On the first floor, there was an open area for someone to relax in. There were several chairs and tables along with some withered plants in the corner. Around the edge of the railing stood Jinn. He was staring at the moving crowd beyond the walls of the mansion, lost in thought.

Hearing the voice, he turned around and saw Evelyn stepping through the glass doors.

"Nothing, just lost in some thought." Jinn looked back at the bustling city before him, unaware of the dangers within the walls of this mansion. "Did they brief you on what they wanted you to do?"

"They did," Evelyn said, joining him in enjoying the view. "At first, I will use my shadows to keep Lady Herbert bound while Lord Herbert heals the effects of my corrosion effect."

"Just that?"

"Of course not. Holding a possessed soul alone is quite difficult. They are unpredictable and strong. Doing just that would need my full concentration. Besides that, if bishop Marx asks me to do something else, I will be doing that."

She paused, glancing at Jinn from the corner of her eye, and said, "These things almost always go as planned. But there is a chance if the priests made a mistake in assessing the danger, then everything could go sideways."

"What about you? Did they tell you about your task? Father Augustus dropped everything in the middle of the explanation and took you away. The other priests were also confused."

Jinn chuckled before revealing what Father Augustus had told him. "He said if I manage to access the spirit realm by tomorrow morning, I will have to trace the origin of Lady Herbert's illness while she is being held."

"I don't even understand why they are calling it that when we know that she is being possessed." Jinn hid the information he knew and acted on the basis of what he knew.

"…I am confused as well." After a long silence, Evelyn shook her head. "There is something wrong here that the church is not telling us."

"Wonder what that is. Anyways, I still have a lot to practice. What are you going to do?" Jinn turned around and looked over his shoulder.

"I will stay here for a while and practice my own powers." After saying that, she looked away from Jinn and closed her eyes.

With a shrug, the black-haired boy entered inside.

Walking down the empty corridor, Jinn recalled the warning Father Herbert gave him.

Whatever happens, do NOT enter the farthest corner of the first Floor. Stay in the front, close to your room.]

It was because both the lady of the house and her unconscious daughter were being accommodated there that neither he nor Evelyn was allowed to go there. But…

'Father, you should not have said something like that to a devil like me. We cannot resist the temptation.'

With a grin on his face, Jinn walked down the hallway. His figure slowly turned transparent, merging with the surroundings.

At the end of the hallway there were two rooms with lights flickering inside them.

Seeing the closed door, Jinn accessed more energy and increased the range of his illusion.

Even as he creaked open the gate of the room, there was no noise, and it even appeared as if the door was still closed.

The room was not well lit; even though windows were closed, there was a cold chill swirling around in the room.

There lying on the bed was a frail woman covered in cut marks all over her body. Even the nightgown she was wearing looks like a bedsheet on her figure.

Without wasting any time, he entered the special vision mode where he saw the world as nothing but transparent illusion full of red and blue lines or hues.

The only time he ever saw the blue color was when he was extracting the Dew of the Moonless Night.

Now, when he used the same skill on Lady Herbert, he saw the same thing he had been seeing for a while now.

Her whole body looked like an empty husk with a faint red hue swirling deep within her body.

Around this faint hue, there was a deeper and sharper thread that had it wrapped from all directions. This thread did not originate from her body but came from the room next to hers.

Jinn already knew who was in that room.

'Things are not looking good for her. She is barely hanging on to life. Is this some sort of obsession?'

Done with his inspection, Jinn wanted to close his vision to avoid too much drain when he felt a familiar pressure coming from above him.

Gulp!

Sweat had already covered his face even before he looked up, but when he did.

Ba-dump!

"Argh!" a twisting pain rang through Jinn's heart as he did it; he barely held onto the illusion around him. 'This is too much.'

The Spirit Realm in his vision had changed once more. He could not even recognize what it looked like now, as his mind failed to register the image of anything but a swirling mass of red threads.

Nothing but red, so much so that it started hurting his brain, Jinn hurriedly closed his vision before the pain grew more.

Slowly the color started returning to his sight, but at the last second of his lingering vision, he saw something. A different color.

After closing the vision, Jinn hurriedly left the room and reduced its area to himself.

He did not even enter the second room and rushed back.

'This might just turn out to be a good thing for me.' Instead of fear or pain, there was a look of satisfaction on Jinn's face.

'There is no need to see Tessa now; if I want to talk to the demon inside her, I would not be able to do it with Lord Herbert present by her side.'

This was Jinn's first time coming across a demon, specifically one that could possess a human.

Demons were supposed to be the servants of the Devil, so Jinn wanted to assess the value of the demon after meeting it.

But at this moment, nothing like that mattered.

Rushing to his room, Jinn hurriedly closed the door after him and called upon the imp.

'How many soul points do I need to find out about the Spirit Realm and how to access it?'

The imp started searching as per his request, and a second later, he found the answer for Jinn.

'150 points for the basic information about the Spirit Realm and how to Access it.'

Jinn did not even think twice before paying the price.

[Soul points: 9459]

When he paid the price, the information was already before his eyes. The words turned into a string of threads, entering his brain.

'So, that's how it is.' Jinn let out a long sigh and reopened his vision.

"Everyone knows the spirit realm as a place for the dead, but in reality that is just a vague understanding of the ignorant. Spirit Realm is a world of spirits; every being without a physical body but with spiritual consciousness lives in this place."

As he saw the waves of red color flooding his vision, Jinn no longer focused his sight on them and paid attention to the transparent wall between the real world and the spirit realm.

"In reality even the spirit realm is not a physical existence. It is a specter of a profound mystery."

The pain he felt upon looking at the realm before dissipated as soon as he looked away from the red threads.

"Which means the spirit realm is full of beings as powerful as, if not more than, the world of the living."

In his vision, the new color he saw before became more intensified.

"The information also told me that to enter the Spirit Realm without dying, you have to infuse your energy into the transparent barrier at four specific points."

Four blue threads were stretching from his hands, reaching the transparent barrier, making the shape of an arrow.

And these points were not fixed; when he looked around at another spot at the barrier, the arrow pattern appeared on that place around at that spot.

But the threads attached to his hands remained the same.

'This also proves what I was thinking. The threads are pathways a person can take to perform a specific action or attack. The hues are the traces of existence of a being.' He looked down, and there he saw the deep blue hue hidden inside his body, flickering brightly.

'Since I am starting to understand the nature of this skill, it is time to name it.' Jinn released dragon energy from the tip of his fingers where the threads were attached and spoke.

[Realm of Desires]

His energy touched the faint barrier that had somehow swallowed the ceiling of his room, and a bright flash of silver light filled his sight.

***

After the dawn of the next day, a luxurious carriage that was in a class of its own, adorned with jewels and curtains, arrived at the doorstep of the Herbert Mansion.

The carriage carried an insignia of the Order of the Seven.

The three priests, along with Jinn and Evelyn, were already waiting for it at the front gate.

When the door of the chariot had just opened, a figure had already appeared right before them.

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