Chapter 233: The True Devil
Translator: Kris_Liu Editor: Vermillion
On the following Friday, after the arcanists finished their breakfast, they entered the hall in groups. According to Raventi’s words, they would be able to see the result of the experiment today or at most tomorrow, which made them feel very curious.
During the past seven days, the arcanists did observe the reaction equipment through the magic imprints that they left. However, there was nothing specially new going on there. There was nothing new with the pure water evaporating, with the lightning striking the vapor and mixed gas, or with the vapor then condensed into liquid again.
Everything was just so simple and plain.
“What are we going to see? Honestly speaking, I’m very curious.” a necromancer from the Hand of Paleness who just re-established his meditation environment was saying in a quite excited way.
Another female necromancer, who had blond eyebrows, compressed her lips a bit, “Jason, in fact, I’m not looking forward to anything, honestly. I don’t see anything that’s special in this experiment, and there’s no way that a simple experiment like this can create an environment where life can be born. The truth is that, at that time, there were way more factors involved than we can even imagine!”
“Lily, I know… I’ve been staring at the lightnings for so long that I feel that they are right in front of my eyes right now,” answered Jason humorously. His words were true, as many arcanists who studied discharging phenomenon also said the same thing.
Lily rubbed her eyes a bit as well, “I know, but that still doesn’t mean anything special.”
When they were chatting, someone that both of them were familiar with walked toward them. He had grizzled hair, deep wrinkles, and gentle, blue eyes.
“Morning, Jason. Morning, Lily,” greeted the old sorcerer.
“Morning, Vern.” Both Lily and Jason nodded and smiled.
“Dear Ms. Lily, may I have a request?” said Vern sincerely, “Would you mind changing your seat with me, as I want to talk to Jason about some of my thoughts over Life Force Theory.”
“Why? It’s something that has been overthrown already, isn’t it?” Lily was confused, and she did not want to sit among a bunch of elemental sorcerers.
“Actually, I do not think so,” said Vern seriously. “Can you deny the existence of life force and soul?”
“Of course not, those two things are fundamental in the school of Necromancy. Denying the existence of life force and soul is denying our own existence and values,” Jason answered decisively. “It is only Life Force Theory that is overturned, and this does not have anything to do with our study of soul and life. We are re-directed in the past wrong practice of how we create human bodies, but for other theories in the school of Necromancy, especially those about soul, they are still fine and solid.”
In their past belief, necromancers were convinced that humans, elves and dragons were superior to other elemental and alchemical creatures because the latter did not have life force that was stored in flesh. Therefore, they believed that only life ingredients could be used to create human bodies, until this theory was overturned by Lucien and Felipe.
Vern shook his head, “What have been synthesized so far are still far from being called ‘the most fundamental ingredients of life’, so I won’t say that Life Force Theory is completely done for. You two must see the great beauty hiding within the human body, and how fascinating human bodies are structured. We are still facing lots of secrets of the human body that have yet to be solved, and if Life Force Theory is totally wrong, can I draw the conclusion that one can just live forever even without a life box, or separating one’s soul, or looking for the next new body?”
“Oh… Arcana’s above. I can tell that you’re really into Life Force Theory, Vern. I’m not even close to you.” Lily rubbed her forehead, as her mind was starting to get messy, “I need some time alone. I believe in the secrets of human body, but I also believe in Felipe’s experiment outcome. Feel free to talk to Jason, Vern.”
Arcana’s above was an expression that sorcerers often used to show the impressiveness of something or to be polite.
Then she walked to the elemental sorcerers and sat down among them. After thinking to herself for quite a while, Lily drew her own conclusion: it was certain that Life Force Theory was wrong, but this did not mean that all the secrets of the human body had been solved, and much more needed to be done to further explore the field. Right now, Lily just wanted to keep her mind open, which she believed that was the best attitude.
Vern sat down on Lily’s seat. When he was talking with Jason, his eyes focused on Felipe, who was sitting there three rows away to the left front of him.
Today or tomorrow would be his last chance. In order to defend the Lord’s glory, Vern was ready to sacrifice himself. However, among all the necromancers he knew, only Lily’s seat was the closest to Felipe’s, but this seat was still not good enough for Nicolay to launch an attack on Felipe and kill him with one shot. Nicolay needed to, when the time was right, bear the risk of taking five to six steps further through the narrow gaps between the seats to kill Felipe.
“May the gate of Mountain Paradise open for me.” Vern crossed in front of his chest in his mind.
…
Soon, all the attendee arcanists had shown up, and today, it was Larry who took the stage.
