While the summit received the intelligence, the witches stationed halfway up the mountain also learned that the sealing ritual would begin ahead of schedule.
"A powerful Ring Caster with a sword?"
The witches chose not to enter the interior of the mountain to guard the seal, but instead waited on the cliff where the passage entrance was located. Miss Aurora held the parchment scroll, looking in surprise at Grandma Cassandra beside her.
"This couldn't be—"
"It likely is."
The old witch sat by a campfire, with Sister Devlin on the other side. The burning flame was the Primal Fire; as long as this bonfire existed, the anomalies of the In-Between could not affect them.
The witches' followers and the nuns of the Spiritualist Order were currently scattered around, preparing to face the next wave of undead assaults. Sister Devlin suddenly looked up at the sky, and the two Great Witches also frowned and looked upward.
Faintly, a massive black shadow above the thick fog became clearer. Then, they saw a skull like a Titan giant, composed of densely packed souls of the dead, gazing down at them.
Those thousands of wailing souls trembled irregularly. As the skull gradually became distinct, their terrifying expressions were reflected clearly in everyone's eyes. Even the bravest person could not look directly at this horrific sight, but the two witches did not care at all.
Embedded in the center of the skull's brow, a physical human being was visible. Miss Aurora narrowed her eyes to observe, then let out a huff from her pretty nose
"Joey Barton. How cliché. Does he think that accumulation of quantity can overcome quality?"
She raised her hands and clapped twice.
"Girls, get ready."
She raised her right hand and snapped her fingers, and twelve golden spheres of light began rotating around her head. Grandma Cassandra picked up her cane from the ground and stood up, a massive and eerie shadow trembling beneath her feet. Sister Devlin reached her hand into the bonfire before her and drew out the lime sword.
Standing up, as silver, cold shards drifted in the air, she grasped a small scythe. If one observed closely, the appearance of this scythe was identical to the weapon wielded by the giant shadow behind Joey Barton when he used the "Death God's Scythe."
The nun flicked her right hand in the air, and the lime shell on the surface of the Angel-grade relic [Ashes] peeled away. As cracks appeared on her body and clothes, the afterglow of the First Fire flickered upon the two weapons.
The battle halfway up the mountain erupted earlier than those at the summit and the foot. Perhaps in Joey Barton's eyes, the witches were easier to deal with than the Church of the True Gods. He was merely a Ring Caster, not even a core member of the "Truth Society," so he naturally did not know what the [Witches' Council] truly represented, nor did he understand what a Twelfth-Circle Witch who doubled as a Twelfth-Ring Caster meant when fighting without restraint.
In the Natural Cathedral at the foot of the In-Between, Shade was still carefully exchanging intelligence with Iluna. On the cliff halfway up the In-Between, the witch who inherited the power of the Fifth Epoch and the nun guarding the Primal Fire joined forces to oppose the manifested Joey Barton. Around the Great Rift at the summit of the In-Between, accompanied by rumbling sounds, the ancient souls hidden within the mountain were awakening, summoned by the In-Between.
The thick fog permeated everything, like an illusory curtain about to be drawn. Beside the bonfire, Shade gazed at the flames before him, and in a daze, he somehow thought of the fourth-ranked Death Candidate mentioned by Luvia.
He had originally thought that the candidate whose identity was still unknown was a vampire, and that Armand Bernhart had come to Midhillburg to help the other secure the status of the Chosen. But thinking about it now, perhaps the vampires' grand plan truly had nothing to do with the Chosen or the In-Between. Even so, the fourth candidate, who had yet to appear, might still show up in this final decisive battle.
"The fourth-ranked candidate is almost unrelated to the descriptions in the Poetic Verses, so the inherited power of the Ancient God is nearly undetectable. But it is certain that he or she must share some characteristics with the first-ranked Joey Barton... could it be those eyes that see through death?"
If Luvia had appeared in Midhillburg, Shade would have even considered that she might be the fourth candidate. Those purple eyes definitely possessed the power to see through death. But from the current situation, Luvia was clearly not.
"Then who could it be? Has the party already been dragged into this? Do they know the contents of the ritual, and that before the ritual begins, a person who has returned from the dead must be killed..."
Subconsciously, he turned to look at Iluna. The seventeen-year-old girl also looked at Shade, even giving him a playful wink.
Under the light of the bonfire, Shade momentarily saw her left eye turn a bright gold. This was not Iluna's original eye; her true left eye had been used as a sacrifice during the Balanced Chosen ritual. Her current left eye was a gift given by Shade using the power of divinity during his first—and currently last—instance of "burning divinity to embody a god."
This eye was very beautiful, and because it was a divine creation, it possessed many complex functions. Furthermore, because that eye was originally meant to be sacrificed to an Ancient God, the replacement eye could actually exert the power of [Balance] better than Iluna's own true right eye. Sometimes Shade even felt that one day, Iluna might be able to see the traces he left—which usually required [Blood Echo]—without using spells or oddities.
Thinking of this, Shade frowned.
"The result of Luvia's coin divination at the time was that as of the moment Iluna arrived in Midhillburg, there were at least four candidates for the Chosen in the city... as of... hmm. Could such a thing happen?"
He looked at Iluna. Although the seventeen-year-old girl was not as stunning as the witches, she was quite beautiful among non-witches. Moreover, due to her youth, she possessed a special freshness that Miss Galina and Miss Aurora lacked.
The outsider still remembered the morning he first met Iluna. He had only been in this world for a few days and was on his way to "Good Peter's Pet Shop" in Purple Iris Alley, near St. Delan Square, to pick up Mia, when he bumped into Iluna at the shop entrance.
