"A test? But there’s nothing on it."
Sodden’s attention was drawn back. He pinched the blank parchment with his thick fingers, turning it over and over to inspect it. His bushy eyebrows were nearly knitted into a ball of yarn, but he still couldn’t figure it out.
"Mr. Sodden, do you know what the Ethereal Plane is?" Kaelin didn’t answer directly; instead, she raised an eyebrow slightly and countered with a question.
"Of course I know! The Ethereal Plane is a transit station, a passage connecting our Prime Material Plane with other Inner Planes!" The Dwarf puffed out his chest and shared his understanding. "And Caster Masters with Mastery over the Curse School can clearly use their Perception to sense and utilize the Ethereal Plane, because summoned Inner Plane creatures will first pass through the Ethereal Plane transit station before arriving in our Prime Material Plane!"
"A very straightforward explanation." Kaelin acknowledged Sodden’s answer, her gaze shifting to the brown-robed figure beside them. "And my test for this new friend is closely related to the Ethereal Plane."
With that, she gestured for the brown-robed figure to proceed, then gently pushed the blank parchment in front of the figure.
The brown-robed figure didn’t chant a Spell or make any Casting gestures. She simply raised a pale hand in silence and gave it a gentle wave through the air over the parchment.
In an instant, a wondrous sight unfolded.
A soft, silvery-white ripple washed over the parchment. Immediately after, lines began to emerge, extend, and sketch themselves out, as if an invisible hand were drawing at an astonishing speed.
However, when the image on the parchment was clearly presented to everyone, a strange silence fell over the room.
It was a doodle full of childlike innocence.
In the center of the picture was a stick figure with a ponytail, outlined with simple strokes. She held a crooked, elongated strip in her hand, barely recognizable as a Swordsman.
Beside her stood another equally disproportionate stick figure, carrying a curved Longbow on his back—clearly an Archer.
The two stick figures walked in tandem through a forest represented by wavy lines. In the sky hung a circle radiating jagged beams of light, along with a few clouds that looked like wads of cotton.
The lines of the entire drawing were childish, the characters abstract, and the composition completely arbitrary. It looked exactly like a child’s impromptu creation.
After his initial surprise, Raine locked his gaze onto the little figure carrying the Longbow.
Although the art style was highly abstract, the deliberately colored black hair and the two solid dots representing eyes made him almost certain that this was a drawing of himself.
And the stick figure with the ponytail was undoubtedly Kaelin.
He subconsciously looked at Kaelin, only to see the usually valiant and heroic Female Swordsman violently lower her head. She wished she could point the crown of her head at them, leaving only a pair of bright red ears visible.
In a flurry of panic, she reached out and slammed her hand onto the parchment with a loud SMACK, trying to cover up her "masterpiece."
"Ahem!" She cleared her throat forcefully, struggling to maintain her composure despite her utter embarrassment. "The content of the drawing isn’t the point! The point is, don’t you want to know how this picture appeared out of thin air on a blank piece of parchment?"
Taking a deep breath, she tried her best to ignore Sodden’s large face, his beard quivering as he held back his laughter. She put on a serious expression and said, "This was drawn using Secret-Keeping Ink."
Through Kaelin’s introduction, Raine learned that the base of this miraculous ink was a Rare material known as the "Tears of the Ether Ray."
This Rare material existed in a peculiar Plane Uncertainty State. In the Prime Material Plane, it appeared as a slightly viscous, clear liquid, yet it was brimming with the Energy of the Ethereal Plane.
"To write is to encrypt," Kaelin explained earnestly. "When writing with ink mixed with the Tears of the Ether Ray, the friction of the pen tip guides the Ethereal Energy within the ink to solidify along the strokes, automatically triggering a miniature Curse Magic effect known as Phase Shift."
"Phase Shift?" Raine raised an eyebrow slightly, keenly catching this key term.
