Dorothy’s Forbidden Grimoire

"Reinforcements? Then when exactly will they arrive?"

Inside the Revolutionary Army headquarters in Dorsa, Dorothy had Consultant Nei respond with this question upon hearing Adan's words. Adan thought for a moment before replying.

"According to the general's telegram, they should arrive in about three days. Three days from now, the reinforcements and supplies will reach Dorsa. Once we've reorganized the troops, we'll launch another offensive on Karnak."

"Three days…" Nei muttered after a pause, his expression still not much relieved.

"Then… has the General prepared any specific countermeasures for the undead?"

"That's unclear for now. His telegram didn't mention anything like that. So I plan to take advantage of these three days to conduct ideological work among the troops—educate them about the basics of undead, help dispel their fear. If possible, I'd like to capture a few skeletons and publicly destroy them in front of the soldiers. By the time three days are up, hopefully the men won't be as afraid of the undead."

Adan explained his plan to deal with the undead. Listening from afar, Dorothy nodded, somewhat in agreement. After all, fear stemmed from the unknown, and the more one understood about the undead, the less frightening they became.

"That's certainly a valid approach," Nei, under Dorothy's control, responded.

"However, we can't be sure the enemy doesn't have other methods beyond undead forces. Preparing solely to counter the undead might not be enough.

Unlike undead, artillery couldn't simply be conquered by understanding it. Even the bravest soldiers could be broken under area bombardment.

"There's nothing I can do about that," Adan said, gesturing helplessly.

"Karnak is surrounded by that enormous undead surveillance zone. Our scouts can't get close at all. We have no idea where their artillery positions are or how they're arranged. Though we have more artillery than they do, without targeting coordinates we're just firing blindly…"

The undead weren't just meant to terrorize and fight—they were also exceptional scouts. Even if Revolutionary Army troops overcame their fear and charged bravely, the moment they clashed with the undead, enemy artillery would rain down. Without intelligence on enemy positions, their own artillery couldn't provide cover.

So, in the current situation—even if morale recovered and troops could face undead—it would still be necessary to infiltrate Karnak's undead surveillance zone to gather intelligence. Otherwise, any rash attack would be walking straight into enemy bombardment.

"Looks like… breaking through that surveillance zone is still the key…"

In the war room, Nei murmured this while stroking his chin, and from afar, Dorothy likewise fell into deep thought, pondering how to infiltrate the interior of the zone for recon. After thinking for a while, she came up with an idea and had Nei speak.

"If I remember correctly, you said the unit previously sent to attack Karnak's forward positions was ambushed by undead on the way?"

"Yes," Adan nodded.

"According to survivors, they were marching normally when skeletons and zombies suddenly burst from underground and attacked, immediately throwing their formation into chaos."

Hearing this, Dorothy had Nei continue.

"So the troops were ambushed mid-march. That suggests the enemy in Karnak was aware of our unit's movement—which implies there's a spy inside Dorsa. Someone leaked troop movement info before deployment, allowing the enemy to pre-position undead for an ambush. Those skeletons and zombies couldn't dig themselves underground; they must have been buried ahead of time."

"A spy… Yes, I also suspected there might be infiltrators in Dorsa after hearing the ambush report. I've started tightening internal secrecy protocols, hoping these traitors won't have another chance to act during the next operation."

Adan replied seriously. Meanwhile, Dorothy silently pondered whether she could use these spies—to strike back against the vast surveillance zone encircling Karnak.

…

Late at night in Dorsa, silence blanketed the city. While the entire town slumbered, Dorothy's room remained brightly lit. Seated by the window, she rapidly wrote with a pen on the pages of a book—her Literary Sea Logbook.

Using the Logbook, Dorothy communicated with a distant contact. While exchanging messages, she jotted down notes on a separate sheet beside the Logbook—line after line of ideas.

At last, after writing a final brief reply, Dorothy ended the exchange and closed the Literary Sea Logbook. Letting out a long breath, she picked up the white paper from the desk and looked at the five listed entries.

"Prayer Statue Stone… Soul-Split… Spirit Summon… Dream Anchor… Wireless Telegraph…"

On the page in her hand, Dorothy had listed terms both mystical and mundane. On the surface, they seemed unrelated, but to Dorothy, they all shared a common feature—they were all methods of communication.

After realizing that Dorsa might harbor spies from the Savior's Advent Sect or the Nether Coffin Order, Dorothy had begun thinking of ways to expose them. But finding a few hidden agents in a city as large as Dorsa was incredibly difficult. They could be among officers, among the general troops, or even hidden among the city's civilians. The potential hiding spots were too vast. And Addus' Revolutionary Army's internal counter-intelligence was weak to begin with—especially now, in a state of disarray. Hoping to find spies in a short time would be extremely difficult.

So Dorothy decided to act personally.

Instead of spending massive time rebuilding the counterintelligence unit and flooding the city with informants to follow tiny clues, Dorothy aimed for a faster method: start from communication channels—identify how the spies communicated with Karnak, and then trace those methods back to their source.

That was what she had just been doing—listing all possible means of communication between Dorsa's spies and the enemy in Karnak, trying to find clues.

In her analysis, the spies hidden in Dorsa could be members of the Savior's Advent Sect, or they might belong to the Nether Coffin Order. Thus, they might be using mystical communication methods from either group, as well as more general mystical or mundane means.

After extensive inquiries, Dorothy compiled five possible methods.

In the mysticism world, different societies and organizations often employed different mystical communication methods. For example, the Eight-Spired Nest used a humanoid-faced spider—a mystical creature specially bred for communication. The Afterbirth Cult used the "Sensory Flesh Altar," a special blood-and-flesh ritual tool.

