Chapter 0153: Awakening

Atop the blood-soaked altar, three finished execution chairs, stained with blotches of blood, stood in a triangular arrangement. Grim, Entik, and Mary sat upright upon them, their expressions vacant as they waited for something.

Below them, on the altar’s first and second tiers, all the wizard apprentices lay sprawled in disarray. A massive bloody hole could be seen in every corpse, gushing torrents of blood. The arcane runes carved into the altar drank their fill and began lighting up one after another.

A blood mist slowly spread, draping the altar in a veil of eerie, sinister mystery.

When every one of the altar’s evil runes had been illuminated, the faintest murmurs of souls began to echo through the chamber. Countless resentful ghosts appeared in succession, circling and spiraling around the altar. Their vague, indistinct forms sometimes became beautiful young women of exquisite appearance, and at other times withered into hideous specters with gaunt, cadaverous faces...

Shrill, uncanny laughter rang without end.

Amid this grotesque scene, in which angels and devils shifted ceaselessly from one form to another, the apprentice corpses sprawled across the altar began to wither rapidly. Their flesh and souls seemed to be drawn away by some unseen force. Before long, they shriveled and transformed into the dead, ghoul-like remains of the departed.

The red light atop the altar grew ever more dazzling.

Performing a blood sacrifice in a material plane governed by strict planar laws would provoke a violent backlash from the consciousness of the plane. In a vast plane such as the Wizarding World, the ritual’s officiant was even more likely to suffer a terrifying counterattack.

Yet the blood altar that Wizard Anderson had built at such tremendous cost was evidently capable of dividing the backlash from the plane’s consciousness among the ritual’s three nodes. Thus, as the blood sacrifice proceeded, Grim, Entik, and Mary were bound firmly to their execution chairs, their bodies trembling like chaff in the wind.

They were not trembling from fear. Rather, an indescribably vast consciousness had locked onto them from afar and was transmitting its fury through the level of the laws. Under the pressure of that immense consciousness, blood sprayed from their mouths and noses, while red rivulets ran from the corners of their eyes and along their ears.

Yet these physical injuries were insignificant compared with the damage inflicted upon their souls. If the blood altar had not continuously drawn upon the apprentices’ vitality to sustain them, Grim and the others would probably have vanished into thin air the instant they came into contact with that vast consciousness.

Even so, after repeated collisions between their individual wills and the consciousness of the plane, the foundations of their souls had already become riddled with wounds, fragile and broken. Those spiritual injuries could be repaired with soul fragments transmitted through the altar, but doing so made it dangerously easy for these foreign fragments to contaminate the core of their souls.

Moreover, every soul fragment drawn in by the blood altar was steeped in the immense hatred, rage, fear, sorrow, and other negative emotions that the apprentices had released in their final moments.

For an ordinary soul, allowing so many negative emotions to surge into the mind at once was undoubtedly terrifying. This alone revealed that Wizard Anderson did not care whether the three of them could truly become wizards. Instead, he was using the blood sacrifice to stimulate their souls and bodily potential again and again, forcing them to grow prematurely while overdrawing their vitality and mental strength.

Once their minds and bodies had been driven to their utmost limits, their spiritual power might perhaps undergo a qualitative transformation through sheer accumulation. Taking the mass of negative emotions as its core, it could condense into a personal consciousness core. For this reason, many books of sorcery referred to the process by which a quasi-wizard advanced into a true wizard as the crystallization of spiritual consciousness.

Only when a quasi-wizard successfully, completely, and stably condensed a consciousness core could the advancement ritual be considered a true success. What Wizard Anderson had arranged for Grim and the other two, however, was an immature and unstable wizard advancement ritual.

Under the influence of the blood sacrifice, the three might be able to raise their bodies, minds, and spiritual power to the minimum threshold for advancement within a short period, and even condense consciousness cores of their own. But once the power of the blood sacrifice faded, their consciousness cores would sooner or later collapse again in the absence of a stable comprehension of the laws, inflicting irreparable damage upon their souls.

Wizard Anderson did not care.

What he wanted was precisely that brief period of qualitative transformation.

So long as he used the fleeting interval in which the three became wizards to perform a second blood sacrifice with them as offerings, he would need to endure only a small amount of backlash from the planar consciousness before instantly devouring the three newly condensed consciousness cores. At that point, he would have a thirty to forty percent chance of breaking through the bottleneck that had restrained him for years and becoming a coveted Second-Class Wizard in Sandtallin.

At the thought of the glorious future awaiting him, a surge of fervor rose and churned within Anderson’s heart. Yet the closer the ritual came to its climax, the less he could afford even the slightest relaxation or fatigue. He forcibly steadied his emotions and watched every minute change in the three figures bound to the execution chairs.

