He had only uttered a single word, and Jenkins snapped back to his senses without even needing a reminder from the cat hiding by the seaside cottage. The full force of his life energy faltered for that one mont of distraction, and the wooden tendrils, already at a disadvantage, were instantly devoured by the tide of gears.
Beneath his feet, the ship's hull transford from wood to tal, bit by bit. In this clash between life and machinery, Jenkins was already on the brink of defeat.
"Weren't I just preparing to face an angel? What in the world is this thing?"
Before he arrived, even after preparing for the worst, Jenkins had never imagined his final opponent would be a "Transforr."
"No, a Transforr is at least a silicon-based lifeform from a materialist worldview—powerful, but at least comprehensible. This thing before is a supernatural creation from an idealist worldview, the kind that drives you mad just by looking at it!"
He frantically searched his mind for a strategy, but no matter how hard he pushed out his life spirit, he could no longer stand against the ever-strengthening gears.
The Cursed Item didn't even have to act directly. The passive field effect generated by its re presence—the animation of gears—was enough to bring Jenkins to his knees.
It didn't matter how many abilities he possessed, or that his spirit reserves were many tis greater than those of an Enchanter of his level; he was, after all, not yet a god. There was no hope in a prolonged battle against this absurd perpetual motion machine. Jenkins's spirit was nearly exhausted.
He glanced back. Beneath the dark clouds, Nolan City was terrifyingly silent. But he could imagine the Orthodox Churches must have already noticed the situation. If he could just stop this monster from reaching the city for a few minutes, he could break through the siege with the speed of his unicorn.
"Alright," he thought, "a hopeless situation with no way out. This is what I handle best!"
With that thought, he ntally activated the purple point of light before him, the one representing [The Unknown Path].
The ability that had saved him in his most dire monts ever since he'd co to this world worked its magic once more. A thin purple thread appeared before his eyes, but instead of stretching into the distance, it pointed straight at his pocket.
Jenkins froze, quickly releasing the cane in his left hand. The mont his palm closed around the warm sphere in his pocket, fate's guidance ended.
He was holding the red ability sphere from Skryu Pompey's head. It had been with Magic Miss for so ti for research, but in the end, even she had to admit the thing was impossible to analyze.
Out of an aversion to the power of death and the unknowable ability it contained, Jenkins had never used it. In fact, he'd been planning to find a ti to trade it away. He never thought that in the end, fate wouldn't let him escape it.
Without hesitation, he followed the thod Mr. Hood had taught him and pushed his mind into the sphere. With a soft pop, the sphere that Magic Miss had tried various thods to probe, all to no avail, shattered like a soap bubble.
A cloud of dust, red as blood, flew out from the sphere and shot straight into Jenkins's forehead. An icy spirit and new knowledge beca his as the red dust fully entered his body.
In an instant, his body temperature seed to drop to zero. A sense of desolate emptiness filled his heart. Endless phantoms of death appeared before his eyes, the clearest of them a small tombstone starkly engraved with the na: Jenkins Williams.
As a skeletal hand reached out from the grave behind the tombstone, the vision vanished. A new point of light representing a new ability appeared before Jenkins: [Heart of Bone (Red Martial)].
"Huh?"
This wasn't an ability Jenkins had never heard of. On the contrary, any Enchanter with a bit of knowledge was familiar with it. Just as numbered items with the suffix "Heart of" were bound to be priceless, abilities with suffixes like "Heart" or "-er" were almost always comprehensive and powerful.
Just as [The Player] comprehensively enhanced any music-related abilities, [Heart of Bone] did the sa for all abilities related to death. In addition, possessing [Heart of Bone] would drastically increase one's resistance to abnormal ntal states and soul-controlling abilities, improve bone density and strength, and, to a certain extent, allow one to cast rituals requiring "bone" without material components.
For Jenkins, obtaining this ability was all benefit and no drawback. [Heart of Bone (Red Martial)] was a rare, all-encompassing, and powerful ability with no prerequisites. Aside from the fact that no one had yet figured out a reliable way to acquire it, it had virtually no flaws.
If he had known this ability was inside the sphere before using it, he could have likely sold it for a hundred thousand gold pounds, and soone would have willingly paid the price.
The problem was, this ability was of no help in his current predicant. The slight boost to his physical attributes and ntal resistance was clearly not enough to let him contend with this colossal monster that was actively rewriting the fundantal laws of reality around it.
"Huh?"
For the second ti in a single second, the sound of confusion escaped Jenkins's lips. The Cursed Item wasn't attacking. Instead, with the appearance of [Heart of Bone], the point of light representing his ability to touch the power of death, [Contact with Death (Red Martial)], began to grow faint.
Then, a red spiritual light blood before his eyes as a greater power ascended:
[Contact with Death (Red Martial)] → [Embrace of Death (Red Martial)]
"What is this?"
It was an ability he had never heard of. The original was a well-known foundational death-type ability, but while the description of the new one was similar, Jenkins was completely unfamiliar with it.
But from the looks of it, this still didn't help him defeat the Cursed Item before him, or even resist it long enough for the Church's forces to arrive.
"Huh?"
For the third ti in two seconds, Jenkins uttered the sound of bewildernt. The appearance of [Heart of Bone] had transford "Contact" into "Embrace"; yet now that [Embrace of Death] had fully solidified, [Heart of Bone] itself began to fade.
"What is it doing?"
An aura of death began to seep slowly from Jenkins's body, forming a tangible gray mist that spread outwards. The wood and tal around him, anything touched by this aura, decayed as if it had been weathered by the passage of a century.
[Heart of Bone] vanished. Jenkins had possessed it for less than a second. Then, a new power of death coalesced, the process incredibly swift, as if this power had belonged to Jenkins all along.
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