Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic

Having confirmed the Old Fishman was dead, the Thirteen-Ring Sorcerer with the Holy Emblem pendant shook his head and spoke first:

"I don't know what grudges you harbor, but now I must leave. The High Priest of the Crimson Cult is dead, and there are many tasks yet to be done outside. Although the Sea Return is doomed to failure, we must still try to minimize the casualties."

"Oh? Don't you see that he is the second Chosen One?"

The Witch pointed toward Daknis, who slightly furrowed his brows, clearly still unaware of the reason he was being pursued.

"Of course, I know."

The follower of the True God nodded, fixing Daknis's features firmly in his mind:

"But compared to the Chosen One, whose dealings we still do not know how to handle, saving the innocents we can save is my duty. I would like to take him back to the church, but rather than the still unknown Whispering Verses, I'd rather do something more practical."

He quietly prayed to the Deity, then nodded slightly to Shard as a gesture of respect before leaving through the corridor.

"See, people from the True God Church can be detestable at times, but most of the time they are worthy of admiration."

Only after the Thirteen-Ring Sorcerer had completely disappeared did the Witch speak to Shard again.

"What is the Chosen One?"

Daknis asked quietly, Shard and the Witch certainly wouldn't answer him, but his right-hand Half-body Demon spoke:

"I seem to have heard about this..."

It was clearly not in the human language; the language itself seemed to embody evil, its tone resembling the sound of slimy insects crawling over liquid.

"Yes, I remember now, it is the Great Prophecy of the Witch. Look, I also just found out, you are indeed the chosen one."

The voice sounded somewhat like when "Desire" was tempting Shard. It was tempting Daknis, and Shard would bet the demon had already known about "the Chosen One."

"The chosen one? Is this some Knight novel's plot?"

Daknis repeated, his brows slightly furrowed.

"Your strange dark powers, haven't you ever wondered about them? The frequent anomalies you encounter, aren't you curious about them? The whispers heard in the darkness, are they really just illusions? Oh, my Daknis, there is only one truth..."

The right-hand Half-body Demon coiled around his neck, whispering in his ear, yet both human and demon eyes looked toward their foes:

"What is the truth?"

"Perhaps, you can use The Puppeteer's Script, and we can try to find the answers together. Maybe it's a ritual, yes, perhaps a ritual, that will let you fully understand your power."

The ancient demon seemed to know much more.

"Script..."

"Ivan Daknis, do you truly believe in the philosophy of the Blood Spirit School? Is becoming Golden Humans that easy? Don't you want to find a more powerful strength through another path?"

The demon asked quietly, Daknis' eyes slightly narrowed and then suddenly he shoved his left hand into the demon's mouth, pinching out a brass ring.

The swollen right hand immediately contracted back to its normal arm size. The mouth in the palm opened and closed as if it wanted to say something but failed to make a sound.

"Poet-Level Relic, The Fish Training Ring, allows non-human speaking intelligent beings to talk. This relic originally belonged to the Crimson Cult, used to tame large nonspeaking sea creatures, now it is being used by Ivan Daknis to allow demons to speak."

The Witch said quietly, and Shard immediately thought of his cat, if Mia could get this ring...

"This relic is useless for cats, penguins, and other fish-loving creatures though it's only rated Poet-Level, but unexpectedly, it works on Evil Spirit Demons too."

Shard immediately lost interest in the ring.

"Witch, what exactly do you want?"

Daknis asked.

"I want to kill you, but by killing you, I would release the demon inside you, so I can't kill you."

She whispered lowly, as if confiding to someone:

"It's a pity, our demon expert isn't currently in the Old Continent..."

Suddenly, she looked toward Shard, making his heart skip a beat, yet he was sure his identity hadn't been exposed.

"Help me capture him, and I promise not a Copper Coin of the twenty thousand pounds will be missing."

"That's of course no problem."

Shard nodded his head.

The Witch pointed at Daknis, a bright yellow light pillar burst from her fingertips, but as darkness appeared between the two, that light pillar also vanished.

"Is that the only trick you have?"

The Witch's Ring of Fate finally appeared behind her, densely packed Spirit Runes emitting Spiritual Light, and before Shard could decipher her Core Spirit Rune, dozens of light pillars shot forward from the surface of the Ring of Fate.

The dark area controlled by Daknis only swallowed two of the light beams, the remaining dozen or so light pillars struck towards Daknis with more force than a Steam Cannon.

He dropped a leaf, and the Spirit Rune "Wind" behind him flickered with Spiritual Light. The man cohabitating with a demon, truly like a leaf in the wind, deftly avoided those deadly Spirit Rune attacks, but even so, his body's side was grazed by one of the black light beams.

That beam was like an eraser, directly wiping out a quarter region of Daknis' waist. But he was immediately engulfed by a Dark Vortex, reappearing soon after, the missing part of his body filled by the dark, writhing darkness that became part of his body and rapidly grew into flesh.

This figure was one Shard had seen on the Fishbone Pirate Ship as well, only back then, half of his body had been engulfed in this terrifying darkness.

The rustling noise appeared by his ear, and Ivan Daknis frowned, looking up to see black chains that clung to ancient columns of the temple descending from above. He tried to dodge again but hadn't expected that these dark chains manipulated by Shard would actually latch onto his Ring of Fate.

The Great Sin Chain could only affect a Twelve-Ring Sorcerer for an instant, but Daknis was merely a Six-Ring.

"What?"

