Chapter 146: Prohibition

Chapter 146: Prohibition

Seeing Cynthia’s pale body enlarged, covered in numerous tumors and flowers, resembling a monstrous tree, and hearing her bashful, murmured request, Klein could not help but shiver. Every hair on his body stood on end.

The scene possessed a horror that surpassed human imagination, something he had never seen even in dreams.

If this had been back in Tingen, when he had faced Megose, Klein would surely have been affected by such a sight, briefly losing his ability to react because of fear and panic. But after experiencing so many things, he was now truly an experienced person and a seasoned Beyonder. The instant Cynthia’s words entered his ears, the glove on his left hand silently changed color.

It turned deep black, carrying a sense of nobility and evil. This represented Klein activating Creeping Hunger and switching to the soul of “Interrogator” Misor, transforming into a Corrupt Baron!

In an instant, he “distorted” Cynthia’s words, changing “General, I want to have a child with you” into “General, I only want to have a child with you.”

With that, Klein believed that the members of the general’s guards and the male attendants surrounding the tree-like monster would surely be pushed away by Cynthia, whose intentions had been distorted, giving him a chance to catch his breath.

As for whether this would expose the fact that he was not the real Admiral Amyrius, he did not care. Anyone still worrying about whether they could complete their role-playing at a time like this was definitely suffering from rather serious obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and he clearly was not.

Besides, in an environment where all sorts of desires had been amplified to the extreme, Klein suspected that the others, who had already been affected, had no way of noticing the specific details of a fight.

The Corrupt Baron’s Distortion ability activated soundlessly, but Klein was stunned to see that the men surrounding Cynthia did not change at all. They were not repelled in the slightest!

It was clearly distorted… The mutated Cynthia can actually resist this influence directly… Klein’s pupils shrank as he abruptly leaped two steps to the side.

From the spot where he had just been standing, a brown branch pierced out, a flower dripping with mucus blooming at its tip.

The flower was abnormally huge. As it opened, it seemed capable of swallowing an entire person.

Pa! Pa! Pa!

One branch after another sprouted from the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. Bearing damp flowers, they chased Klein from every direction.

In the process, those flowers casually bit down on the head of the blond secretary Luan, as well as on the heads of the guards, male attendants, and maids reveling on the carpet nearby.

Having learned from the earlier failure of Distortion, Klein did not hesitate. He pulled out his right hand, his palm tightly gripping the dark-gold high-level charm.

Ninth Law!

He originally had not wanted to use the charm so quickly. It was not because he was reluctant to spend it, but because he had hoped to fight for a while and determine exactly what the monster Cynthia had mutated into specialized in before weakening it in a targeted manner. After all, Ninth Law could not impose broad restrictions. The content had to be specific enough. For instance, it could not make all Beyonder effects invalid in this place, but it could designate one particular Beyonder power and prevent it from taking effect. To maximize its value, careful observation and sharp judgment were prerequisites!

However, the current situation forced Klein to reveal his trump card at once. Otherwise, he suspected he would not be able to harm the tree-like monster at all!

If the Ninth Law charm can’t create an environment where I can kill the monster, I’ll use it to flee the villa immediately, draw Cynthia outside, then find a chance to pray and go above the gray fog so I can use the Sea God Scepter for saturated bombardment! As that thought flashed through his mind, Klein, who was constantly jumping and dodging among branches and flowers, uttered an Ancient Hermes word in a deep voice:

“Law!”

As the activation incantation echoed, the dark-gold charm in Klein’s palm suddenly turned cold—so cold it seemed to strip away all emotion.

At that moment, Klein used it to attain a state of extreme calm. While throwing out the Ninth Law charm, his thoughts flashed rapidly as he considered what to restrict.

His first reaction was to prohibit the generation of any desire, but he clearly knew that this was too broad. Therefore, he considered changing it to the prohibition of reproductive desire. After all, Cynthia’s wish was to have a child with Admiral Amyrius, and the influence she displayed on those around her was primarily in this area.

