Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

---

Chapter 122: Genius Myss

Myss’s voice cracked on the shout. He hurriedly cleared his throat as if nothing had happened.

“The Eye-Opening Ceremony can choose outsiders too?”

Brief blinked his bean-like eyes. “The priest said he heard a divine prophecy. I suppose anyone in the city can be chosen.”

“Salaar fits all their requirements perfectly, so it isn’t strange that they picked him.”

“They’re still choosing a woman tonight,” Myss hissed, as if a forked tongue might flick from his mouth at any moment. “What was that Blind God’s Blessing again? The two young people get married after the Eye-Opening Ceremony…”

The thought made him extremely unhappy.

Myss found it difficult to describe the feeling. It was as if Salaar had once again reverted to the mind of a boy. Salaar was clearly still right there, yet Myss felt as though he had lost something.

With a sharp crack, Myss tore a chunk straight off the wooden edge of the bed.

Salaar stared at the missing piece. “…The Blind God’s Blessing may not be that absolute.”

Another sharp crack followed, this time from Myss whipping his head around.

“Really? …You’ve been chosen by some inexplicable Blind God. How can you be so calm?”

Then he narrowed his eyes.

“Wait. I remember now. You said the only thing you ever had relations with was a mosquito in Crimson Marsh. This ‘mosquito’ wouldn’t happen to mean—”

Salaar: “…”

Salaar answered with absolute sincerity. “It isn’t what you think. The last time I came to Crimson Marsh, I was here to collect the mages willing to join the army.”

Myss raked Salaar from head to toe with a suspicious gaze but said nothing more. An inexplicable pressure clogged his chest, and even his previously vigorous appetite disappeared.

Salaar coughed twice and continued questioning Brief.

“Did they mention anything else?”

“The candidates will be announced together before sunrise tomorrow. Then they’ll be taken away to bathe, dress, and have their hair arranged. At sunrise, they’ll hold the Eye-Opening Ceremony and awaken the Blind God.”

Brief tried hard to remember.

“After that, they all went to the underground church. That place is guarded really tightly. I was worried about Bedsheet, so…”

The Bedsheet Archdemon bobbed its head, making a growling sound in agreement.

“I understand completely,” Salaar said.

“I don’t,” Myss huffed. “After all, I’ve never been to the Crimson Marsh before, and I’ve never been bitten by a mosquito.”

Salaar finally failed to hold back. He smiled to himself for a moment.

“The Crimson Marsh is rather unusual…”

Mondicia had complicated terrain and was covered in ruins. Most of its territory could be considered uninhabited, while its few cities governed themselves independently.

Unlike Aufon, which emphasized royal authority, Mondicia was effectively controlled by the religion known as the Secret Garden.

The Crimson Marsh possessed the largest and most complete ruins. The Secret Garden established the nation’s largest Root Church here, which was what gave the Crimson Marsh its status as the capital.

“…So Mondicia has no royal family. The High Priest of the Secret Garden is the true ruler of this country,” Salaar explained patiently.

“That’s why the Root Church is the most heavily protected area in the entire city. It isn’t strange that Brief and Bedsheet couldn’t get inside.”

Myss didn’t care about how heavily anything was guarded.

“The High Priest? You mean the one choosing the sacrifices?”

Brief already had half his body inside the book, but he still nodded.

“Yes, him! An old man whose beard nearly drags on the ground. He said he can hear the Blind God speaking!”

At that exact moment, a knock sounded at the door.

“Mr. Salaar, Mr. Myss. We’re going out to purchase some supplies. Would you like to come?”

Hearing there was a chance to investigate Earl, Salaar stood.

“We’ll be ready in a moment.”

He instinctively cast Myss a knowing glance, only for the Archdemon to deliberately ignore it, his rear firmly glued to the edge of the bed.

“You go. I’m not going,” Myss said.

Salaar raised a brow. “Are you feeling unwell?”

“I’m not going. I’m staying in this room.” Myss spoke viciously. “I really am feeling unwell. I’m in a bad mood.”

Salaar looked at him in surprise, his brows and eyes gradually drooping. His lapis-lazuli eyes even seemed a little damp, as though Myss had locked him in a box and abandoned him outside on a rainy day.

Myss hardened his heart, yanked the blanket over, and buried his face in it.

“I said I’m not going.” Then, after struggling for two seconds, he grumbled, “But you’re not allowed to go anywhere alone. You can’t go too far. You must come back before lunch and bring me roasted meat and fruit. The meat has to be hot… You’re only going out to get food for me. If you go too far or leave me here without caring about me, that counts as violating the contract…”

Salaar sighed. “…All right, since you insist.”

