Advanced Ritual

While making the Phantom Demon Card, Iver could still sit in his wheelchair.

But he couldn't do that while performing the advanced ritual.

Fortunately, Iver had already fed the Shadow Demon its fill early that morning. Even when he stood up, with his body completely linked to his shadow, the awakened Shadow Demon didn't lose control.

The shadow beneath Iver's feet writhed faintly, occasionally rising a little to prove that it was still alive, still there.

The shadow that floated up from time to time reminded people of the "mists swirling around" effect made with dry ice—except this mist was pure black, without a trace of any other color.

A demonic aura swirling around, basically.

In fact, the materials and procedure for the advanced ritual were not exactly the same everywhere.

Universal rituals themselves were not that rigid. The complexity of many rituals, as well as the difficulty of obtaining their materials, actually came from deliberate encryption. In essence, it was similar to the coded language used in alchemical texts. The purpose was to prevent people from analyzing the true nature of the ritual.

That was why Iver could create the Phantom Demon Card so easily.

As a newly developed ritual that had only been created three years later, it had not yet gone through repeated encryption, erroneous decryption, and re-encryption. The original meaning of its ritual had not yet been distorted. That was why Iver, whose Basic Ritual level was only 1, could easily reproduce it.

The advanced ritual, however, was the exact opposite.

The advanced rituals of the various inheritance schools differed slightly in their details.

The ritual Iver used was a simplified version he had once seen in his adoptive father's collection of books. It was a ritual commonly circulated among the knight families of Avalon.

Its advantage was that it did not require much fuss. Its disadvantage was that it consumed a small piece of White Crystal—about the size of a thumbnail and as thin as a coin. But the material itself was not expensive, so that was hardly a problem. Iver drilled a hole through it, threaded it onto a cord, and made it into a single-use pendant.

He prepared six pieces of silver jewelry: two bracelets, a necklace, two rings, and a forehead ring.

He then coated them with Clove Essential Oil, Cinnamon Essential Oil, Cypress Essential Oil, Benzoin Essential Oil, Helichrysum Essential Oil, and Chamomile Essential Oil respectively, placing them at the six points of the hexagram Iver had carved. The six Plant Essential Oils and the hexagram array carved with a sharp silver instrument were the most important core of the ritual—the only irreplaceable part.

After that, Iver prepared three foods he disliked.

He chose radish, bitter melon, and green pepper. He cut only a symbolic thin slice of each and placed them in the center of the hexagram.

With that, the preparations for the ritual were complete.

Iver put on his academy uniform. Though it was a school uniform, it was also a formal Clerical Robe.

It had a pure white clerical collar, with two golden Thorn Pattern reliefs bearing roses at the neckline—even genuine gold was used in these ornaments. Brown shoulder straps crossed his shoulders and chest, still decorated with golden thorns shaped like antlers. The robe hung down past the middle of his thighs. Below it were brown trousers and cloth shoes.

Anyone who saw this outfit could tell at a glance that he was a priest of the Nine Pillars God Church.

He shut the room door tightly. Once the full moon had risen more than forty degrees above the horizon, the ritual was officially ready to begin.

"—The nine are complete."

Iver chanted softly.

As he spoke, he lit a bundle of dried sage and mugwort tied together into an incense stick.

Like roasting a cigar, he repeatedly heated the tip of the herb stick.

In truth, it could indeed be considered a kind of cigar—just as coffee could, in a sense, be considered soy milk made from beans.

Sage was the most commonly used herb for fumigation and burnt offerings. Mixing it with different herbs produced different effects. When mixed with mugwort, its primary purpose was to block the influence of powers from other Paths on the advanced ritual.

For Iver, that meant suppressing interference from his own Path of Transcendence.

"Cast away three..."

Iver spoke softly as he pressed the continuously smoking herb stick into the center of the hexagram.

"—Constant Self, Lord of Scales and Feathers, Amber."

These three names belonged to the Pillar Gods of the Path of Love, the Path of Adaptation, and the Path of Twilight respectively.

This was a necessary part of the Full Moon Ritual.

No supernatural being could please everyone. Even the Full Moon Ritual allowed no room for improvisation.

Before seeing his teammates and enemies, he had to declare in advance the three Paths he disliked most. This served as a demonstration of his resolve.

During this ritual, he could not cooperate with teammates from these three Paths. Even if all three Paths had powerful individuals, he could not secretly switch sides.

Iver had carefully selected these three Paths.

Though the Path of Adaptation excelled at survival, it would definitely sell out its teammates when necessary, protecting itself first. Abandoning one's team and running at the first sign of trouble was a defining trait of the Path of Adaptation.

