"Wilds of disorder, obey my command."

"Burned to ash, now coalesce and form."

"Everything shaped, sprouting from within outwards."

"This is the moment of motion—obey the mandate of heaven!"

As the final incantation fell, Naimes could clearly feel everything around him begin to change.

Soil, plants, fragments of houses, even the air itself—all of it started to shift. The latest_epɪ_sodes are on_the novel•fire.net

These things seemed to dissolve like pigments, and then a spark suddenly appeared.

The dissolved matter unified into one thing—a manipulable energetic substance.

That substance changed rapidly;

in the next instant it took on the properties of water and surged toward Big Black.

To a spellcaster, spells were their techniques.

And the ceiling of such techniques usually far exceeded that of swordplay and similar arts.

They could amplify the caster’s mental power repeatedly, pry on greater natural forces, and ultimately produce tremendous effects.

But precisely because of that, spellcasting became exceptionally intricate.

It required a great deal of preparation time.

If Isabella fought Naimes, even ignoring previous preparations, just this current chant alone would give Naimes enough time to slash her to death a dozen times over.

The moment those energetic materials covered Big Black, his body erupted into violent convulsions.

"Shaping-class spell: All Things Obey."

"Genius," Naimes murmured, admiring Isabella’s talent.

Spells on this scale were not something ordinary priests could dabble in.

Even many Steel Seed priests would not possess this kind of spell.

This was not orthodox priestly magic.

Spells had undergone countless evolutions and had long since branched into many schools.

Some derived from demonic magic, some were developed independently by humans, and some were simplified from divine rites.

All kinds of spells interpreted the world from different angles and harnessed its power.

The more powerful a spell, the greater the user’s requirement for control.

It was like Naimes’s Thousand Moons Extinguished, Flying Bird Turns—Nether Sword;

many learned the form, but only learned an empty shell, unable to unleash its true force, and often harming themselves instead.

Most priests consolidate their mental power through faith, which stabilizes their spirit and grants bonuses when casting divine spells and related holy magic.

But when casting spells of other schools, that advantage disappears.

Shaping-class spells were most favored by witches.

They used their mind to control an element and then sculpt it.

The fact Isabella could cast such a complex and extremely difficult All Things Obey without any mental bonuses said her talent had nearly matched his.

Countless energetic substances shifted rapidly and pierced Big Black’s body, then drove synchronous transformations within him.

This spell could be considered a classic of the shaping school.

It turned matter into a pure energetic state, then manipulated it to perform various reconstructions;

during this process, the beings wrapped in it would undergo myriad changes.

If an organism’s basic structure was reconstructed, then death was the likely result.

Big Black struggled and tried to shake off the invasion of those energetic materials.

Then his body reached a critical moment: a mass of black veins entangled with one another.

You could clearly see his body compress, then quickly expand, then burst apart.

Flesh and blood sprayed everywhere;

a skull was flung high into the air, breaking free from the enveloping energy and flying off into the distance. Countless black veins wove together like wings, carrying the skull as it glided away.

Obviously, Big Black chose to sacrifice its body to save the head.

At that point Isabella couldn’t help coughing;

she went limp and collapsed to the ground, then began to vomit violently.

This was one of the side effects of excessive expenditure of mental power.

Naimes watched the flying skull but did not pursue it, and the flesh that hit the ground was not completely dead yet.

Without the brain’s command, these pieces retained only instinct.

Some chunks of flesh, controlled by the black veins, launched attacks at everything around them;

there were even instances of pieces striking themselves.

Most of the flesh died within seconds, and on closer inspection these remnants displayed other properties.

Some had become woody, some hardened like stone, and some crumbled away like earth.

This was the effect of All Things Obey: it could effectively reconstruct the basic structure of the things it wrapped.

If Big Black had detonated later in the night, or if Isabella’s spell had continued longer, Big Black might have turned into wood or a stone statue.

"Are you okay?" Naimes helped Isabella to her feet.

After the nausea and vomiting, her mind eased slightly and she recovered some composure.

"I'm fine. I just need to use a divine rite to rest for a moment before I can fight again." Once she regained clarity, Isabella quickly exchanged information with Naimes.

She told him about the old priest’s possible bloodline experiments and the connections he once had with the Dartmanley family.

"I see. So the Dartmanley family’s bloodline experiments were a continuation of the old priest’s research?" Only now did Naimes understand why the old priest had said certain things were his debt to Nael.

It made the old priest’s contradictions even more glaring.

On one hand he might truly feel guilt toward Nael and wish to atone.

On the other hand, he continued to push his experiments forward, watching coldly as problems arose because of them.

People tended to call such self-contradiction—madness.

"Then Jacques is likely in danger," Naimes concluded.

"The old priest isn’t at the church;

he’s most likely with Op."

"As things are exposed, what the old priest might do is unpredictable, but the most likely outcome is he’ll forcibly push the experiment to succeed." Naimes wasn’t particularly surprised that Jacques hadn’t fled.

He had a certain read on human nature.

Jacques wasn’t the sort to slink away in defeat.

Naimes simply hadn’t expected Jacques to have gone with Op’s caravan.

Compared to a church without the old priest, the caravan was the truly dangerous place.

The old priest had gone mad;

from the current situation, his life’s knot centered on those bloodline experiments.

If Naimes tried to get into the old priest’s head, he could roughly guess the man’s thought: no matter what, he had to make the experiments succeed.

Only then would it not have been in vain.

Only then would he truly complete his atonement.

"Because of that mindset, when everything’s about to be exposed, he’ll use all his strength to complete the experiment."

"Op and the old priest's cooperation was very likely coerced."

"The old priest was torn up by his emotions in daily life;

Op probably paid lip service while pursuing his own agenda."

"At this point, we might have unwittingly helped the old priest make up his mind."