Chapter 197: True Soul Body

Chapter 197: True Soul Body

“Fate!”

As the dragged-out, difficult ancient Hermes word echoed, the area where Klein and the Spirit World Plunderer stood suddenly dimmed.

It was an almost imperceptible change, like a cloud happening to drift across the sky without pausing for even an instant.

Yet when that illusion-like shadow vanished in the next breath, the “invisible person” wrapped in a semi-transparent white robe was already frozen in place. Beneath the surface of its clothing, uncontrollable traces bulged outward, like insects writhing beneath fabric—sluggish, slow, and labored.

Opposite it, clarity had completely returned to Klein’s eyes. Beneath the shadow of the triple crown, the flesh buds on his face had disappeared.

The scene now looked as though the Spirit World Plunderer had not been the one controlling Klein’s Spirit Body Threads and nearing success, but rather that Klein had been controlling the Spirit World Plunderer’s Spirit Body Threads and was about to turn it into his marionette!

The Luck Stealer charm had swapped their fates!

This high-level charm, made from a Worm of Time, could steal the target’s subsequent fate and graft one’s own short-term future onto them, thereby completing the exchange.

And so, Klein and the Spirit World Plunderer instantly traded circumstances. One had gone from death back to life, while the other had fallen in an instant from victory within reach into absolute desperation.

After confirming that the Spirit World Plunderer was intelligent, extremely difficult to deal with, and far from easy to hunt, Klein had begun performing a retreat. He had seemed reckless, but in truth, he had deliberately allowed himself, step by step, to fall under the Spirit World Plunderer’s control, luring it out while remaining ready to use the Luck Stealer charm at the crucial moment.

In that way, however ruthless the Spirit World Plunderer was toward its enemy, its own situation would become just as hopeless!

Of course, if the Luck Stealer charm failed to take effect, or if the Spirit World Plunderer’s main soul did not appear and it instead relied on some other method to control the situation, Klein still had one last means of preserving himself: he could directly end the summoning and return above the gray fog, using the loss of two marionettes and several mystical items to ensure his own safety.

He had no time to marvel at the incredible power of the Luck Stealer charm, nor at how terrifying angels of the Marauder pathway truly were. Before the exchange of fate ended, Klein raised the Sea God Scepter in his hand without the slightest hesitation.

His deep blue papal vestments unfurled in the wind. The golden triple crown reflected interwoven rays of blue-green and silver-white light. In an instant, bolt after bolt of lightning burst from the top of the white bone scepter, weaving into a sphere before crashing down upon the Spirit World Plunderer!

Silver-white brilliance flared, drowning the target and bleaching the surroundings into a sheet of whiteness.

Once, twice, three times—Klein continuously drove those terrifying spherical bolts of lightning, sparing none of his spirituality.

At last, he heard a roar that seemed to come from the depths of the soul itself and instinctively sensed that his target had broken apart and collapsed.

Only then did Klein lower Sea God Scepter and watch the silver-white lightning scatter thread by thread.

At that moment, his entire spirit body had become quite illusory. Even with the Tyrant’s support, he no longer seemed entirely real.

As the lightning disappeared, the “invisible person” in the semi-transparent white robe once more appeared before Klein’s eyes.

Flickering points of dim and bright light shone out from within. The Spirit World Plunderer’s entire being suddenly split apart, turning into countless illusory bubbles that shattered one after another.

The “Tyrant” had succeeded in the hunt.

Just then, a violent tremor suddenly came from the deeper regions of Calderón, as though some colossal entity had awakened because of the Spirit World Plunderer’s death, or as if countless dangerous creatures were surging out in response.

That indescribable sensation actually gathered into an illusory grayish-white whole, like a flood, rising layer by layer from the lower part of the city.

Other Spirit World Plunderers? No, it feels more like something even more dreadful, more terrifying… the beings served by Spirit World Plunderers? And the core of Calderón, the end of the underground abyss, is still completely silent. Not a single sound has come from there. That makes it even more frightening… Klein forced himself to stay alert. While keeping part of his attention on the movements deeper inside Calderón, he anxiously waited for the Spirit World Plunderer’s characteristic to separate out and condense into a material.

For the moment, he felt none of the joy of a successful hunt. All he had was the tension of pacing along the edge of an abyss.

During this process, Klein had Winner Enzo and Hell Admiral Ludwell draw closer to him. He also tossed Sea God Scepter to the former, allowing himself to break free from the state of rash impulsiveness and think more calmly about how to handle the changes that might follow, as well as whether he had overlooked any other detail.

A thought flashed through his mind, and Klein abruptly remembered something:

When he had ordered his mystical items to sing, Creeping Hunger had praised the True Creator and recited His complete honorific name.

Although the human-skin glove had not used ancient Hermes, which could leverage the forces of nature, but Hermes instead, the latter could likewise exert effects in the field of ritual! This meant that the True Creator might very well have heard Creeping Hunger’s praise and noticed the commotion here.

Aside from the rising “grayish-white flood” and the terrifying beings in the city’s depths, there are other dangers… Wait, I’m currently a spirit body, roughly equivalent to a wraith. I’m not in a normal state… The moment this thought crossed Klein’s mind, his spiritual intuition was stirred. By instinct, his gaze shot toward Calderón’s entrance.

There, light and shadow flickered, and a figure entered.

