Shadow of the Throne, lower deck.
Dressed in a black robe, Tierney first used the ritual dagger forged from Double-Number Black Gold to tap rapidly across the floor.
As geometric figures of different shapes lit up one after another, his occult knowledge, after becoming a "Cipher Scholar," had risen drastically. He had mastered part of the "Euclidean Sigil" that even some Chapter Lords had yet to grasp.
After the sigils lit up, spirituality surged out, and countless figures sprang upward, enveloping the entire altar area.
Tierney then used the ritual dagger to create a spiritual environment before kneeling on the altar cast from obsidian, holding the golden stone sphere bestowed by the Black Emperor in both hands.
Within the "Flame Stealer's" sight, all kinds of clusters of light appeared before him.
The radiance was not the glow cast by candles, but light he could see directly after advancing to "Flame Stealer."
The sphere's main tone was a large mass of golden light, while the green teardrop-shaped light shone even brighter.
Within it, the grain-of-rice-sized silver-white light was the smallest, yet the most solid and dazzling.
What the Black Emperor had ordered him to separate and "steal" was precisely that grain-sized cluster.
Over the past two standard months, he had tried more than a thousand times, all ending in failure.
The silver-white cluster of light was embedded firmly inside the golden cluster, making it difficult to separate.
Tierney held the stone sphere in his left hand. At this moment, it looked utterly ordinary, but he knew the evil will he would face the moment he touched the silver-white light within.
The "Flame Stealer" nimbly placed the fingertips of his right hand on the golden sphere. As spirituality spread, he began to rise step by step into Thelema's Third Layer Mindset.
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