Chapter 148: Test

As Gawain removed the biological tissue that was suspected to be divine flesh from the fused magic circle in the shadow realm, the aberration in the outside world finally lost the vitality that was almost inexhaustible.

As Sir Byron’s heavy strike landed, this aberration let out a low and deep howl. It stumbled and fell to the ground and began to swiftly disintegrate like a true aberration, into black smoke dust that was blown all around.

Gawain and Amber had also returned from the shadow realm, only the former now had an odd crystal cube in his hand.

Although they weren’t sure of the specific process, Byron and Heidi could also guess that it was this duo’s movements in the shadow realm that destroyed the monster’s resurrection mechanism. Heidi immediately went forward. “Ancestor—— the monster finally died! Was it something you discovered in the shadow realm?”

“I found this.” Gawain lifted the crystal cube in his hand and then looked at the surrounding soldiers who were keeping guard. After pondering for a moment, he said quietly, “Byron, Heidi, Amber, stay here. The others go keep guard outside the room for the time being.”

The soldiers realized that their feudal lord had probably found something unbelievable in the shadow realm; thus, they left this hall without the slightest hesitation.

Byron’s expression instantly turned solemn. He’d seen the object in Gawain’s hand earlier, and right now, he had many vague associations. “Lord… the thing in your hands is…”

“It was this thing that was releasing energy, allowing the monster outside to continuously resurrect. In addition, it is highly likely that the monster was influenced by it, such that it was able to live here for a thousand years and possess abilities that many ordinary aberrations do not,” Gawain murmured and then recounted his discoveries in the shadow realm to Byron and Heidi. “…That is the situation. I’m afraid we’ve really discovered something incredible.”

Clang! The staff in Heidi’s hand slipped out and landed on the ground.

“This… Could it be the flesh and blood… of the gods?” This lady who was always mature and composed was finally overwhelmed. She stared at the crystal cube in Gawain’s hand with shock and some hints of fear. “Gods, how could the gods…”

“I know you’re finding this very difficult to accept, and I know you are a believer of the Goddess of Magic and Mysteries. The fact that the gods have fallen and their flesh and blood have landed in the hands of mortals is a terrible blow to you.” Gawain softened his tone, hoping that it would make this great great great great… great-granddaughter slightly calmer. “But I also know that there is a sentence in the Mages’ creed. The path of seeking is endless. The gods are also part of it. ——Mages were never a group that was unduly god-fearing. It’s the same even if you believe in the Goddess of Magic.”

“I just couldn’t believe it.” Heidi exhaled and picked up her staff with a bitter smile. “Do you know, I’ve only been this disconcerted twice in my life. The previous time was when I saw you rise from your coffin.”

“Legend says there was once an ancient divine battle. Some of the gods were defeated, and their remains fell into the mortal world when they died. Their powers and fragments turned into the various Beyonder powers and magical creatures in the mortal world. And those gods who were victorious were the main gods of today.” Gawain provided the explanation that he had prepared. “Perhaps not all the remains of the gods had ‘transformed’. —— Maybe the Gondor Empire back in those years found this piece of remains that was intact and still contained vitality. Then they built this secret base to study it.”

This explanation was rather easy to accept, and it wasn’t fabricated either —— in fact, Gawain even felt that a big part of this explanation tallied with the truth. At most, it was just slightly… more euphemistic with a partial explanation of the gods’ cause of death.”

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Compared to Heidi, Byron instead appeared to be even more composed. He who was an ex-mercenary was even more lacking in reverence for the gods. When he saw those squirming strange biological tissues, what he felt more was nervousness and disbelief, but there were little emotions of awe and fear. Thus, he very quickly resumed his calmness and got thinking. “Perhaps it’s not as exaggerated as we think. The ancient era had so many formidable things. Perhaps the Gondor Empire only found the remains of a certain demigod creature that had remnants of — what was it called again? — ‘divine’ powers! Then, they were taken to be the corpses of gods and studied.”

Gawain had to admit that Byron’s argument made sense too. “This is also a possibility.”

With that, he examined this hall. Regarding the research projects that this place had once carried out, he believed that he had already caught some prospects of it.

“The Gondor Empire in the Meteoric Era… That was an era where humankind was proud and arrogant. The energy of the Well of Deep Blue knew no limits. The adaptability of humankind’s Mage system led to human Mages almost being Spellcasters with the strongest destructive force in the world. When they were invincible, there would come a change in the things humankind pursued. No lack of resources, not short of powers, what they wanted next… was probably eternity like the gods in the legends,” Gawain said while looking towards the line of words on the wall of the hall. “‘Humankind shall last forever… Even if we defied the gods.’ With the use of the word ‘defy’, it shows that the researchers then knew what an audacious thing it was that they were doing, but they simply dared to do so… Unbridled testing at the edge of seeking doom probably referred to this.”

At the end, he sighed and shook his head. “Unfortunately, scholars of the empire soon learned that the Well of Deep Blue was the only supernatural magical power well in the entire continent, and its magical power had a transmission limit. The powerful and unmatched Gondor Empire had merely been blessed by luck. The territory of the empire had been limited to the radiation range of the Well of Deep Blue from the very beginning. Thus, when the Meteoric Era ended, all the presumptuous ideas became naught…”

Everyone was full of a myriad of feelings because of Gawain’s words. Finally, it was Heidi who broke the silence. “Ancestor, how do you plan on dealing with these… divine flesh and blood?”

