The core ability of a Desire Apostle was Desire Control.
First of all, this ability was extremely subtle and almost impossible to guard against. Everyone experienced emotions and desires at every moment, and as long as those existed, they could be exploited.
Desire Control had two applications. One was to directly manipulate emotions or desires within a certain range. This was also an area-of-effect ability, capable of manipulating multiple desires at once.
The other was to plant seeds of desire in advance. When the target experienced intense emotional fluctuations or displayed an overly obvious desire, the user could immediately take control remotely and catalyze those desires and emotions.
The range of this remote control was roughly three kilometers, making it an exceptionally covert ability.
Only those at the level of a Saint possessed Enemy Detection abilities with a range of several kilometers. Without a Saint or a grade 1 Sealed Artifact, ordinary mid-sequence Beyonders had no way of finding a Desire Apostle lurking in the shadows.
These two applications ultimately produced two effects. The first was to amplify the target's emotions or send them out of control, causing errors in judgment or even a loss of reason that left them practically incapable of resisting.
The second was to detonate their desires, pushing them beyond what their body could withstand and inflicting severe injuries or even death.
An ordinary Desire Apostle had little chance of killing a Beyonder with a single use of Desire Control. But with the enhancements provided by the Dark Hut and his dual pathways, Raphael could use this ability to briefly rob even a Sequence 4 of their reason or severely injure them.
However, a Sequence 4's spirituality could generally detect Raphael lurking in the shadows at the same time. In other words, the moment he used