He had just turned to leave when something cool suddenly landed around his neck.

Salaar instinctively grabbed it and caught Fork in his hand. Myss had just thrown Fork down the collar of his shirt.

“I’m going to monitor you the entire time!” Fork wrapped tightly around his ring finger and announced with great vigor.

Salaar sighed again. “All right.”

After thinking for a moment, he pinched Knife out of his pocket and placed it on the floor.

“Help me protect Myss.”

Knife raised its head and nodded elegantly.

……

The instant Salaar left the room, Myss sprang upright.

Knife was so startled it nearly launched itself across the room.

Myss immediately picked Knife up and wrapped it around his wrist with great solemnity. Then he strode toward the room’s only table and sat down with a serious expression.

Their room was well positioned. The interior was decorated with conspicuous tapestries and colorful tiles, all set against bright pale-yellow stonework. Under the golden sunlight, it looked as beautiful as a flower garden, completely unlike the damp forest they had passed through before.

The table stood beside a large window.

Looking outside, one could see a terrifyingly blue sky, layers of ruined brickwork, and vines and shrubs invading every available crack. The morning light was brilliant. Giant eye-shaped leaves swayed in the wind, casting shadows across Myss’s table.

Myss gave the room a cursory glance before withdrawing his gaze and focusing on a sheet of parchment.

Salaar had been selected as one sacrifice. The other candidate would most likely be some unknown human woman.

Myss hated this helpless, stifling feeling. He had to find a way to become the other sacrifice.

Salaar had to remain firmly under his control.

He didn’t know what sort of being this Blind God was, so interfering with it directly would be difficult. But manipulating that old High Priest and making him choose Myss was something he believed he could manage.

After entering the human world, he had developed quite a few little techniques.

Finding someone was easy. He could extend magical threads, trace the flow of magic, and follow it all the way to the so-called Root Church.

As Mondicia’s true leader, the High Priest was undoubtedly powerful. Myss was confident he could locate him.

The problem was what came afterward.

Once he found the man, how was he supposed to make him choose Myss?

Myss gnawed on the end of his quill.

The techniques he had learned so far could roughly be divided into magical manipulation, magical perception, and memory analysis.

This time, merely rearranging those abilities in some simple combination wouldn’t be enough. He had just learned something new, and it was time to digest it properly.

“Myss, Myss, what are you thinking about?”

Seeing that Myss was about to chew the end of the quill bald, Knife asked cautiously.

“Kendrick’s divine power.”

Myss glanced at Knife and answered casually.

“I’ve always thought that guy’s ‘spirit swapping’ looked familiar. Where did I see something like it before… hm?”

Myss looked at Knife again.

Right.

The first “body swap” he had encountered in the human world hadn’t been Kendrick’s work.

Back in the Red Amber, Salaar had transferred his consciousness into Knife.

Although Salaar and Knife hadn’t literally exchanged places, the outward form had been extremely similar.

To exchange the minds of two people, Kendric had to use divine power to connect their bodies.

Salaar and Knife also possessed a mental connection through their contract.

Myss narrowed his eyes, lightly tapping the tip of his quill against the parchment.

Almost unconsciously, he drew two circles and connected them with a line.

Was so-called “body swap” truly an exchange at all?

Even as a Chaos Archdemon, Myss couldn’t sit here and control a Dragon Fae’s right hand from a distance.

But he could control his own right hand to write. If necessary, he could also write using his left hand.

“Exchanging minds” sounded vague and insubstantial. Controlling different parts of a single whole sounded far more reasonable.

The quill tapping against the parchment stopped.

Yes.

If two connected people were treated as a single whole, a two-headed symbiotic organism…

Then Kendrick’s technique wasn’t complicated at all.

For Myss, the half of the body belonging to “Myss” had been blocked by divine power. As a result, he had naturally begun using the half belonging to “Salaar.”

For Salaar, the situation had been exactly the reverse.

In Knife’s case, Knife had chosen to sleep and surrendered full control to Salaar.

It hadn’t been “Salaar transferring into Knife’s body.”

It had been “Salaar completely controlling the entire symbiotic organism.”

In other words, if Myss learned from Kendrick and used magic to temporarily connect himself with a target, then thoroughly suppressed the other person’s mind, he could briefly control that target.

Myss separated out a magical thread thinner than spider silk. Mimicking the fluctuations of Kendrick’s divine power, he wrapped it around Knife’s body.

The next instant, Myss experienced a strange sensation.

To a certain extent, he could control Knife’s movements, as though he had grown an extra finger that didn’t listen very well.

