Chapter 169 (1/2)

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.