"In the waves of steam and machinery, who could achieve extraordinary? In the fogs of history and darkness, who was whispering? I woke up from the realm of mysteries and opened my eyes to the world. "
With the rising tide of steam power and machinery, who can come close to being a Beyonder? Shrouded in the fog of history and darkness, who or what is the lurking evil that murmurs into our ears?
Waking up to be faced with a string of mysteries, Zhou Mingrui finds himself reincarnated as Klein Moretti in an alternate Victorian era world where he sees a world filled with machinery, cannons, dreadnoughts, airships, difference machines, as well as Potions, Divination, Hexes, Tarot Cards, Sealed Artifacts…
The Light continues to shine but mystery has never gone far. Follow Klein as he finds himself entangled with the Churches of the world—both orthodox and unorthodox—while he slowly develops newfound powers thanks to the Beyonder potions.
Like the corresponding tarot card, The Fool, which is numbered 0—a number of unlimited potential—this is the legend of "The Fool".
Lord of the Mysteries (诡秘之主) is a Victorian-Horror inspired Chinese xuanhuan webnovel written by Cuttlefish That Loves Diving (爱潜水的乌贼), which can be read here
.
This story provides examples of:
- All Myths Are True: Some fairy tales from modern era were revealed to be originated from mysterious incidents that had happened in real life. They were suppressed by some kind of power or sealed and were spread among the people and gradually became stories a Mysticologist could use.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Those who are from the Secret Supplicant Pathway are believed to be this by the other groups, since the god that controls this Pathway is evil, and uses his influence to corrupt all who belong to his group and make them worship him. Only one beyonder was able to not fall under his influence thanks to using a method to start from the 5th sequence, skipping the 9th where all become corrupted.
- Ancient Conspiracy: There are a lot of conspiracies, but the oldest belong to Twilight Hermit Order. Their suspected purpose is to resurrect the Original Creator, guiding history toward that conclusion. They have already existed for many thousands of years, existing solely for their one purpose. They have members in every church of the world and in the different secret societies that exist, some of them were even created by them.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: The Spectator pathway is based around this; for instance, its Sequence 9 potion grants the ability to easily understand people's goals and motivations from the most subtle of social clues.
- Back from the Dead: Klein has been able to come back to life thanks to his hidden abilities and his connection with the Grey Fog.
- Blessed with Suck: Some people are born with a connection to a particular pathway, starting with essentially half of a Sequence 9 ability without having to drink a potion. This is much less awesome than it sounds — their powers are weak, and they generally won't have any training and will therefore frequently go insane, especially if their Sequence can't be identified. Worse, they're locked into the Sequence they were born with and will definitely go insane if they drink any other potion.
- Bolt of Divine Retribution: Klein gave one to a swindler who used his name to establish a cult and cheat others for money and sex. The God of Storm also gave one to Klein's marionette when he tried to ask for one of his treasure.
- Church Militant: Every ofittial Religion in the Continent have their own military branch, made by adepts that deal with rogue beyonders, and other supernatural beings.
- Crazy-Prepared: Klein quickly learn to be like this if he has to survive in the world of beyonders, the powers he gains many times are not enough to deal with his enemies which are also well prepared to deal with anyone who interrupts their plans. Most of his harder battles are the ones where to win he has to be crazierprepared than the other and sometimes this is not enough like in his battles with Amon.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: The churches are structured like the Renaissance-era Catholic church, but as Klein notes, their underlying beliefs stem from a creation myth that more closely resembles one from Chinese mythology; and, of course, there are several of them rather than just one, all of them believing in a creation myth that puts them on even ground with the others — monotheism doesn't seem to be a thing.
- Cursed Item: All sealed artifacts come with dangerous side effects.
- Cursed with Awesome: The Prisoner pathway is built out of traditional monstrous or undead versions of this, such as werewolves and wraiths.
- Darkness Equals Death: Literally in the 'The Land Forgotten by the Gods'. Plunged into eternal darkness, only lit up by an eternal thunderstorm, the residents of this plot of land live in a constant fear of darkness: if the candle goes out for longer than a few seconds, one will either be swallowed by corrupted monsters or just mysteriously disappear.
