Wilt fell unconscious.
His consciousness once again arrived before that pure, transcendent halo. Now he knew it was the Sefirah of the Wheel of Fortune Pathway-the Key of Light.
This time, however, he did not remain on the surface, but entered it.
"Buzz!!!"
Wilt felt his feet touch the ground. He opened his eyes and looked curiously at his surroundings.
"The Key of Light in the Western Continent is controlled by the holy monk lineage, so they turned this place straight into a Buddhist realm?"
He found himself above clouds wreathed in an ethereal aura. Beneath him was a massive lotus platform, adorned with sariras that radiated dazzling light.
Below the lotus platform were Buddhas, bodhisattvas, arhats... but they were all statues. A floating object hovered on either side of Wilt.
On his left was the sarira found in the ruins. On his right was a continuously looping ring, its center twisted and distorted into a unique symbol.
"That's the symbol of the Great Old One, Circle of Inevitability!" Wilt recognized it at a glance.
"Whoosh!" The symbol suddenly flew at Wilt, striking his spirit body in an instant before he could react.
"Aaah!!!"
Wilt dropped to his knees on the lotus platform and once again let out an agonized scream. The Circle of Inevitability's energy rapidly eroded his spirit body, soon corrupting half of it.
Just as the corruption continued to spread-
"Buzz!!!" The sarira on his left emitted a dazzling light.
"Dong! Dong! Dong!" Three bells rang out, followed by faint Buddhist chants that resounded through the sky!
Upon hearing the chants, the pain in Wilt's spirit body instantly eased, and the energy corrupting him was suppressed by another golden light.
"Huff!"
"Huff, huff!!"
Five minutes later, Wilt rose to his feet weakly.
"That was close!"
Relieved, he wiped the nonexistent cold sweat from his forehead and looked down at his chest, where a golden swastika firmly suppressed the Circle of Inevitability's energy.
"The Circle of Inevitability actually tried to corrupt me. Luckily, the Key of Light saved me."
"Still, it wasn't a complete loss."
Wilt clenched his hands. Some new Beyonder knowledge had appeared in his mind.
"Sequence 9, Dancer..."
"The Circle of Inevitability's energy actually bestowed a boon on me, making me a Beyonder of the Eternal Aeon Pathway."
"But I'm already a Sequence 8 of the Marauder Pathway. With both Pathways existing in me at once, is that good or bad for me?"
"Hiss!" Wilt suddenly sucked in a cold breath of pain. The excessive depletion of his Spirituality left him dizzy, with a dull, swollen ache in his forehead.
Then his spirit body began to sink...
The real world.
"Whoosh!"
Wilt's eyes snapped open.
Suddenly, a man dressed in a classical black robe and a pointed soft hat appeared before Wilt.
The man adjusted the monocle over his right eye and asked Wilt curiously:
"You're awake?"
"How do you feel?"
"Because of you, almost all the avatars in the waters around the Rorsted Archipelago were wiped out this time."
"There's no telling how long it'll take to rebuild. You've really caused me a lot of trouble."
Wilt hurriedly got up and saw many Amon avatars around him.
Among the avatars were men and women, adventurers, pirates, officials, doctors, chefs...
Wilt: "..."
Sure enough, I can't trust a single punctuation mark in anything Amon says!
But who is this avatar? Why haven't I seen him before?
Seemingly noticing Wilt's confusion, the Amon avatar in the lead said, "Oh, right, let me introduce myself first."
"I'm avatar No. 037, the person in charge of the Rorsted Archipelago and a Sequence 3 Mentor of Deceit."
"And the unlucky fellow you blew up was my deputy, No. 041."
"As for the avatars around us, hmm... I borrowed them from other places ten minutes ago."
"Is there anything else you want to ask?"
Wilt knew his test had come again, so he took the initiative to ask, "How long was I unconscious?"
"No more, no less-exactly half a shichen!"
"Then you came here to..."
"That's enough!" Avatar No. 037 immediately raised a hand to interrupt Wilt.
"Although I can roughly guess what happened to you, I don't want to know."
Wilt froze for a moment, then a teasing smile appeared on his face:
"Oh, you can actually hold back your curiosity."
"I was just about to tell you the whole truth."
"No amount of curiosity is more important than life." Avatar No. 037 paid Wilt's provocation no mind.
"Especially when facing the starry sky, one must restrain one's desire for knowledge even more."
The Amon avatar really does know something. Wilt maintained a normal expression, but grew serious inwardly.
He had said those things to probe how much Amon knew about what had happened earlier.
It seems that although Amon doesn't know the details, he must know I've come into contact with an existence in the starry sky.
But they didn't get rid of me immediately. Whether out of fear or for some other reason, that means I still have room to maneuver-plenty of it!
Wilt put his monocle back on, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly as he asked avatar No. 037 in a curious tone:
"What do you intend to do with me?"
"Hmm..." The Amon avatar fell silent, as if considering what to do.
"How about this?" He suddenly clapped his hands, having thought of a good solution.
"I'll give you the original body's Honorific Name. You can recite it directly and let the original body deal with the headache!"
"The original body's Honorific Name is: The hand that moves time; the shadow that roams fate; the embodiment of deceit and mischief."
With that, No. 037 smiled at Wilt. Not only him, but all the avatars turned to look at him in perfect unison.
The corner of Wilt's mouth twitched. He knew he had no room to refuse, so he promptly recited the Honorific Name:
"The hand that moves time..."
"The shadow that roams fate..."
"The embodiment of deceit and mischief!"
"Whoosh!" The moment he finished speaking, Wilt vanished from where he stood.
"Whew!" Amon's avatar No. 037 let out a breath of relief.
"I've finally sent that troublesome fellow away!"
Meanwhile, on Wilt's side.
After he finished reciting the Honorific Name, a violent wave of dizziness struck him. He found himself being forced to move rapidly through a distorted world drained of color, where there were no directions, no up or down, left or right.
Wilt instantly realized where he was:
"This is the Spirit World!"
The surroundings continued to lose color, and the dizziness persisted.
Just as Wilt was about to reach his limit, everything strange happening to him vanished in an instant.
Wilt opened his eyes and found himself inside a towering, magnificent cathedral.
Every pitch-black pillar, every arch, and every section of the dome was densely inlaid with the bones of different races.
"The Corpse Cathedral!"
"Didn't I recite Amon's Honorific Name? How did I end up on Adam's turf?"
Just then, a gentle, lighthearted voice tinged with amusement came from behind Wilt:
"Judging by your reaction, you're only surprised and puzzled, and mostly surprised at that..."
"In other words, you know where this is."
Wilt's body paused for a moment. He turned around and saw two people not far away.
One wore a classical black robe and a pointed soft hat of the same color. He had curly black hair, black eyes, a broad forehead and a thin face, with a crystal monocle over his right eye.
The other wore a rather simple white robe and had a thick, pale-gold beard covering the lower half of his face. His golden eyes were as clear and innocent as a baby's, and a silver cross pendant hung on his chest, making him look like the most ordinary of priests.
Wilt spoke the two people's names in his mind:
King of Angel-Adam!
King of Angel-Amon!