Chapter 626: Truth Mentor
In the dark of night, at the shore of Twinkling Star Lake, Gethsmoor, with its eight limbs and eight eyes, stared at the shimmering lake under the moonlight, where a strange water creature and Francesco upon its back were visible. After a moment of surprise, Gethsmoor gritted its teeth and spoke.
“What in the world is that?! How dare it oppose me!”
With these words, Gethsmoor leaped into the air, forcefully springing from the ground, charging towards the water creature above the lake. Francesco, on the creature’s back, strained to stabilize himself. Having just begun to recover from the agonizing pain, he swung his sword and conjured a massive wall of fire on the lake’s surface to obstruct Gethsmoor’s advance.
Faced with the wide fire wall ahead, Gethsmoor accelerated to bypass it and continued rushing towards the target. Seizing this opportunity, the water creature began to dive, and Francesco, unable to enter the water, leaped from its back and transformed into a fiery streak soaring into the sky.
After passing the fire wall, Gethsmoor looked back towards the lake but saw not Francesco soaring nor the water creature diving; in its view, the creature remained in its previous position, and Francesco was still on its back. Without hesitation, Gethsmoor continued its high-speed charge, swinging the bl**d Blade toward where the water creature and Francesco should be, until its attack struck and they transformed back into a cloud of illusions.
“d*mn it!”
Seeing that it had seemingly been deceived again, Gethsmoor cursed. Just then, Francesco had successfully created a significant distance from Gethsmoor while she was attacking the wrong target, and from out of her line of sight, he released a fireball towards her. After hitting the illusion, Gethsmoor found herself directly struck by a fireball from behind, and amid a loud explosion, her back was severely injured, nearly causing her to fall into the water with a scream.
The Full Moon Water Nymph, a creature conjured by Doro using her extraordinary ability as a newly promoted Truth Mentor, combined with local legends from Gramorn, was a manifestation of an elusive tale. This manifestation was a power possessed commonly by beings at the Red Tier Level in the realm of enigma.
As an extraordinary being known as a Trickster Writer, Doro could transform a well-known tale into a real creature. This elusive creature would possess the shape and abilities of its legendary story and would be under the control of the Trickster Writer. The strength of this elusive creature was influenced by several factors.
The first factor was the extent of the legend’s spread; the broader its reach and the more people who knew of it, the stronger the elusive creature. The second factor was the circumstances under which the elusive creature was summoned; the closer the situation matched the content of the legend, the stronger the creature. Next was spirituality; the more spiritual energy sacrificed to summon the elusive creature, the stronger it became. Even if the first two factors were weak, as long as the Trickster Writer had enough spiritual energy to invest, the creature could become significantly powerful.
Finally, since the elusive was not equivalent to faith, the Trickster Writer could not create a deity-level elusive being. The selected legend should ideally include elements of horror to fit the characteristics of “Shadow.”
For instance, the Full Moon Water Nymph summoned by Doro had a relatively weak legend; its tale primarily circulated around Twinkling Star Lake and mainly in Gramorn. Essentially, the legend stemmed from some phenomena caused by the extraordinary system of the Quiet Moon Temple on the lake being misunderstood by mortals.
Although the legend of the Full Moon Water Nymph was not widely known, the circumstances surrounding Doro’s summoning were extremely fitting; they were right at the site of the legend, on a full moon, making it highly relevant. Finally, Doro’s abundant “Shadow” also provided significant support to the water nymph, ensuring its strength could affect Gethsmoor, a preliminary apostolic transformation at the Red Tier.
The ability of the Full Moon Water Nymph was to create illusions of any creature in its water and surrounding area, causing them to see what they subconsciously believed they should see. This was evident when Gethsmoor lost sight of the water creature and Francesco while bypassing the fire wall. Only when she refocused on the previous location did she see the illusion of the water creature and Francesco still there.