"Exactly. This means that the visual existence of the writing or drawing is cleverly pushed into the Ethereal Plane adjacent to our world by the ink’s own Magic Field," Kaelin nodded, continuing her explanation. "It is actually still on the paper, but as if separated by a one-way layer of Magic Glass, the light from our Prime Material Plane cannot touch it. Therefore, in our eyes, it remains blank."
"So, it isn’t Invisibility; rather, it has been isolated in the Ethereal Plane," Raine quickly grasped the crux of the matter, looking suddenly enlightened.
"That’s exactly it!" Kaelin affirmed Raine’s words. "To bring the isolated information back to the Prime Material Plane requires the right ’key.’
"This key is not a physical object, but a type of Magic fluctuation that can ’resonate’ with the Ethereal Energy within the ink.
"When making every bottle of Secret-Keeping Ink, the creator sets a unique ’resonant frequency’ for it, which is extremely difficult to crack by external forces."
Kaelin’s expression turned a bit more solemn. "Only a Caster with true Mastery over the Curse Series can keenly capture and simulate this frequency to complete the ’decryption’."
Hearing this, both Raine and Sodden understood the true purpose of this test.
Judging from the brown-robed figure’s effortless action just now, she had clearly cracked everything in a very short amount of time, offering a glimpse of her profound attainment in Curse Magic.
From this, it wasn’t hard to deduce that the brown-robed figure indeed possessed the ability to break the Curse Barrier deep within the Howling Cave.
"Fine, even if this person can break that barrier!" Sodden crossed his thick arms over his chest and spoke bluntly. "But since we’re teaming up to delve into that blasted cave, they can’t just keep hiding themselves like this forever, right?"
His eyes, hidden beneath thick eyebrows, were like two polished pieces of glowing charcoal, staring intensely at the brown-robed figure. "I don’t want to fight alongside a fellow who isn’t even willing to show their true face! Who knows what’s hiding under that robe?"
Hearing this, the brown-robed figure’s body couldn’t help but tremble as she subconsciously shrank back.
Raine keenly noticed that behind her loose cloak, near her waist, something seemed to be swaying back and forth restlessly. That slender outline... was it a tail?
"Mr. Sodden, it’s not that she’s unwilling to show her true face," Kaelin, who evidently already had some understanding of the brown-robed figure’s situation, tried to ease the tension. "It’s just that her circumstances are quite special."
"Special?" Sodden chewed on the word, his voice filled with granite-like stubbornness. "I’ve seen plenty of ’special’ in this world. Specially good drinkers, specially good fighters, and those with specially rotten tempers. But none of that stops a person from showing their face!
"Listen, mystery guest." This time, he spoke directly to the brown-robed figure. His tone wasn’t exactly friendly, but it had shed some of its initial hostility. "Armless says your situation is special, but precisely because it’s ’special,’ I have all the more reason to know!
"We’re teammates, right? We’re going to dive into a pitch-black cave together. If your ’special’ means you suddenly glow, that’s a disaster for sneaking around! If your ’special’ means taking off your hood releases a mist that makes your teammates dizzy, then we need to prepare gas masks in advance!"
He lowered his voice, as if afraid of being heard by something that shouldn’t be listening. "If your ’special’ is attracting certain monsters, then we need to sharpen our weapons beforehand, rather than finding out at the last minute that we’ve got a whole string of uninvited ’guests’ trailing behind our asses!"
Seeing that she remained silent, he couldn’t help but tap his fingers impatiently against the tabletop, making THUMP, THUMP sounds.
"I’m not mocking your scars, nor do I intend to pry into your secrets, but a Warrior must know exactly what’s going on with the person fighting alongside him!
"Even if you just tell me, ’stay away when you see purple light shining from my eyes,’ or ’my face has been corrupted by the aura of the Abyss, don’t look’—just give me a straight answer!"
Hearing this, Kaelin wanted to say more, but the brown-robed figure silently shook her head at her.
Then, the brown-robed figure took a deep breath, raised her pale hands, and grasped the edge of her hood.