Taking the scroll, Lucian gradually settled his emotions and asked with considerable curiosity, "Master, you've always said you did many outrageous things in your youth — what exactly were they?" At these words, Fernando's eyes widened and he bellowed, "Don't go prying into things that aren't your business! Get back there and analyze 'Spell Trigger'! Don't think that having a ritual means you can advance to high rank!" The sudden roar startled Lucian, and he hastily retreated through the door. Once the door closed, cutting off the sound, Lucian shook his head with a mixture of amusement and puzzlement. "The outrageous things Master did really must have been outrageous!"
...
Five days later, at the Arcane Magic Council headquarters, on the thirty-third floor — a vast, empty hall.
On the floor, a bizarre Magic Circle shaped like a human body had been drawn in blood from a banshee mixed with other precious materials. Spell lines covered the positions of the head, left chest, palms, and feet, each one pulsing like a dark red heart.
"Lie down on the Magic Circle." It was only after Felipe had finished setting up the base Magic Circle that he let Lucian and the Storm Lord enter, lest they secretly learn this special soul ritual — the Banshee's Blessing.
Lucian removed the Holm Crown Ring, the Ice Avenger Ring, and the Ogre Strength Gauntlets. He took off the Immortal Throne Robe and the Boots of Evasion, then removed the Sun Crown Amulet, the Fireweaver's Bracelet, and both the Archanist Badge and the Arcane Magic Badge, handing them all to Afris — who was watching with eager eyes — for "safekeeping." This soul ritual absolutely could not tolerate any magical item interference.
Afris was temporarily roped into being a pack mule but didn't find it troublesome. His amber eyes gleamed as he stared at the accessories in his paws, occasionally licking the rings and amulets with his tongue, paying no attention whatsoever to the ritual's progress.
Lucian, wearing a white shirt and fitted trousers, slowly walked to the edge of the Magic Circle and lay down in the designated position. Felipe then produced six massive bone stakes forged from high-rank banshee teeth, and said in a very unpleasant tone, "Try not to scream from the pain."
With that, he picked up one of the stakes — carved with complex, eerie patterns — and drove it viciously into the back of Lucian's right hand. The material, which must have contained some unknown substance, was so sharp that it pierced straight through Lucian's Second-level Knight body and pinned him into the Magic Circle beneath.
Despite having prepared himself mentally, Lucian still hissed through his teeth. Pain was an unavoidable reaction, though fortunately he'd endured worse injuries and didn't shout out. Drops of blood shimmering with a faint silvery moonlight seeped out, staining the banshee bone stake crimson. But the color quickly faded, vanishing entirely as if fully absorbed by the stake, slowly injecting itself into the lines of the Magic Circle.
Left hand. Right ankle. Left ankle — after all of them had been pierced with bone stakes, Felipe gently inserted the remaining two into the center of Lucian's forehead and the position of his heart. They went in shallowly, barely breaking the skin, yet they seemed to form a mysterious connection with the Magic Circle behind Lucian's back. They stood upright, looking as though they'd pierced through Lucian's brain and heart.
Having completed all this, Felipe stepped back several paces and softly began chanting. One by one, the lines on the Magic Circle slowly lit up. The incantation was gentle, like a song. Waves of soporific power seeped in from the bone stakes, from the Magic Circle, making Lucian's eyelids heavy and his thoughts drift involuntarily. He found himself thinking about how he'd been devoting himself these past few days to analyzing the nearly completed "Spell Trigger," and about how he'd stolen time to "improve" the structure and materials of a magical crystal lamp, handing the results to Arthur and Florenza respectively for evaluation from their different professional perspectives.
"Oh wind from the Land of Slumber, blow past this helpless soul, blow past it without cease." Felipe intoned, raising high his black magic staff embedded with gems of every color. He chanted in the language of the dead created by the Meshket Empire. A large pale-white gem on the staff flared bright, and Felipe's overcoat billowed outward like bat wings, as if a breeze carrying the scent of decay truly blew through the hall.
In a dazed state, Lucian sensed the breath of wind. Hypnotic whispers rode upon it, and his soul drifted further still.
"Oh flame from the Bone Wastes, warm this helpless soul and grant him lasting protection." Felipe circled a third of the way around and chanted once more in the language of the dead. Pale, formless phantom flames bloomed across the Magic Circle. They caused no damage to Lucian's body, but Lucian felt waves of warmth wash through him as his soul grew ever purer.
Watching from the side, Fernando's red eyes were half-lidded, as though through the phantom pale flames he could perceive a creature clutching a scythe and draped in black robes, and behind it, a wasteland where countless undead wandered.
"Oh cold from the Silent Hell, enfold this helpless soul and grant him eternal, unchanging peace." Felipe circled another third of the way, and a silver gem ignited. Boundless, frigid silence enveloped Lucian's soul, making it more solid and substantial.
Having done this, Felipe raised his left hand as well and let out a silent scream. The six bone stakes, which had drunk deep of Lucian's blood, writhed like serpents, rising into phantom shadows. They were images of beautiful but twisted women — their upper bodies white, their expressions racked with agony. Driven by Felipe's scream, they opened their mouths and began to sing.
The singing was beautiful, the melody enchanting, but only a soul could hear it. Through a haze, Lucian saw ripples spread across his own soul in time with the song, slowly drawing in the liquid flowing within the Magic Circle.
Two minutes later, beads of cold sweat appeared on Felipe's forehead. He lowered his left hand and drew from his coat a strange, entirely black mirror. It was adorned not only with small magical gems but also with crimson "leaves," pale hollow eyeballs, and on its reverse side, the hideous face-skin of a banshee.