As for the Path of Twilight and the Path of Love, there were simply too many oddballs among them.

—The so-called Path of Love was merely a flattering name.

It was a Path related to savagery, animal instincts, and impulse, one that pursued animals' innate urges to reproduce and feed.

What kind of people were in it?

Perverts, gourmets, adult entertainers, competitive eaters... No matter how he looked at it, they were anything but serious. Still, it was quite suited to the modern internet environment.

The Path of Twilight, meanwhile, emphasized that "the sun will eventually set, and all things will eventually perish." It was a path that resisted death and disappearance, pursuing immortality and permanence.

Embalmers, taxidermists, gravediggers, and even painters and sculptors who created portraits of the dead might believe in the Path of Twilight. Making mummies and wax figures also belonged to the techniques of the Path of Twilight, as did summoning spirits and reincarnation.

Excellent teammates were unlikely to come from any of these three Paths.

As Iver recited the names of the three Pillar Gods in succession, a gust of wind suddenly swept through the room.

Three colors of flame suddenly ignited atop the three foods Iver disliked eating.

They were black, emerald green, and amber.

They quickly burned away in the flames, turning into a wisp of black smoke.

But strangely enough—even though a bizarre whirlwind had formed in the room and was constantly circling Iver, the smoke produced after the herb stick ignited the three foods rose straight upward. It gathered into a column of smoke only as thick as a wrist and connected directly to the White Crystal pendant hanging beneath the chandelier above.

Then Iver began circling the Ritual Array. Holding the herb stick outside the array, he bent low and walked in circles, fumigating the array's outer ring.

"May the six protect me..."

He pointed the herb stick toward the six pieces of silver jewelry in turn while reciting the names of the remaining six Pillar Gods: "Hourglass. Candle Keeper. Great Sage. Silver Crowned Dragon. Twin Mirrors. Serpent Father."

As he touched them one by one, the six pieces of silver jewelry gradually turned black.

They had not been blackened by smoke. Rather, they seemed to have touched some kind of poison, or to have drawn some harmful substance from the surrounding air.

The whirlwind in the room suddenly grew stronger as well. Every lit candle in Iver's room was extinguished by the wind, yet nothing else was blown down—not even a light sheet of paper.

"I follow the path of Candle Keeper."

The next moment, the herb stick in Iver's hand suddenly exploded.

He released it and threw it into the center of the hexagram. It continued to crackle loudly, releasing a beautiful stream of pure white smoke. Once again, the smoke covered the suspended White Crystal pendant, which had already been blackened by the smoke before it.

—The ritual had succeeded.

When Iver saw that his Basic Ritual progress had suddenly increased by 20 percent, he finally let out a breath and confirmed that the ritual had succeeded.

He took the White Crystal pendant down from the chandelier and put it on against his skin.

Although he had known beforehand that the ritual was simple, this was still Iver's first time advancing through a ritual.

Everything before this had only been theory. This was the first time he had actually performed it.

When Iver put on the pendant, he felt a faint sense of tranquility and drowsiness.

It was not intense and could be resisted with willpower.

It was roughly like feeling sleepy after eating one's fill, or the sensation of taking melatonin before bed.

But Iver did not resist. Instead, he sat in his wheelchair and closed his eyes, sensing the dragging force.

It was like slowly sinking through the Deep Sea in darkness. He clearly sensed his consciousness being dragged by some force into a deeper level while he remained awake.

"Good evening, priest."

Just as Iver awoke again, a cold voice with a strangely familiar cadence rang out.

He opened his eyes and found himself in a pitch-black space. There was clearly no light source, yet he could see everything.

He was sitting in a tall, broad-backed chair. Iver was over six feet tall, but even he could not completely fill the chair. When he placed one elbow on one armrest, his other arm could not reach the armrest on the opposite side.

When he looked up, he found that there were eight more chairs like this one.

The nine chairs formed a circle, while at the very center stood a huge stone Hourglass statue. It was about five or six meters tall, like one of those enormous decorative pieces found in shopping malls.

Iver realized that he was the fourth to arrive.

Three people had already arrived before him.

The four of them sat next to one another. The first was an old man with his head lowered, gripping a cane. The second was a young man wearing a brown double-breasted long coat and a top hat.

The third was dressed rather awkwardly. He wore a fully enclosed knight's helmet, yet his clothes consisted of a shirt and sweater suited for easy movement.

Though Iver could not see their faces at all, just as people's faces could not be made out in dreams, he immediately realized that the second person had to be Sherlock. That distinctive cadence was too recognizable, and the outfit had not been disguised at all.

It was practically saying—yes, I'm Sherlock Holmes.

Iver's outfit is on the cover! It was drawn by the book's operator, Guanguan!