- Death Dealer: "Clown" and "Magician"— the sequences 8 and 7 corresponding to the protagonist's "Seer" pathway — gives the ability to transform paper into blades — ideal for card throwing.
- Death World: The Forsaken Land of the Gods where the City of Silver is situated. Anyone living there who is in complete darkness for more than about five seconds dies horribly, often being replaced with an evil doppelganger - and there is no sun; the only natural illumination is the constant lightning strikes. On top of this, the dead in the vicinity of the City of Silver rise as horrifying monsters. This can only be abated by a blood relative slaying them before their natural demise. Of course, every place outside the city is filled with all manner of horrible nightmare creatures, often intelligent ones that want to kill people and take their place.
- Divine Intervention: The Fool. Every Tarot member usually call his name for help when they find troubles that they can't solve, although they usually have to provide a service for his help later.
- The Dreaded: Amon the Blasphemer. Even if you manage to get to Level 1 you are no match for this guy, Angels run from him, even the Gods are wary of him, he is a King of Angels of the Marauder Pathway, and he can steal anything, including your thoughts, distances, abilities (like walking or seeing), he can steal beyonder powers, defraud the laws of nature, steal years of your life, as long as he can understand it, he can steal it. If you fight against him and with the help of several angels you manage to defeat him, bad luck, you just defeated a clone with his main body safe in a secure place and he now knows about you and he would come to kill you soon. And now he is trying to become a god.
- Eldritch Abomination: So many of them, although some are somewhat friendly, there are a lot that are not. Just knowing that they exist could make you go crazy.
- Eldritch Location: The Starry Sky, a mysterious place that can corrupt an Angel of sequence 2 in minutes. Even knowing too much about it can make you crazy.
- Enemy Mine: For example, Klein had to cooperate with Trissy.
- Evil Weapon: The beyonder artifacts; beyonders use them because thanks to them they can use the power of other pathways, but there is always a price to pay. Beyonder weapons from the Sun Pathway can purify evil spirits easily but, if one uses them for a long time, they can end up worshipping the Sun God all day long. The ones made from beyonder materials are not very corruptive but they have weaker effects and those made from Beyonder Characteristic are more corruptive but also more powerful.
- Exposition of Immortality: A lot of characters are revealed to be Beyonders that have lived for hundred of years, especially Angels but Azik Eggers is a good example of this trope. He has lived since the fourth Era, repeatedly dying and resurrecting while losing his memories every 60 years, during each cycle he tries to regain his memories to find a solution to his problem.
- Fate Worse than Death: There are traps made by beyonders from high sequences that are like this, divination reveals that those who are trapped like this are not dead just in constant suffering.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: The Sanguine that we see obtain the blood they need to live by using the alchemical skill their pathway gives them to serve as doctors; fortunately for them, bloodletting is still a commonly-accepted medical treatment, so they offer low-cost medical care, secretly taking the blood they extract from patients as part of this treatment in order to survive. Vampires who take blood by force are hunted down by other Sanguine, since they're a threat to the secret existence of the entire clan.
- The Fettered: Maric and Sharron and anyone who follows the Prisoner / Chained pathway properly. As the name suggests, the theme of the pathway is that you turn yourself into a traditional monster and must then resist the bloodlust and 'easy' route to power that it offers in order to advance.
- Gaslamp Fantasy: The setting is Regency-era (the king is literally George III); there are some Steampunk elements but the story is primarily focused on the supernatural.
- Gender Bender: The Demoness and the Red Priest Pathway are like that, a man in the Demoness Pathway becomes a woman in the 7th Sequence. A woman in the Red Priest Pathway becomes a man in the 4th Sequence. The change is permanent.
- Giving Radio to the Romans: Emperor Roselle, the transmigrator before Klein, is the one that created the new era; before him, the continent was still in a medieval era, his 'inventions', like guns and steam engines help him to gain power, he reformed the politics, and was the 'author' of famous novels like 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'The Count of Montecristo.' He wanted to create cars, but the lack of Oil in the world stopped him. Klein decided to do something like that but the easiest inventions were already 'created' by Roselle, he was only able to 'create' a bicycle.
