Chapter 205: The Spiritual Cultivation Mantra
The three men transformed into monsters. Tina startled for an instant before steadying herself, her short blade flashing into a streak of light, sweeping across in one motion. One of the creatures let out a shrieking howl and collapsed, its body shrinking rapidly back to its original form — though now nothing more than a corpse.
Joe and Jed had snapped back to their senses by then. Neither wore armor, but both were knights all the same, and each drove a fist forward, white light flaring across their knuckles, sending the lunging creatures flying backward.
Tina held the short blade steady, eyes sharp. Something was clearly off about these men — as though someone else were driving them from within. Her gaze swept the crowd, searching.
The whole gathering had descended into chaos by then, no one understanding what was happening, only that monsters had appeared out of nowhere, the young ladies screaming in terror.
Monroe, dancing with his fiancée, felt the disturbance ripple through the crowd at once, his eyes darkening with murderous intent. Someone had dared cause trouble at his own ball — whoever it was, they were as good as dead.
Tina spotted a figure holding an odd gesture with his hands, as though controlling something remotely. Something clicked in her mind, and her short blade flew again, streaking toward him in a flash of white.
The two creatures Joe and Jed had knocked back landed and immediately snatched up a young nobleman from the crowd, roaring as they lunged forward again, wielding the poor man like a weapon, swinging him bodily at Joe.
Joe froze, unwilling to strike with lethal force, backing away instead. The other creature grabbed a tabletop and hurled it at Jed, who met it with a white-lit fist. There was a crack, the table shattering apart, and Jed followed through without hesitation, his fist sweeping in the form of a knight's mace strike, driving the creature back with another blow.
The creature howled and lunged again, utterly heedless of its own safety.
Tina's flying blade streaked down toward the man's head. Seeing it coming, he flung out a hand, and a barrage of bone spears materialized in the air — several shattered by the blade before he startled, black smoke rising around him, as though some force field lurked within it, and the flying blade found itself unable to close the distance.
His focus, entirely consumed with holding off Tina, slipped from his control over the two creatures. Both froze abruptly, then collapsed — while the nobleman they'd used as a weapon had already lost his soul entirely.
The two fallen creatures began to change, gradually shifting back into their true forms — two noblemen, both unconscious.
Tina and the black-smoke figure remained locked in a standoff.
"Tiller. You'd dare do the devil's own work!" Monroe said, fury burning in his eyes, his voice cold.
A sword had appeared in his hand at some point — Tina had no idea when — clearly not his usual weapon, but a blood-red blade etched with a tulip design.
"Heh heh. Monroe, you think I fear you? I serve the will of my true master, and you—" Tiller never finished. Monroe's blade had already struck. Everyone present felt, for an instant, as though the whole world had become an ocean of tulips, blossoms of blood-red blooming in every direction. Tiller never got the chance to finish his sentence — the flowers closed around him, and the blade drove home into his stomach.
Tiller seemed to want to say something more, but nothing came out at all. His head dropped.
Just as the crowd began to believe it was over, a thin wisp of black smoke drifted silently through the scene. Monroe's brow furrowed. A ghostly, keening whisper sounded, and every magic lamp in the courtyard dimmed all at once.
"Damn it!" Monroe cursed, shouting out, "Don't panic! Everyone move to the center!"
The crowd, just beginning to settle, surged into fresh panic — though Monroe's command drew them, without quite meaning to, toward the middle of the yard. Tina looked up, her gaze fixing on a spot near the entrance, dark and empty. She sensed something there.
Whatever it was, it clearly meant her harm. Without hesitation, she raised her hand, and the short blade shot free in a streak of white light. A pained cry sounded, something fleeing — she never got a clear look at what it was, but the black smoke vanished along with it.
She recalled the blade to find a single drop of blood clinging to its edge, a thread of dark power woven through it. Having spent so much time at Evan's side, dark power wasn't unfamiliar to her — but something about this particular drop repulsed her deeply, as though countless tormented souls writhed within it.
Monroe glanced around, let out a breath, and made his way to Tina, examining the drop of blood on her blade's tip, rubbing it between his fingers and holding it to his nose. His brow furrowed. "This blood reeks of devil and sulfur both. A pack of devil-worshippers, no doubt. When did a cult like that ever take root around here?"
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Interrogation of the two surviving noblemen went on through the night. Both claimed to have no idea what had happened — they'd simply attended a few gatherings with Tiller, being men of no particular talent themselves, relying entirely on their fathers' standing, their family fortunes already in decline, and had gone mostly to vent their frustrations. But tonight, the moment they'd seen Tina, something had flared in their chests, their minds clouding over, and they had no memory of what they'd done afterward.
Monroe said flatly, "Hand them over to the Inquisition. Devil worship is a serious matter. Their noble titles end here." He paid no mind to their pleading. Fury churned in him — devil worshippers, daring to strike right under his own roof. He wasn't a man who tolerated such things lightly.
