All-Things Obedience

"Wilderness of disorder, heed my command."

"Ashes of incineration, gather and take form."

"Shape all things, let them arise from within and without."

"Now is the moment of motion—obey the law of Heavenly Mandate!"

As the final incantation fell, Naimus could clearly feel everything around them changing.

Dirt, grass, trees, fragments of houses, air—everything was shifting.

Those things seemed to dissolve like paint, and then a spark of fire suddenly appeared.

The dissolved matter became one—an energy substance that could be controlled.

That substance shifted rapidly. In the next instant, it turned fluid like water and surged toward Big Black.

For spellcasters, spells were their techniques.

And the upper limit of such techniques generally far exceeded skills like Swordsmanship.

They could continuously amplify a spellcaster's mental power, prying loose more natural forces and ultimately producing powerful effects.

But precisely because of this, casting spells became exceptionally precise.

They required an especially large amount of preparation time.

If Isabella fought Naimus, setting aside the earlier preparation time, this chant alone would have been enough for Naimus to cut her down more than a dozen times.

The instant those energy substances covered him, Big Black's body began struggling violently.

"Shaping School spell—All-Things Obedience."

"A genius." Naimus sighed at Isabella's talent.

A spell on this scale was not something an ordinary priest could dabble in.

Even many Steel Breed priests did not know spells like this.

This was not an orthodox priestly spell.

Spells had undergone countless evolutions and had long since branched into numerous schools.

Some had evolved from Demon spells, some had been independently developed by humans, and some had been simplified from divine arts.

Every type of spell interpreted the world from a different angle and made use of its power.

The more powerful the spell, the greater the demand on its user's control.

It was like Naimus's Thousand Moon Extinction Bird Turning Underworld Sword. Many people learned it, yet only learned an empty shell. Not only could they not unleash its true power, they would instead injure themselves.

Most priests used faith to unify their mental power, making their minds exceptionally stable. This gave them bonuses when casting various Holy School spells and spells corresponding to their respective divine systems.

But when casting spells from other schools, they lacked that advantage.

Shaping School spells were mostly favored by Wizards.

They used their own minds to control certain elements and shape them.

For Isabella to cast such a complex and difficult All-Things Obedience without any enhancement to her mental power, her talent was almost comparable to his.

Countless energy substances rapidly transformed, piercing into Big Black's body and driving his body to undergo corresponding changes.

This spell could be called a classic of the Shaping School.

It turned matter into a pure energy state, then manipulated it through all kinds of reshaping. During this process, any individual caught within it would undergo countless transformations as well.

If even a living being's basic structure was reshaped, then death was essentially all that remained.

Big Black struggled continuously, trying to escape the invasion of those energy substances.

Then his body suddenly reached some critical point, and countless black blood vessels across him tangled together.

His body visibly compressed, then rapidly expanded before exploding.

A mass of flesh and blood sprayed in every direction. A head shot high into the air, breaking free of the energy substances and flying into the distance. Countless black blood vessels wove together like a wing, supporting the head as it glided away.

Clearly, Big Black had chosen to sacrifice the lesser to preserve the greater.

At that moment, Isabella could not help coughing. Her body went limp as she collapsed to the ground, then she immediately began vomiting.

This was one of the side effects of excessive mental power consumption.

Naimus watched the head fly away but did not choose to pursue it. The flesh and blood that had fallen to the ground had not completely died either.

But without the brain's control, those things had only instinct left.

Under the control of black blood vessels, chunks of flesh attacked everything around them. Some even attacked themselves.

Most of the flesh gradually died after a few seconds. At a glance, it was clear that other traits had appeared on it.

Some had become woody, some had hardened like stone, while others had softened and crumbled like dirt.

That was the effect of All-Things Obedience. It could effectively reconstruct the foundational structure of anything caught within it.

If Big Black had self-destructed even a little later, or if Isabella's spell had lasted a little longer, he would probably have turned into wood or a stone statue.

"Are you all right?" Naimus helped Isabella up.

After the nausea and vomiting, Isabella's mind eased somewhat, and she recovered a little.

"I'm fine. I just need to use divine arts to rest for a while before I can recover my combat strength." Once she had cleared her head, Isabella quickly exchanged information with Naimus.

About the Old Priest's possible Bloodline Experiment, as well as some of his past connection with Dartmenly.

"So the Dartmenly Family's Bloodline Experiment was actually a continuation of the Old Priest's experiment?" Only then did Naimus understand why the Old Priest had said he owed Nigel certain things.

But this only made the Old Priest seem even more contradictory.

On one hand, he might truly have felt guilty toward Nigel and wanted to repent.

Yet on the other hand, he continued pushing his experiments forward, watching coldly as all the problems caused by them unfolded.

People generally called such self-contradiction—madness.

"Then Jacques is probably in danger." Naimus stated his conclusion.

"The Old Priest isn't at the church. Most likely, he's with Otto."

"Now that the truth has been exposed, no one can predict what the Old Priest will do. But the most likely possibility is that he'll forcibly push the experiment to success." Naimus was not particularly surprised that Jacques had not left.

He still had some grasp of the human heart.

Jacques was not someone who would slink away in defeat so easily.

Naimus simply had not expected Jacques to go to the Otto Caravan.

Compared to the church without the Old Priest, the caravan was the truly dangerous place.

The Old Priest had already gone mad. Judging from the current situation, the Bloodline Experiment was the obsession of his entire life.

Naimus put himself slightly in the Old Priest's shoes and could roughly infer his thoughts: no matter what, he had to make the experiment succeed.

Only then would none of it have been in vain.

Only then could he truly consider his atonement complete.

"Precisely because of that mindset, now that this is about to be exposed, he'll use all his strength to complete the experiment."

"Otto's cooperation with the Old Priest was very likely coerced."

"Normally, the Old Priest struggled amid all kinds of emotions, and Otto probably only pretended to comply while working against him."

"But at this point, we've instead helped the Old Priest make up his mind."

Thank you for following along, thank you for voting, and thank you for your support. You are the true heroes!