Magical Soul Parade

Chapter 380: Understanding The Grand Design

Himothy’s fist, along with the very will of the world that had been pressing down on Finn, began to shift backward in an instant. The crushing weight was forcibly pushed away by the surging divine energy flooding through Finn’s body. On his face, a white bone mask began to materialize, fleshing out of nothing and forming along his features — the definitive sign of the Errant Heretic.

From the passage between both worlds, figures started to pour out in an unending stream, all wearing the identical white bone masks. These were the believers of the Errant who had remained loyal and faithful over the many millennia in that world of Gods, the faithful who had first been brought into the fold of the Errant by Jon.

How they had known this particular event would occur, or how they had been organized enough to know the exact coordinate to emerge in droves, remained a complete mystery.

But as they came out by the thousands, the aura of the Errant Heretic soared. His divinity burned bright in this world that had no Gods, a world that naturally lacked the ability to forge or hold divine power.

With that violent pushback, the attack of the Glory Bearer was nullified entirely. Himothy’s body shuttled backward through the sky like a broken doll.

The energy he had congregated into his fist dissipated in an instant as the full brunt of the Error Bearer’s nullification broke through the Chaos Bearer’s limiting array and latched onto the battlefield.

Finn took the logic that divinity was not supposed to exist in this world and inverted it for a brief moment, rendering the baseline premise that forged the power behind Himothy’s attack completely null and void, ending their clash right then and there.

The might of the world, seeing that it no longer had a structural premise to continue its attack, dissipated. The sudden drain and siphon of energy from the surrounding Ossuarists and Transcendents snapped shut, releasing them.

Bodies dropped to the ground in a heavy slump across the battlements. Their eyes were wide with fright and terror from the near-death experience they had just survived. They didn’t even have the mental room to feel relieved that they were still breathing. Instead, their attention was focused entirely inward, directly at their own souls, checking frantically to see whether their natural soul density would revert back to its normal levels.

To their utmost horror, their worst fears were confirmed.

Caretaker-rank Ossuarists had dropped from their mighty heights of power, falling even past the lowest rank of the system. Their soul densities had breached the barrier dividing what was defined as an Ossuarist and what was defined as an Arcanist.

They had fallen completely into Arcanist territory, suddenly able to sense the raw mana in the surroundings while losing the ability to feel a single trace of soul energy.

Even worse, within that Arcanist hierarchy, they had fallen so incredibly low, their densities siphoned so thoroughly by the world’s draw, that they were now nothing more than low-ranking Adept-level Arcanists.

Some who were even more unlucky had fallen all the way down to the Novice level.

Preceptors were the only ones who seemed to have come out of the situation still somewhat in one piece. Those with Transcendent fragments powerful enough to enforce their core concept during the moment of the drain had not received as much damage as the rest.

Within the Sepulcher houses, only the core members of the families — those who bore the true, ancestral fragments — retained a significant amount of their soul density. They were still firmly within the Preceptor level, unlike the peripheral Preceptors of their families, some of whom had dropped to the Caretaker rank or even down to the Initiate rank of Ossuarists.

Aside from these core family members who still held their fragments, only the Transcendents themselves were left standing. But even they were entirely shaken by what had just occurred.

Without a doubt, if they had been fighting in their true Transcendent bodies and not these Ossuarist vessels bearing their fragments, they would have succumbed to the exact same fate as the Arcanists.

Transcendents in their true bodies were, after all, simply individuals who stood at the direct threshold between the top of the Arcanist level and the baseline of Ossuarist soul density. By all parameters, it was only their unique ability to touch upon universal concepts rather than simple elemental mana that made them special. And even then, that uniqueness didn’t bear its full structural strength until they possessed the bodies of Ossuarists, using them as vessels to bear their fully conscious soul masses in an unending cycle.

For a moment, the absolute fickleness of their situation dawned on all the Transcendents, dragging them from their already shaken, low point to an even more terrible, grounded reality. A deep hollowness settled in their eyes.

And as they cast their gaze up at Finn, the Errant Heretic, who had risen into the sky in full glory, looking down at the broad expanse of a battlefield that was now nothing but a black mass of destruction, the look in their eyes became even deeper.

This was the absolute limit of transcendence. This was the limit of mana. When the Glory Bearer had borne the might of something beyond him to clash against a divine entity, the simple after-effects of the collision had been enough to threaten the existence of the Transcendents themselves... the so-called true powers of the world.

Finn looked down at them with an unreadable expression behind the glowing green eyes of his mask.

These were the people upon whom he had wanted vengeance for so long. Yet, looking at them now, they looked only like wounded beasts, scared creatures who feared death and knew it was coming for them unless they found a way to break the limits of their transcendence.

In a way, he kind of sympathized and understood where they came from in their desperate bid to gain divinity. But in the same vein, he did not support the method with which they went about it, nor did he forgive them for involving him in their plans. The fact that he understood their motives didn’t mean he had changed his mind about their fates. It simply meant he had gained a deeper understanding of the grand design.

Finn’s eyes turned toward the far distance, his gaze narrowing behind his mask. His believers continued to pour out of the dimensional passage behind him, but his attention was no longer on them. He was looking straight ahead.

Far beyond the ruined battlements in the sky above the mountain peak, a simple, lone figure stood floating silently in the air. His hands were clasped calmly behind his back. His long, unbraided white hair whipped about his shoulders, flowing freely in the mountain wind.

He looked like a figure of immense renown, a being who truly transcended the limits of this world, carrying an air of absolute authority laced with a sharp, prickly sense of danger.

His pupils were pure, solid white, and his eyes were locked onto Finn across the vast distance.

Without needing to be told, Finn knew exactly who this person was...

Sage Limitless.

He had arrived.