In the dead of night, the lonely stars fell like gossamer draped over the three-story mansion. Inside, on the second floor in a study, Lind Benedict paced back and forth with a furrowed brow, looking like an anxious office worker stressed over KPIs.
Here, his guise was that of an ordinary businessman managing several bottled water factories. As a necromancer, he adhered to the principle of using summoned minions for combat rather than engaging directly.
After a while, the communication terminal on the rosewood desk suddenly activated, manifesting an ethereal figure.
The figure was clad in unblemished white priestly robes, but its head and body were composed of swirling, inky black mist, like a personification of darkness.
“High… High Priest!” Lind immediately knelt, his voice trembling.
Indeed, this was his superior, one of the three high priests of the Holy Spirit Sect: the Soulfire High Priest— a walking strategic weapon and one of the top mages standing at the peak of individual combat power within the Origin Civilization.
It was rumored that if he wished, he could instantly strip the souls of tens of thousands from a town, casting them into an unfathomable hell where they could never be reborn.
Looking down at the kneeling Lind, the Soulfire High Priest’s shadowy countenance revealed no discernible emotion. Only a neutral voice emanated, “Have you located the experimental subjects that escaped Black Tower?”
“I… I have failed! I still have no leads…” Lind broke into a cold sweat. As a Reincarnation High Priest and the General of the Ghost Hand Society, he hadn’t felt this level of fear in a long time. “Please, grant me a little more time, High Priest…”
“His Holiness has reached an agreement with President John Tito Lokived. You have at most half a month; if you cannot find them by then, the government forces of New Eden will intervene,” the Soulfire High Priest said calmly. “At that point, we may not obtain either of the experimental subjects.”“New Eden?” Lind paused, immediately understanding the implications.
The two crucial experimental subjects from Black Tower had fled into the Rusted Bone Free City, entirely controlled by the Holy Spirit Sect. Even the Eight Great Corporations found it hard to navigate here. Thus, once they entered this place, Black Tower would need the Church’s assistance to retrieve them.
This explained why previously, as the General, he had received cooperation requests from Black Tower.
But because the importance of these two experimental subjects was paramount, the government of New Eden was also starting to stir, even considering a counter-terrorism war under the pretense of “rescuing the national hero Nameless.” They sent troops into Firth River to seize the experimental subjects before Black Tower and the Holy Spirit Sect could find them.
By then, regardless of whether Black Tower managed to recover one of them, it was likely the Holy Spirit Sect would find itself in vain, directly benefiting from President Lokived’s opportunism.
“I… I will definitely find them within half a month!” Lind took a deep breath. “But I may need to utilize some… large-scale methods. I hope the Church will approve my use of the ‘Soul Brains’…”
Necromancers weren’t particularly adept in one-on-one or frontal combat but did possess numerous methods for large-scale destruction, particularly in manipulating souls. Previously, he had hesitated to go all out for fear of significant repercussions, but with the deadline approaching, he could scarcely hold back any longer.
“Approved.”
“Thank you, High Priest…”
Moments later, the projection dissipated into starlight, leaving the study in eerie silence.
Lind inhaled deeply, quietly retrieving a small white skull from his clothing.
This was a specialized vessel containing a “Soul Brain.” The Soul Brain itself lacked physical substance; it was a special magical device born from a comprehensive understanding of necromantic magic practiced by the Holy Spirit Sect, best described as a “magical terminal made from souls.”
It had countless benefits.
For instance, it could be directly affixed to a spirit without requiring specific gear, becoming a second layer of spirit on top of the original.
It could also deploy AI and various software, leveraging the spirit’s capabilities to hijack the body, allowing for bodily management even without cyber enhancements.
Most remarkably, it amplified mental power, offering advantages in both spirit defense and spell manipulation far beyond those conventional terminals provided.
But why was such a device little known in the outside world?
The reason was simple; it had two critical flaws.
The first flaw was its raw material scarcity, requiring an extensive number of soul runes. In the grand scheme of things, only human spirits possessed the strongest souls, dwarfed tens of thousands or even millions of times by other biological souls. Even so, it took countless human souls to forge a single Soul Brain, sealing its status as an irreplaceable and nefarious object.
The second flaw was the technological inability to perfectly sever the connection between spirit and memory, resulting in a significant number of memory fragments remaining within the finished Soul Brain.
These memory remnants would gradually infiltrate the holder’s spirit during use, eventually reaching their core memories, thereby affecting their personalities, thoughts, and self-awareness—transforming them into a cybernetic lunatic or a fragmented personality.
