Chapter 375: Efficient Method
It first came to me like déjà vu, the dream I had watched in Miriam’s head flashing in my mind.
I wanted to release the restrictions on mind-vision and get an overview of the room but I caught myself.
Turning to my left, I observed Miriam, struggling at first to get a reading from her but eventually glimpsing the anticipation she felt when she looked at me.
"What?" she mouthed.
"You’re beautiful," I mouthed back.
For a second, a hunger appeared in her eyes, followed by craziness, then, smiling at me, she turned back to the altar.
"What is going on?" I racked my head.
The woman in the veil had been the spark for the chaos in my mind. Though Chiara wore the same white robes I had seen in Miriam’s dream, I had thought the woman in the dream had been the one. I hadn’t even remembered the dream.
I wanted to tell myself I was making a mistake, that what I had seen was just a memory, but dreams could not only be memories.
Looking up at the altar, the thought of Chiara didn’t sit well with me, and just as I began planning how I could abate the disaster that might come, I noticed the enchanting woman at the altar and Miriam sharing a look.
"Wait, they both have on black robes, they are two of the only three people here wearing black."
I had paid little attention to the exceptions, the other nuns wearing white, since there was one other person on the bench on the other side wearing black.
In a second, the possibility of what was happening all clicked in my head. Suddenly, out of nowhere, my heart began beating fast, and I was hit with a bad premonition.
"Where, where," I called in my head, my eyes darting left and right while I kept them fixed.
In the dream, if I was right, Chiara suddenly got cut in two while Miriam followed behind her.
If that dream had been Miriam imagining the future, rather than a memory, then it meant my association with Chiara had thrown a wrench in her plan, displacing her from her position by Chiara’s side and being replaced with another.
The woman on stage was the replacement, and if that was correct, it meant Chiara would be split in two, and the woman would come face to face with Chiara’s killer, the woman wearing a veil.
I watched as Chiara descended the altar, going toward the veiled woman, the enchanting nun behind her.
"What kind of conspiracy is this?"
With this thought, I acted.
The Psion in my head burst out with force, mind-vision being activated to its very limit.
Just as I had feared, several eyes turned toward me, but with the surprise that grabbed them, they could only watch as I pushed off my seat, running along the benches toward the altar.
Spell Breaker appeared in my hand in a beat, and my plan for its first target was the woman in the veil, but...
Echo!!
For good measure, I decided to use the technique, extending it to just the confines of this room, and it showed me another thing.
As fast as I could, I jumped and changed my aim from the veiled woman to the space just on Chiara’s left.
My eyes hardened, and I was just about to pull the trigger when I saw I had no reason to.
My target currently had a fist in her chest, the red coiling ribbon she held falling from her hand.
As my feet touched the ground, I turned my aim to the woman behind Chiara, ready to unload a shell, but was then surprised to see her unmoving, her gaze lost.
Moving to the side, I checked the rest of the room and realised that not just her but everyone had stopped moving.
Sluck!!
A sound usually heard during pleasure reverberated through the room as Chiara took her right fist out of her enemy’s chest.
At first, it looked like she had her limb hanging in empty air, but then a female dressed completely in a white, tight outfit appeared.
The assassin fell to their knees as their pristine cloth was stained with gushing blood, and they looked up at Chiara helplessly.
"How are you still able to move?"
Chiara had her back turned to me when she spoke, but as I moved my eyes from the assassin to her, I saw that her face was right in front of mine.
Surprised, I jumped backwards, pointing Spell Breaker at the woman, but as I landed, a pair of arms wrapped around me from the back.
"First, you move to protect me, then you move to kill me, pick a side," Chiara whispered in my ear.
I had kept my eyes on the woman when I jumped, but somehow she was no longer in my vision and was now behind me.
Mind-vision had been fully active, but not even it had registered when she got behind me.
"So how did you find out about the plot?"
The woman was no longer behind me, but now in front and walking away, and I was just considering how to answer when I realised something of mine was missing.
"My gun."
Behold, Spell Breaker, which I had been holding in a tight grip, was no longer in my hand but now in Chiara’s, the woman collapsing on a bench at the front and inspecting it.
"This is beautiful, and... close your mouth, a fly might get in."
If her earlier demonstration hadn’t been enough, the woman’s last act made a statement.
My hands, which had been grabbing at empty air, slowly fell down as I closed my mouth.
Looking at Chiara in a new light, I walked past her to the woman she had downed.
"Be careful, she might have some death trap on her. You don’t want to activate it and die."
I paused in my steps and observed the fallen woman for a few seconds. Mind-vision showed me nothing, but in the end, I chose to turn away from her and toward the nuns who seemed to have been frozen in time.
"What did you do to them?"
"Put them in an illusion," Chiara quickly replied.
She was delicately tracing her fingers over Spell Breaker as she continued to speak.
"To them, their plans worked out, and everything is moving just fine. Though limited, it’s a very efficient interrogative method."