- God's Hands Are Tied: Because of an agreement they made, they could not oppose George Augustus III's attempt to move on Sequence 0.
- God Guise: The Fool start like this.
- Gods Need Prayer Badly: They don't actually need it for power or sustenance; instead, any Angel-level or above Beyonder needs it in order to tether their mind to humanity so they don't lose control. The more worshipers they have, the more they can use their powers without risking insanity.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: Inverted with one Beyonder artifact that has a drawback that turns out to be much more serious than it seems at first glance. It makes you constantly feel uncomfortably hot while carrying it, which seems like a minor annoyance at worst... but it doesn't actually warm you up, so it's incredibly easy to suffer frostbite or even freeze to death while carrying it in cold areas, since you will still feel warm even as you die of hypothermia.
- King of Thieves: There are Four Pirate Kings, but everybody agrees that Nas Solomon, is the most powerful of them, he is sequence 3 of the Dark Emperor Pathway. His ship is a beyonder artifact that can travel by the spirit world.
- Language of Magic: There are multiple languages that have a mystical power and can be used in rituals, activating charms, and activating some Beyonder abilities.
- Lost World: The 'The Land Forgotten by the Gods' turns out to be Europe which was cut off during the Cataclysm. Although most residents died, some still survive under harsh living conditions preserving knowledge forgotten by most outside.
- MacGuffin Delivery Service: The Fool literally become this for The Tarot Club, which allowed them to trade beyonder materials across big distances, and access to the resources of the 'Land Forgotten by the Gods.'
- Magic Potion: Anyone can gain supernatural powers and become a beyonder by drinking potions belonging to one of twenty-two pathways and digesting them before drinking the next potion of the corresponding higher sequence and eventually reaching the gods. The potion formulas are simple though strictly classified and the brewing is trivial. The materials, however, are exceedingly rare, coming from extraordinary creatures or the remains of dead beyonders and rising in sequence is risky and might involve complicated rituals.
- Our Angels Are Different: Sequences 1 and 2 of every pathway are called Angels, They are complete mythical creatures and have to have an anchor that prevents them from going mad. They can respond to prayers all over the world, and were called Subsidiary Gods in ancient times. Those who contain more than one sequence 1 Beyonder characteristic, or contain the uniqueness of the pathway, are called Kings of Angels.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Sequence 7 of the Prisoner Pathway is Werewolf, they have basically the same power of a typical werewolf, their bite can make their victims became werewolf right away, they can control them for a while but they not live long. They have the additional curse that in the full moon they transform and their bloodlust is at their peak if they kill humans in that state, their personalities become cold and more twisted.
- A Pirate 400 Years Too Late: One would think that being in the age of steam, pirates in wooden ships would be a thing of the past, but thanks to the Beyonders powers they have, they are able to resist and escape from the fleets of many Kingdoms and Empires.
- Power at a Price:
- Most Sealed Artifacts work this way, providing incredibly useful powers at the cost of significant drawbacks, such as requiring regular human sacrifice, randomly making you lose your way and stumble across catastrophe, turning you into a mindless worshipper of the Sun God if overused, or making you uncomfortably hot.
- The entire Prisoner pathway works like this; each step makes you Cursed with Awesome in some way, such as turning you into a werewolf or a zombie. Every time you advance, you get to keep all the advantages of the previous path while losing the drawbacks (though you get the drawbacks of the next step instead.)
- If you are a man who has followed the Demoness pathway, you will change gender.
- Some pathway changes your personality, you will be more irascible if you take the Tyrant pathway, the Abyss and Hanged Man pathway are worse.
- Some advancement rituals are costly, for example the Fool pathway needs to isolate from the world at sequence 3.
- After reaching sequence 2, you needs anchors/believers to keep your sanity.
- Power Levels: Every pathway has the same 9 levels or sequences, they begin with level 9 and end in level 1, there is a level 0 but few people know about it. Levels 9 and 8 are called Low Sequences, Level 7, 6 and 5 are called Mid-Sequence, and Level 4 to 1 are called High Sequences with sequence 4 is called Demigod, a sequence 3 is called Saint, 2 and 1 are Angels, and then there is level 0, a god.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: In 'The Land Forgotten by the Gods', the council of Six rules over the Silver City and they are all powerful beyonders, specially the Leader of the Council.
