Chapter 33: If it weren’t for Hiltina, I might still be a gigolo right now.
“Name.”
“Rast.”
“Age.”
“Can’t remember, probably about two to three hundred years old, but I wouldn’t mind if you write down seventeen.”
“Gender.”
“Isn’t it supposed to be armed helicopter?”
Behind the one-way mirror, Isda paused in her questioning. The Starry University uniform adorned with the star badge formed a taut arc that rose and fell with her breath.
She gazed at Rast, who looked harmless in the inquiry room, took a deep breath, and pulled a handful of teddy bear cookies from a jar on the table and stuffed them into her mouth, stabilizing the rising and falling arc.
Isda glanced at the paper in her hand with Rast’s name: “Rast… Is this your true name? No surname?”
“Don’t know. Why would you think someone who has wandered aimlessly in the Night World for over a hundred years would still remember their real name from hundreds of years ago?”
“But since someone calls me that, it must be my name.”
“Hmm?”
Isda’s little hairpin flitted about: “Who is the one that calls you this name? When and where did you hear it?”
“In my dreams.”
“…” Isda fell silent and reached into the iron can to grab another handful of teddy bear cookies.
“By the way, I shouldn’t be undergoing interrogation as a suspect right now, right? I see you haven’t handcuffed me.”
Rast adjusted his sitting posture in the chair, leaning back comfortably against the backrest: “Although I’ve been heinous and wicked in the Night World, and being executed a hundred times wouldn’t be excessive, I only blew up half a city out of desperation.”
“And Hiltina did that too. If you want to convict me for this, then she’s the mastermind, and I’m merely an accomplice.”
“If I hadn’t met Hiltina back then, I might still be working as a gigolo in a hotel in the Night World… Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being a gigolo, but becoming a Night Traveler offers me a broader horizon.”
“You and Vice President Hiltina are certainly not suspects,” Isda interrupted Rast’s rambling, “This is just a routine questioning and registration.”
“You should know that due to possessing Sequence abilities and the Night Blade, every Night Traveler has extremely powerful destructive capabilities.”
“And because of the oppressive, suffocating atmosphere lingering in the history of the Night World, those who frequently come and go from the Night World tend to be somewhat mentally extreme, becoming significant unstable factors.”
“Additionally, due to confidentiality clauses regarding civilians in the Night World, according to the laws of Granville, every Night Traveler within the national borders must be registered, tracked, and monitored regularly for their mental state.”
She pulled out something resembling a tablet from the table and lightly swiped at it.
In the next moment, a virtual light screen appeared before Isda, and with a gentle swipe of her finger, the content on the tablet kept changing.
“Let me introduce myself; my name is Isda.”
“A third-year student at Starry University, ranked seventy-eighth in the Obelisk, a Third Tier Hermit, currently serving as a psychological evaluator in the Starry Student Council.”
Isda took a bite of a cookie, and the little bear on the cookie instantly lost its head: “Next, I will conduct a psychological assessment on you in the form of profiling, assessing your mental state and stability coefficient.”
“Just get comfortable in whichever way you like. Please relax your body and mind as much as possible and cooperate with my assessment.”
“Uh-huh.” Rast obediently nodded.
He adjusted his posture and stretched lazily.
During the stretch, Rast subtly pointed his right hand as if it were a g*n, aiming it at his temple.
Click.
…
In the narrow inquiry room, a brief psychological assessment was underway.
Isda asked questions; Rast answered. Occasionally, the headset-wearing psychological evaluator paused to jot something down on her tablet.
It looked just like Rast’s previous experiences visiting a psychologist.
But in reality, this was just Isda’s disguise.
Standard test questions and various assessment forms can measure the mental state of most ordinary people, but applying them to Night Travelers is not easy.
Sequence abilities, Night Blade… they have too many variables that can disrupt psychological assessments.
Because of this, Isda, who serves as a psychological evaluator specializing in assessing Night Travelers at Starry University, relies on more than just these psychologists’ questionnaires and verbal tactics; she relies on her Night Blade.
While using ordinary inquiries and recordings to help Rast gradually relax his body and mind, Isda quietly activated her Night Blade.
Her spirit instantly surged to a higher realm, no longer perceiving with the perspective of the material world, but observing the world before her with spiritual insight.
Night Blade “Eye of Secrets”.
It can open the spiritual realm’s vision, allowing direct observation of another’s spirituality, and observe the symbolic manifestation of the target’s spirit, even to some extent, read fragments of their memories.
Of course, for the Eye of Secrets to achieve mind reading or memory retrieval, there are many limiting conditions… thus, this Night Blade’s effectiveness in combat is not particularly outstanding unless there is a significant tier difference between both sides; otherwise, it cannot generally be used against enemies in battle.
Isda felt her third eye open at her brow, her spiritual eye.
She was prepared for the various manifestations of spirits that Night Travelers could have; they come in all shapes and sizes.
For instance, someone might appear as a charming nobleman on the outside, but their spiritual manifestation is a transparent slug. Some might look like a boisterous muscular man, but their inner manifestation is a frail little flower.
For those Night Travelers with poor mental states, their spiritual manifestations can only be described as indescribable, with all sorts of peculiarities.
However, when Isda looked at Rast’s spiritual manifestation with her spiritual eye, she suddenly froze.
It was a small black cat, with soft fur as delicate as silk and eyes as blue as seawater.
It flicked its slender and elegant tail, yawned, glanced at Isda, and then let out a weak “meow”.
So cute!
Isda felt her heart melt.
Her heart, which had been scarred from observing the indescribable manifestations of other Night Travelers, was healed in an instant.
After seeing so many monsters and oddities, she never expected that there could be such a cute existence among the spiritual manifestations of Night Travelers.
Almost instinctively, she brought her spiritual avatar closer, wanting to pet the little cat.
Then, Isda saw the cute black cat suddenly open its gaping maw, from which countless pitch-black tentacles emerged, directly swallowing her spiritual avatar’s head and upper body.
Isda instantly became “Is)(da,” following in the footsteps of that teddy bear cookie.
(End of this chapter)
