The increasingly absurd string of "indictments" made the masked man freeze for a split second — and in that same instant he felt a violent surge of crisis crashing in from every direction.
The next moment: black flames erupted from beneath his feet, a silver-white lightning bolt split down from the clouds directly overhead, and the air all around him was sucked clean away, leaving him unable to breathe.
He had no idea what any of these abilities actually were, but that didn't stop him from reacting fast — he warped the black flames' trajectory, used the resulting air current to dodge the lightning's strike point, and as for the inability to breathe, for a demigod that was barely worth worrying about in the short term.
In those precious few seconds, Vincent made a decisive call: he activated the Nation of Disorder's empowerment and entered the Ambition state. In an instant, golden-cyan light blazed in his eyes, and everything about him underwent a complete transformation — including, notably, his confidence, which inflated right along with everything else.
Bernadette's voice came through: "You only have three uses of Mystical Re-enactment left. Remember — your goal is to escape, not to go toe-to-toe with a demigod at Sequence 6."
Vincent grinned. "Got it!"
He spread his palm. A blood-red spear condensed in his hand with terrifying speed, radiating an aura that made the air itself seem to recoil. Since he only had three chances left, he might as well open with the hardest-hitting thing he had.
"Spear of Longinus."
The spear had existed since an age too ancient to trace, and had once been stained with the blood of a great being. Hurled through Mystical Re-enactment, it crossed the distance between them in a heartbeat.
It ignored space entirely.
The masked man's face went white behind his mask. He threw everything he had into warping its trajectory.
It barely helped.
What he could do was one thing only: use every ability at his disposal to keep moving at maximum speed, staying ahead of the spear's pursuit.
Vincent laughed under his breath and roared again with Words of Order: "You are guilty! Everything you have done — guilty!"
BOOM.
Waves of lightning, flame, and storm descended in sequence, all aimed directly at the masked man.
Bernadette's voice again: "You've now used two of your three Mystical Re-enactments."
Vincent's smile locked up. That snapped him back — time to run.
He turned to go — and stopped.
Not far away, where there had been nothing before, stood an old man with white-streaked hair and immaculate clothes. He was watching Vincent with a calm, pleasant smile. Then his pupils shifted — vertical slits, irises fading from pale blue to gold.
A Spectator Pathway demigod. Here.
The thought had barely formed when Vincent felt a thread of awareness slip into his mind — reaching past his defences and sinking into his mental world, moving to trample his mind island freely.
But two, three seconds passed.
And nothing happened.
Vincent blinked. Huh? I seem... completely fine?
In the original novel, when Klein had a Spectator demigod invade his mental world, it had taken his guardian angel and the paper marionette and a whole series of desperate manoeuvres to finally subdue the attacker. That had been a genuinely harrowing fight.
So I'm fine because—
Oh.
Vincent suddenly understood. This intruder had just barged headfirst into Bernadette's mental world instead of his.
...
Herwin Lambis tore through the target's psychological defences with contemptuous ease, passed through the Sea of Collective Subconscious, arrived at the deepest point of the target's mind — and found his way to the consciousness's Mind Island.
An island bearing an ancient, crumbling palace.
The whole process had been impossibly smooth. So smooth that even knowing he had caught his target at the weakest moment in their psychological defences, he still found himself wondering: was this really a demigod's mental world?
Perhaps this demigod simply had an unusually weak consciousness.
He stopped second-guessing and moved directly for the island — to ascend it, open the door of the Mind Body, and seize control of the target's subconscious, turning them into a puppet.
Herwin Lambis flickered and arrived close to the island's edge. In all his years as a Spectator Pathway demigod, he'd seen no end of other people's Mind Islands. The palace-type was not unusual.
But one this ruined — that was a first.
Everything on a Mind Island symbolised the deepest truths of the person's soul and consciousness. This level of dilapidation almost always meant that the mind had suffered some form of damage before intrusion — damage that had never fully healed.
"Since you are in such pain," he said pleasantly, "why not stop resisting and accept my control. I promise you — I will make your mind healthy again."
He raised his hand. Dense fog rose from the surface of the island before him, swallowing it whole in an eyeblink. Herwin's eyes deepened to gold, and a terrible Dragon Awe rolled outward like a wave, sweeping toward the fog-covered island.
The fog shattered beneath the Awe without any resistance at all.
But the Mind Island that had been there was gone.
Herwin was not surprised. Even an easy entry into a demigod's mental world didn't mean the target wouldn't fight back. He was the Spectator Pathway demigod here. In the Sea of Collective Subconscious, the mental world — he was the true ruler.
A cold expression settled over his face. His golden eyes swept rapidly across the place where the island had vanished, catching the faint traces left behind as the fog dispersed. In the mental world, every movement left a mark, and as a Manipulator, he could trace those marks directly to wherever the target had gone.
A moment later, Herwin Lambis gave a cold snort.
"Found you."
With a single thought, the Sea of Collective Subconscious around him erupted into a ferocious mental storm — wave after apocalyptic wave forming in succession, crashing toward a distant Mind Island with devastating force.
As the storm engaged, he pressed forward himself. While the Mind Island used every resource it had to hold back the tempest, he moved quietly onto the island, spread his arms, and released a plague-storm — his intent: to take the ruined castle before him and reshape it entirely in his own image.
Just then, a slender figure walked out of the castle.
She wore a white blouse with lace trim and ribboned flowers, a simple dark-blue outer jacket, cream trousers, black leather boots. A cascade of chestnut hair fell loose down her back.
Herwin Lambis stopped dead. There's someone else in this mental world?
Bernadette looked up at the old man a short distance away, perfectly calm. In an instant she understood exactly what had happened.
She raised her hand. An ancient staff appeared in it. She lifted it gently and swung it down.
In the next instant, the infinite Sea of Collective Subconscious — under that single stroke — parted.
Split clean in two.
And split along with it: Herwin Lambis.
This was the other Mystical Re-enactment spell Bernadette had worked out in her research:
"The Parting of the Sea."
The Sea of Collective Subconscious was, after all, still a sea.
To be continued…
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