The mirror was tossed into the air by Felipe, hovering without support above Lucian's head, its pitch-black surface — too dark to reflect any image — aimed down at him. Laborious, guttural necromantic incantations poured from Felipe's mouth. Every gem on the magic staff blazed to life, drawing even Afris's attention.
The mirror trembled once. The singing of the six banshee phantoms became wailing — agonized, beyond endurance. The black surface of the mirror slowly cracked open, revealing white, hollow pupils! Within those pupils, dark, twisted silhouettes appeared to dance in a strange, convulsing rhythm.
Gazed upon by those impossibly bizarre eyes, Lucian felt his drifting soul surge upward — past the clouds, past the starry sky — until it met its ruling star of destiny. Then he sensed that somewhere in the infinite distance, in a place untouchable, something was connected to his soul across the void.
It was looking down upon him with an attitude of lofty superiority!
The lines of the Magic Circle suddenly pulsed with eerie life, as though they'd come alive. Then all of them curled and coiled around Lucian's body, sinking deep within.
Lucian's soul was wrenched back into his body with a violent jolt. He trembled seven times, as though seized by a chill, and then fully regained consciousness.
"My promise has been fulfilled. I owe you nothing." Felipe took out a white handkerchief, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, tossed those words out with a grim expression, and turned to leave without looking back.
Lucian's head spun slightly. He couldn't quite adapt to his soul's new state, but after a few minutes passed, he focused his spiritual energy and the bone stakes in his palm floated up of their own accord, dissolving into fine powder.
"My spiritual force and soul can now interfere with reality..." Lucian confirmed with a trace of emotion. His speed from mid-rank to high-rank was probably the fastest in the history of the Arcane Magic Council, but it had come at the cost of slowing his future advancement.
Bone stake after bone stake shattered and turned to dust. Lucian stood up as though he'd never been injured at all. The Magic Circle etched onto the floor had completely vanished.
"What exactly did that final eye represent?" the Storm Lord Fernando murmured in puzzlement. A Grand Archanist like him could see straight through ornate, complicated magical rituals to their essence — for instance, he understood perfectly well the powers that had been channeled in the earlier stages. But that final step left him unclear on what had transpired.
Recalling the strange sensation at the end, Lucian asked with a mixture of doubt and unease, "Master, at the end of the ritual, my soul seemed to connect with something extremely distant. Is that... normal?"
Had this been an ordinary ritual, Lucian wouldn't have dared ask his master for fear of exposing the Soul Library's secret. But this "Banshee's Blessing" ritual was something Fernando didn't understand either, so any oddities could be blamed on it.
"That's what happens when your foundation isn't solid enough. There's a great deal of knowledge about high rank that you simply don't know." Fernando sighed slightly and said seriously, "Almost every high-rank mage experiences similar strange sensations upon advancement. A small number can even perceive it at the point when the soul begins to interfere with reality. The current prevailing theory is that it's a hallucinatory image produced by the qualitative manifestation of the true world after the World of Perception interacts with it."
"As long as it's not a problem with me, that's fine." Lucian felt relieved. A slower advancement speed going forward was tolerable enough — his advantage in world perception could compensate for much of it. But if some hard-to-treat soul injury had resulted, that would have been real trouble.
Fernando shot Afris a glare, causing the creature to return the items hanging from its claws to Lucian in abject misery. "Rest well for a week and adapt. Don't rush into the advancement ritual."
"Yes, Master." Lucian wouldn't joke with his own soul just to save a little time.
...
Arcane Magic Council, twenty-eighth floor, high-grade warehouse district.
"Red Dragon scales..." "Crimson Magic Tree sap..." "Verdant Soul-Eating Flowers..." "Six Sunstones..." "Ghoul brains..." "Tears of a Wraith..." ...
"Commissioner Isi, here are the materials you requested." Smith, the Fifth-Circle mage guarding the warehouse, handed over the materials Lucian had exchanged for and couldn't help asking, "Commissioner Isi, are you about to advance to high rank?"
The magical ritual for advancing to high rank required many rare and expensive materials, so any Fifth-Circle mage who reached this threshold could apply to the Mage Management Department for assistance. The Council would provide the most complete resources at the cheapest price — half off. So Lucian had come straight to the warehouse with the documentation issued by the Affairs Committee, but even after spending nearly all his Archanist Points and Gold Thalers, he'd only managed to collect a third of what he needed.
Looks like I'll have to mortgage my pension income for the next three years to the Master, and I still need to give Afris the subsidies from the Council and the Elemental Will to serve as its monthly salary, so it can periodically impersonate me and wander around in public, Lucian thought with a "pained" expression, then "smiled" at Smith and said, "I'm just preparing in advance."
Is there really a precedent for exchanging materials this far ahead of time? Smith watched Lucian's retreating figure, utterly perplexed. He'd heard of people going on adventures and gathering some materials on their own, but he'd never heard of anyone coming to the warehouse to stock up in advance. The warehouse wasn't going anywhere!
"Looks like Commissioner Isi really is going to advance. That speed..." Smith could hardly articulate his feelings.
...
Seven days later, Lucian once again stood in the same hall where the previous ritual had been held. His heart was somewhat uneasy, because the ritual for advancing to high-rank mage was far more difficult than the Banshee's Blessing, with a high chance of failure. Out of every ten Fifth-Circle mages who met the conditions and attempted advancement, three or four would fail. For someone like him who had been forcibly elevated, the danger was surely even greater.