Inside the flesh-egg was not the rudimentary form of a god but a mass of constantly recombining fundamental particles, perfecting its own form of existence through the devouring of life.
Only at the very moment before being consumed did the Scepter Priest understand this truth.
The Embryo was not a "god yet to be born."
It was an already awakened law.
It did not grow through faith but expanded itself by devouring possibilities. It created the Ghost Brides not for service, but to collect living samples, for analysis, absorption, and assimilation.
What it sought to cultivate was a world without boundaries. A world where there was no "you" and "I," no "life" and "death," no "believer" and "god."
There would be only it… eternally flowing, eternally existing.
Even more terrifying was that by the time the Scepter Priest understood this, it was already too late. He could feel his consciousness being parsed, copied, and then distributed into the minds of those desiccated corpses.
Raven-Ian watched this scene in silence. He saw the Priest's white robe gradually turn golden, and a crack open at the center of his forehead, revealing the slit of a third eye.
When the transformation was complete, the former High Priest had become just another member of the corpse congregation, mechanically joining the chanting.
New Ghost Brides continued to bring in sacrifices, and Ian noticed that the labels were becoming increasingly precise:
"Master of Hermetic Arcana,"
"Proficient in Seven Systems of Divination,"
"Capable of Controlling the Tides of the Nile River."
The Embryo was no longer satisfied with ordinary life force as it had begun selectively devouring specific knowledge and abilities, seeking to gather the strengths of all beings, to complete its own omnipotence.
Ian felt a chilling absurdity.
The ritual continued, but he did not see the Black-Robed Woman he had encountered before, nor did he find her corpse.
He had no idea whether she had foreseen everything and escaped or had already become one of the indistinguishable corpses.
Once transformed, none of them retained recognizable features.
At that moment, the chanting within the chamber suddenly became frantic.
The jaws of the corpses opened and closed at a near-breaking frequency, producing a horrifying clattering sound.
Ian, in Raven form, had already withdrawn to a withered tree outside the Temple with his wings folded, his crimson eyes reflecting the faint golden glow from deep underground.
He was still thinking…
How could he end this existence of "self as all things"?
How could he break the eternal cycle built upon countless living sacrifices?
There was no time left to think. The golden flesh-egg at the center suddenly began to tremble violently, its surface veins writhing like a nest of serpents.
Then, a pulse emerged from within like a heartbeat.
Thump… Thump…
The rhythm was slow and heavy, yet it carried an irresistible pressure, as though the very earth trembled in response.
The Temple walls began to seep black blood. The ground cracked and the air filled with a restless agitation, like something on the verge of birth.
The very atmosphere twisted, and the moss on the stone walls withered at a visible rate and it looked as if even plant life was being forcibly drained.
Ian's pupils shrank.
"Is it breaking out of the shell ahead of time?" His thoughts raced.
According to the records he had seen in the library, such a god-creation ritual should require at least seven more days to complete.
Unless…
From within the corpse congregation, an unusually tall figure rose. It wore a decayed robe inlaid with golden threads and at the center of its forehead, the flesh bud had grown into a complete golden eyeball.
It was, the transformed Scepter Priest.
Now, he had become the so-called Archbishop of the Undead.
He raised his skeletal arm and all chanting ceased instantly.
"To celebrate the arrival of our Lord…" The Archbishop's voice sounded as if countless people were speaking in unison, layered with an eerie harmony. "All living beings in this city shall be offered!"
The Ghost Brides all raised their heads simultaneously. Their eyes, like grains of golden sand, flickered with fanatic light. Their red wedding garments fluttered without wind and their bodies began to disintegrate into fundamental particles.
"Find every living being… men, women, young, old…" The golden eye on the Archbishop's forehead burst with blinding light as he spoke. "Let them join our sequence!"
It was unmistakably the Archbishop's voice.
Once the highest leader of the Sun God's faith, now reduced to the mouthpiece of the Embryo.
Standing at the forefront of the corpse Priests, his withered arm raised, palm upward, as if proclaiming a divine oracle.
As his words fell, every Ghost Bride in the hall turned at once. Their red eyes flickered and their blood-stained mouths parted slightly.
They no longer dragged coffins.
Instead, they merged directly into the walls, dissolving like smoke into the stone, dispersing silently through every corridor.
Their destination was clear, they were after every living person in the city.
In that instant… Ian understood. They were no longer "harvesting wizards", they were planning to harvest the entire city. Every living person would be transformed into a desiccated corpse, becoming both the "nourishment" and the "limbs" of the Embryo's birth.
This city would no longer be a place for humans to live, but a giant "divine kingdom" composed of countless corpses.
Just imagining it was enough to send chills down one's spine.