Over the following days, the Tulip Guard fanned out to hunt down devil worshippers across the region. Even the New Faith, tolerant as it generally ran, drew the line at devil worship — though not without a fair share of innocent souls swept up in the purge.
...
At Hollingburton, Evan's life continued peacefully. If not for Boniface still lurking somewhere in the background, it might have been perfectly quiet — though the man seemed to pay him no mind at all these days. Had Evan not understood his true feelings so well, he might have thought Boniface had given up his vengeance entirely.
In the midst of this calm, some vague unease nagged at Evan, though it was quickly swept aside by Jessica's paper, On the Equation of State for an Ideal Gas, published under three names — Jessica, Evan, and Jenny.
All three earned the Gas Burst spell from the paper — a strange sort of magic, close to wind-based spellcraft yet distinct from it, and each of them received a slightly different variant. Owing to their differing depth of understanding of the gas equations, Evan additionally gained a paranormal gift for halting the motion of gas particles entirely — effectively, the ability to control temperature — along with a Gas Wall spell.
Jenny's outcome proved the most remarkable of all. Not only did she break through to second tier, she gained an ability to manipulate gas directly — imperfect, but requiring no incantation, no wand, no special reagents at all.
When the gift first came to her, she had no idea what had happened. Only once Jessica explained did she understand, and she realized the research itself had contributed to her breakthrough, seemingly independent of raw talent. Only then did she understand why Jessica had never placed much weight on her own natural gift to begin with.
Since arriving at the school, she'd learned her talent ranked dead last in her class — and yet she'd broken through to first tier while others still struggled at that same stage, though she'd started magic later than most. What had truly mattered wasn't talent at all, but knowledge itself.
She saw, for the first time, a path forward no worse than anyone else's — and only then did she fully grasp the depth of Jessica's own patient effort on her behalf.
Evan, meanwhile, buried himself in research on electromagnetic waves. Xiaoshuang had once again projected herself back to the Black Forest. Since granting the priest there healing and protective divine arts, the goblins had begun manifesting divine art of their own, the priest growing steadily more devout, quietly rising as something of a rival to Nobi's own authority.
This time, she'd come back mainly to see Xiaoling. The priest was absent when she appeared, so she slipped invisible and flew out of the great hall, catching him mid-sermon: "You must learn gratitude, hold gratitude in your heart. Our lord, the great god Evan, dwell on him, hold his name in your mind, for he is everywhere. The light within you will kindle, god and mortal made one, heart bound to heart, thought unbroken from thought..."
This was a fragment of a spiritual cultivation mantra, one Xiaoshuang had absorbed from the teachings Evan had received from the goddess of life, though she'd swapped in the name of Evan himself. Evan had never given much thought to these goblins, but Xiaoshuang had been quietly tending them in his name all along.
She glanced over the gathering — only five of them present, though three already stood noticeably stronger than an ordinary goblin, one of them beginning to form something like a genuine spirit-core within. Something occurred to Xiaoshuang, and she left a quiet mark on him and two others in passing — a mark that would surface in their minds the moment their inner spirit awakened, something the Church would have called a basic divine art.
The five listened with real devotion. Once the old priest finished, he pressed his palms together, and the five did the same, chanting together, "Amn!" Two syllables — one open, one closed — sounds that recurred often in incantations. Evan had noticed their effect of resonating through body and mind alike, and had passed them along to Xiaoshuang, who'd exaggerated their power considerably, claiming they held boundless, miraculous power beyond understanding. The old priest had taken this entirely at face value, chanting them with total devotion ever since.
Neither Evan nor Xiaoshuang realized these two syllables genuinely carried a strange, real power within this world. Evan had only begun to grasp the deeper mysteries of magic — he still had far to go — but these two sounds, resonating through the body's own channels, chanted with sincere devotion, thoughts unified, achieved a simple method with outsized effect. Back on Earth, the seed-syllable mantras of esoteric Buddhist practice, and the Christian "Amen," both carried echoes of this same sound. The old priest, chanting it faithfully for well over a million repetitions by now, had unwittingly cultivated real spiritual power of his own — though he attributed it all entirely to divine grace, devoting himself further still.
Xiaoshuang left her three marks and slipped quietly out of the goblin stronghold. Under Nobi's leadership, the goblins had absorbed two more neighboring settlements, and with natural growth on top of that, their population had grown considerably. Neat little houses now stood beside the stronghold, arranged in orderly rows — something close to the first stirrings of a civilization reborn, with plenty of surrounding wasteland already cleared for farming.
Xiaoshuang took flight, sniffing the air, and streaked off as a beam of light straight toward the unicorn Xiaoling.
She spotted Xiaoling wandering in the distance and called out happily, "Xiaoling! Xiaoling!"
Xiaoling looked up at the approaching light and recognized her at once, bounding over with delight. Xiaoshuang landed on her head, about to speak — when both of them suddenly lifted their heads at once. A figure had appeared in their field of view.