- Religious Bruiser: There are several but Father Utravsky of the Church of the Earth Mother is the most notable, everyone who meets them compare him to a mountain and for good reason since he is a powerful Beyonder of the Twilight Giant Pathway
- Rewriting Reality: Sealed Artifact 0-08, the Quill of Alzuhod, has the power to do this; things written by it are generally guaranteed to come about, provided the writer can justify them by the rules of plot contrivance (which does not necessarily mean that the things it does have to be likely; they just have to be possible and make some form of narrative sense.) The catch is that it constantly tries to kill its owner by subtly changing the things they write. The Visionary Pathway's sequence 1, Author, has a similar ability without the drawback.
- Ritual Magic: All Beyonders are able to use ritual magic to some extend, although some pathway are better on this field.
- Royalty Super Power: Members of the Loen Royal family have control of the Justiciar Pathway, the king and princes are beyonder also a selected group of aristocrats, although because of a treaty with the Churches, the king can't ascend beyond the 5th level.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The Wishing Lamp, one of the most powerful artifacts in the novel, has a very powerful and evil entity sealed inside that can fulfill you ten wishes, but after each wish your life would be in risk, also you have to be very careful with the words you use because it can easily twist your wish, you can survive the first two if you are careful but the third one must not be made.
- Shout-Out:
- Several of Klein's fake names are references to real-world series, such as Sherlock Moriarty for his detective guise, or Gehrman Sparrow for his persona as a crazy bounty-hunter-slash-pirate.
- There are also several references to One Piece, especially during the pirate arc, such as pirates using their bounties as if they are power-levels. At one point Klein even overtly tries several phrases from One Piece as passwords for an artifact left by another transmigrator after reading another One Piece reference in their journal.
- The author has also said that the entire sealed artifact system (where mysterious but extremely dangerous artifacts are sealed by the major powers and given identification numbers because sometimes even just knowing their name is dangerous) is a reference to the SCP Foundation.
- Suppressed History: A large part of the world's history is hidden because of Beyonder's secrets.
- Vegetarian Vampire: Maric and Sharron are the zombie/wraith versions of this respectively; while the Prisoner pathway offers incredible power if you yield to its bloodlust, and leaves you weaker if you resist the urge to become a mass-murderer, they've managed to resist until now. It's implied that this is the way the Prisoner pathway is supposed to work and that, while it leaves you weaker in an immediate sense, you advance faster if you can manage it.
- Villain Team-Up: Many times, a lot of the secret societies hate each other since they worship different deities but they hate the official churches even more, so they help each other from time to time when their interest converge.
- Tarot Motifs: The tarot cards are a big part of the story, since not only the members of the Tarot Club have chosen one card as their name, but also all the recipes of each pathway are hidden in Tarot cards called 'Blasphemy Cards' created by Emperor Roselle.
- There Can Be Only One:
- Reaching Sequence 0 in a pathway requires both its Uniqueness (which, as the name implies, is unique), and all three Sequence 1 Beyonder Characteristics for that path (of which only three ever exist.) Therefore, all Sequence 1 Beyonders in a particular pathway must kill each other if they want to advance to divinity.
- Subverted with the Visionary Pathway, which had a Sequence 0 god and a Sequence 1 angel at the same time because of the Pathway's abilities that made possible for Ankewelt to separate a part of his characteristic and identity to create Alzuhod.
- Uplifted Animal:
- Suzy, the labrador dog of Audrey, it drink the beyonder potion of Audrey by accident and became a rare beyonder animal, usually they become monster right away but the Spectator Pathway was a perfect fit for Suzy and Audrey decides to cultivate her dog, as a result she becomes more intelligent every time she drinks a new potion.
- We later meet Harry. the owl, another beyonder animal from the Spectator Pathway
- World-Wrecking Wave: You can expect one everytime that a Sequence 0 ritual is performed.