Thus, even someone like Lind, a Reincarnation High Priest, was prohibited from using Soul Brains casually; he could only request permission from the higher-ups, namely the Soulfire High Priest, in case of vital needs.
“I should be able to use it for at least 20 minutes without adverse effects…” Estimating his spirit strengths against memory fragment infiltration rates, Lind pressed a button beneath the white skull.
“Please enter the security passphrase.” The mechanical voice emanated from the white skull.
“&*（￥%…” Lind recited a series of safety words, all composed of Rusted Bone dialect and then watched as the top of the skull opened from both sides, revealing a small compartment about one cubic centimeter in size, within which a small ball of phosphorescent flame was quietly swirling, resembling a droplet of green tears.
Gazing at this immensely precious object, Lind cautiously extended a hand to touch the green phosphorescence when suddenly, a white tendril emerged stealthily from the shadows, wrapping around the skull-shaped storage box and the Soul Brain, swiftly pulling it away.
Lind stood shocked, bewilderedly turning his head to spot a swirling black mass unfurl in the study shadows, revealing the figure of a silver-haired girl.
She held the small box in her hands, examining the green flame inside with curiosity, asking, “Is this the Soul Brain?”
“Y-You… give it back to me…” Lind trembled, his voice rife with indescribable anger, quickly escalating into a loud shout, “RETURN IT TO ME NOW!!”
Boom!
The chilling green flames erupted in the study, radiating outward. Yvette dodged out into the corridor, unwilling to bear the brunt of such a formidable soul attack.
She then directed her finger toward the Soul Brain in the box, immediately feeling a chilling sensation washing over her mind, complemented by a slightly robotic AI female voice overlaying her consciousness.
“System self-check in progress… Self-check complete… Unauthorized host detected, please enter the activation password.”
Of course, Yvette was oblivious to the activation password, but she surmised the architecture of the Soul Brain system resembled that of standard magical terminals. It could almost be considered a violent transplantation of code. Thus, using a bit of runic hacking, she could bypass the security protocols.
However, right now, she had to deal with the “General,” so she shelved this matter for the moment and turned to face Lind, who had rushed out from the study.
At that moment, propelled by a combination of anger and fear, Lind, fully losing his composure as a necromancer, chose not to create distance and summon his skeleton army. Instead, he conjured bone armor around himself and wielded a white bone blade, charging towards Yvette like a wraith of death.
Yvette, naturally, wouldn’t refuse such a duel invitation between mages. The red runes on her body flared to life as she raised her hands forward, expertly catching the bone blade aimed directly at her heart with her bare hands.
Lind momentarily froze, suddenly sensing something was off, but it was already too late. Yvette raised her leg and kicked him hard in the abdomen, propelling him backward. She grabbed his bone blade and lunged toward him, viciously stabbing toward Lind’s heart.
The magical barrier flickered and shattered layer by layer, along with a scream as Lind’s abdomen was slashed open, blood gushing forth. He gritted his teeth, using the momentum to ride the wind backward, tumbling down the stairs, quickly summoning the skeletons hidden beneath the garden soil.
“Kill her!” he roared, almost to himself like a cornered beast. In truth, he truly was one.
As a Reincarnation High Priest, part of his soul had already been sacrificed to the Soulfire High Priest; escaping was a dire impossibility. But losing the Holy Spirit Sect’s core secrets would ensure he faced a wrath far worse than death; his only option was to fight to the bitter end against this silver-haired girl and reclaim the Soul Brain.
Under the darkened skies, countless skeletal hands erupted from the grass, clawing toward the heavens and converging into a sprawling tide of skeletal warriors. They charged toward the mansion like frenzied beasts, agile and eerie in movement, sharing an essence with the aberrants if their appearances were disregarded.
Yvette, however, paid them no mind and pursued Lind intently, darting outside the house and then into the mansion’s garden and the adjoining golf course.
At this moment, the surroundings were finally open, with Yvette hovering in the air. The skeletons quickly advanced in a phalanx to cover Lind’s escape.
Seeing this, Yvette was forced to summon a series of rune circles above her head, ultimately reaching twelve.
This sight nearly shattered Lind’s psyche.
The presence of multiple rune circles represented the simultaneous casting of numerous spells; it involved an interlinked harmony of a mage’s mental power, magical energy, runic understanding, and the architecture of the spells themselves, embodying a mage’s overall strength.
Even a five-level mage like Lind, the distinguished Reincarnation High Priest, could only cast a maximum of five spells at once! Among his peers, the most adept could manage six, while the least capable could only perform three. These were all five-level mages, regarded as the world’s elite.
Why could she simultaneously cast twelve circles?
Was this merely a bluff? Was it just flashy effects?