Chapter 28: Authority

Chapter 28: Authority

At the headquarters of the Church of the God of Knowledge and Wisdom, inside that white tower.

After completing his prayer, Luca Brewster, trapped underground, returned his attention to the strengthening of the seals itself.

He wanted to study the situation and see whether he could decipher the secrets contained within, thereby inventing certain secret techniques.

As he descended level by level, inspecting one Sealed Artifact after another, Luca suddenly froze and stopped.

His expression became rather bewildered. He no longer knew whether he should first move his left foot or his right foot.

This seemed like an extremely profound question, and not one easy to understand.

On the Southern Continent, beside a church belonging to the Evernight Goddess.

Leonard lifted a cup of coffee ground from local specialty beans, intending to take a sip.

During this process, his thoughts involuntarily turned to the tightly closed doors and windows, and to the brightly lit sky. He wanted to figure out what abnormality had occurred.

However, he could not leave the current room and was sealed within. The old man, Pallez Zoroast, had fallen into a strange silence and had never answered his questions.

Fortunately, no additional danger was attached to this. Leonard could still sit there calmly, substituting thought for action.

After an unknown length of time, he looked down at the coffee he had set back on the table. Frowning slightly, he muttered in confusion, “What was I about to do just now?”

In the Rorsted Archipelago, within the concealed city of Bayam.

Danitz noticed nothing of the environmental changes. He was earnestly fiddling with the wired telegraph machine connected to his room.

Recently, the Golden Dream had returned to the Sonia Sea and was docked at a port with telegraph service. Danitz wanted to invite them warmly to visit Bayam and witness the dignity of Lord Divine Envoy.

If possible, he hoped the Golden Dream could use Bayam as its home port. That way, he could return to the ship at any time, join adventures, and search for treasure, while also selectively listening to the Captain’s lectures.

As a man of all-around talents, Danitz had without question mastered all knowledge and skills involved in sending telegrams. At this moment, he sat before the machine, his fingers moving swiftly as he sent out sentence after sentence of the words he had composed in his mind.

At the beginning, his thoughts were clear and his wording proper, leaving him somewhat smug.

Gradually, his eyes went blank, and his hands kept moving, as if operating entirely on instinct.

Once the telegram was finished, Danitz let out a breath, picked up his cup, and gulped down a mouthful of beer.

“That was faster than I expected. Even if I lose my job one day, I can go to the telegraph office and find work with a decent salary,” Danitz thought, both rather proud and somewhat aware of potential hardship.

He casually picked up the draft of the telegram and recalled the process of sending it. His expression gradually turned strange.

“What did I send at the end?” Danitz could not help whispering.

At the end, he seemed, probably, perhaps, to have mocked the first mate, second mate, “Tin Can,” and “Bucket” in the telegram—then passionately confessed his feelings to the Captain.

“I’m done for, I’m done for… How could I send out what I really thought…” Danitz’s face slowly turned pale. He suspected he had been controlled by his potion just now, and that the contents he wrote had not passed through his brain at all.

He hurriedly prepared to send another telegram, stating that the previous contents had nothing to do with him and were entirely the product of Anderson deliberately causing trouble and playing pranks.

Only then did he realize something outside seemed wrong. The sky was gray and murky, without even a trace of cloud.

…

Within the astral world, the existences and objects concealed by the Evernight Goddess broke free of their restrictions and returned to reality one after another, in a certain sequence.

Like Amon’s true body, They appeared somewhat dazed and did not react immediately.

In addition, the Evernight Goddess also stopped in midair with a trace of confusion, as though She had not yet decided what to do next. However, Her instinct was to first protect Herself.

The Lord of Storms, the Eternal Blazing Sun, and the God of Knowledge and Wisdom, who had been restricted within Their own divine kingdoms by thick prism-like patches of light, likewise underwent certain changes. The intensity of Their counterattacks clearly dropped, giving the impression that They had begun to doubt Themselves and were uncertain whether what stood before Them was truly an enemy.

The Lamp Genie dropped the Trunsoest Brass Book and directly returned into the Wishing Lamp. He looked as though He had fought to His limit and had no choice but to withdraw back into the seal, yet also seemed to have remembered something and instinctively chosen to evade.

Antigonus, who had just recovered His self-recognition and clear consciousness, became bewildered once more. His face seemed filled with questions.

Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing? What is happening around me?

In the Forsaken Land of the Gods, the giant figure of light formed by the ancient Sun God, now much dimmer than before, sighed lightly and spoke again:

“Let there be light!”

The light in the astral world brightened with it, stabbing into the “eyes” of Amon’s true body and avatars, the Primordial Demoness, the Hidden Sage, and other existences.

They instantly regained clarity and each seized the moment to respond in different ways.

Those streams of information abruptly dispersed, merging into the surrounding symbols and vanishing in an instant.

The black tentacles like pythons, topped with eyeballs, swiftly retracted, disappearing to some unknown place.

Amon’s true body gazed at the newly advanced Klein. He gave up the opportunity to exert influence while Klein’s state remained unstable and raised a hand to adjust the crystal-ground monocle over His right eye.