The blood sacrifice had gradually reached its climax. The three offerings were now at the critical juncture of condensing their consciousness cores. If that boy truly had some special arrangement in place, then this was also the perfect moment for him to launch a carefully prepared counterattack.

Accordingly, Anderson used various methods to monitor every subtle change in the three with his powerful spiritual force. Amid the torment of intense mental strain, he waited for the strange upheaval that might occur at any moment.

And, just as he had expected, when the power of the blood sacrifice on the altar had built to its most concentrated intensity, the damned disruption truly arrived.

It happened to Grim.

Seated upon the execution chair, his entire body had swollen several times larger under the stimulation of powerful life force and soul energy. Dense cracks spread across his massive, solid muscles, and an almost unbearable heat radiated from within him.

He had clearly chosen the path of fire specialization among elemental wizards. Yet this advancement ritual contained no resources capable of reinforcing his fire affinity. Should the backlash of advancement occur, he would likely suffer the most catastrophic consequences of the three.

Perhaps sensing the miserable fate awaiting him, Grim—whose body and soul had been completely controlled by the paper person—suddenly began to tremble violently. A terrifying fire-origin power, too intense for words, erupted within him. It blazed through his entire body, igniting even his soul.

Anderson’s face instantly turned livid.

Through his spiritual perception, he sensed the paper person hidden within Grim’s soul emitting shrill, terrified screams. Yet the command to ignite the body and soul had not come from the paper person.

Could it be... that, like Entik, Grim had concealed a second consciousness deep within his soul?

No matter how hard Anderson racked his brains, he could not comprehend the chip’s unique form of existence.

Embedded at the level of Grim’s genes, the chip was essentially an auxiliary brain. Its operations and thought processes took place through bioelectric currents, making it extremely difficult for outsiders to detect. Even with Anderson’s cunning and meticulousness, his dozens of inspections had focused primarily on traces of sorcery and fluctuations in elemental or spiritual energy.

The chip’s utterly unconventional mode of existence had allowed it to evade his scrutiny and remain hidden.

In truth, Grim and the chip had long since conducted countless simulations of the possible changes and developments in the blood sacrifice. Unless Wizard Anderson had lost his mind, it was inevitable that he would use some necessary spell or method to control the three of them before the ritual began.

That was why Grim had not concealed his hand at the outset and had directly revealed his trump card to Anderson. No matter what he said or did, Anderson would carry out the ritual all the same. In that case, Grim might as well expose his cards openly and leave Anderson suspicious and uncertain instead.

In reality, Grim’s body and soul truly had been unable to withstand the invasion of that bizarre paper person, and the creature had seized control of him through some special method. Fortunately, Grim had long ago devised hundreds, even thousands, of contingency plans with the chip for every possible circumstance.

When Grim lost his self-awareness, the chip had only to select and execute the most suitable plan at the critical moment of the blood sacrifice. After all, when it came to controlling the body, the paper person could never surpass the chip, which was itself a part of Grim’s body.

The plan the chip adopted was simple:

Burn itself.

The chip knew nothing about the paper person’s form of existence. But it only needed to know one thing: the other creature could not possibly be aligned with fire.

It burned itself completely. It ignited itself utterly. From mind and body to flesh and soul, every combustible substance within him began to burn.

Seated on the execution chair, Grim’s body shook violently. He threw back his head and released a long, agonized groan. A terrifying stream of flame, hot enough to make one’s scalp crawl, erupted from his mouth and nostrils. Within that torrent of fire, the paper person struggled and roared in pain and fury. Then it caught fire, was consumed, and finally scattered into a cloud of ash, vanishing without a trace.

Grim broke free of the soul’s restraints and awakened from the chaos.

The moment he regained consciousness, he frowned in pain.

Two utterly opposite sensations surged through him, from his flesh to his soul. For an instant, he thought he had gone mad. Otherwise, how could he simultaneously experience such contradictory and sharply opposed perceptions?

One sensation, extending from body to soul, kept telling him how wonderful his current condition was. Endless vitality and soul fragments filled with profound insights into consciousness surged into him, continuously strengthening and expanding his body and mind.

He had the illusion that he could grow ever stronger like this forever, without limit.

The other sensation was its exact opposite. A powerful premonition of death enveloped his body and soul, dimming his spirit until it seemed almost extinguished. He felt weaker and more insignificant than ever before, like a balloon stretched to its absolute limit, ready to vanish in the next instant with a single explosive pop.

Both sensations were vivid and immediate. Each engraved its overwhelming impression deep into Grim’s soul, leaving him utterly convinced.

Was he powerful or weak?

Was he about to ascend to the pinnacle of life, or was he hovering on the edge of death?

Grim was bewildered in an instant.