Chapter 169

Servants of Magic (4)

"Well, let's go further."

"Yes, my lord."

I walked slowly with the priests toward the divine power flowing from the beyond.

I then felt a strange feeling of apprehension along my spine.

It was suspicious and sinister.

'Although it indeed is the power of Igras-Sho.'

That was made even more evident due to the priests' reaction.

They looked deeply moved as one.

Seeing them shed tears and shiver like they did when they first met me, I felt like there indeed was a part of the god's body, the leg, that was sealed in there.

It would've been even more strange if there wasn't since I had never felt that much presence even when the god initiated a conversation on the altar or communicated through the sacred beast.

If I were to compare it, perhaps it was at the same league as when I was confronting Mercadius?

There surely was something beyond that.

But then...

'Why does it feel like there's a strange atmosphere mixed in it? It's very faint, though, but I can still sense it.'

A hunch kept whispering to me.

It warned me to proceed with caution.

As we got closer to it, slowly but surely, the faster the priests walked.

An urgent feeling was revealed in their action.

After a while, the feeling that overwhelmed us reached its peak.

The creepiness that only I could feel rushed through my entire body.

"Huh?"

"That's..."

The voices of the priests, which had been stained with bafflement, soon turned to a joyful echo.

Wriggle!

Wobble! Swish!

At first, I thought it was a cockroach.

Small creatures densely covered the walls.

Countless entities gathered and rocked like a black carpet hung under a windy night.

The outline of their body was similar to that of a spider.

They were seven-legged beings that I had seen enough through the god's statue.

In the place where their head was supposed to be attached, six tentacles that were reminiscent of a starfish stretched out in all directions like petals, swaying ever so idly.

"Those are creatures molded after the great being's image... then it must be a sacred beast!"

No, it wasn't.

I had seen the sacred beast of Igras-Sho twice so far. It was nothing like that.

'They had black tentacles.'

And the force I felt from them, although very slight, was different.

The unpleasantness was mixed with the presence of the Igras-Sho.

... Ah? Did I just say unpleasantness?

Yes, there was a reason why it felt queasy.

The feeling was so faint as if it meant to tickle my senses. It seemed like it was about to get caught yet far from it as well.

"There!"

One of the priests shouted with bloodshot eyes.

On the place where the priest's finger was pointed...

Shhh!

As the small spiders scampered as if to move away, the object that was hidden beneath them was revealed.

In that place, as if the look of the small creatures were enlarged a few hundred times, was a creature that looked the same but had a size that was incomparable to the previous entities.

Screech!

Six tentacles attached on its head fully bloomed.

At that moment...

Zoom!

A wave propagated from that place, and I felt my head throb.

- [The Successor's Eyes] has resisted against [?????? (Rank: ?????)]

That creature had attempted something on all of us just then!

The name of the skill didn't come up. It was the same as the phenomenon I experienced when I was contacted by Igras-Sho.

Considering the fact that [The Successor's Eyes] put up a resistance against it, it was something that interfered with the mind.

What the wave coerced to do and the spider's intention was confirmed immediately through the priests' reaction.

"Aah!"

Among the accompanied priest, the one with the least divine power walked forward with staggering steps.

The floor was full of tiny spiders, but he took a step regardless of that.

Crush!

The spiders that couldn't avoid in time were trampled and died, causing their bodily fluids to splash across the floor.

He spoke in a cracked voice.

"I... I take on the command of a great being!"

He sounded like he was responding to a voice I couldn't hear.

The priest raised his hands with only bones left and wrapped his head.

Crunch!

In that manner, as if a watermelon had just exploded, his skull shattered apart, and his flesh, brain fragments, and bone pieces splashed all around the vicinity.

I shouted with fright.

"Everyone back up!"

The fastest one to move was the archbishop. He was the one that had the most divine power aside from me in that place.

Among the rest of the priests, although some had moved immediately according to my instructions...

Crunch! Wack!

Some died of self-inflicted injuries, preventing us from ever saving them from such a terrible fate.

Most of them were relatively weak in divine power.

The nose-poking blood stench spread everywhere, and those relatively intact ones eagerly defended those that hadn't died yet.

All hell went loose in an instant.

'The waves that the creature is propagating is tempting us to harm ourselves!'

At that moment...

Drip!

Blood trickled down from the holy wound of the finger again. It was as if it was rushing me again.

At the same time, the four seals on the back of my hand began to prick. The blood started to gather.

"Could it be?"

I concentrated on my senses while keeping my distance.

I could still feel the traces of Igras-Sho from that giant spider.

However, something unpleasant was mixed in it.

