Chapter 84: Wishes

Chapter 84: Wishes

Adam turned His head and looked at Klein. Within His clear, pale eyes was reflected a face down which streams of bright-red blood were flowing.

His expression did not change. Gentle and tinged with a hint of pity, He looked like a god gazing upon mortals.

Klein smiled back at Him as his head split open inch by inch.

The trend quickly spread through his body, causing him to collapse into a puddle of blood.

Floating amid the blood were a shirt, a coat, and other items. Sinking within it were the bloodstained wooden cross-stake and an ancient-looking mirror.

Inside the Cathedral of Bones, within the divine kingdom of Adam the Visionary, Klein died in this bizarre manner.

Adam, dressed in a simple white robe, looked upon the scene with warmth and calm, though whether He had already foreseen this or had simply erased His own emotions was impossible to tell.

Above the gray fog, inside the ancient palace.

The mad vortex of worms instantly lost all movement, breaking apart into stiff, dead Worms of Spirit.

The next second, those Worms of Spirit turned illusory and took on a grayish-white hue, as though fusing into the fog of history.

Then they came alive again. Gleaming with deep, dark light, they wriggled together and gathered into one.

In only a few seconds, the Worms of Spirit reformed into a human figure: Klein Moretti, black-haired and brown-eyed, wearing a formal shirt.

With the owner of Sefirah Castle’s return, the destroyed mottled long table and the twenty-two high-backed chairs rapidly restored themselves. The scattered miscellaneous objects all over the floor piled together once more.

Klein picked up the Staff of the Stars, which was inlaid with many kinds of gemstones, and sat down in The Fool’s seat.

The entire space above the gray fog trembled, releasing a vast and surging invisible power.

Klein then nodded at the golden figure occupying Bernadette’s prayer point of light.

“I will fulfill my promise.”

The Lamp Genie laughed.

“It seems you have not inherited His cunning and shamelessness. Good.”

As soon as He finished speaking, the blurry, distorted golden figure swiftly withdrew, no longer projecting Himself through Bernadette’s prayer point of light.

“Well done.” While splitting off a Worm of Spirit to respond to the Queen Mystic’s prayer, Klein lowered his head and made a wish to himself. “I wish to recover to the state I was in before tonight.”

When his main body died, it had only carried away the most essential part of the Miracle Invoker Beyonder characteristic. The rest had been isolated by Adam’s Cathedral of Bones and could not be retrieved.

Of course, Klein still had a large portion of his characteristics within the Worms of Spirit above the gray fog, and within the remaining marionettes in Utopia—Zaratul neither needed additional Beyonder characteristics nor wanted them to affect His own state. Therefore, He had not directly used the law of Beyonder characteristic convergence to draw away the same-pathway characteristics within Utopia. Instead, He had used another method to collect them, which was relatively slow and required time.

After making this wish, Klein summoned the Curtain, draped it behind him, and snapped his fingers.

From the pile of miscellaneous items, the Seer pathway Beyonder characteristics from Sequence 9 to Sequence 3 that had previously been separated from the Curtain floated up at the same time. They turned into pure points of light and entered Klein’s body.

His state instantly returned to what it had been before, when he had almost finished digesting the Miracle Invoker potion. Apart from the fact that he had no physical body, he was no different from when he had suffered the attack.

Immediately afterward, Klein turned his gaze toward Utopia, which had a close connection to him.

…

Inside Utopia, Zaratul stood on the roof of Saint Arianna Cathedral. His face was covered with a white beard; he wore a hood and black robes. Around Him were the historical projections of Roselle Gustav, William Augustus, and the Abomination Suah. He was patiently waiting for the door of the Cathedral of Bones to open and for Gehrman Sparrow to walk out on his own.

Under His control, some of His marionettes were dealing with the small number of Utopia marionettes that had begun to show abnormalities, leaving those that still temporarily remained normal for last.

At that moment, on the bodies of the unmoving Utopia marionettes, thin and illusory Spirit Body Threads suddenly floated upward, rising rapidly toward an infinitely high place.

They came alive in an instant and turned in unison, looking toward Zaratul and His historical projections.

Their pairs of eyes shone brightly in the darkness.

At the same time, a vast shadow descended from the faintly emerging grayish-white fog, enveloping the whole of Utopia.

Zaratul and His historical projections instinctively raised their heads and looked up at the high sky now suffused with a faint gray fog.

“This place shall not be sealed off.” The next second, William Augustus’s historical projection lifted the longsword in his right hand and solemnly proclaimed.

The shadow covering Utopia immediately shook, and gaps appeared in multiple places. It could no longer completely isolate this city of marionettes from the outside world.

Roselle Gustav’s historical projection at once transformed into a torrent of complex information, surging toward Klein’s remaining marionettes in an attempt to interfere with their actions. The historical projection of Suah, the Abomination, attacked the curtain-like shadow, widening the corresponding gaps.

Zaratul then stretched out His hand, connecting the void before Him with another island in the Berserk Sea that He had already marked.

Next, as long as He took one step forward, He would be able to leave Utopia.

At that instant, before the torrent of information could fill their spirit bodies, Klein’s marionettes opened their mouths at the same time and chanted a word in Jotun:

“Leodero!”

