Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic

Chapter 1938: The Meaning of Blindness

Shard in the fire had quietly taken a sip of essence, and as he split open the sea of fire, he unleashed another Moonlight Slash with his newly recovered Spirit. The brilliant moonlight was blocked by the giant fiery hand, having no impact on the Diviner.

"Be careful!"

He warned his brothers behind him who had a Ring of Fate floating above them; the firelight illuminated their faces, none showing any sign of retreat. The giant-like Diviner swung his massive hand at them, all three jumped back simultaneously, with the Edwards Brothers joining hands once more, and under their combined spellcasting, a gigantic mirror suddenly manifested in the air.

The mirror reflected the image of the Flame Giant, prompted by the brothers’ signal, Shard threw a Thunder Spear at the mirror, shattering it. The flames dimmed for a brief moment, but the ground vibrated again, and the Diviner in the fire revived once again.

An expanse of flames was again cast forth by him, and upon landing, the flames rapidly transformed into various fire humanoid figures. These figures all possessed souls; some were clearly necromancies, and a few were living souls.

Undoubtedly, these were the original residents of Green Lake Town and their descendants. Shard refrained from attacking them, as it would hasten the progression of the ritual. But when those fiery figures charged at the trio, attempting to self-destruct, they were forced to counterattack.

Even the fiery explosions would still ooze black fluid, polluting the ground. Though not fully understanding the ritual, Shard knew this could only worsen the situation.

"This won’t do!"

The essence-laden Shard, feeling feverish, asked the brothers:

"Do you have any solutions? If not, I’ll take the risk."

"If we had solutions, we wouldn’t wait for you!"

The brothers responded loudly, as mirrors appeared one after another around them. Monsters emerged from the mirrors to face the fiery apparitions, allowing them to continue their battle against their ancestor projected in the bonfire.

"Alright, get me some time, don’t worry about those Fire Men, help me fend off your ancestor’s projection."

The brothers clasped hands, turning back against the fiery figures surrounding them, leaving the mirror summons to be annihilated. They raised their eyes to the colossal fire figure above the bonfire. As it swung its hand towards Shard, lunging at it, the Edwards Brothers, gritting their teeth, used their few remaining Spirit to let the Ring of Fate’s Core Spirit Rune for [Space] radiate glimmer:

"Stop!"

The giant fire figure paused for less than a second before moving again, but this fleeting pause gave the brothers finally a chance to execute their final and most perilous move.

Shard seized the gap gained by the brothers, swiftly approaching the bonfire’s base, not thinking to use [Lagre’s Leap] due to the vast influence of spatial sorcery surrounding this flame.

He could not turn back; only "she" was there to describe what was happening behind him.

In the brothers’ hollow, blind eyes, dim gray luminescence appeared within the dark eye sockets. The gray light rapidly whirled within each socket, and as the brothers raised their hands, the dim gray glow drifted from their sockets, swirling in the air, annihilating everything around it, until it touched the flame, even the fire twisted into whirlpools and vanished.

The effective obstruction provided Shard with the best opportunity; he ultimately leapt forth, letting himself plunge into the flames.

The brothers couldn’t discern what Shard did after entering the fire; only a vague silhouette of him standing in the flames with arms spread wide.

The fire couldn’t harm Shard; instead, it filled him with warmth. Shard took a deep breath, and as he communicated with the power of the Fire of the Primordial flowing through his body, the bonfire flames trembled and continually retracted to the bottom, until the peculiar flames were absorbed into his body and transformed into Spirit by the Fire of the Primordial.

This was the first time Shard used the flame absorption power since acquiring it from Sister Delphine. The sister was indeed correct; though he gained the ability to transform fire into Spirit, the conversion efficiency was terribly low, barely surpassing a drop of the pink essence on his lips.

With the Flame Giant shrinking, the endless stream of Fire Men appearing from the fire sea ceased, soon being completely eradicated by the brothers. The flickering bonfire was continuously absorbed by Shard, and when they turned, intent on utilizing the power of their blind eyes to further aid Shard, the fire-constructed figure was already gone due to the flames diminishing.

Soon, the flames dancing over the bonfire were only what clung to Shard’s body. As Shard took one last breath, all the fire was finally fully absorbed by his body, and the blackened firewood beneath him, still carrying warmth, quickly cooled under the rain.

