Bang! Bang!
Doors and windows in
Within the headquarters of the Church of the "
Luca, on duty in the underground sector, sensed this uncommon disturbance and sprang to his feet.
As a "Prophet," he caught with great keenness that something was happening.
This aged man, in a plain white robe trimmed with brass thread, at once used a secret art and was, in one stride, at the entrance of the underground sector; he stretched out his hand to push at the great door.
But this door — not heavy for a Demigod — did not, in that moment, budge in the slightest, as though sealed shut by some invisible force.
Luca Brewster did not press on with futile attempts; he turned his gaze instead into the depths of the underground.
There all was silent — not the faintest sound rose from it.
This is not normal… Luca did not need to depend on his own extraordinary abilities to judge that something was amiss here.
In ordinary times, from the very deepest part of the underground there would always come a sound that made one's hair stand on end and one's spine grow cold; but now, it had vanished, as if it had never been.
Others might not know, but Luca, as a senior of the Church of Knowledge, knew that the sound came from an extremely dreadful sealed artefact whose particulars even he did not know — and it could not have been wiped away out of thin air.
The present circumstance could only point to one of two things: Either that sealed artefact had broken its restraints and entered a more eerie state; or it had been further sealed, and could no more exert any influence upon the outside.
And whichever it might be, it meant that a danger of the utmost extremity lurked around them — for the artefact's serial number was: "0—01"!
Atop the surviving bell tower in Bayam, the light upon
Mr "Error" had just then, without the least concealment, displayed His newly-obtained extraordinary capability and signified to every Existence that watched Him a single fact: He had already accommodated the uniqueness of the "Door," and obtained its corresponding authorities!
By this means He had just closed, throughout the whole world, everything related to the concept of "door," and so reinforced the effect of sealing to the utmost degree.
This meant that, for a short while, no item under seal in the churches of the orthodox gods nor in the hidden societies could be put to use, for none could unseal them.
Even if a true god were to descend from the stellar realm, it might take some time to break through the restraint.
Thus Amon had excluded the great majority of "Tier 0" sealed artefacts from the war of the gods that might be about to begin, and would no longer have to take their interference into account.
Of course, an influence of this kind, brought to bear upon the whole world through authority, could not be long maintained — unless Mr "Error" Amon devoted to it all His effort. For this reason, He had not done it sooner; only when he had perceived the disturbance in Klein's anchor did he, in one stroke, set it in motion.
— The more powerful a "Tier 0" sealed artefact, the more dreadful its negative effects; this is yet more so for those that can affect the level of divinity. Even a true god of Sequence 0 could not bear it long. Thus, the true gods do not unseal save when they must, lest, in doing so, they bring upon themselves greater interference, where gains cannot make good the losses.
Having done this, Amon propped Himself up on the palm, sprang lightly, and, without any reserve fit for a true god, sat upon the railing atop the bell tower.
He looked towards the sea-line and waited at His ease for the secret to be undone — for the rite by which Klein would accommodate the "Fool" uniqueness to formally begin.
When that time came, He would toll for the other the funeral bell.
…………
Within the "Goddess of the Night's" hidden world.
Under the successive impacts of the awakening will of "Fu Sheng Xuan Huang Tian Zun" and
It made his thoughts utterly chaotic, on the verge of splitting into two distinct personalities — one called Antigonus, and another called the "
At the same time, his clones had lost their reason and were in a state on the brink of disintegrating into a vortex of worms; only the puppet, at present, simply stood in place, with no one to operate it.
Voice after voice of prayer and praise from the faithful echoed at Klein's ears and formed corresponding images of cognition.
It was like a dyke, holding fast against the surging floodwater that rolled towards him.
Such a state of affairs was not entirely strange to Klein; when he had become "Mystery Pryer" and devoured the extraordinary characteristics tied to Tsalatu, he had had a similar experience. Therefore, having just, with the anchor's help, weathered the initial confusion, he, with considerable practised skill, guided Antigonus's self-cognition and spiritual brand toward the reviving will of "Fu Sheng Xuan Huang Tian Zun," so that the two might erode each other and become entangled.
The raging "mental storm" weakened sharply, and Klein's self-consciousness at last had a moment to draw breath.
Without pausing to settle himself, he immediately brought the divine images formed by the multitude of anchors into the entanglement of those two mental pollutions, seeking a new balance.
But it did not go smoothly. Compared with the previous occasion, the essence, tenacity and degree of madness of Antigonus's spiritual brand were all plainly stronger than Tsalatu's: this was, after all, the King of the Angels who had accommodated a uniqueness, and was called the half-"Fool."
Moreover, Klein had also stolen the other's identity and fate. This brought two further unfavourable consequences: His personality was at every moment on the verge of splitting; from time to time he believed himself to be Antigonus, and tried to fuse the other's spiritual brand with his own mind. He had taken over Antigonus's out-of-control, mad fate, and his whole body was unstoppably disintegrating — and this brought a great deal more mental pollution.
In addition, Antigonus's spiritual brand and the reviving will of "Fu Sheng Xuan Huang Tian Zun" were not wholly incompatible: on certain local "battlefields" and in certain respects they showed signs of merging into one — as if originally arising from the same Existence.
This initially bore out a conjecture of Klein's, namely: as a born mythical creature, Antigonus had been, from birth, endowed with a certain "Honoured Celestial" will. When He advanced to "Mystery Pryer" the matter became all at once severe and gave rise to an unwitting mutation. By the time He had accommodated the "Fool" uniqueness, madness seems to have become, directly, one of His aspects.