, which represents the goddess of the night. As long as he pours his own spirituality into it and reads the activation spell, the spell will burst out in a few seconds with the power to put the surrounding creatures to sleep.

Glancing at her pocket watch, it was still some time before dinner. She carefully put away the successfully produced "Sleep Charm", picked up a new piece of silver, and prepared to try another spell from the domain of the Evernight Goddess, "Dream Charm".

(End of this chapter)