Ritual

It was as though a church choir had begun to sing, yet beneath that hymn lay a palpable gloom. An ominous aura shrouded the entire room.

"Mr. Riges!" Adel was the first to react, hurriedly lowering his head and bowing in respect.

The wary state of the other four aberrants was also broken by Adel's actions.

Seeing this, Adam grinned and strode calmly into the room. It was as if an invisible force had pushed the aberrants aside, making them retreat one after another to clear a space for him.

Adam sat directly in the chair and crossed his legs, one hand resting against his mask. In an instant, he seemed to become the king of this place, stirring an almost irresistible urge to kneel.

"Presumably, you have already heard of the Tears of God Ritual." Adam adjusted his throat and said in a hoarse voice, "There are some matters I need you to handle."

"Please give your orders, Mr. Riges." The aberrants exchanged glances, then hurriedly spoke to Adam.

"Don't worry. It isn't anything difficult. I merely need you to help gather some materials." Adam said softly, "If you do well, I would not mind presiding over the Tears of God Ritual for you ahead of time."

"Bring back a bottle of consecrated holy water. Wolfsbane from a cliffside. Outer garments commonly worn by humans. The corpses of different beasts. Soil from the highest and lowest points of the city..."

Adam spoke slowly. Some of these were things required for the Tears of God Ritual, while others were not. They were merely meant to make the ritual more complicated.

In a calm yet unquestionable tone, Adam ordered the aberrants to collect the items.

"As for Adel." Adam looked at the blood thrall with his head lowered. He seemed to ponder for a moment before saying, "At noon, stare directly at the sun. Collect the tears you shed in a bottle."

"Yes, Mr. Riges!" Adel's face filled with wild delight as he hurriedly agreed.

The things the others had to collect had nothing to do with them personally. Only he had to gather his own tears. Combined with the name Tears of God Ritual, how could Adel fail to understand that he was the one about to undergo the ritual?

The Tears of God Ritual did not contain any extraordinary power. At its core, it was a divine art—a miracle primarily accomplished through the power of God.

The theme of the first stage of the ritual was repentance.

Tears of repentance. The Beasts did not need God, yet suffered disaster because God had departed. That was the Beasts' sin. Because the Second Son had not heeded the shepherd's warning and went to the underground caverns, suffering came upon the earth. That was the Second Son's sin.

Thus, if they wished to gain God's mercy, both the Beasts and the Second Son had to repent for their sins.

Watching the aberrants depart, Adam did not relax. Instead, he remained seated, eyes closed as he continuously sorted through his emotions.

As long as Adel's Tears of God Ritual succeeded, every aberrant present would become 'utterly loyal.' Adam would then continuously assign them various tasks, making them keep investing in the matter of obtaining the Tears of God Ritual.

The more they invested, the deeper they would sink. For the sake of a more complete ritual later on, they would become Adam's most loyal people, then help him subdue more aberrants and obtain more capital from them.

"With this, the gathered aberrants will have been divided into ranks." Adam kept considering the traits of these aberrants, wondering whether there were any omissions in his plan.

"Jin? Adel invited him." Adam recalled what Adel had said before entering.

"Would aberrants truly be uninterested in something that could so effectively conceal their identities? No, they would not." Adam understood very well that any aberrant in the Holy Sound Kingdom would be interested in the Tears of God Ritual, even if they possessed other means of concealing their abnormality.

"Those who were interested but did not accept Adel's invitation are the most dangerous." Such people had not been drawn into the hierarchy of aberrants Adam had created. Before Adam truly controlled most of the aberrants, their target would be Adam himself, the one who possessed the complete ritual.

"Therefore, when Adel and I interact, we need to be even more careful. We cannot let those people trace me through Adel." Adam noted this point, then temporarily set the concern aside.

Outside, Adel had already gone to stare at the sun.

In the Divine Word, after God departed, endless radiance descended, cleansing the Beasts.

Thus, most clerics believed that God was the world's barrier. He protected the world, preventing that excessive light from harming it.

From this, another incarnation of God emerged—the God of the Sky. It was the God of the Sky who used His own power to divide the sun, moon, and stars, ensuring that the three would not appear at the same time.

There was also a claim that God had replaced the sun, giving rise to the incarnation of the Sun God.

As the churches that worshipped the God of the Sky and the Sun God fought tooth and nail, a third claim emerged.

"God is perfect, but God's perfection differs from human perfection. He is the union of good and evil, both the God of Creation and the God of Destruction. In other words, God is the God of 'All.'"

"The Beasts made God leave, but only God's goodness departed. God's evil remained behind and punished the Beasts."

The emergence of this claim caused most churches to turn their spearheads toward the church that described God through the concept of "All."

After all, most churches had been founded upon the belief that God was kind and that God loved humanity.

Of course, there was also the Original Doctrine Church. They believed that God was simply great, unrelated to good or evil.

The divine power borrowed by the Tears of God Ritual seemed to combine the gods pointed to by the doctrines of these three churches. It did not merely borrow the power of one particular incarnation of God.

The sun, the sky, and good and evil.

The object of repentance in the first stage of the Tears of God Ritual was the Sun God. Staring directly at the sun represented a willingness to repent, while the tears shed were tears of repentance.

The holy water was needed only because the holy power within it served as a catalyst. If Adam had truly been a cleric and possessed holy power himself, then he would not have needed holy water.

Wolfsbane from the cliffside. Wolfsbane was believed to be connected to werewolves and possessed intense toxicity. Most potions and evil rituals required wolfsbane as a material.

There was a widely circulated saying: Even a pure-hearted man, one who never forgets to pray at night, cannot avoid becoming a wolf on the full-moon night when wolfsbane blooms.

As far as Adam knew, some people chose to transform into werewolves to extend their lifespans. The ritual for becoming a werewolf was hidden within that sentence.

Vampires and werewolves were inextricably linked, and blood thralls were the same. Wolfsbane was also necessary in the ritual.

As for the outer garments commonly worn by humans and the corpses of different beasts, they generally served as symbols of some kind.

The soil from the city's highest and lowest points was meant to connect to where the true Tears of God lay.

In the Divine Word, a demon spirit tempted the Second Son by saying that, in the most prosperous place, there was a lake formed from the Tears of God. The soil from the city's highest point was meant to indicate "the most prosperous," while the soil from its lowest point indicated the bottom of the lake.

Adam tapped his mask with one finger after another. Through the mask, he seemed to feel the scar on his cheek throbbing faintly.

Back then, he had suffered no small amount for the sake of this ritual.

Thinking about it, these aberrants were truly fortunate to be able to begin the ritual so easily.

Memories of the past surfaced once more. Adam continually calmed his thoughts, making himself settle down again.

"Trace the ancestors, trace the past, unearth talent." Adam recalled the traits of his bloodline awakening. "Have signs already appeared?"

"Memories are always so easily stirred up, and my exceptional affinity does indeed seem to have strengthened."

Adam lowered his leg and walked to the window, watching Adel stare at the sun, hoping to focus his attention on what was happening before him.

"So blood thralls are not afraid of the sun? As expected, some film and television stories from my previous life cannot truly be applied to this world." Though he had long known this, seeing a vampire stare directly at the sun still gave Adam an absurd feeling.

In this world, vampires were products created by sorcerers researching werewolves. Their weakness was actually similar to that of werewolves: they merely feared silver objects.

With a bone dangling before them, the aberrants' efficiency became astonishing. Before long, the items Adam had mentioned were brought back one by one.

And so, the ritual began.