"Wilds of disorder, obey my command."
"Burned to ash, now coalesce and form."
"Everything shaped, sprouting from within outwards."
"This is the mont of motion—obey the mandate of heaven!"
As the final incantation fell, Nais could clearly feel everything around him begin to change.
Soil, plants, fragnts of houses, even the air itself—all of it started to shift. The latest_epɪ_sodes are on_the novel•fire
These things seed to dissolve like pignts, and then a spark suddenly appeared.
The dissolved matter unified into one thing—a manipulable energetic substance.
That substance changed rapidly;
in the next instant it took on the properties of water and surged toward Big Black.
To a spellcaster, spells were their techniques.
And the ceiling of such techniques usually far exceeded that of swordplay and similar arts.
They could amplify the caster’s ntal power repeatedly, pry on greater natural forces, and ultimately produce trendous effects.
But precisely because of that, spellcasting beca exceptionally intricate.
It required a great deal of preparation ti.
If Isabella fought Nais, even ignoring previous preparations, just this current chant alone would give Nais enough ti to slash her to death a dozen tis over.
The mont those energetic materials covered Big Black, his body erupted into violent convulsions.
"Shaping-class spell: All Things Obey."
"Genius," Nais murmured, admiring Isabella’s talent.
Spells on this scale were not sothing ordinary priests could dabble in.
Even many Steel Seed priests would not possess this kind of spell.
This was not orthodox priestly magic.
Spells had undergone countless evolutions and had long since branched into many schools.
So derived from demonic magic, so were developed independently by humans, and so were simplified from divine rites.
All kinds of spells interpreted the world from different angles and harnessed its power.
The more powerful a spell, the greater the user’s requirent for control.
It was like Nais’s Thousand Moons Extinguished, Flying Bird Turns—Nether Sword;
many learned the form, but only learned an empty shell, unable to unleash its true force, and often harming themselves instead.
Most priests consolidate their ntal power through faith, which stabilizes their spirit and grants bonuses when casting divine spells and related holy magic.
But when casting spells of other schools, that advantage disappears.
Shaping-class spells were most favored by witches.
They used their mind to control an elent and then sculpt it.
The fact Isabella could cast such a complex and extrely difficult All Things Obey without any ntal bonuses said her talent had nearly matched his.
Countless energetic substances shifted rapidly and pierced Big Black’s body, then drove synchronous transformations within him.
This spell could be considered a classic of the shaping school.
It turned matter into a pure energetic state, then manipulated it to perform various reconstructions;
during this process, the beings wrapped in it would undergo myriad changes.
If an organism’s basic structure was reconstructed, then death was the likely result.
Big Black struggled and tried to shake off the invasion of those energetic materials.
Then his body reached a critical mont: a mass of black veins entangled with one another.
You could clearly see his body compress, then quickly expand, then burst apart.
Flesh and blood sprayed everywhere;
a skull was flung high into the air, breaking free from the enveloping energy and flying off into the distance. Countless black veins wove together like wings, carrying the skull as it glided away.
Obviously, Big Black chose to sacrifice its body to save the head.
At that point Isabella couldn’t help coughing;
she went limp and collapsed to the ground, then began to vomit violently.
This was one of the side effects of excessive expenditure of ntal power.
Nais watched the flying skull but did not pursue it, and the flesh that hit the ground was not completely dead yet.
Without the brain’s command, these pieces retained only instinct.
So chunks of flesh, controlled by the black veins, launched attacks at everything around them;
there were even instances of pieces striking themselves.
Most of the flesh died within seconds, and on closer inspection these remnants displayed other properties.
So had beco woody, so hardened like stone, and so crumbled away like earth.
This was the effect of All Things Obey: it could effectively reconstruct the basic structure of the things it wrapped.
If Big Black had detonated later in the night, or if Isabella’s spell had continued longer, Big Black might have turned into wood or a stone statue.
"Are you okay?" Nais helped Isabella to her feet.
After the nausea and vomiting, her mind eased slightly and she recovered so composure.
"I'm fine. I just need to use a divine rite to rest for a mont before I can fight again." Once she regained clarity, Isabella quickly exchanged information with Nais.
She told him about the old priest’s possible bloodline experints and the connections he once had with the Dartmanley family.
"I see. So the Dartmanley family’s bloodline experints were a continuation of the old priest’s research?" Only now did Nais understand why the old priest had said certain things were his debt to Nael.
It made the old priest’s contradictions even more glaring.
On one hand he might truly feel guilt toward Nael and wish to atone.
On the other hand, he continued to push his experints forward, watching coldly as problems arose because of them.
People tended to call such self-contradiction—madness.
"Then Jacques is likely in danger," Nais concluded.
"The old priest isn’t at the church;
he’s most likely with Op."
"As things are exposed, what the old priest might do is unpredictable, but the most likely outco is he’ll forcibly push the experint to succeed." Nais wasn’t particularly surprised that Jacques hadn’t fled.
He had a certain read on human nature.
Jacques wasn’t the sort to slink away in defeat.
Nais simply hadn’t expected Jacques to have gone with Op’s caravan.
Compared to a church without the old priest, the caravan was the truly dangerous place.
The old priest had gone mad;
from the current situation, his life’s knot centered on those bloodline experints.
If Nais tried to get into the old priest’s head, he could roughly guess the man’s thought: no matter what, he had to make the experints succeed.
Only then would it not have been in vain.
Only then would he truly complete his atonent.
"Because of that mindset, when everything’s about to be exposed, he’ll use all his strength to complete the experint."
"Op and the old priest's cooperation was very likely coerced."
"The old priest was torn up by his emotions in daily life;
Op probably paid lip service while pursuing his own agenda."
"At this point, we might have unwittingly helped the old priest make up his mind."
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