Whatever it was wasn't easy to identify. However, when it thickened as it started to emit strange waves, its trace became clearer.

Only then did I finally realize what it was.

"This is the divine power that Mercadius bore!"

"What? What did you say?"

The archbishop asked in confusion while he was occupied with pulling back the priests who were trying to hurt themselves. He knocked them unconscious instead of allowing them to commit suicide. Due to that, he couldn't understand my words.

I explained it to him.

"What that creature bears is not purely the power of the 'god of magic.' It also bears the divine power of another god."

I noticed it a bit late since the overwhelming energy of Igras-Sho, the god of magic, overshadowed it.

Why did such a creature exist there?

A scenario was immediately drawn in my head.

Shh!

When I lifted my sword, the archbishop freaked out and stopped me.

"M-my lord, you mustn't! Seeing that we can feel such a strong divine power from it, that creature is surely not an ordinary sacred beast, but...."

I nodded in agreement.

"Yes, that's right. That's the eighth leg the magical god lost. It appears to be the severed flesh of the god."

Wobble!

Keeping its ground in the middle of the cave, the giant spider constantly gave birth to a small creature that resembled itself from its end.

I could be sure that that was the being that morphed from the severed leg of the god.

Just as the fragments of Planaria, which had the super-regenerative ability, grew into new individuals, that object also had mimicked the main body.

Of course, however, it failed to grow into another deity. All it could do was mimic its appearance at best, and it had borne a divine power incomparable to the main body.

The archbishop shouted in a trembling voice.

"Then we have to send it back to the god!"

"I don't think it's possible in this state. The monster was the one that tried to manipulate the minds of the priests just now."

"What?!"

I didn't miss it due to my senses.

I stared into the center of the giant spider's body.

I felt the traces of the 'god of mind' wriggling inside it.

I could finally understand why Igras-Sho gave the archbishop the oracle.

Without me, it would have been hard for them to fight by themselves, resisting the power that distorted their minds.

"That is currently contaminated."

I aimed my sword at it.

"We will purify it and dedicate it to the god of magic. Cover me!"

As soon as I finished saying so, I stretched out my sword. Along the path that I extended, sword energy resembling nine dragons shot forward.

A new sword path was made by borrowing the sword god's power and combining the enlightenment I gained of sword movements known to the reincarnates of the past.

Boo-boo-boom!

The sword energy, which spread out like flames as soon as it crashed, swallowed the tiny spiders crawling on the cave walls at once and scorched them.

The only thing left at that moment was the giant spider that was keeping its ground in the center.

Screech!

With a creepy noise...

Shhhh!

I almost couldn't dodge it.

The spider's attack was literally at light speed.

How I was able to block it wasn't because I had reacted after seeing it.

It was thanks to preemptively responding by sensing the divine power before the attack could even be fired.

The rock wall that was directly hit by the laser shot out from the spider's end melted in an instant.

I had unleashed a shield barrier, but I couldn't protect all the priests unavoidably, and those that were attacked immediately got turned into ashes.

'It's extremely fast!'

No sacred power, skill, or magic I had witnessed so far had been that fast.

It's an attack that had surpassed the speed of cognitive abilities of a creature.

'If I just watch then block after, I'll immediately get hit! I have to focus on my senses as much as I can-!'

I soared into the air.

The moment I did, the spider began to focus its attack on me.

Laser rays burned the space, melted the rock walls, and cause flames to spark across the place.

"Our god!"

Flames, ice, electric current, and shock waves were poured out by the priests in the rear, all attempting to strike the spider.

Pure divine power was mixed in with each spell to attack the contaminated divine power.

Under their cover, I gathered the power of the four gods and wrapped it around me, and separated the air.

Screech!

Crush!

Every time it plowed through the spider's flesh, the burning sword penetrated over and over.

Its body wasn't that of a normal creature.

Darkness flowed along the trajectory of the sword I swung, which then scattered in all directions.

I cut off at the darkness, layer by layer as if to dig into it.

Sensitized sensations sought a direction to gouge out the eerie energy inside the spider's stomach.

I attacked intensively only to penetrate it.

'It's in that place! The main culprit that contaminated the spider!'

I gathered my strength together once more.

Resistive force repelling divine forces of a different kind.

The cycle of me first predicting the attack, blocking, and then the spider attacking repeated endlessly. After the heavy rain of light, my sword dug up the spider's stomach without fail.

After cutting out the darkness in all directions as if to slice sashimi, I finally bore witness to it.

'It's different from the Mercadius's form!'

There was no such thing as a Red Mana mixed in it.

It was understandable. The time when that object had seeped in the severed god's flesh would've been a lot earlier than the incident that the Mercadius had obtained the 'skill.'

