Late at night, the waxing gibbous moon nearly sank into the earth once more. The horizon had already begun to pale.
The clock in Iver's room swung its pendulum rhythmically, its hands pointing to 4:20 a.m.
Yet he still sat motionless in his wheelchair like a statue, turning through the "Shepherd's Secret Covenant."
Two strange purplish-red streams of bloody tears continuously slid from the corners of Iver's eyes as he sat blankly before the desk, as though he had lost his soul. Drop by drop, they landed on the pages, then sank straight into them and were absorbed.
Iver stared, transfixed, at the secrets within the book.
The skin on his face had flushed crimson, while the veins on his forehead and forearms bulged visibly. Those veins should have been blue, yet they revealed deep-purple, web-like patterns.
Though it was winter, Iver's room was still warm. Yet accompanied by his deep, heavy breathing, pale-white clouds of heat constantly poured from his mouth. Occasionally, when he gave a low cough, a few sparks burst out.
It was not until dawn, when birds began calling outside, that Iver seemed to awaken from a deep dream.
His eyes cleared once more, and the purple patterns on his face slowly withdrew.
By then, without realizing it, he had already turned the thin black leather booklet to the end. The knowledge had been etched deeply into Iver's memory; the instant he closed his eyes, he could recall it with perfect clarity. Even the words seemed to glow.
"...So it was something like this."
Iver's expression was solemn as he muttered under his breath.
This black Grimoire described a mysterious art known as "shepherding."
It was a mysterious art that had existed more than a thousand years ago, before the concept of "professions" had even appeared.
At that time, nearly all superhumans walked multiple Paths simultaneously. The extraordinary common sense of "reducing the number of Paths one delves into as much as possible" had not yet been established.
Walking multiple Paths at once not only made people prone to madness and made advancement along every Path more difficult, but was also highly disadvantageous for passing down inheritances. In that environment, the mysterious arts each superhuman developed and mastered through a lifetime of effort had to be passed on to an heir whose personality, interests, and nature were completely identical to their own.
Thus, in ancient times, superhumans were exceedingly rare in human society. Moreover, their supernatural powers were not very strong.
Without an inheritance system, almost no superhuman inheritance could survive beyond three generations. And relying solely on their own exploration, each person could advance only a very limited distance along their Path.
It was not until around the fourth or fifth century that the concept of "professions" gradually emerged. Through various methods of cultivation, superhumans gradually purified and radicalized their personalities, eliminating the Paths they did not intend to pursue. At the same time, they guarded against the corruption of their essential nature and, while preserving their original selves, tried to follow the safe routes their predecessors had already explored.
The principles of the Nine Great Paths were actually quite vague. Their boundaries overlapped with one another, and they continued to change.
For example, the Path of "Beauty" related to art changed the most obviously. Nearly every few centuries, people's understanding of "beauty" would change. Many forms of art once considered lowbrow became "ancient trends" decades or centuries later.
But without guidance, superhumans easily went astray.
That was because every psychologically healthy ordinary person necessarily conformed to the principles of multiple Paths at once.
For example, a wild superhuman of the Dedication Path might also manage to develop the Illumination Spell. But if they did not know that the core principle of the Dedication Path was "altruism," they could easily end up pursuing a path of "using their healing abilities to seize the right to speak," such as becoming the leader of a small religious sect.
That made it easy for them to unknowingly set foot on the Path of Authority.
Likewise, the Equilibrium Path, which pursued knowledge and science and analyzed all things to dispel their mysteries, would become the Path of Wisdom, which pursued truth, if one grew too obsessed with truth or considered oneself a brilliant genius superior to ordinary people.
If one became too fixated on becoming a pope or bishop and craved promotion within the church hierarchy, one had already stepped onto the Path of Transcendence.
Walking two Paths simultaneously was still manageable. But everyone's mental and physical energy was limited, and humans were forgetful.
If one completely forgot their original intention and became someone entirely different from who they had been at the beginning... then the power that had originally come from the Dedication Path would also grow weaker and weaker until it vanished.
The most important inheritance passed down through the "profession" system was the "bottom line of the Path." Even if a Path's range was vague, its core was certainly clear. Therefore, one should not test the boundaries of a Path, but only follow its most essential principles and use only its safest powers. In this way, one could obtain relatively pure Path Power.
