After a busy morning, Mili finally returned to her room in the evening.
It was a priest’s lounge decorated with pure white marble. The floor was clean and tidy. On the walls hung the golden holy emblem commonly used by the Holy Council, along with a core that provided light magic.
The curtains by the window were also spotless. If any devout low-ranking priest had lived here, they probably would have knelt in gratitude to the Holy Council.
But Mili only found it uncomfortable. This environment was like some shady corporate 007 work system—working from midnight to midnight, seven days a week, and being called in whenever something came up.
“I’ve been transmigrated here for a year… when will this end…”
She sat down on a chair, placed the Book of Revelation—wrapped in a magic guide book shell—on her knees, and let out a long sigh.
The original owner of this body had been a Light Priest of the Holy Council.
She had status, knowledge, and far more mana than the average person. Logically, as long as she didn’t court death, she could use her past life’s knowledge of novels to live a retirement life in the border town—“praying in the morning, drinking tea in the afternoon, reading at night.”
The problem was that red-haired noble… why was he still alive? She hadn’t changed his life at all.
After that, everything changed. She had barely escaped with her life, but when she returned to the Holy Council, those Celestial Wing Tribe members suddenly placed a document titled “Inquisition Personnel Transfer Form” in front of her.
She was inexplicably promoted to Apocalypse Priest.
And to make matters worse, they saddled her with the title of Archsage.
“SUCH A PAIN… AND THEY STUCK ME WITH THE INQUISITION…!!!”
“Sigh… only this book can guide my path.”
Mili hugged the book, leaned back against the chair, and recited in a deliberately profound tone.
After reciting, she couldn’t help but laugh bitterly at herself.
Because this book didn’t update in real time.
She had confirmed that many times during yesterday’s escape.
And that was the most hair-raising part.
A book that looked like an otherworldly magic guide book on the outside, but inside was like a physical book from her past life, placed before her to tell her the so-called future.
No matter how she looked at it, it didn’t seem like divine revelation. She flipped to the relevant chapter.
The text still hadn’t changed. Liuna would die. Luo Sha would die.
The original body would also be ambushed and killed in the church without any defense.
But in reality?
Liuna hadn’t been assassinated. Luo Sha hadn’t fallen into a trap that led to death.
Mili closed the book, her brow furrowing deeper.
“This really is… convenient and inconvenient at the same time.”
This damn book wouldn’t tell her what to do now, nor would it tell her which step had already changed.
It certainly wouldn’t kindly write in the margin: “Dear Transmigrator, due to your butterfly effect, the subsequent plot has entered an unknown route. Please act with caution.”
It felt like playing a game where a mysterious smiling man in glasses forces you to climb onto the roof of a certain king’s castle, only to be tormented by two mysterious silver knights holding great bows, and then you have to parkour along the rafters.
Mili closed her eyes. The chaotic scenes from last night floated up again.
At that time, she had stood in the church, watching the red-haired noble girl and the brown-haired guard run out.
Liuna.
And that guard.
A noble lady who was supposed to die in the merchant guild’s conspiracy.
A guard who was supposed to be killed by flames and arrows in the hunting lodge.
But they were both alive.
Not only alive, but they had charged toward the square without a scratch.
Mili hadn’t wanted to get involved.
Her goal from the start had been simple: keep herself alive, and preferably live comfortably. Changing the world, saving the heroine, defeating the mastermind—that was something a hot-blooded protagonist would do, not someone like her, whose first reaction after getting a spoiler book was to avoid death flags.
But the problem was, the more she didn’t want to get involved, the more things slammed into her face.
So she still followed them.
But she didn’t appear directly. Instead, she bypassed the burning streets, using the blind spots in the ruins that Liuna and Luo Sha couldn’t see, and observed from a distance.
Flames devoured houses. The streets were full of rubble and black smoke. In the distance, rumbling came from the mine direction.
Mili watched for a while, her expression growing uglier.
Watching any further was pointless.
She returned to the church and decided to first deal with the things that “should have been taken by someone else in the original story.”
After all, the timeline was already broken.
Why should she leave the treasures for someone named Miu La who would come later?
The original plotline had already deviated. Leaving them was the same as keeping them. So she might as well take them.
‘Well, since I’m here~’
In the back hall of the church, Mili found the extremely hidden compass mechanism. She rotated the stone dial according to the book’s records. The pointer let out a faint click, and then a marble slab on the ground slowly shifted aside, revealing a spiral staircase leading underground.
The stairs were made of deep black stone bricks. The air inside was very stale.
Mili, hands in her pockets, walked down step by step.
The deeper she went, the colder the air became.
This place was completely different from the church above ground.
Strange symbols were carved into the black stone walls of the underground—some were holy prayer patterns, others were obscure forbidden runes.
After walking for a while, she stopped in front of a door.
Two highly conflicting symbols from her past life’s culture were engraved on the door.
On one side was the suffering and redemption of Jesus.
On the other was the fall and temptation of Satan.
Mili stared at the door for a few seconds.
“It looks unlucky no matter how you look at it.”
“This really is an otherworldly fantasy world, right? Not some mysterious soul-like minigame from a certain high-rise building…!”