At that moment, he felt as if all the surrounding light had dimmed, with only a single beam shining upon Iluna. In contrast, the first candidates he encountered afterward, whether it was Darkness or Joey Barton, did not evoke this peculiar feeling.
"Is there something strange on my face?"
Seeing Shade staring at her, Iluna asked somewhat shyly. Shade shook his head and continued to gaze at the flames.
"I just thought of some strange things, just guesses... regardless, we should solve the Joey Barton problem first."
The twenty-minute break was enough for Shade to recover his physical strength and spirit by the bonfire. When he stood up again, he felt as if he had endless energy coursing through his body.
He had intended to take a walk around the cathedral while there was still time. Just as he was thinking about how to persuade the high-ring casters in the cathedral to let him look in the basement, he heard a dull but clear bell tolling from the depths of the white fog outside.
Everyone stopped what they were doing to listen carefully. It was nine consecutive tolls. Following the bells, all the ritual supplies and ritual marks prepared for the sealing ceremony inside the cathedral began to flicker with a golden glow. The holy symbol of the God of Nature—two overlapping leaves—hanging on the wall at the end of the main chapel began to scatter miracle elements throughout the cathedral, while outside, the white fog grew turbulent.
"It's starting," Iluna said softly.
Shade frowned and looked toward the cathedral entrance; his keen senses allowed him to perceive a further change in the In-Between. The whisper elements almost overwhelmed the miracle elements even inside the cathedral. Further away, he heard a sound like the roar of an ancient beast, and the rumbling vibration of the ground signaled that something was coming.
In the real Midhillburg region, the great earthquake previously announced in the newspapers arrived as scheduled. With a rumbling sound as if Mount Sicar was about to split apart, Midhillburg, shrouded in white fog, endured the devastation of natural power. Giant boulders crashed down from the summit of the real Mount Sicar, thick black smoke billowed from the mountain pass lake, the lake water boiled explosively, and the dormant volcano was being reactivated.
Ruf Lane, House of the Blind.
Sister Michelle stood by the second-floor window, leaning against the frame and feeling the vibration of the building. Many people stood behind her; after Shade's departure, quite a few ring casters had come seeking help. Sister Michelle knew their worries, and she shared them. Sister Devlin had prophesied what was to happen, and she knew better than anyone how terrifying the coming night would be.
"This dormant volcano is finally about to erupt."
St. Carla Avenue, Cassandra Auction House.
The old witch's young apprentice, Miss Rita Swift, was comforting the staff who had not left the auction house in the first-floor lobby, organizing the ring casters left by the witch to prepare for the undead that might appear. The violent earthquake left everyone looking pale, and at this moment, three strange figures appeared outside the auction house. They were three pale middle-aged men: one held a thorn scepter embedded with a ruby, one wore six gemstone rings of different colors, and one held black-and-white dual pistols. They all looked like nobles.
"Excuse me, are Miss Grace White and Miss Helen Black here... we have their invitations."
South City Slums, Spider-Tail Alley.
The flower-selling girl, whose entire stock Shade had once bought out, huddled in a drafty, dilapidated house with her parents and siblings, eyes closed and shivering during the earthquake. Outside was the howling wind, and something massive was moving slowly in the depths of the white fog, casting a giant black shadow upon the window.
This was the Midhillburg slum, the sanctuary for the propertyless poor living in this city. Tonight, no one could help them except themselves. Suddenly, a knock sounded at the drafty door. The scruffy, not-very-tall middle-aged man grabbed the family's only kitchen knife and stood in front of his family.
"Don't be afraid, I will protect you, Mary, Jane, Dennis, and little Harry."
Mount Sicar, the dense forest at the foot.
The Delarion Royal Army stationed in the Mount Sicar region had each found the positions their teams needed to guard within the forest. The fifty-man squad led by Captain Lades was constructing defensive fortifications, responsible for protecting a silver stake erected in the woods. The silver stake was driven into the soil like a nail, its surface covered in complex, fine patterns that led the young corporals to speculate about its value.
Captain Lades, draped in a cold-weather cloak and wearing his leather boots, gazed at the fog-shrouded evening forest, then looked down at the rotting corpse with a shattered skull on the ground.
He clutched the amulet Shade had sent him; even the sudden earthquake could not disturb this middle-aged man's thoughts.
"I have a feeling something incredible will happen tonight... the dead returning to life? It turns out the stories weren't lies; legendary magic really exists."
The Five-God Cathedral.
The earthquake did not interfere with the ritual that had been planned for a year. The ring caster squads remaining in the real world were all deployed to clear the city of the undead, who had become powerful once again. Inside the cathedral, as old priests gathered from across the Old Continent and local ring casters participated in prayer in the magnificent main hall wearing uniform white robes, five golden pillars of light burst through the white fog from the cathedral, extending high into the sky. The holy symbols of the five True Gods appeared under the starry sky amidst the night fog.
A golden glow enveloped the entire city, making the real Mount Sicar look as if it were illuminated by the city below. The sealing ritual, "Scar of the Holy Tree," had officially begun.
And in the Natural Cathedral of the In-Between, the ordinary clergy who had been protected into the In-Between were now praying in low voices around the bonfire in the center of the main chapel. Hurrying ring casters, holding casting materials and their respective relics, watched the churning white fog from the doors and windows.
Hundreds of brass life-rings appeared simultaneously, though the steam fog did not overly obstruct their vision. No one spoke; everyone waited in silence.
The main body of the sealing ritual took place in reality; the cathedral in the In-Between did not require many additional ritual steps. What they had to do was withstand the assault of the undead on the Gate of Death before the ritual was officially completed.
The final battle was about to begin.
PS: One person will not occupy all the qualifications.
(End of Chapter)