The middle-aged man looked back in surprise. Though the Ring of Fate was a tangible object, it also possessed an intangible nature when faced with attacks. It was common knowledge among circle sorcerers that very few things could directly target the Ring of Fate.

The chains struggled to entwine around the Ring of Fate, and the originally spinning brass ring actually began to slow down. During the period where the blood-flesh of desire could still be effective, Shard could match a magician of the Inner Ring close to the High Ring. Moreover, considering the opponent's significant desire, it was quite normal for the Great Sin Chain to have an effect.

"Miss, quickly!"

Shard immediately alerted the witch, grasping the chains that extended from his sleeves with both hands. The chains wrapped around the Ring of Fate, but the ring resisted as well, the harsh sound of metal deforming and sparks indicating that Shard wouldn't last much longer.

Miss Aphrola took a deep breath, and all the light on her Ring of Fate behind her disappeared. Then, Shard thought he vaguely saw golden steps materialize behind her.

"This is something I've barely learned—"

She raised her right hand high, the gleam at her fingertips and the familiar motion causing Shard to look over in surprise.
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"Feliana's Witch Light!"

The witch shouted, and the golden light was not a beam but a shockwave expanding in all directions. The blinding brightness targeted Daknis, who couldn't move because his Ring of Fate was fixed, as if to shatter all obstacles in front, twisting the boundaries of time and space.

It passed by Shard, letting him tremble as he felt its power, feeling as if he had understood something.

Daknis summoned a massive Dark Vortex, trying to devour the fierce, blinding golden light, but a full-strength attack from a Twelve-Ring Witch was not something the yet-to-fully-awaken Chosen One could withstand.

Also, being bound by Shard at that moment, he could only brace himself against the blow, unable to move. At that same moment, his right hand, which could no longer speak, expanded on its own. This time what expanded was not flesh-colored, but black muscle.

The entire arm, like a huge parasitic worm living inside the middle-aged man, grew amidst Daknis's heavy breathing sounds. His right side turned into a black substance that seemed to ooze pus.

Like a burst of serum, the pus-like black right arm and body swelled to at least three times the size of the left side of his body, leaving Shard curious about how he managed to keep his balance.

Of course, Daknis did not answer that question. He used his enlarged arm to shield his face, then, at the cost of almost evaporating his entire right arm, he truly managed to block the witch's strike. By the time Miss Aphrola was preparing another move, Daknis, with his right eye covered in black pus and a faint red light visible in his left eye, slammed his large, rapidly bubbling and regenerating black hand onto the ground.

The ruins were themselves an anomaly caused by spatial displacement, and naturally, beneath the temple rolled the raging sea.

His hand slamming down made the ground tremble again. The temple floor, which not even the self-destruction of the Old Fishman Priest had destroyed, was actually smashed into a hole by him, with blood-red seawater gushing into the temple like a fountain.

He wanted to jump in, but the black chains still bound his Ring of Fate behind him. Daknis looked towards Shard, the red light in his eye making Shard feel as if his soul had been punched... punched with the strength of someone like Mia.

"Hmm?"

Shard glared fiercely at Daknis, whose eyes flared red for a moment as if he had seen something unbelievable.

"Karmic Sin?" (in demon language)

The massive black right arm grasped the chain and yanked it fiercely, trying to pull Shard toward him. Shard stumbled forward, knowing the opponent's irrational physical strength was far greater than his own, so he could only cancel the Arcane Technique to withdraw the chain, then watched as the huge monster jumped into the waves below the broken floor.

The floor slowly healed, as if the temple possessed its own life.

"Shall I pursue with you?"

The Witch looked at Shard, who immediately retreated a step:

"The opponent is The Chosen's prime candidate, and I'm severely injured at the moment. You can see my condition, my lady, I do not possess your strength; I am incapable of doing anything."

He was always quite honest when facing the Witch.

"Cowardly man."

Miss Aphrola clearly did not believe his excuses, the lady with curly brown hair scoffing as she leaped into the hole in the floor.

Shard heard the strange sound of conches below, but not the eerie sounds of the Crimson Cult, rather it was light and pleasant. Large groups of creatures were swimming underwater, but it didn't sound like merman.

"What Miss Aphrola has summoned isn't important... Manipulating dark powers is indeed troublesome, not to mention the demon within him. If the Witch really can't capture him, once Daknis reaches Tobesk, we'll still need Iluna to suppress him..."

He stood in the temple of bygone days pondering, waiting until the temple floor's cracks caused by the blow fully sealed before bending down to pick up his fishing rod and leaving the place.

Only Shard remained here, the dim lighting making the shadows of the statues scattered throughout the temple seem particularly terrifying. After the battle, an eerie silence descended. The Outlander turned solemnly and looked toward the blood-dripping, White Bone Holy Emblem hanging in the depths of the temple.

He silently adjusted his clothes, setting aside the matters of the Witch, the mermen, and the demons to calm himself. He took a deep breath, then walked step by step toward the Holy Emblem.

Though he did not know what would happen, the sense of ritual was still necessary.

After rescuing Lecia, he had no intentions of accomplishing anything else in Coldwater Port. The mermen, let the Church handle them since they were well-prepared; Daknis, let the Witch pursue him, as he was already prepared to have Iluna deal with the demon-possessed man in Tobesk.

The only thing Shard wanted now was Divinity.

With Divinity, even the worst of situations would no longer be a problem for Shard.

[Outlander, your desire at this moment is truly strong.]

She whispered gently in his ear.

"No, I just know what is important."

In his eyes, there was only that golden glimmer.