As for the Savior's Advent Sect, Dorothy directly inquired with Shadi, who had long-standing ties with them. From him, she learned that their mystical communication method aligned with the Church's mainstream: the Prayer Statue Stone.

This was a type of special stone highly attuned to the power of faith. It could sense the content of a prayer and manifest it visibly. The process involved carving a statue of a deity from the stone. A follower would memorize its appearance and pray toward it. The content of their prayer would then appear on the statue's pedestal. Each pair of Prayer Statue Stones was carved into two distinct statues with different poses and features. The prayer would only manifest on the correct statue if the supplicant precisely remembered the statue's details.

Using Prayer Statue Stones enabled very fast communication. But they had many limitations: the stones were extremely rare, large in size, and usually housed only in major churches. Typically, only followers outside would send messages to the statue through prayer; the statues couldn't immediately respond. True two-way communication required both correspondents to be in churches that housed these sacred statues.

This form of statue-prayer was the mainstream communication method for both the Savior's Advent Sect and the Radiance Church—information Dorothy had confirmed from both Shadi and Vania.

As for the Nether Coffin Order, Dorothy reached out to Sadroya and learned that their primary mystical communication methods were Spirit Summoning and Soul-Splitting.

The former was relatively straightforward: a trained spirit would serve as the messenger. Two Beyonders located far apart could use a summoned soul to relay messages. One summoner would speak the message to the spirit; the second would summon the same spirit elsewhere and receive the message. Since spirits could travel at incredible speed through the Ethereal Realm, as long as the distance wasn't absurd, the second summoner could quickly retrieve the message from the spirit.

More advanced setups allowed both communication circles to be kept in semi-active autonomous states, maintained by spiritual storage items. This let messenger spirits freely traverse the Ethereal Realm between the two formations, enabling real-time, efficient, low-energy communication. This was the Nether Coffin Order's most widely used internal method.

The second method, Soul-Splitting, was less common. It involved a powerful Silence-path Beyonder dividing off a small portion of their soul and placing it into a vessel, which would then be carried far away by a communicator. That communicator could converse with the soul fragment to relay messages to the main soul. However, since splitting the soul over long periods had negative side effects, this was rarely used except in emergencies.

Besides society-specific mystical techniques, there was the Dream Anchor, a communication method many mystics used. As long as dream-mimicry could bring individuals into the same dreamscape, they could converse face-to-face inside the dream. But Dream Anchor Sigils were expensive, and unless one was truly wealthy, this wasn't sustainable for long-term use. Moreover, if both parties weren't asleep at the same time, the timing of communication was severely limited.

Naturally, not all communication was mystical—mundane methods existed too. Among them, the most convenient was setting up a radio transmitter and sending wireless telegraphs.

Seated with legs crossed, Dorothy examined the various communication methods listed on the paper in her hand, mentally going through a process of elimination.

"Prayer Statue Stones require large holy statues—typically a church to house them. The Savior's Advent Sect only established such statues in a few major cities within Addus, and Karnak isn't one of them—so that's out."

"Dream Anchor sigils are too expensive. The cost of long-term intel exchange is too high, and it's inefficient if the two sides can't synchronize their sleep schedules. Urgent messages during the day would have to wait until the other side sleeps—also eliminated."

"Soul-Splitting puts strain on the one doing the splitting over time. It's fine for high-priority emergency tasks, but definitely not suitable for a mission where the spy's duration of activity is unknown."

"As for setting up a radio and sending telegraphs… These Beyonders wouldn't consider such mundane methods unless all mystical ones failed."

With these thoughts, Dorothy had already reached a rough conclusion on the spies' communication method.

"So, these spies are most likely using Spirit Summoning. If two long-duration, low-power summoning arrays were set up in concealed places, then a messenger spirit could swiftly travel through the Ethereal Realm—perfect for long-term covert communication."

"Seems like this counterintelligence operation will have to be approached from a soul and Ethereal Realm perspective."

With this in mind, Dorothy reopened her Literary Sea Logbook, flipping through it until she reached the contact page for Kapak, a native of the New Continent. After pondering for a while, she picked up her pen and wrote in Spirit Glyph Script.

After another round of correspondence via the Literary Sea Logbook, having achieved her objective, Dorothy put the pen down and looked out the darkened window.

"Then next, I'll pass the operational details to Nephthys and Commander Adan tomorrow."

…

As the moon sank and the sun rose, daylight spread—soon, Dorsa welcomed a new day.

By morning, outside the city limits of Dorsa, on an open field beside the military camp, countless uniformed soldiers were lined up beneath the blazing sun. Their formations stretched far into the distance. All of them carried firearms and stood with tense expressions, eyes fixed ahead with visible unease.

In front of the formation was a wooden platform, upon which Commander Adan stood, delivering a rousing speech to the troops.

"Like I said just now! Those skeletons and zombies—there's nothing to fear! They're not stronger than you! They're not faster than you! If you attack them, they'll still fall! They're nothing but dead things! If they can die once, they can die again!

"If that's not enough, then today we'll observe them up close! Go see for yourselves! I'll demonstrate how to handle those dead things personally—watch and learn! Then follow suit! Remember, you are soldiers of Addus! Not cowards! Don't shrink back in fear of a bunch of corpses!"

Adan's impassioned voice rang from the platform, urging courage into his soldiers. But just as he roused the ranks, on the edge of the officer's line below, a low-ranking officer's face revealed a sly glint.

"So… this is a guts-training stunt, huh?"

"Better report back immediately—turn their guts-training into gut-spilling."

Tugging at his officer's cap, the junior officer silently looked up at Adan on the stage.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Dorsa—in a wide, hidden room—Nephthys gently ran her hand over a jar filled with white bone ash, caressing the materials meant for a ritual.