Locke composed himself. "But, Dean, can a crystallized wizard curse me from a distance?"
Earl Thompson, the academy dean, smiled. "Of course not. The gap between First-Ring Wizards isn't that vast. Even a Second-Ring Wizard couldn't kill you without ever seeing you or having any form of contact with you."
"But you did have a weakness, and you exposed it to that female pope of the Specter Holy Church."
"You killed one of her Formal Wizards. The Specter Holy Church is different from every other wizarding organization. The entire Black Wizard organization is, in truth, her personal property. While still students, all wizards of the Specter Holy Church must split off a fragment of their souls and place it inside their magical artifact, the Soul Torch. From then on, their lives and deaths are in the hands of the pope of the Specter Holy Church."
"But this is still a composite spell." Earl Thompson, the academy dean, explained, "You killed one of her First-Ring Wizards, so your soul aura remained in that Soul Torch. Using it, she could cast Ritual Magic on you once and drag you into the Styx River."
"She only had one chance."
"Likewise, she can do this to anyone who kills one of her First-Ring Wizards. So the Soul Torch is both a magical artifact that protects the Formal Wizards of the Specter Holy Church and a trap for eradicating their enemies."
"Even if someone kills a wizard of the Specter Holy Church, its crystallized wizards can use this connection to kill the wizard who killed their Formal Wizard."
"To be honest, you shouldn't kill a wizard of Specterology so casually. Wizards of Specterology are the best at staying alive. More than that, they're also adept at taking their killer down with them before they die."