"Damn it!" Ian cursed inwardly.
He had already devised a strategy against the Embryo, to use Paradox Divine Authority to redefine its logic of existence, forcing it into a state of simultaneous existence and non-existence, a quantum contradiction that would collapse its rule-anchor.
But that required time.
It required precise ritual setup and it required descending deep underground and confronting the Embryo directly.
And now, he had no time.
An entire city with thousands of innocent lives were being pushed toward death.
He could not wait any longer. He had to stop this before the slaughter began.
The Raven spread its wings, soaring upward, piercing through the Temple's dome in an instant, becoming a streak of black shadow that shot toward the heart of the city.
As he passed through narrow ventilation shafts, Ian's mind raced. The original plan of conceptual erasure required careful preparation.
Now, he could only activate a backup plan, which was a half-finished spell developed from Paradox Divine Authority:
[Causal Banishment].
When Ian burst out of the Temple, the night sky over Memphis had already turned a sickly orange-red.
Screams echoed in the distance as seven Ghost Brides were hunting across different districts. The nearest one stood in the center of the marketplace. From beneath her wedding dress extended countless blood-like threads, writhing like living creatures, slipping through the windows of every home.
"The first."
Ian reverted to human form and the broken wand in his hand reassembled itself.
At its tip, the blue-gold eyeball spun wildly, locking onto its target. The casting process of [Causal Banishment] was entirely different from ordinary magic.
Ian did not chant, instead, he tore open his left sleeve, revealing golden runes embedded beneath his skin, writhing and rearranging like living organisms.
"Definition…"
His voice carried layered echoes.
"The very existence of the Ghost Bride is a causal error."
A beam of pure white light erupted from his wand, but instead of striking the Ghost Bride, it shot straight into the sky. The light refracted through the clouds, splitting into seven branches, each one precisely striking a hunting Ghost Bride.
The one in the marketplace froze.
She slowly turned around and for the first time, something akin to fear appeared in her golden-sand eyes because her body was becoming… unreal.
"You should never have existed." Ian's gray-green eyes reflected the white glow as he spoke. "You are the product of an erroneous timeline."
The Ghost Bride let out a piercing shriek as her body began flickering like a malfunctioning television signal.
She lunged desperately at the nearest living person, but her fingers passed straight through them.
She was being stripped away from reality itself.
"Return to nothingness."
Ian lowered his wand.
From her feet upward, her form began disintegrating into fundamental particles.
She struggled and screamed, but she could not stop the process because Ian's magic was not attacking her.
It was correcting an error in reality.
Seeing the spell take effect, Ian did not linger as there were more than one Ghost Bride.
As the first hint of dawn began to approach, the city should have been awakening.
Instead, a deathly silence hung over the streets.
Ian landed, shifting from Raven back into human form. He had barely steadied himself when a sharp scream rang out from a nearby alley. A mother clutching her baby had been cornered by a Ghost Bride.
The Ghost Bride's eyes burned red, her mouth split to her ears, and blood-like threads shot from her fingertips, binding the mother and child.
"Please… spare my child…" the mother cried.
The Ghost Bride did not respond.
The threads tightened violently.
In an instant, their skin began to shrivel, their life force forcibly extracted, streams of golden light flowing into the Ghost Bride's body.
In just three seconds, both of them became dried corpses, casually dragged away.
"Stop!" Ian roared.
With a swing of his wand, silver-blue light burst forth…
"Causal Banishment!"
This was his own creation based on Paradox Divine Authority, combined with his understanding of the Ghost Bride's nature.
It did not attack the body. It did not destroy the soul.
Instead, it severed the target from the chain of causality. Those affected would be exiled into the gap beyond reality, unable to influence reality, and unable to be influenced by it.
As if they had never existed at all.
As expected, only magic could counter magic. Only the irrational could oppose the irrational.
Silver light surged like a tide, striking the Ghost Bride directly.
Her body froze and a flicker of shock crossed her crimson eyes, and then, her form blurred like a pencil sketch being erased.
Her existence rapidly faded away.
The street returned to silence as if nothing had ever happened.
Ian did not pause.
He rushed into the next street, where three Ghost Brides had surrounded a group of civilians hiding inside a temple. They raised their hands, blood-like threads weaving into a net as they began draining the crowd's life force.
"Causal Banishment!"
Silver light swept through and all three Ghost Brides disintegrated simultaneously, collapsing into nothingness.
Inside the church, the survivors slumped to the ground, stunned.
"I-it's… that boy!" Someone recognized Ian. "H-he… alone… defeated them?!"
Ian dashed into the marketplace. A Ghost Bride was dragging an elderly man, likely someone with abilities needed by the evil god's Embryo, into a coffin.