“I was just about to say.” Gawain glanced at the crystal cube in his hand and then lifted his head to look at Heidi and Byron. “When you are focusing on it, is there any… mental discomfort? For example, fear or auditory or visual hallucinations?”

“No.” Sir Byron shook his head. “Though I was startled when I first learned what it was, there’s nothing — now that I’ve accepted the fact.”

“Is that so…?” Gawain frowned. “I want to do a test. This test might cause some pressure on your minds. Are you two willing? Oh yes, Amber already tried it once by herself. Such a mental influence isn’t fatal, and you can recover from it.”

Amber instantly glared. “It’s not like I actively wanted to test it earlier!”

On the contrary, Heidi and Byron did not hesitate for long; the two of them nodded together. “Ancestor (Lord), please begin!”

Gawain thought for a while, then cautiously placed the crystal cube on the ground, and instructed the two. “You two move a little farther.”

Byron and Heidi complied without knowing the reason why, moving to stand a few meters away from the crystal cube; they then watched as Gawain removed his hand from the surface of the cube before he slowly retreated. Gawain even questioned as he stepped back, “Any sense of discomfort now?”

The two people still shook their heads, while Amber had darted out the instant she realized what Gawain had in mind. At this point, no one had any idea where she was cowering at.

Gawain continued to back away and was engrossed with focusing on the changes of the biological tissues in the crystal. Through this process, he confirmed Byron and Heidi’s condition over and over, and just as he was about fifteen meters away, there was suddenly a change in the flesh and blood stored in the crystal!

The biological tissues that were originally writhing slowly became active all at once. The dark-red blood plasma gradually backwashing around the biological tissues also quickened in flow and spread many tiny ‘tributaries’, forming a structure that seemed like a three-dimensional spiderweb within the crystal. Following the changes to the flesh and blood in the crystal, Heidi and Byron’s expressions instantly turned delirious.

Upon seeing this sight, Gawain had gotten an assessment. He didn’t need to inquire about the two’s condition before he suddenly took a step forward, and it was the distance of this step that calmed the divine flesh and blood, that’d just recovered some activity, back down again.

“This… What’s going on?!” Heidi was roused from the brief mental lapse and looked toward Gawain with some remaining palpitations. She could no longer recall what she had seen in the brief moment earlier, but the frightening feeling of a loss of mental control and her mind being flooded with noise and hallucinations were etched there. And what she found even more inconceivable than the terrifying feeling earlier was the fact that Gawain only needed to take a step forward to repress the restlessness of the divine flesh and blood. “How did you manage to do that?”

“To be honest, I don’t know either, but it seems like I am able to repress the activity of these biological tissues.” Gawain was actually also rather confused; though he had some vague guesses in his heart, he really didn’t know how to vocalize them. “It’s probably because as a fellow who’d resurrected, I am considered to have violated the laws of nature and carry some odd might to some extent.”

A trace of awe instantly appeared in Heidi’s look toward Gawain, but apart from the reverence, she had a question that was more practical. “How should we deal with this thing? Are you going to constantly keep it with you?”

Amber who had cowered into an unknown nook and cranny earlier wormed out again and even gave her opinion from the side. “I feel that if you were to be hugging such a piece of divine jerky when you’re eating and sleeping, you’d be taken to be a psychopath…”

Gawain pondered for a moment and thought to himself, if it was really as Amber had said, this might be the highest level of necrophilism throughout history, and he probably had to add the prefix ‘holy’ in front of necrophilism…

Then he pulled at his thoughts that had started to digress and glared at Amber. “No one will think you’re a mute if you speak less!”

Next, he did the test several more times and finally gained a rough understanding of the ‘encroaching pattern’ of these divine flesh and blood.

They were some residue bits of the dead gods after all; the destructiveness of these biological tissues weren’t as severe as Gawain had imagined at the beginning. He found that so long as the average person does not focus directly on these flesh and blood, he wouldn’t be affected, and if these flesh and blood were at a distance of more than twenty meters, even if one focused on it, he would be able to maintain enough reason to look away or escape the area of effect.

In this case, there was no need to send this thing back to the shadow realm to be kept.

To be honest, sending this thing back to the shadow realm might seem like the safest way of storing it; after all, in this territory, no one other than Amber was able to enter the shadow realm, but Gawain still had this nagging feeling of uneasiness. He believed that those Master Mages of Gondor hadn’t placed this piece of divine flesh and blood into the shadow realm to safely control it — because, given the Gondor magic skills in those years, they absolutely had the ability to create a enclosing barrier of some kind or a magic enigma lock to store this thing. Entering the shadow realm wasn’t as difficult as it was today, so leaving the item in the shadow realm naturally wasn’t as safe as it was today.

Thinking carefully, if those Master Mages placed these biological tissues in the shadow realm and even set up a complicated fused magic circle for it; instead of saying that they were repressing and controlling it, they were more likely to be sustaining it with the help of the shadow realm’s powers.

Gawain recalled that structures resembling charging runes did exist on that fused magic circle…

At the thought of these, Gawain made up his mind: he decided that he could not send this dangerous thingamajig back to the shadow realm! If he lost control over this ancient testing ground and it slowly grew and regenerated in a place where no one was able to monitor it, what would he do?

Numerous novels and movies in his past life had given him a reminder: sealing the item in a place where oneself could not see it; that was the first step to unexpected happenings coming true!