Even if a priest craved promotion, or sought wealth, authority, or lust through their position, as long as they remembered that the core principle of the Dedication Path was "altruism," they would not lose their priest profession level because of it.
With the "profession" system, supernatural knowledge could finally be formally passed down. From then until now, superhumans had generally grown stronger and stronger.
But that did not mean the ancient mysterious arts were weak.
Almost every mysterious art from the pre-profession era was an inheritance left behind by a powerful figure of that time.
For example, the "Shepherd's Secret Covenant" Iver had obtained was a mysterious art engraved from the memories of a man called the "Shepherd."
This art required compatibility with both the Dedication Path and the Path of Transcendence, and it required the two Paths to remain as balanced as possible. Only when their depths were equal could one use the "Art of Shepherding."
Once Iver advanced his priest profession, he would be temporarily unable to use it until he advanced to Demon Scholar.
And this mysterious art could practically be called black magic—
Its fundamental principle was: "Nourish the formless with the formed, and nourish the formed with the formless."
Overall, it described a mysterious art that could make anyone stronger...
After opening the book, Iver had fallen into an illusion. From the words, he vaguely saw a black-robed man wearing a hood feeding his flesh to weak demons.
He did not make contracts with the demons. Instead, he lured them to follow him with nothing but his flesh. It was like raising pets, or herding cattle and sheep. These weak demons were fed by him and grew increasingly powerful.
He consequently became emaciated, his body covered in scars.
After that, Iver saw someone kneeling before the black-robed man and begging for something.
Using a special method, the man infused the demon's formless power into the supplicant's body. In a blaze of fire, the supplicant underwent a drastic transformation and gained power.
Thus, the supplicant became the man's follower. He killed many people and offered them as sacrifices to an ever-growing number of demons. And when he grew weaker, he too was mercilessly thrown to a new batch of demons as blood food.
Through this repeated exploitation, the demons gradually grew stronger and more numerous. After that, using the same secret method, he infused these demons into the bodies of other followers who craved power.
In this way, he obtained an evil army composed of demon-possessed followers.
The army gathered various secret treasures and seized countless riches for him. As the man grew ever weaker, he began raising more and more phantasmal demons. By then, those following him were no longer limited to demons. Even Light Attribute phantasmal demons appeared at his side.
He had raised all of them from a young age. Without signing contracts, they were willing to accept his commands and share some of their power with others.
Under the black-robed man's management, the number of followers around him grew, and they became increasingly powerful.
Like a snowball, they formed a terrifying force in a short time, attracting encirclement campaigns from all sides.
In the end, when he was surrounded by a coalition army, he sacrificed the followers who followed him as food and used the Art of Shepherding to feed them to powerful phantasmal demons.
Anyone who had accepted his shepherding was powerless to resist the forced sacrifices of the Art of Shepherding.
They were used as food, summoning even more powerful phantasmal demons.
Iver saw it all clearly in the illusion.
Although it was merely a silhouette, there was no doubt that it was the "Fallen Angel" who had descended and been defeated in Version 3.0! The black-robed man's plan went awry at the final moment—he had tried to use the Art of Shepherding to infuse the Fallen Angel's power into his own body.
Yet he had never expected the Art of Shepherding to suddenly fail at that moment.
He could not properly contain the Fallen Angel's power. He had missed the optimal moment.
Without using the Shepherding Method, which could extract a phantasmal demon's essence without harming its nature, his actions became an act of stealing the phantasmal demon's nature. The enraged Fallen Angel struck back and severely wounded him, and he was consequently killed by an assassin from the coalition army.
The evil inheritance of the man known as the "Shepherd" ended there.
"...Because the moment he tried to infuse the power he had seized into his own body, he had already deviated from the Dedication Path."
Iver sighed.
He really had not chosen the wrong name.
Using humans as sacrifices to feed phantasmal demons, then extracting power from the phantasmal demons—or directly sacrificing an entire phantasmal demon to feed a human.
Just like a true shepherd.
Using ubiquitous grass to herd cattle and sheep, then obtaining milk and meat from the cattle and sheep.
The grass was ordinary people.
The cattle and sheep were phantasmal demons.
What an atrocious analogy.
—If one did not regard that boundless grass as the price, then "shepherding" cattle and sheep was naturally a secret art that created something from nothing.