The spell on the door was still intact.
This place had been well-preserved at least.
She raised her hand and touched the door crack with holy magic. Pale golden light patterns slowly spread across the door’s surface. A few seconds later, the heavy stone door let out a low rumble and swung inward.
Behind the door was an underground vault.
Or rather, an underground tomb chamber.
In the distance stood a golden throne.
The throne was magnificent, with gems embedded in the armrests. The backrest was carved with wing patterns, and golden sacred beasts coiled on either side of the seat. On that gold throne, which symbolized absolute authority, sat a corpse.
The corpse was wearing an old papal robe.
It was the remains of a former pope.
Mili walked closer, staring at the skeleton seated upright on the golden throne, her expression complicated.
“What a golden toilet. The pope doesn’t sit on it anymore—could it be because he was afraid he’d sit down and never get up?”
After saying that, she felt it might be a bit disrespectful to the deceased, so she perfunctorily pressed her palms together.
“Sorry, you keep sitting.”
Beside the throne lay an old kingdom-era map.
Mili picked it up and unfolded it. After a few glances, her expression gradually froze.
The map didn’t record ordinary terrain, but the structure of a city that no longer existed.
The Time Capital ruins.
This place had once been part of the Time Capital.
According to the annotations on the map, a large-scale time collapse had occurred here in the old era. Spatial chaos had reset, cut, and stitched the entire area, eventually reverting everything to the state before the Time Capital was established. The former pope, in order to guard a certain weapon, had locked himself underground, trying to use holy spells to resist the time torrent.
The result—
Mili glanced at the skeleton on the golden throne.
The result was as seen…
People always thought they could resist the torrent of time, but in the end, only a skeleton sat on the throne.
Mili put away the map.
At least for the border town, this thing was useless for now.
But useless didn’t mean she couldn’t take it.
She continued deeper and soon saw a dark gold long spear displayed in the center of the vault.
That spear was very long, its shaft heavy. The spearhead seemed forged from both night and gold, covered in intricate symbols. Some of those symbols belonged to this world’s ancient sects, but others immediately caught Mili’s attention as distinctly out of place.
A Catholic cross.
An Orthodox-style holy pattern.
Geometric symbols related to Sunni and Shia.
A symbol of the nomadic worship of the Eternal Heaven.
And even patterns from Norse polytheism.
Mili’s head throbbed.
“Ha? Eternal Heaven?”
She took a deep breath.
“This must be an otherworld, right…?”
No one answered.
Mili finally put on an expression that screamed, “Author, are you slipping in personal references?”
Four words were carved beneath the spear.
Omnis.
Mili tried to grip the shaft and lifted this holy relic imbued with mana.
“So I’m the Statue of Liberty now, huh.”
She muttered a small complaint and barely managed to stow the long spear away.
On a round table nearby lay several other items.
A pendant with a watch.
A white clock-shaped bracelet with the words “Made by the Royal Guard of the Holy King’s Court” written on it.
A black book that looked incredibly wicked.
Mili looked at the book first.
The cover was filthy, as if freshly dug from a grave. The edges of the pages glowed with a faint purple light. Flipping through a few lines, the content was roughly about necromancy, corpse driving, undead reanimation, and fixation of soul remnants.
“If the Holy Council finds this, will I get promoted straight to heretic?”
Just as she was about to keep flipping, she noticed that the stone around the table was clearly different.
The marble around where the watch was placed was much newer than the rest.
As if it had been replaced later.
“New stone?”
Mili frowned, looking at the watch that felt abnormally saturated with time.
Suddenly, she felt she shouldn’t keep digging.
But her hand had already reached out.
She picked up the pendant with the watch. Her body instantly experienced an extremely subtle change. The surrounding air seemed to slow down a little, and her own movements seemed to speed up.
“Time—type equipment?”
Mili looked at the pendant, then at the skeleton on the golden throne.
She held the pendant and gave a very serious salute to the pope.
“Your Holiness, please don’t suddenly jump up someday.”
As soon as she finished speaking, the bracelet on her right hand suddenly lit up.
“Priest Mili, can you hear me?”
Sailafei’s voice came through the communication bracelet.
Mili almost jumped out of her skin.
“Received. What are your orders?”
She quickly put on the pendant and tucked it under her collar, forcing her voice to stay calm.
On the other end of the communication, Sailafei’s voice remained gentle.
“Report on the situation in the border town.”
Mili paused for half a second.
‘Hey, if I tell the truth, won’t I be toast?’
If the Inquisition got heavily involved now, the entire story line would fly off the rails. More importantly, she still hadn’t figured out what would happen next with the border count, the merchant guild, and the natural essence now that they had deviated from the original.
Recklessly calling Sailafei here to further collapse the timeline—wouldn’t she end up sitting at the same table as those four maggot brothers, that noble swordsman, the red-haired noble, and the brown-haired guard?
She quickly organized her words.
“Uh… nothing much. No need to come yet, Sailafei.”
After saying that, even she felt it was ridiculous.
The border town outside was practically burning into hell.
“The count’s life or death is uncertain, but…”
“But?”
Mili’s brain worked furiously.
Red-haired idiot noble.
Liuna.