Just as the Ninth Law charm flew into midair, transforming into specks of dark-gold light that spread in all directions, Klein suddenly thought of one thing:

Cynthia had previously been an ordinary person!

This was an undeniable fact!

Over the past three nights, Klein had repeatedly confirmed this using Spirit Vision and divination. He believed that Cynthia was not a Beyonder.

Likewise, if she had been one, Admiral Amyrius, who could directly distinguish ordinary people from Beyonders, would have discovered it long ago.

So the reason she had suddenly mutated into a monster was a matter that had to be considered carefully!

Did she become a vessel for an evil god’s descent through some ritual, like Megose? No. If there had been a ritual, there’s no way I wouldn’t have detected it. My spiritual intuition would have warned me not to open Spirit Vision, not to look directly at Cynthia… Is there some item or trait on her body that projected an external power over here? That’s why nothing happened the previous two nights, but tonight there was a sudden mutation… In any case, her terror comes from the outside, not from herself… In those one or two seconds, Klein swiftly made his judgment. No longer hesitating, he seized the opportunity and spoke in a deep voice:

“Interaction with the outside world is forbidden here!”

The Ancient Hermes filled with mystic meaning instantly rippled outward. The scattered dark-gold light abruptly interwove into countless symbolic signs and magical marks like laws, then merged into the void.

Hum!

A faint ringing sounded by Klein’s ear, and he seemed to see invisible light filled with desire being expelled outside the room.

Immediately afterward, an illusory yet resplendent starry sky appeared before his eyes, along with a star blooming with brilliant light.

Pa! Pa! Klein’s two eyeballs burst apart at once, and a ghastly, horrifying mixture of blood and fluid streamed outward.

Although he had used the Ninth Law charm to isolate the external influence, the level of that power was extremely high. Merely a normal bit of backlash had directly pierced through the natural protection of the high-level charm and blown apart his eyes!

The injury was swift and without warning. Klein had no chance at all to use Paper Figurine Substitution, just like when he had faced the Marionettist Rosago.

If not for the Ninth Law charm, far more than his eyes would have exploded. He might have become a monster like Cynthia!

At the same time, the tall, tree-like Cynthia froze in place. Her body suddenly collapsed, turning into a mass of flesh covered in brownish-green tumors. Around her, the members of the general’s guards and the male attendants fell one after another, unconscious beside the bed and on the floor.

Cynthia’s head was embedded in that lump of flesh, and her mouth murmured again and again:

“General, I want to have a child with you…

“General, I want to have a child with you…”

…

She struggled to extend the remaining branches on the ceiling and walls, suddenly binding Klein, who was dizzy from the backlash, and dragging him toward herself.

The moment Klein recovered even slightly, he fought with all his strength. Yet whether he tried to snap his fingers and ignite flames or switch Creeping Hunger, he failed because both hands and arms were firmly bound.

Using the abilities of a Clown to “see” the brownish-green tumors drawing closer and closer, a thought suddenly stirred in Klein’s mind. He directly changed his appearance, transforming from Admiral Amyrius into Gehrman Sparrow—a Gehrman Sparrow whose eyes were covered in blood!

The entangling branches paused for a second, then strangely loosened. They lashed outward in all directions, as though trying to catch something.

Cynthia’s head, however, murmured in loss and confusion:

“General, where did you go…

“General, where did you go…”

Without the sustained resistance of the external power, she was finally affected by the Corrupt Baron’s Distortion. She only wanted to have a child with Admiral Amyrius, and thus let Gehrman Sparrow go.

Klein rolled to his feet, pressed his right hand over his eyes, and pulled downward sharply, transferring the ruptured wounds to his left shoulder.

As his left shoulder turned into a bloody mess, Creeping Hunger became stained with pure, brilliant light.

Klein looked with pity at Cynthia’s head inside the pile of flesh and spread his arms out to both sides.

A bright pillar of light entwined with sacred flames descended from midair, enveloping the monster that had collapsed into flesh.