Soul of Negary

“Go, hurry up!”

Orders madly were resounding throughout, a large number of knights unleashed all of their divine techniques towards the summoning venue without care to hide anything.

“Don’t kill me, I’m…” the upper half of a middle-aged man was seen attached to the lower half of a monster, apparently fused together perfectly.

Seeing a knight approaching him with his sword, the middle-aged man desperately called out, as if he had some sort of unique identity. But it was to no avail, as the knight’s sword mercilessly swung down, slicing him and his monster lower half apart.

However, at this point, the summoning ritual was almost complete.

A large amount of unknown substances had formed an array of strings around where Birosius stood, which enveloped the entire main square. These strings were giving off a faint glow that somehow appeared colorful and flashy.

As soon as these strings manifested, they began attaching to Birosius’ body and conducted information exchange with him. This was mutual communication between Birosius and his Evil God.

In the end, this summoning was conducted with too little preparation, not only were there no vessels for the Evil God to descend into, there were also no offerings in the traditional meaning of the word. For this reason, having gone completely insane in his pursuit of witnessing the ‘truth’, Birosius chose to use himself as the catalyst of the ritual.

Ever since 10 years ago when Birosius first obtained the pinky finger cult’s leaked magic ritual, he had been busy hunting fingers to obtain power from the Evil God.

However, due to his lack of necessary knowledge, he didn’t know any other spells or how to use them, so he had been crudely utilizing the Evil God’s power by infusing his body with it, granting him immense strength and defense.

This was a terrific waste of the Evil God’s power, but the long years of accumulation had allowed Birosius’ body to become accustomed to the Evil God’s power, thus becoming a passable vessel for him to descend into.

“Ignore the restraints, we definitely cannot allow that evil to descend upon this land” the Cardinal raised his scepter up high, channeling light of extreme heat from the ruby engraved at the tip. These rays of light madly shot forward like a barrage of arrows through the Cardinal’s manipulation of them.

Anything that stood in the way of these rays of light were instantly vaporized into blue mist, the surrounding structures were smashed into rubble, even the natural ledges that stood in their ways were blasted apart.

This land was the meadow of their God, so during times of peace, as God’s sheepdogs, the church had always exercised restraint to try and limit their destruction as much as possible, deciding against using attacks that were too powerful.

However, they no longer cared about this restraint at this point. As shimmering light erupted from the knights’ bodies, numerous supportive divine techniques arrived from the priests behind them to greatly alter the knights’ prowess.

Unlike the knights whose strength needed to gradually grow through very clear steps, the priests of the Sun Shadow church did not have a clear separation in level.

They only needed to use their faith to manifest a mark within their souls, which would be used to sustain their divine techniques. Each of their prayers was a resonation with their God, from which their soul mark would become deeper and more complex, allowing them to sustain more divine techniques.

It was for this reason that a priest could use at least 5 times more divine techniques compared to knights. In certain regions, there also existed a profession called Combat Priests, who trained themselves in close combat and wielded spike maces in battle. Through the buff of a large number of divine techniques, their fighting strength far surpassed that of a knight, while also being capable of restoring their own stamina and healing their own wounds in combat with divine techniques.

However, for the Lohr branch of the Sun Shadow church, due to enjoying the ‘peace and quiet’ for so long, most priests had gotten used to enjoying themselves, completely losing interest in training themselves daily like the knights.

Under the reinforcement of numerous divine techniques, the knights charged forward with reckless abandon towards Birosius, as the black strings touched the knights’ bodies, they instinctively entered their armors, formed a connection with them and began mutual communication.

However, the Blessing of Glory became an obstacle for them, as their faith itself became a mental shield that protected their minds.

Among the numerous divine techniques infused into the knights’ swords was one called [Otherworld Ejection], which caused the black strings to continuously break and collapse.

…

Chromie lowered his head while wielding his white iron sword, his eyes displaying clear hesitation. Although his swordsmanship could be considered excellent, it was terribly insufficient against these inhuman entities.

However, there were several sacrificial rituals on the [Tome of Sacrifice] that would grant him rapid strength.

There were two types of sacrificial spells written in the [Tome of Sacrifice], the first were permanent sacrifices like the one he used to sacrifice his sense of smell in exchange for Spirit Vision; while the second type were one-time sacrifices. For example, by sacrificing one finger, that finger would shoot out from his hand like a jet arrow, the description of which stated that as long as the target was within its range, the finger would be able to penetrate all forms of defenses.

It wasn’t just that, there were also many others, like sacrificing his eyeball, skin, skeleton, etc. in exchange for abilities.

These sacrifices were ‘one-time’ in the sense that the user must sacrifice something permanently in exchange for a single use spell of extreme power.

The final one-time sacrifice depicted in the [Tome of Sacrifice] was the sacrifice of one’s soul.

While the final permanent sacrifice depicted was the sacrifice of one’s ‘proof’, which was said to allow one to become a God for a brief moment.

Naturally, Chromie had no intention of using either of these sacrifices, because the greater the power one wished to obtain, the greater the price one must pay. And the price to become God, even if only for an instant, was one that he couldn’t afford.

In exchange for having an incomplete limb, I can unleash a one-time spell to kill Birosius.

Chromie was currently contemplating if this was worth it. Sacrificial magic didn’t target any Evil God to ask for power, so even if the church discovered it, it would only be taken away by the Sun Shadow church at most, and he wouldn’t receive any punishments.

Is it worth it?

A flash of hesitation flashed through Chromie’s eyes. This was simply human nature for one to find it much easier to hurt others than it was to hurt themselves.

「 I am…」the black strings began to converge and infuse into Birosius’ body, or rather, the Evil God’s body, who had descended on this world: 「 Bardimor! 」

His body began to change, the black strings now hovered around him, lifting him into the air.

Following Bardimor’s declaration, this name resounded in the ears of everyone, including those who were hidden and shivering in their own homes. The name seemed to carry some sort of magical force that compelled one to deeply memorize it.

This could also be considered a form of communication. From the very moment that Bardimor’s information was spread together with his name, regular citizens in the surrounding had already formed a connection with him, back-feeding information that belonged to them towards Bardimor.

Standing not too far away, Chromie naturally could not avoid this calamity. At this point, the question was no longer whether or not the sacrifice was worth it. He quickly pointed his finger towards the hovering Bardimor.

The knights also charged to attack Bardimor, but as Bardimor opened his eyes, two rays of light shone from his eyes upon the knights body, causing their armor to writhe, their body to writhe, and their blood to writhe as well. The knights’ everything had already begun to writhe, quickly altering them beyond recognition.

Chromie endured the numerous flowing thoughts through his mind and activated his sacrificial magic.