The figure wore a simple, plain linen robe and had long silver hair.

He was male, with soft features and a beautiful face. His eyes were gentle yet faintly indifferent, as though he were observing fate from the position of a bystander, observing every person in the world.

Behind him, ray after ray of light formed layered, illusory, pure wings that spread outward, covering the entire entrance area.

“…” Klein nearly squeezed the hiss out from between his teeth as a series of names flashed through his mind:

“Ouroboros!”

“Tail Devourer!”

“Angel of Fate!”

“King of Angels!”

He had no time to consider whether his previous idea was feasible. His body expanded as though it had no substance, enveloping his marionettes Enzo and Ludwell, as well as the residual bubbles of the Spirit World Plunderer that were still separating and merging their characteristic!

At that moment, in Ouroboros’s silver eyes, a figure in the distance had already been reflected—a figure wearing a triple crown and deep blue vestments, majestic and tyrannical to the extreme, along with a grayish-white fog blurred almost beyond recognition by the aura of the Tyrant.

In both of His eyes, a shimmering river appeared at the same time, circling around the figure that resembled the Tyrant and around Calderón’s outer region.

Silently, the square houses and pale stone pillars destroyed by the lightning storm earlier rose back into place. The giant blacksmith, who had been reduced to two charred toes, regained his body inside the mausoleum and resumed striking the anvil with clang after clang.

Everything returned to how it had been not long after the Tyrant first entered.

Yet Klein, dressed like a pope, was gone. His two marionettes and the residual bubbles of the Spirit World Plunderer were gone as well.

Because the corresponding figures could not return, the freshly restarted scene immediately shattered, reverting to the scarred aftermath of the battle.

Tail Devourer Ouroboros quietly watched all this. For a long time, He made no movement. Meanwhile, the rising “grayish-white” from Calderón’s depths slowly receded.

…

Above the gray fog, Klein slumped wearily in The Fool’s high-back chair, so exhausted that he could not even have Enzo and Ludwell massage his shoulders and legs.

Sea God Scepter had been thrown back into the junk pile. The Tyrant card had also left his soul body and now lay face-down beside the Black Emperor card. In front of him floated the residual bubbles of the Spirit World Plunderer. They continuously separated out a Beyonder characteristic, then continuously fused with those points of light.

After recovering for a while, Klein saw specks of grayish-white powder falling onto the surface of the mottled long table, accompanied by a transparent object that seemed to have no weight.

The object was palm-sized, formed from worm-like things coiled together into something resembling a human shape. Colorless liquid filled the inside, where bubbles often surfaced, releasing fine black rays.

Klein did not dare examine it too closely, because the minute structures within that weightless transparent object were even richer and more complex. They formed indescribable patterns and symbols, as though concepts such as knowledge, power, change, secrecy, strangeness, and madness had been directly fused into it, no longer abstract.

It brought Klein an intense wave of dizziness, even giving him the feeling that his mind was close to collapse and his soul on the verge of losing control.

“This should be the Spirit World Plunderer’s True Soul Body… The corresponding dust is here too, around seventy grams. That’s more than needed, and more than I expected…” Klein gave an almost imperceptible nod. He placed the dust into a box, tossed it together with the True Soul Body into the junk pile, and covered it with gray fog.

After completing these tasks, he raised a hand and rubbed his temples, silently mocking himself:

“If I hadn’t been holding Sea God Scepter, after being ambushed by the Spirit World Plunderer, I most likely would have chosen to leave Calderón directly. I would have waited until I had a helper, then carried out the hunt in the safest possible manner so as to control the disturbance and avoid alarming the unknown things in the core region…

“Sigh. I charged all the way to the end like that. Although the result was good, it really doesn’t match my personality, and it completely contradicts the acting principles of the Seer pathway. I should avoid using Sea God Scepter in the outside world as much as possible from now on.

“Uh… The Spirit World Plunderer has already been hunted successfully. There’s no need to ask Miss Sharron for help anymore. In a few days, I’ll write to her and tell her she no longer needs to worry about this matter.

“Still, I have a feeling that I’ll go to Calderón again in the future. When that time comes, I may still need to ask Miss Sharron for help.

“Also, I need to gather information about Bizarro Banes. I can’t place all my hopes on the City of Silver…”

As his thoughts surged, Klein did not bring his marionettes. He directly returned to his body, ended the ritual, trudged to the bed, and fell into a deep sleep the moment his head touched the pillow.

…

“He escaped?” Soest looked at the man opposite him and asked Daly Simone, who was currently spirit channeling.

They had just completed an operation and captured several members of the Numinous Episcopate, but the key figure mentioned in the intelligence, the “Hand of Paleness” Palenque Tacibli, had not been in the hidden stronghold.

This was a Sequence 4 demigod, so the Red Gloves team had not only used a Grade 1 Sealed Artifact, but had also invited “Eye of the Goddess” Ilya to take action. In the end, their effort had come up empty.

Daly Simone nodded.

“Yes.”

She then looked toward the captive and asked in an ethereal, drifting voice:

“Where did Palenque Tacibli go?”

“He said he was going to meet someone,” the Numinous Episcopate member answered slowly.

“Who was that person?” Daly Simone pressed. Leonard Mitchell and the others also turned their gazes toward him.

The spirit-channeled man spoke in a voice without fluctuation:

“Ince Zangwill.”