The Divinely Inspired (Part 2)

"Crack!"

The middle-aged sea raider stabbed the same spot repeatedly. Cracks appeared across the transparent shield. He drove the blade in harder and pierced straight through it. The transparent shield shattered into starlight and vanished. In his eyes, the Burning Short Sword struck Ace.

"Bang!"

The struck Ace burst into starlight and disappeared.

The middle-aged sea raider's momentum plummeted. Suspicious and jumpy, he looked wildly around.

"I see you! Stop hiding!" he roared, trying to bluff Ace into revealing himself.

Only echoes answered him. His whole body jolted, and he suddenly slashed fiercely behind him. "Bang!" Once again, scattered starlight.

"Looking for me? Here I am."

Ace's low, ethereal voice echoed. Shadows emerged one after another from the darkness, transforming into Ace. The bizarre sight made the middle-aged sea raider's scalp crawl. He felt a trace of fear, and under those circumstances, his thoughts grew increasingly active.

"Great God of Fire, His Excellency Erik. I, your blood descendant, Sharp Eric, pray for your blessing." As Sharp murmured, he sliced open the back of his hand and smeared blood across the blade. The flames on the Burning Short Sword in his hand blazed ever brighter until it became a burning longsword more than three meters long.

Sharp's body trembled faintly, as though the effort had drained him enormously. Through his senses, Ace detected that an immense amount of magic power had gathered in Sharp's short sword in a brief span of time. This magic power differed from what he normally drew upon. It was exceptionally active, arranged in a peculiar pattern, and possessed the properties of flame.

Holding the burning longsword, Sharp spun rapidly as he attacked, flinging out a burning ring that expanded in an instant and incinerated every Ace around him to ash.

The burning longsword seemed to have exhausted its strength. Its flames dimmed, reverting it to a Burning Short Sword, and even the bright yellow at its center seemed duller. Sharp looked as though he had undergone intensely strenuous exertion. Beads of sweat covered his entire body, and his clothes were soaked through. Panting, he dropped to one knee, bracing himself against the ground with his short sword as he struggled to regulate his breathing.

"Clap, clap!"

Eerie applause echoed through the air. "Your performance has greatly exceeded my expectations. Now, look into my eyes."

Ace appeared from the darkness once more. Runes flickered in his eyes, radiating a ghostly gleam. Sharp involuntarily looked into Ace's eyes, and his body instantly froze. Countless flames appeared before him, along with burning blood. Enemies pursued him. He hid in despair, yet was still surrounded on all sides by his foes...

Ace smiled as he looked at the unconscious Sharp. A seasoned God-Chosen was indeed formidable. He could use a strange item to repeatedly attack a single point, directly shattering the magic protective membrane that could withstand Ace's strongest Physical Attack, Torrent of Acid, for two seconds.

He had even unleashed a wide-range attack with terrifying destructive power. Even from far away, Ace could feel the scorching heat wave from that instantly spreading burning ring.

No wonder his son had rated him so highly—close to a pseudo-hero. Ace even suspected that an ordinary pseudo-hero, without a powerful weapon-type strange item, would have difficulty defeating Sharp.

Ace's victory lay in the asymmetry of information. Through Yus, he had already gained a clear understanding of Sharp's circumstances, while Sharp knew nothing about him.

The moment Ace discovered that Sharp's mental strength was slightly greater than his own and that he could pass a Will check, he devised a plan: weaken the other man's will, thereby lowering his mental strength.

The instant he leaped from the wooden boat and entered the shadows, he used Illusion Gaze to create a visible, tangible, audible illusion of himself, then applied a Lesser Magic Protective Membrane to it. After Sharp struck it and noticed something was wrong, Ace used his gaze again to interfere, focusing on the power of fear to heighten his Active Thinking and fill his mind with distracting thoughts.

Finally, he used several false images of himself to blur the line between reality and illusion, planning to strike repeatedly afterward with different illusions, striving to completely control Sharp's perception and trap him in a false world.

Unexpectedly, Sharp had been provoked into unleashing his ultimate move. That terrifying burning ring, whose terror could be felt even from afar, consumed most of Sharp's energy, causing his will and mental strength to rapidly decline. Ace easily manipulated his perceptions, plunging him into an illusion where he lost consciousness in despair.

The lighthouse's flames had already gone out. With his left hand, Ace picked up Sharp's short sword. With his right, he opened the spellbook and linked his mental power to Lesser Charm Beast. A phantom flashed and pounced upon Sharp, while a charm rune structure slowly crawled out from the back of his neck.

Seasoned God-Chosen, successfully captured.

After several days of research, Ace discovered that God-Chosen displayed a very pronounced accumulation of magic power in their bodies—or rather, they were more deeply "contaminated" by magic power. Non-God-Chosen, on the other hand, possessed only trace amounts of magic power "contamination."

Comparing this to himself, after meditating for several months with the Magic Crystal Meditation Method—a meditation method incorporating Magic Crystal Runes—large quantities of Magic Particles had accumulated in both his body and mind. His degree of magic power "contamination" was slightly lower than Sharp's. In other words, his current state resembled that of a seasoned God-Chosen.

Ace kept scatterplot records of his own meditation progress. Once a week, he would cast Minor Magic Missile at full power and record the number of missiles he could release on a scatterplot. During the first few months, he gained two or three additional magic missiles each week. Recently, that growth had begun to slow, increasing by only one or two missiles per week.

At present, Ace could cast at most sixty-one magic missiles at full power. He recorded the mental power consumed by one magic missile as one unit of mental power, also called one missile. Having settled the unit for measuring mental power, Ace tested his other spells and roughly calculated their mental power consumption.

Illusion Gaze was the most complex. Activation consumed 5 units of mental power, maintaining it for one minute consumed an additional 2 units, and creating a realistic illusion consumed another 1 unit. Casting Illusion Gaze required a minimum of 15 units of mental power, with no upper limit.

Continuing his research on God-Chosen, Ace discovered that their magic power mainly accumulated in the heart, followed by the brain. In his own case, it accumulated mainly in the brain, followed by the heart. This was likely why, at the same level, a God-Chosen's Physical Quality far surpassed his own.

A God-Chosen's blood could serve as excellent material for writing runes, while their powerful hearts were superb magical materials containing unique rune structures. Their brains contained no rune structures. Ace speculated that rune structures might also emerge in his own brain under magic power contamination, but he had no way to observe his own brain with mental power. Whenever his mental perception reached that area, all he perceived was pitch-black darkness.

When a God-Chosen died, something resembling a soul appeared. It could not be captured. When Ace linked to it with mental power, he sensed only vague emotions such as fear and anger. After lingering in the natural world for several hours, it dissipated on its own.

Non-God-Chosen were the same as ordinary people. No souls appeared after their deaths.

Ace charmed the surviving sea raiders one by one, executed everyone who had killed, took part of the sea raiders' treasure, and buried the rest somewhere on the small island. Then he had the few sea raiders who had not yet killed anyone row him away from the island. He had his own bottom line; he would not become a monster without scruples merely in pursuit of power.

After going ashore, under Ace's mental suggestion, the sea raiders went to the Dess Town Guild Hall to turn themselves in. They might face the punishment of being sold into slavery, but that was no longer Ace's concern.

If you think this is not bad, please bookmark the book, cast a few recommendation votes, or invest in it. Thank you for your support!