Perhaps it happened shortly after the collapse of the material world.

More precisely speaking, perhaps the timing would be right if it was done after the god of mind went missing?

"Here it is!"

With the sword made out of four interlinked divine power, I struck the spider's belly.

The small dot would've been like a fatal blow to the spider right at that moment.

I stabbed deeply and thrust in.

Boo-boo-boom!

The foreign divine power confronted the four kinds of sacred energies of the gods that agreed to go along with each other, causing a huge explosion to occur.

It was such a shock that it made me worry if the cave would collapse.

'Begone! Disappear from its body!'

While having the sword stuck in, I poured all the divine power I had into it.

The force I pushed into it was concentrated only on the traces of the "god of mind" stuck in it instead of spreading and attacking the entirety of the spider's body.

And after a while...

Screech!

I finally observed a change.

The outskirt of divine power disappeared like a phantom.

It shattered and gradually scattered.

The energy that remained in the middle of the spider's belly gradually shrunk until it finally disappeared.

At that moment-

Paht!

"Huh?!"

The surviving priests were astonished.

My eyes also opened wide unknowingly.

"What's this?"

The light stemmed and crossed the cave, carving out all the landscapes in our sight.

It felt like we were watching a scene where cracks and light leaked out on the eggshell that conceived the sun.

As the traces resembling the god of mind disappeared, the darkness covering the spider's outer skin faded and steadily disappeared.

Afterward, a strong ray of light broke out of the spider along the path where the shadow disappeared.

I was cautious that it might have malice and destructive power like the rays that attacked us recently, but it was different.

The light seemed more intent to reveal its existence than to attack.

In such an instant, the black surface disappeared, and only the brilliant waterfall of light remained.

At that point, it had reached a state where we couldn't look straight at the spider with our naked eyes.

And...

Whoooong!

The spider floating, wrapped in light, spun as it twisted its body.

Like a waterspout created above a lake, it tightened its slender body and made itself thinner.

When it completed taking shape, a long object floated in front of us, emitting holy light.

The archbishop cried.

"The eighth leg!"

It was difficult to breathe since the traces of pure Igras-Sho after the unpleasant feeling disappeared were so intensely filling up the surroundings, causing air to have difficulties traveling into my lungs.

The archbishop wiped away his tears and gave me a suggestion.

"Chosen one... It's your grace. You should consecrate to the great being yourself!"

Originally, fancy rituals and ceremonies would have to be followed to match the congregation's format.

At that moment, however, I didn't think they would need such empty formalities.

The priests of the congregation and the 'one' that awaited the dedication wanted its leg back.

Therefore, I held onto the shining spider's legs with my hands and prayed with my desire in a sincere manner.

'Oh, Great Being. I consecrate this to you.'

It was a prayer that was done in my own will for the sake of connecting to Igras-sho.

I then felt like it had answered for the first time since I came there.

It expressed words full of gratitude and joy.

- By this, you have completed me, mortal.

In the next moment, I saw a different space than the cave we were in.

The priests disappeared, and an alien landscape unfolded.

'This is-!'

The place was familiar.

The thick wobbling darkness was all over the place where the glaring light I had dedicated the leg to hadn't reached.

It was where I first met Igras-Sho.

And that time again, there was the god in front of me.

Igras-Sho looked like a plain mass of flesh compared to the spider I once saw in the material world.

The darkness continued to flow from the base of the severed leg, covering the surroundings.

But at that moment...

- Finally!

The god brought the leg that turned to light near the cut surface.

Boosh!

Afterward, the light that had filled the surroundings began to cut and consume the darkness.

The starlight-like glow melted and covered the dark universe, and the fiery Milky Way lit up all the shrouded spaces.

I let out an exclamation unbeknownst to me.

'It has returned!'

I realized that the magic element that had been lost had been revived.

Even without the god's declaration, for those who contained the power of Igras-Sho in their bodies, they just knew instinctively.

Although I couldn't see any of them, the archbishop, priests who came along, the remaining members of the headquarters, and the believers, spread throughout the dimension, must've realized.

The magic of the eighth element.

I experimented on it.

Booooosh!

When I raised my hand, a photon fluttered at the end.

'So that's what it was.'

I could see why Igras-Sho, whose leg had been cut off, kept shedding darkness like blood, why the space I was in was so full of darkness, and why the breathtaking darkness was around him whenever the god descended.

'Darkness is, after all, the absence of light.'

At that moment, Igras-Sho had recovered what he had lost for a long time.

The god laughed, and I was thrilled.

From that point on, the mortals of the material world would come to know of the light element magic.