Sixteen Years (2)

Alice had long decided who to seek out next.

—First, Medici was ruled out.

After realizing the problems with the City of Calamity, the Witch Pathway's Deification Ritual was brought up again. Grischa Adam believed that this ritual offered a possibility: a way to give birth to the Calamity of Destruction without allowing the Original Creator to revive.

—Use another type of corruption as a barrier in between, preventing the Witch Pathway and Hunter Pathway from truly combining into one.

"Then what kind of corruption should we use?" After hearing this speculation, Alice turned to Klein. "Using the Chaos Sea would awaken the Primordial God, so should we use the Castle of Origin? We can't possibly use the Fallen Mother God's corruption..."

"That is precisely what I have been considering," Grischa Adam replied. "I have observed the advancement rituals and Acting Methods from Sequence 9 to Sequence 1 of the Witch Pathway. The core of this Pathway is maintaining oneself, and the focus of its Deification Ritual should likewise be maintaining oneself amid corruption. It is merely that the Primordial God altered the ritual and restricted the corruption to the Chaos Sea."

After a pause, he added:

"If we refer to the rituals of other True Gods, perhaps corruption at the True God level would originally have been sufficient. However, that would likely become exceedingly dangerous when advancing to the Old Days. To be safe, corruption at the Sefirah level is probably necessary, preferably from a Sefirah corresponding to a Pillar.

"The Castle of Origin is indeed an option, but the Fallen Mother God's corruption is not entirely unusable either. There is Fallen Mother God corruption on Earth..."

"Absolutely not!" Alice's eyes filled with terror. "Have you considered that she is the Root of Disaster? At least the current source