Larry’s round face was filled with excitement, and he said to everyone in the hall with a higher pitch than usual, “We’ve discovered the wonderful relation between the concentration and conductivity of solution from Lucien’s questions, thus I was thinking: what if we study something else rather than solution? What if we study pure water? I wonder how pure water’s conductivity is like…”
Because it was a widespread fact that water was conductive, most arcanists ignored this direction. Although they could make pure water out of combining oxygen and hydrogen together, they never thought of doing this. Hearing Larry’s words, they felt quite hesitant.
Larry began to make pure water to test its conductivity. When electric sparks kept appearing in the reactor, the magic circle at the bottom of the pure water for testing current actually detected nothing. Every sorcerer’s face looked quite confused but also surprised, as what they thought as some kind of common sense was, again, overturned.
When the water started bubbling, Larry finished his experiment, “As everyone saw, before pure water is resolved into hydrogen and oxygen, it is not conductive, thus we can make an assumption that it is some kind of alchemical substance dissolved in water that turns water to be conductive. I’m not sure what it is yet, but we can first take a look at the new fourth-circle magic that I’ve created based on this experiment—Larry’s Water Shield, which can effectively defend against the Lightning spell.”
Then, Larry started to share the general structure of the spell and how he built its model. Although he was hiding the core part of it, most arcanists were still listening to it very carefully, hoping that they could build something like this on their own.
However, Vern was having a difficult time concentrating. He kept looking at those waiters who were serving the arcanists with black tea, water and warm face towels. When he saw that there were around five or six waiters who were serving around in the hall in different places, Vern raised his hand and beckoned to a nearby apprentice.
“Yes, sir? What can I do for you?” The apprentice hurriedly came over to Vern and asked in a very respectable manner, as he knew that every single one of the arcanists present was at least of middle rank!
Vern nodded in a nice way, “Good young fella, I need some black tea with sliced lemon to stay focused.”
Jason was not paying any attention to Vern, not only because what Vern was doing was simply ordinary, but also because, as a necromancer, he was very interested in spells that could block electromagnetic wave spells like Lightning.
“Sure.” The apprentice respectively took a few steps back and then walked toward a door.
At this time, Nicolay ventured to take two steps forward to stand in the front.
“A cup of black tea with sliced lemon for Mr. Vern over there.” The apprentice just directly talked to Nicolay, as he did not care about the order of the waiters. And the other waiter who was now standing behind Nicolay was a bit confused, having no idea why this guy wanted to please that old sorcerer.
Nicolay went to the small room in the corner of the hall and got a cup of black tea. Nervous as he was, he told himself, “God is watching me, and this is my most glorious moment. The gate of Mountain Paradise will be open for me!”
Nicolay calmed down with his belief, and then he walked toward the row of seats where Vern was. When he came in front of Vern, Nicolay handed the cup to Vern respectively.
“Your lemon black tea,” said Nicolay politely, as if he was totally strange to Vern.
On the other side, another middle-rank arcanist who was siting four rows behind Lucien also requested a cup of water.
Walter knew that this was not a very good distance to kill Lucien. However, he was decisive and certain that, when his partner Nicolay launched his attack toward Felipe, it would also be his best chance to kill Lucien Evans.
Putting down the cup, Nicolay slowly turned around. Staring at Felipe from behind, Nicolay felt that the distance between Felipe and him was the path the he needed to take to get to Mountain Paradise.
In Nicolay’s eyes, the distance was long, but what was at the end of the path made him yearn for it so much.
Although what Nicolay had was only a replica of the Sword of Truth, it was still a level nine divine item, thus using the replica would still cost him a lot of power and strength, despite the fact that the full power of the replica sword could not be fully activated because of Nicolay’s level. At the same time, as this was a sword, Nicolay could not use it from some distance away, instead, he needed to get Felipe with the sword in a very short distance to achieve the most ideal effect.
Therefore, Nicolay needed to have someone to distract Felipe at that moment when he launched his attack.
When Nicolay was moving to the isle, he was still calculating the distance. Before he arrived at the best spot for assassination, if Vern could not offer him further support by distracting Felipe, he had to take all the risk in a sink-or-swim way to kill Felipe, even if it meant that he needed to run through the narrow seat gaps to get closer to Felipe.
Nicolay was ready to sacrifice himself.
Meanwhile, Walter, while putting down the cup of water for the arcanist, was also calculating his distance from Lucien Evans, but he would not take any chances before Felipe was attacked.
Vern took a deep breath, and just when he was about to draw people’s attention to himself, an arcanist in the front shouted in sharp voice, “The reactor! Something’s changing in the reactor!”
All the arcanists looked at the reactor, including Larry.
In the glass bottle at the bottom on the right, inside the tube for condensation, something light red appeared in the pure water!
What was it?!
