Chapter 48: “Frenzy”

Chapter 48: “Frenzy”

After the Saint of Secrets Botis entered the spirit world, he immediately began traversing it, heading straight for the Ruins of the Battle of Gods at the easternmost part of the Sonia Sea.

Just then, his thoughts suddenly blurred. His body directly changed direction and left the spirit world from another location.

By the time Botis’s spiritual intuition warned him, his mind tensed, and he recovered his own thoughts, what appeared before him was a bare forest where almost all the leaves had fallen. The surroundings were silent and empty, and the crimson moon hung high above.

As a former Traveler and Astrologer, Botis immediately recognized where he was. He discovered that he was still in Backlund, only moved from the city into the remote outskirts.

At the same time, he understood exactly what had happened:

At some unknown point, someone else’s consciousness had infiltrated his mind world. At the critical moment, it had influenced his thoughts and altered his predetermined destination!

That demigod of the Audience pathway! I actually failed to discover them! Botis’s pupils abruptly dilated, reflecting an illusory silver-white book.

The book flipped with a swish, instantly arriving at a certain page.

Botis immediately raised his hand and grabbed toward the space between his brows, directly pulling a mass of darkness out of his immaterial island of consciousness. He threw it into his own shadow.

His shadow then separated from him, twisted upright, and presented a female outline.

Dark Knight, Fallen Shadow!

This was a power Botis had Recorded from Dark Saint Kesma. It could separate the fallen thoughts within one’s heart and fuse them with one’s shadow, forming an uncontrolled independent creature.

Botis used it to clear away the consciousness within him that did not belong to himself, freeing himself from the Manipulator’s influence.

At the same time, it was also Botis’s counterattack. If the hidden demigod of the Audience pathway could not swiftly deal with this Shadow, the thoughts they had split off would gradually become independent, causing the original self to become half-mad, or even lose control.

The moment he removed the hidden danger inside his mind, Botis did not hesitate in the slightest. He was about to leave the battlefield preset by his enemies and Teleport elsewhere.

But at that moment, his mind suddenly grew irritable. He felt that the entire environment was making things difficult for him, and his anger could no longer be restrained.

As the silver-white book within Botis’s eyes flipped, the entire forest collapsed with a rumble, and that black Shadow nearly flattened into a puddle.

After the frenzy, Botis’s mood turned extremely low. He could summon no interest in anything, feeling that he was utterly useless, that he was a burden upon others and upon the world.

Mental Plague! During the earlier battle, Botis had already been infected by Mental Plague, and it had finally erupted now!

The reason Cattleya had used The Little Match Girl at the very beginning was not merely to interfere with Botis’s Teleportation and stop him from leaving. It was also to conceal traces for Miss Justice, allowing her Virtual Persona to slip into the other party’s mind world without triggering Botis’s spiritual intuition. It had not erupted, only quietly planted the seed of Mental Plague.

Precisely because of that, when the ambush failed, Cattleya and Audrey dared to activate the contingency plan, withdraw on their own, and let the Saint of Secrets Botis and the Dark Saint voluntarily separate and return to their own places once danger had vanished.

Cattleya’s final act of igniting the green vines and creating a huge commotion looked, on the surface, like attracting official forces and forcing the enemies to give up pursuit. In truth, it was to compel the Saint of Secrets Botis to leave as quickly as possible, leaving him no time to carefully inspect and examine the deeper state of his own…