“What’s happening, Myss? My body feels so stiff.”

Knife swayed its head in confusion.

Myss immediately withdrew his power.

Knife was already a mental extension of Salaar, so he had never expected to control it easily.

But according to this theory, if he lowered his standards somewhat…

Myss didn’t manipulate another thread. Instead, he diffused his magic until it was invisible and gathered it within a radius of ten meters around himself.

Knife was immersed in the thin magic. The connection between them was far less stable than a direct thread.

However…

“Myss?!”

Knife rubbed its eyes with the tip of its tail. Its flat little snake face somehow showed a trace of shock.

“Myss, how did you, uh, grow…”

Myss gestured vaguely in front of his chest.

“Do I look like a human woman?”

This body wasn’t particularly tall, had a slender build, and possessed delicate features.

He only needed to control the other person’s vision and create a few nonexistent characteristics to disguise himself as a beautiful and spirited human woman.

Later, he could stuff something into the front of his clothes. That would reduce how much control he needed and allow him to expand the range.

With that thought, Myss turned toward the bread tray and began selecting suitably shaped loaves.

Knife stared at him in shock for a long while before finally speaking.

“Just now… all you did was diffuse your magic, and you controlled my five senses?”

“Mm. Kendrick’s approach was pretty good.”

Myss poked at a piece of bread.

“It was much easier than I expected. You really can learn quite a lot in the human world.”

Knife was speechless.

Combined with the stiffness in its body from earlier, it quickly understood.

With Myss’s power, he could keep magic dispersed around himself all day.

Any weak ordinary person who came near him could be manipulated however he wished.

Hallucinations, false impressions, every kind of nonexistent sensation… Even mages who deliberately defended themselves would be affected to varying degrees.

If Myss made up his mind and concentrated his power on one specific target, he could even control that person’s movements freely.

Someone at Salaar’s level could resist. But anyone else…

This was genuinely terrifying.

“What are you planning to do?” Knife asked nervously, flicking its tongue.

Myss chose two pieces of bread and stuffed them into his clothes.

“Obviously, I’m going to make that old priest choose me as the sacrifice!”

After several seconds of silence, Myss added with righteous conviction,

“…We don’t know the procedure. If the sacrifices are taken away separately, I won’t be able to keep an eye on Salaar.”

With that, Myss sat down on the bed again and repeatedly practiced the magic he had just acquired.

The corners of the Archdemon’s mouth curled upward. His mood had visibly improved.

“Brief, come out and guide me. Take this magical thread and deliver it to the entrance of the underground church.”

After several hours of practice, an extremely fine magical thread condensed under Myss’s control, almost impossible to perceive.

Knife: “…”

Knife desperately wanted to imitate Salaar and sigh, gut it held itself back.

……

When Salaar returned with lunch, Knife finally let out an audible sigh.

“What?” Salaar silently mouthed, glancing at Myss, who was happily devouring skewers of meat.

“Exactly what I told you,” Knife replied in an almost inaudible voice. “Salaar, have we made the Chaos Archdemon even more… dangerous?”

Salaar silently took a bite of bread.

“I knew he learned quickly, but I didn’t expect him to learn this quickly… It’s as though he was born understanding the fundamental nature of power.”

“Can we really end the Night Scourge?” Knife asked worriedly.

Salaar didn’t harbor any delusions of heroism and believed in the resilience of the human world.  But they couldn’t exactly add new burdens for humanity to endure —the Chaos Archdemon was practically evolving!

“Shh.”

Salaar raised one finger and gently pressed it to his lips.

“Salaar…”

“If I possessed Myss’s abilities, along with the Chaos Archdemon’s enormous body, I could completely destroy the human world simply by allowing the magic-filled Night Scourge to descend once.”

Salaar spoke slowly and calmly.

“I wouldn’t need to control very much. I would only have to take away humanity’s capacity for awe. Make them ignore the abnormalities before their eyes. Make them numb to the corpses of their own kind. Make them incapable of sensing the danger of death.”

Knife stared fixedly at Salaar.

“…But Myss acquires such terrifying power only so he can use it to play.”

Salaar smiled, his gaze resting lightly on Myss’s back.

Myss was wholly focused on enjoying his roasted meat. His entire body seemed to sparkle because he had thought of a good idea, his happiness overflowing plainly for everyone to see.

“That, Knife, is where the mortal world’s hope lies.”

---

The author has something to say:

Yes, this is the canon version of “Sweet Pie”. [dog head]

The Chaos Witch (♂) returns to the stage. [okay]

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>