With a wave of his hand, a flash of silver light and the Ghost Bride vanished instantly.
Ian leapt onto the clock tower, overlooking the entire city. Dozens of red figures roamed the streets, spreading like a plague.
There were too many Ghost Brides. No one knew how many innocent girls had been turned into them.
"There's no time to deal with them one by one."
Gritting his teeth, Ian raised his wand and began to chant:
"By Paradox as the guide, by causality as the blade…
Those who pursue death… shall be pursued by death.
Banishment… across the entire city!"
After all, Ian himself was the embodiment of the God of Paradox.
As for incantations, they depended entirely on his own flair. In an emergency, this was about as "dramatic" as his talent allowed.
In an instant, silver-blue patterns spread outward from him like ripples, covering the entire city.
All Ghost Brides, no matter where they were, no matter whether they had already begun harvesting, froze in place.
Their bodies began to turn transparent as their crimson eyes dimmed and the blood-threads dissipated.
And then, they collapsed.
It was as if they were erased from the world by an invisible hand.
On the streets, beneath rooftops, inside basements, countless Ghost Brides vanished at once. The living people they had been dragging fell to the ground, weak, but alive.
Silence fell over the city.
Then, cheers erupted like a tidal wave.
"We… we're saved?"
"It was that boy! He saved us!"
"He alone… defeated all the Ghost Brides!"
People emerged from their hiding places, gazing at the boy standing atop the clock tower.
Their eyes were filled with awe and reverence. He was only fifteen or sixteen, his black robes fluttering in the wind, wand pointed toward the sky like a god descending upon the world.
His slender figure was wrapped in worn robes, yet he radiated an overwhelming, fearsome authority.
"Is… is he a god?" A woman holding her baby murmured.
Ian gave no response.
His gaze remained cold as he swept across the city, confirming there were no Ghost Brides left.
The last one was hiding in the sewers, attempting to drag away a stunned child.
Ian leapt down.
A flash of silver appeared…
"Causal Banishment."
The Ghost Bride silently dissolved.
The city was finally quiet.
However, at that very moment, Ian had no time to accept their worship. He turned toward the Temple and his pupils shrank sharply.
The sky above it was twisting with black-red lightning spreading like a web.
Even more terrifying was that the entire Temple structure was beginning to melt like wax, revealing writhing golden flesh within.
Ian's expression changed drastically.
In the direction of the Temple, the sky was undergoing a violent transformation.
Dark clouds gathered like ink, forming a massive vortex. Thunder roared continuously as if heralding the birth of something that should never exist.
At the center of the Temple, a golden pillar of light shot skyward, piercing the heavens as though attempting to replace the newborn Sun itself.
Thunder crashed but it was not ordinary lightning. Golden bolts struck down like divine punishment yet they did not harm the city.
They only circled the Temple, unable to stop the birth of the evil god.
The gestation had reached its final stage. From within the mutated flesh of the Temple there seemed to echo the cry of an infant.
"Damn it… It was a diversion tactic!"
Ian's face darkened.
At that moment, he realized something that sent a cold shiver crawling up his spine.
The Ghost Brides' massacre had been too deliberate. The corpse-Priests' proclamation had been too theatrical.
It was all… a carefully staged performance.
Ian understood that his city-wide rescue had been a lure. A classic luring the tiger away from the mountain.
Perhaps other beings could not detect his Raven form but the evil god's Embryo was different. It had noticed his observation long ago yet revealed nothing.
Instead, it used the Ghost Brides to draw his attention away, buying time for its own birth.
Yes… that monster had already perceived him in Raven form and concealed it flawlessly.
Even at the cost of sacrificing all the Ghost Brides.
More terrifying still was that it had predicted Ian's choice.
It exploited human nature by forcing him to choose between destroying the evil god and saving the people.
This level of calculation surpassed ordinary intelligence.
It was almost… precognitive.
"It… is really about to be born." Ian had thought that by stopping the sacrifices, he could delay the Embryo's awakening.
But clearly, it had already accumulated enough energy. It no longer needed more sacrifices.
Everything had been part of the Embryo's plan.
"…There's no time." Ian murmured but he did not retreat.
He turned toward the Temple while gripping his wand tightly.
"If you insist on being born… Then the moment you open your eyes… Will be the moment I'll make sure you close them forever."
The wind rose, causing his black robes to billow. The boy's figure once again shot forward toward that Temple leading to Hell.
At the edge of the city, the Black-Robed Woman gazed up at Ian's departing figure.
The night wind lifted her veil, revealing the runes on her face slowly fading.
Her cracked lips trembled slightly:
"…Will he succeed?" The words were as light as a sigh.
She had escaped unharmed, yet what she was planning remained unknown.
(End of Chapter)
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