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Are you ready for the main class?
Ren looked up from where he was still sitting on the clinic floor.
"There are more?"
Of course there are more. You fucking idiot. Did you read the title? A pause with genuine offense in it. The Eldritch Doctor. Doctor of the Ruin Gospel. The main Law you comprehended this time is Madness and Depravity. Did you think that was it? Did you think a rank-up gave you two skills and a philosophy lesson and called it a night?
"I thought the integration completed."
The integration of the passive skills completed. The active class ability requires a separate step. The System's tone shifted into something that was still condescending but had an edge of actual information under it. To use the chapter ability, you first need to manifest the fragment of Madness and Depravity within you. Transform into the Knight form. Then the chapter activates.
"How do I do that."
Figure it out, the System said. You have a fragment of a Grand Law sitting in you. It's the size of a grain of sand. Close your eyes and find it.
Ren closed his eyes.
The clinic was quiet around him, the red glow from the grafting room pressing through his eyelids in a faint pulse. He turned his attention inward, past the familiar architecture of his body, past the ten tentacles folded into their resting configuration, past the Law of Skin sitting in him like a second skeleton.
There.
Small. Dense. Present in him the same way background noise is present: unregistered until you turn toward it.
He reached for it.
The transformation did not build gradually. It arrived.
. . .
The robes came first.
Heavy fabric that was not fabric, layered over him in sheets that moved without air, black at the base and threaded through with gold in patterns that repeated at every scale. The layers settled and kept settling, each fold carrying weight that did not correspond to its apparent mass. The hem spread across the clinic floor and kept spreading.
Then the ruff at his throat, enormous, cream and gold, structured in concentric rings that curved outward like the cross-section of something that had grown in rings rather than being assembled. It framed his chest with the ornamental severity of a thing that was both decoration and armor and something else he did not have a word for.
The crown came last.
Thorns, or what had been thorns, black and organic, radiating out from around his head in a halo that was not intended to suggest holiness. The negative space between them was deliberate. Everything about this form was deliberate.
He opened his eyes.
The mask had changed.
He had not seen it change but he could feel it: heavier on his face, the oval no longer perfectly smooth but worked, the surface carrying depth that the plain white original had not. He reached up and touched it. His fingers found planes and structure where there had been none.
He was standing. He had not stood up. He was simply standing now, which was a thing that happened in transformations at this scale.
He looked at himself.
"What the fuck is this."
The robes extended past the clinic floor. The ruff at his throat was enormous. The crown was thorns and intention and bad omens. The gold threading in the fabric caught the red light from the grafting room and did something to it that the light had not consented to.
"Why am I wearing this ridiculous robe."
It is called regalia, the System said. You're welcome.
"And why did my mask get more hideous."
It got more accurate. A pause. Look closer.
He looked closer, in the surface of one of the instruments hanging on the clinic wall.
And then he went still.
He had seen this before.
Not this exactly. A version of this, built at a scale that had taken up most of a dungeon arena: three masks in formation, one for each Law he had consumed at that point, Madness and Plague and Obsidian, robes woven from shadow, arms too many, a presence that bent perception in ways Lu Changcheng had bled from the effort of standing near.
He had become that.
He had been that, once, in a dungeon, temporarily, catastrophically, with no understanding of what it was or why it was happening.
"Holy shit," he said, very quietly.
There it is.
"That form. In the dungeon." He was still looking at his reflection. "The three-mask abomination. That was connected to this."
Was it? Or was this always what you were building toward, and the dungeon gave you a preview you didn't have the context to read?
"It makes sense now." He turned the thought over. "The dungeon form used the Laws I'd consumed at that point. Madness, Plague, Obsidian. Madness was already in the mix but I hadn't comprehended it, only consumed a fragment. I was running on instinct and absorbed divinity with no framework to hold it." He looked at his hands, which were now very pale against the black fabric. "This is the framework."
Correct. And now the second part.
The notification arrived.
. . .
The Ruin Gospel: Book of Blasphemy, Chapter IV: Descent into Madness and Depravity.
Rank: Legendary. Authority: Grand Law of Corruption. Type: Domain / Mental Corruption / Battlefield Authority.
"Within every soul slumbers a hidden sin. Within every sin sleeps a monster. Let the chains of reason be broken, and let the monster awaken."
Upon activation, the user releases an endless black-gold miasma infused with the Authority of Corruption. The miasma rapidly spreads across the battlefield, transforming the surrounding area into a domain where reason, morality, and restraint gradually collapse.
Unlike ordinary mental attacks, this authority does not impose foreign thoughts upon its victims. Instead, it amplifies the darkest impulses already present within their hearts.
Fear becomes terror. Desire becomes obsession. Hatred becomes wrath. Doubt becomes despair.
Effect: Coronation of Sin.
Every affected individual possesses a dominant flaw hidden deep within their psyche. The miasma identifies this flaw and elevates it into the ruling force of the target's mind.
The list continued. Pride becoming arrogance. Blasphemy consuming all order. Despair extinguishing will. Wrath burning through reason. Each one a version of something that already existed, taken past the point where it could be managed.
Ren read it twice.
Effect on Allies: Blessed Madness. Allies recognized by the user are not spared from the corruption. Instead, they enter a state known as Blessed Madness. Their dominant traits are amplified to supernatural levels while retaining enough clarity to distinguish friend from foe. Depending on compatibility with the corruption, all attributes, abilities, and authorities may be enhanced by up to tenfold. However, prolonged exposure risks permanent mental degradation.
Effect on Enemies: Descent. Enemies continuously accumulate Corruption Stacks while within the miasma. Each stack accelerates their descent through four stages: Unease, Fear, Madness, Depravity. Upon reaching Depravity, the target becomes a slave to their dominant sin.
Mythical Authority. Only individuals possessing Mythical-Rank Mental Resistance, equivalent Authorities, Divine Protection, or higher conceptual defenses can fully resist the effects of this chapter. All others inevitably descend.
He finished reading.
He stood in the Knight form, robes pooling across the tile, crown of thorns casting odd shadows under the red grafting-room glow, and thought about what he had just read.
The ability did not attack the mind. It revealed the mind. It took what was already there and removed the structures that held it in check, the same way the Law itself worked at the conceptual level. Which meant it was not something that could be fully defended against by willpower alone, because willpower was a structure, and the miasma dissolved structures.
He thought about Gregory Hood.
Hood's dominant flaw, from everything Ren had observed in Azareth, was certainty. The absolute conviction that his read on a situation was correct, that the outcome he declared was just, that the weight of the correct answer justified the cost. A man who could fix causality into specific shapes had to believe, with total commitment, that he was right. The ability to manipulate cause and effect at that level required removing doubt from the decision-making process.
Put that man inside the Coronation of Sin.
Let Pride become arrogance. Let certainty become the delusion of superiority. Let a Legendary-rank causality manipulator lose access to the internal check that asked whether the outcome he was fixing was actually the right one.
The Knight form breathed around him, robes moving with their own unhurried logic, the crown sitting heavy and correct on his head.
"Woooooo," he said.
The sound was low and controlled and deeply satisfied.