The arcanists almost felt that they didn’t dare to ask, but their hearts were filled with the question. Several of the arcanists in the front even stood up to see clearer. Nicolay’s vision was blocked, but he was encouraged – from the chaos, he could have enough time to kill Felipe. However, he was also a bit distracted subconsciously, wondering what the light red stuff was.
Raventi, who was sitting in the front, directly flew onto the stage, deactivated all the magic circles and took out the light red substance. He hurriedly activated the magic circle, Identification, to see what it was.
At the same time, more arcanists also used their own Identification magic circles to check the substance, including Felipe.
However, what they had all ignored was that Identification could only check things that were not unknown, as the spell was continuously improved by the congress.
Seeing that many arcanists were busy with casting the spell, Nicolay knew that this was his best chance to kill Felipe. Under his long robe, he grabbed the replica of the sword tightly, and then he took a solid step forward. He walked faster and faster. He did not care anymore if any arcanists had noticed him. In his eyes, there was only Felipe.
Within a few second, Nicolay had shortened his distance between him and Felipe quite a bit.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Walter also started to take action.
Nicolay was one step away from Felipe now!
He fiercely ripped off the amulet that he was wearing for hiding his divine power with one hand, and took out the sword with the other hand.
When he was about to hack the sword at Felipe, someone shouted in a hight pitch, “Aspartic acid… There’s Aspartic acid in there! Something originally found in asparagus! Oh… Arcana’s above… What I’ve found here…”
“And some other life ingredients! Although two of them have never been successfully refined yet, they are parts of the foundation of life!” On the other side, another level five arcanist was shocked, as if he just saw the real God.
“And lipid and carbohydrate…” Pesor and Tina-Timos all stood up. Although they were not some kind of followers, they still wanted to say that this could only have been done by God.
It was a miracle that an environment that was made up of several of the simplest factors, including lightning, gases, pure water and a mini replica model of a volcano, could just generate life ingredients!
Felipe was also astounded. In his eyes, they were now in the realm of God. He wondered who designed this model—was it Professor?!
Every single one of the arcanists knew what this experiment meant—it had revealed the fact that, even though it could not completely deny that the God of Truth could create life, at least God was not the only entity that could create life. In other words, Creationism was facing a great threat.
When the arcanists were exclaiming in front of the experiment finding, Nicolay, who was only one step away from Felipe, was still shocked.
He could not remove his eyes away from the reactor, which was surrounded by many different identification magic circles. The light of the tree symbol above the reactor representing all kinds of life ingredients was so pure and bright that Nicolay, when staring at it, had forgotten his purpose for being here.
He could not believe what was in front of his eyes. He could not believe that there was aspartic acid in the reactor.
Lots of thoughts flashed through Nicolay’s mind. He recalled how the experiment was built up: high temperature and methane gas brought by volcanic eruption, magic lightning used to recreate natural thunder and lightning, pure water to simulate prehistoric ocean, the main gases including hydrogen… In the whole experiment, there was no intervention from God, but life ingredients were still created.
Nicolay was more than regretful that he had learned something about arcana before. He wished that he had never known what life ingredients were and how important they were.
Nicolay’s head was buzzing with thoughts:
“Can natural environment also create life? So it isn’t something that is only controlled by God?
“But… but life should only be governed by the almighty God…
“Creating life… is within the realm of God…
“Does God even exist? Does Mountain Paradise exist? After I die, where will I go?
“They are devils, true devils! They’ve made me doubt God!”
In a flash, Nicolay’s thoughts shook the foundation of his belief, and thus his divine power started to go out of control. And as a quick reaction, Nicolay started to pray.
However, as soon as he started praying, his power directly exploded. From the inside out, the divine power devoured him with dazzling, beautiful light.
At the same time, Walter was overwhelmed by the same holy light.
Both Nicolay and Walter exploded with their power and turned into two beautiful beams of light, just like dreamlike firework.
Seeing the light beams, the arcanists were astonished but also confused.
Before the arcanists could figure out what was going on there, Vern’s head exploded. White brain tissue and fresh blood scattered everywhere.
The rest of the arcanists hurriedly tried to stabilize their own mediation environments. They were too shocked to comprehend the whole situation, and they only shared one common thought:
“This was crazy!”
…
“So, the two experiment subjects have proved the great impact that the experiment finding can bring to the Church,” said Hathaway emotionlessly. Her silvery-gray eyes were cold.
The grand arcanists knew the Church’s plan from the very beginning, since Vern’s suggestion of putting Nicolay and Walter into the meeting was actually made up by Thanatos and was put in Vern’s mind.
Vaharall and Varantine never thought that the grand arcanists would show up for this meeting.
