Lord of The Mysterious Realms-Chapter 83: This Is Just the Beginning
It was like plummeting from the heavens, a disorienting freefall of loss and emptiness that threatened to drive him mad.
He opened his eyes and scrambled up from the cold floor. Beside him lay the shattered remains of the mirror, which had exploded moments before from reflecting that divine countenance.
Jenkins took a deep, steadying breath.
"That gel... was it divinity?"
It was the first thing that came to mind.
"It's likely not the divinity of the Eternal Blazing Sun," he mused. "None of the information I just received contained any occult knowledge pointing specifically to the Sun."
The concept of a Bestowal seemed to have taken on a new meaning for Jenkins, but he had more pressing matters to attend to.
First, there were the memories he had just absorbed. They confirmed much of what he already knew: the malevolent spirit had been an ordinary person in life, one who died consumed by a powerful grudge. She had battled Enchanters from the five major churches before being sealed away. But then some demon found her, broke the seal, and gave her an artifact capable of creating more spirits.
No, he hadn't seen the specific cause of her death. Her transformation into such a powerful entity might have been the demon's handiwork as well. Yet, the woman's memories held no image of the demon; it had never truly shown itself. All she recalled was a black shadow, orchestrating everything from behind the scenes.
He silently focused inward, feeling his soul settle back into his body, and took stock of the three Bestowals within him. He summoned his Black Robe. This time, however, it didn't form a disguise but materialized directly onto his shoulders as a physical garment. This change was a result of its brief contact with the divinity, a one-time alteration, he suspected.
He knelt and carefully swept the fine dust left behind by the powerful spirit's demise into a small vial. It was Ectoplasmic Powder, an exceedingly rare material that couldn't be wasted.
"Burning divinity," he murmured. "Did it really let me become a god, even for a moment?"
He pushed open the door of the hospital room and stepped into the dark, dilapidated corridor. His movements were utterly silent, the Black Robe concealing every trace of his passage.
"I see."
The knowledge contained within the divinity was a tangled skein of complex threads, but Jenkins managed to tease out a few useful strands of information:
"The substance of godhood is not found in this realm."
This was the first piece of information he had on ascending to godhood, and for now, it was the only one he could "see."
He shook his head. There were more important things to do.
The long hem of his Black Robe swept across the dusty floor as Jenkins glided out of the derelict building.
The Nightwatchmen patrolling the hospital grounds passed right by him, feeling nothing more than a sudden cold draft, completely oblivious to the deep, inky shadow that slipped past them.
He stopped before a flowerbed and knelt, digging into the soft earth for several minutes. Soon, he unearthed a withered, yellowed bone that looked as if it had been scorched. A single red thread was tied around it.
From the spirit's memories, he knew this was the object the sulfur-reeking man had given her: A-12-3-9991, the Soul Nest, also known as the Spirit Propagator. The man had only mentioned one of its properties: when held by a spiritual entity, it would rapidly generate a massive number of spirits similar in nature to its bearer.
Left unchecked, the bone could produce an army of undead large enough to overwhelm the entire city in just six months.
The red thread was a special item, enchanted through ritual magic to suppress the Cursed Item's aura. Otherwise, the spirit wouldn't have even needed to kill anyone; the mental contamination from the item alone would have been enough to turn a general hospital into a psychiatric ward.
"The scent of sulfur... a demon?"
Jenkins mused as he continued to dig. Soon, he uncovered the woman's rotting corpse.
Feeling a wave of fatigue, he sighed and finished unearthing the body of the wretched woman from the slums. He hesitated for a moment, then made the holy sign of the Sage over his chest:
"May the Sage watch over you. May His radiance illuminate the path ahead!"
Nolan City's slums were never lacking in such wretched souls. The number of bodies abandoned in sewers, back alleys, and slaughterhouses was astronomical.
Jenkins pitied her, but he would not forget the innocents who had died because of her actions.
The spirit's memories revealed that six innocent people were currently possessed by other entities, scattered across the various corners of Nolan City.
Jenkins couldn't hunt them all down himself; that was a task for the Church. There were, however, some people he could help.
Still cloaked in the Black Robe, he made his way to the far end of the hospital courtyard. Behind a low, yellowed-earth wall, he saw three small, clustered points of light. Jenkins silently pushed open a door and found three bodies lying on the floor.
These were three of Nolan's unregistered Enchanters. The spirit had captured them, intending to replace their souls, but it had been destroyed for coveting Jenkins's body before it could finish the deed.
The one nearest the door was Miss Hersha, whom he hadn't seen in some time. Jenkins used his candle to sear the putrid, greenish wounds on each of them. Then, under six pairs of confused and terrified eyes, he glided silently into the distance.
In the sky, unnoticed by Jenkins, a new star had appeared, radiating a brilliant purple light.
Many would find no sleep that night. The celestial anomaly signified the birth of a new pseudo-god, yet no one could discern the domain of this great being from the star's position in the heavens.
On the outskirts of Nolan, at the top of the Astrologer's Tower of the Church of Starry Sky and Equilibrium.
Miss Ivagarden, a believer of the Church of the Myriad Phenomena of the Starry Sky, and Miss Audrey, a believer of the Hermit of Destiny, stared nervously at the star chart in their hands.
"It's truly in Nolan. The prophesied The Unknown Path is here," Audrey murmured.
"But the Millstone of Fate, C-07-0-0001, prophesied nine candidates for Savior. Why...?" Ivagarden trailed off, looking at her friend with concern. The obsessive look on Audrey's face was unsettling.
"Now, 'The Unknown Path,' the 'World Tree Seedling,' and the 'Twin Demons' are all here. Nolan City will become like the Frozen Spire and the Wasted Sanctum from the great histories. The chosen Saviors will gather here, and this city will become destiny's grand stage!"
Miss Audrey repeated her declaration with conviction, then tossed her hair and rolled up the star chart.
"The purple star of destiny, foretold in the epics, has appeared. The dawn star that heralds the end of the epoch will appear within fifty years. Our time is short. We must find the Savior before the great cataclysm begins, before the final Cursed Item—the Beast of Calamity—emerges. This epoch's Millstone of Fate has been turned to its final chapter, and that chapter's theme is 'Steam.' The final calamity will be related to it. The world... it absolutely cannot be allowed to end with this epoch!"
Jenkins had no way to deal with the cursed bone himself. After he finished unearthing the woman's decomposed body and arranging it neatly in a conspicuous spot, he pulled the Black Robe tight and hurried home.
Chapter 83: This Is Just the Beginning
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