His figure instantly split apart, transforming into one door after another that seemed both illusory and real.

Those doors opened simultaneously and closed simultaneously, making it impossible for the Evernight Goddess and the other existences to grasp where Amon’s true body had departed.

After Amon’s true body moved far away, His avatars faded along with Him, vanishing strangely.

This had made use of a loophole, equating “Amon’s true body moving away” with “the Amons moving away.”

At the same time, the giant figure of light expanded from the ancient Sun God shrank and cracked apart, transforming back into Adam, who bore dense shadows upon His back.

At the feet of this Visionary, the sea that contained all colors and all possibilities vanished in an instant, as though returning underground.

Raising His head to glance at the astral world, Adam returned through the rift to the far side of that shadowy curtain.

His fusion with the True Creator had only just begun and was not yet complete. His attempt just now to rise to half a Great Old One was actually quite forced and risky. It would cause Their progress afterward to slow considerably.

In the astral world, as the battle subsided, the civilizational scrolls and natural barriers formed from plants, along with the illusory red moon, faded one after another, returning to unknown places.

The Lord of Storms, the Eternal Blazing Sun, and the God of Knowledge and Wisdom first shattered the thick patches of light outside Their divine kingdoms. Then They fell silent, continuing as before to block the cracks in the world barrier.

Floating above the ancient palace, the Evernight Goddess put away the dark coffin, the twilight greatsword, the golden bird-shaped ornament, and Her four arms, turning Her gaze downward.

After the semi-transparent dark cloak manifested the mask, it transformed into Klein’s body.

Klein pressed one hand to the faintly discernible mask on his face and held the other over his abdomen, his back slightly bent, as though enduring indescribable pain.

Just as he raised his head and looked toward the Evernight Goddess’s face veiled in thin black gauze, a pitch-black cloak appeared outside his body. Beneath it, one slippery, evil tentacle after another extended.

After becoming The Fool, there was no doubt that the Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings within him had awakened further.

Mad ravings and howls continuously echoed beside Klein’s ears, tearing at his spirit and making him understand that this would be the normal state of his future.

There was no way to kill the Lord of the Mysteries. Even if His will would be worn down little by little by time, His spirit would persist forever, ready at any moment to seize Klein’s body and revive completely.

If the will of the Lord of the Mysteries had not just been “killed” once, making the currently awakened Him a little weaker than Klein had expected, Klein suspected he might not have been able to withstand it at all. He would only have been able to watch helplessly as his body collapsed and he became another existence.

Of course, he could still ask the Evernight Goddess for help and have Her give him a drop of water from the River of Eternal Darkness. But that was by no means a long-term solution. It could only delay matters for a while. In the end, he still had to face this.

Relying on his own consciousness and anchors, Klein balanced the Celestial Worthy’s will within him.

At this moment, he did not even have the ability to speak.

The Evernight Goddess, floating above, nodded gently.

“What you need most now is stability.”

With that, Her figure was erased inch by inch, returning to Her divine kingdom in the astral world.

Klein turned his head and looked at Antigonus, who was still somewhat bewildered. With a thought, he took the Wishing Lamp and “0-02,” then returned to Sefirah Castle.

Antigonus remained seated within the half-collapsed palace, upon the giant stone chair, feeling as though He had dreamed for a very, very long time.

…

Inside Sefirah Castle, Klein sat in The Fool’s position and focused intently on stabilizing his mental state.

As before, before he achieved preliminary stability, he could not seek treatment from a psychiatrist—unless he visited Adam the Visionary, but that would very likely make the madness even worse.

Once he stabilized slightly, Klein quickly examined the authority he had obtained.

It was called “Fooling”!

It not only encompassed partial authorities over history, time, fate, change, and concealment, but was also the symbol of “blind foolishness” within the domain of the mind. Its simplest application was to lower an enemy’s intelligence.

Just as Klein was about to study it further, his inspiration was suddenly stirred.

Someone had invaded Sefirah Castle!

And only after the invasion succeeded did Klein receive the “notification”!

Klein abruptly raised his head and looked beneath the mottled long table. There, at some unknown point, the grayish-white fog had formed a door.

A figure wearing a pointed soft hat, a monocle, and a classical black robe walked out from within.

Amon!

Mr. Error’s eyes were stained with a trace of deep black, and His smile appeared somewhat mad.

He leisurely looked around, pushed His monocle, and said with a smile, “Surprised?”

Klein attempted to mobilize Sefirah Castle and expel the other party, only to discover that Amon had somehow also gained control over Sefirah Castle!

Amon turned His gaze toward him, pulled out a chair, sat down, and laughed softly.

“I released my suppression of the Lord of the Mysteries’ will within me.

“He is the owner of Sefirah Castle, which means I am also the owner of Sefirah Castle. Of course I can enter.

“This is very risky. Even I did not dare attempt it before. But since you have grown to your current level, I had no choice but to take the risk.

“It is very exciting, and the result is not bad.”

As He spoke, one slippery, evil tentacle after another darted out from beneath Amon’s clothing.

He had voluntarily allowed the Lord of the Mysteries to partially revive, plunging Himself into a half-mad state.