The rainwater soaked Shard’s newly dry clothing, though he had no time to care for this. Leaping from the bonfire remains, the trio stood back-to-back gazing at the chilling cemetery, and watched the indistinguishable shadows in the depths of the mist.

The Earth still trembled, but this time no further attacks followed. Under the remnants of the bonfire, blood-red trees swiftly took root and sprouted. Shard swung his Sword to cut them down, yet another tree soon grew. Further inspection revealed this tree connected to massive subterranean roots; unless Shard could uproot the titanic tree whose main body was unknown, he had no means to destroy the red tree.

After waiting for a long time with nothing else happening and confirming it was safe, the Edwards brothers sat on the blood-soaked cemetery ground without caring about their image. Shard looked around, noticing the fog spreading beyond the area originally illuminated by the bonfire. Eventually, apart from the ground becoming more blood-red and a large blood-red tree appearing, the thick fog in the cemetery became identical to the eerie woods outside, amidst the sound of drizzling rain.

The two brothers were indeed quite exhausted, but before Shard appeared, they had attempted several times to annihilate the villagers’ spirits, and they shared their findings:

"The spirits of the villagers appearing here are merely projections composed of their soul fragments and other soul energies. The arcane technique you used to annihilate souls is currently the most thorough method to eliminate them. Their true souls seem to be injured by that move you just made."

"Their true souls are likely within an Angel-Level Relic mastered by your ancestors."

Shard also shared his judgment, then praised them without reservation:

"The power you used at the end, was it space annihilation? It’s truly impressive."

Wood Edwards looked at Shard with empty eye sockets:

"Many years ago, my brother and I encountered a rather terrifying enemy. He blinded our eyes but also made us experience the ultimate madness and the power of destruction."

He raised his hand to cover that eye, a complex expression on his face:

"Mirror Keeper has the ability to restore our eyes, or at least install a Demon Eye. But we refused; in this blind state, we could appreciate and possess the power to annihilate space. To maintain this power, it’s best to keep the eyes damaged; that is the price of power..."

They helped each other stand up, and Grass Edwards also said:

"We’ve seen that guy near Green Lake Hotel; he’s also come to Green Lake City, but we don’t know what he’s planning... Compared to our ancestor, my brother and I think that guy is the truly terrifying one."

Shard knew they were talking about Dr. Schneider, so he wasn’t comfortable continuing the topic:

"What are the tree roots entwined around your Ring of Fate? It’s rare to find arcane techniques or rituals that can directly affect the Ring of Fate."

But the two brothers didn’t know either. They could only feel that when casting spells, those strange roots would intercept some of the power, reducing the effectiveness of the spells:

"It’s likely one of our ancestors’ rituals."

"Can you still walk now? Time is of the essence; I must continue deeper into the island. Do you want to stay here and rest, or join me?"

He thought he had gained two ’companions,’ but the brothers shook their heads:

"Our pre-prepared plan anticipated this situation. It’s not too bad right now. While we can still move, we want to try and see if we can communicate with the outside of the island. We need to attempt to contact ’Mirror Keeper.’

"How do you intend to do that?"

Shard asked, and the brothers once again held hands, then leaned their heads together. Shard didn’t know what arcane technique they used; he only saw their heads gradually ’merge’ together.

But this wasn’t a merge of flesh, just some kind of spatial overlap. Moreover, they weren’t merging their heads completely, only half of their faces with the blind eyes were overlapping.

When the two blind eyes were superimposed together, Wood Edwards took out a red drawstring velvet bag from his pocket. After taking out the bronze-colored eyeball inside, he tremblingly placed the Demon Eye, at least Keeper of Secrets Level, into the overlapping eye sockets of the two.

The metal eyeball entered the eye socket, clearly not under their brain’s control, behaving like a parasite-like creature, moving erratically in the socket.

But soon, the eyeball calmed down. With bronze-colored lines spreading from their eye sockets to their faces, the pupil marking of the bronze eyeball emitted a dispersing light.

In that light, a long unseen Thirteen-Ring Sorcerer, wearing strange mirror-like ornaments on his ears, the ’Mirror Keeper’ Ail Harken, actually appeared.

Not the entity, similar to the earlier Diviner in the fire, it was also a projection-like state. Shard could even see that he seemed to be at Green Lake Shore, the night scene of Puhov Village vaguely visible in the white mist behind Mirror Keeper.