If this were the Forsaken Land of the Gods, the lingering divine power of the Tyrant there would have allowed Klein to directly draw down a god’s power merely by speaking that name. But the outside world was different. Whether to punish those who spoke His true name was up to the Lord of Storms Himself.

The only purpose behind Klein having the marionettes speak this honorific name at the same time was to make the Lord of Storms cast His gaze here.

As one of the five Omniscient and Omnipotent pathways, the Lord of Storms was likely one of the true gods least willing to see Adam’s scheme succeed. If Amon became the Lord of the Mysteries, the King of Space-Time, then this Tyrant would be placed in an extremely dangerous situation, forced to constantly worry that the son of the Creator might deal with Him and help Adam or the True Creator ascend to the position of Lord of the Astral World.

Therefore, compared to Evernight and the Earth Mother, the Lord of Storms, the Eternal Blazing Sun, and the God of Knowledge and Wisdom might be the ones even less willing to see Adam and Amon succeed.

If there was another chance later, Klein planned to have the marionettes continue shouting “Aucuses” and “Herabergen!”

The surroundings of Utopia immediately turned gloomy, as though containing an indescribable wrath of nature.

Before Zaratul could take that step, streaks of lightning in different colors suddenly leapt across the night sky. They brandished claws and bared teeth; they expanded wildly, seeming to turn the entire sky into an ocean of thunder.

Rumble!

Before the deafening sound could spread, the lightning fell toward Utopia like a torrential downpour.

…

Rorsted Archipelago, New City of Silver, at the top of the round tower.

Derrick Berg, who was gazing toward the source of the earthquake, heard the sound of doors and windows opening at the same time—and not just one or two. There were thousands upon thousands of them.

Although this did not directly bring any danger, the eerie change still put Derrick on high alert.

After a slight hesitation, he prepared to find the current Chief, Waite Hillmon, and suggest using the god-grade Sealed Artifact, Proof of Glory, to first protect the New City of Silver and the new Moon City in the nearby forest, then decide whether to pray to Mr. Fool based on how the abnormality developed.

Just as he turned and walked toward the door, Waite Hillmon, whose forehead was tattooed with dark-cyan symbols, emerged from the light in the corridor and said in a deep voice, “The underground seals have failed.”

The seals have failed… Derrick instinctively believed this was connected to the abnormality on Blue Mountain Island.

And compared to doors and windows opening everywhere, the consequences of failed seals were terrifying to contemplate!

“Use Proof of Glory immediately!” Derrick said without the slightest hesitation.

This was a god-grade Sealed Artifact that could be used for short periods of time. It had once helped the City of Silver block disaster after disaster in the Forsaken Land of the Gods, allowing them to endure until the present era and obtain salvation.

Derrick’s thinking was very clear: use Proof of Glory to suppress the other god-grade Sealed Artifact, Earth’s Gift, as well as the saint-grade Sealed Artifacts that would soon exert negative influence on their surroundings.

Waite Hillmon said nothing more. He immediately made a decision and, together with Derrick, hid within the light and entered the underground.

—Proof of Glory required at least two Saints to be used. This was precisely why Waite Hillmon had not immediately headed underground but had first come to look for Derrick. Of course, if one only wished to make simple use of it, there were tricks available, but they required advance preparation: the corresponding mark had to be branded onto one’s body ahead of time.

…

Bayam, Waves Cathedral.

A streak of lightning shot rapidly into Alger Wilson’s room and transformed into an urgent voice.

“Your Eminence, most of the underground seals have failed! Only the balances formed between certain items through mutually restraining effects have not vanished!”

Alger’s brows moved slightly. Combining this with the simultaneous opening of all the doors and windows in Bayam, he sensed that something deeply unusual was happening.

He immediately spoke into the void.

“Form teams of three at once. Remove the Grade 2 and Grade 3 Sealed Artifacts that will not cause too much harm in the short term, as well as those that possess living traits, from the underground. Avoid a chain reaction.”

In this way, the underground would become an uninhabited zone. Those dangerous Sealed Artifacts would be unable to cause casualties for the time being.

As time passed, once the abnormality causing the seal failures was over, the Mandated Punishers would be able to free up their hands to deal with these items.

However, this all depended on whether the three Grade 1 Sealed Artifacts went out of control.

If they did, their negative effects would influence the whole of Bayam before long.

And now that the seals had already failed, it was difficult for those three items not to have problems.

The first thought that flashed through Alger’s mind was to take the item with the widest range of negative influence, use his own abilities to temporarily control it, and then fly out over the sea, far away from Bayam.

For him, this would not be too dangerous in the short term. After all, he was also a demigod. The biggest problem was that the remaining two Grade 1 Sealed Artifacts would undoubtedly cause extremely severe destruction to Bayam.

At least I did my best… Alger felt this method was both safe and sufficient to answer any later investigation by the Church of Storms. It was quite a good plan.

His gaze subconsciously moved toward the window. Beyond it lay the schools and almshouses near the cathedral.

Alger withdrew his gaze and fell silent for two seconds. Then he sighed and continued, “Leave the rest to me.”

His words transformed into one electrical signal after another, combining into silver-white lightning that flew underground.