Using the illusions created by the Full Moon Water Nymph, Doro saved Francesco and managed to distance him from Gethsmoor, even wounding her slightly. However, the successful use of illusions back-to-back had overloaded the Mirror Moon Nymph’s abilities, and it would temporarily be unable to affect Gethsmoor, so Doro ordered it to dive underwater and recover slowly.
However, these actions only slightly mitigated the situation, and there was still a distance to cover before defeating Gethsmoor. Thus, Doro immediately initiated her next actions. Accompanying the extension of her will, Doro’s flesh puppets began to move; figures shrouded in veils flew from the towering magical statue, taking to the night sky.
Meanwhile, Gethsmoor, furious and embarrassed to have been deceived by illusions once more, let out a furious scream and turned her gaze toward Francesco in the sky, charging at him again.
Seeing Gethsmoor aggressively advance once more, Francesco, now airborne, rapidly fired a volley of fireballs at her, trying to bring her down. However, due to the slow trajectory of Francesco’s ranged attacks, they all missed.
Thus, using extreme speed and agility, Gethsmoor dodged the fireballs while swiftly closing in on Francesco, seemingly about to reach him. Under the divinely enchanted effects of the Spider Queen, if Gethsmoor succeeded in striking Francesco, one hit could incapacitate him.
At that moment, a dazzling, flickering orange beam cut through the night sky, shooting straight towards Gethsmoor. In an instant, she was struck, impaled in the abdomen, and the intense impact and heat burned a large hole through her body.
“Ugh…”
Having received this sudden blow, Gethsmoor, who had been consistently on the offensive, plummeted from the sky. She stopped just above the surface of the water, and as she struggled to recover and fly again, she angrily turned to the source of the beam, where she saw several men of various attires hovering above the lake.
“Who… are you!?”
Gethsmoor gritted her teeth at the sight of the figures. Just as she prepared to take action, several large fireballs shot down from above, heading straight for her face. Taking advantage of Gethsmoor’s moment of vulnerability, Francesco released fireball attacks at the opportune moment, accurately hitting her.
“Boom!”
With a tremendous crash, Gethsmoor was engulfed by an explosion, her body blown out of the sky and plunging into the lake; she didn’t even have time to scream.
“Even against a Red Tier, the electromagnetic cannon is quite effective.”
On the Mirror Moon Statue, Doro, clad in a hooded cloak, mused as she observed the distant scene. It was she who had used the electromagnetic cannon to bring down Gethsmoor, but the cannon was not fired directly by her; it was launched from one of her flesh puppets.
This was one of the abilities possessed by the Thread of Spirituality’s life-spinning wheel; after reaching Red Tier, the extraordinary beings of this path possessed enhanced spiritual threads capable of transmitting greater power.
Now, Doro not only could transmit passive abilities to her flesh puppets but could also allow them to unleash their own active abilities! Doro’s puppets could utilize extraordinary powers below the Red Tier, meaning that as long as she had sufficient spiritual energy, they could operate at the level of a White Chalk Tier extraordinary being! Doro could enable them to use electromagnetic abilities to fly, or even actively fire white chalk level electromagnetic cannons.
To strike at Gethsmoor, an exceptionally fast-moving target that surpassed the limits of the n*ked eye, naturally required projectiles with faster speeds, and the electromagnetic cannon, capable of speeds exceeding multiple times the speed of sound, was perfect for the task.
However, the problem was that while Doro’s electromagnetic cannon was fast, she could not lock onto Gethsmoor. Her flight speed exceeded the limits of the n*ked eye, and none of Doro’s puppets could track her movements. Without enemy-targeting capabilities, Doro’s attacks would be ineffective regardless of her firepower.
Thankfully, although Doro lacked enemy-targeting methods, Francesco possessed the ability. As a Celestial Fire Saint at the Red Tier, he had the fourth-tier “Lamp” perception, allowing him to track Gethsmoor’s movements. His fireballs simply could not hit her due to their slow speed, not because he couldn’t see clearly. Thus, Doro needed only to observe Francesco, study his every attacking motion, and analyze the trajectory of each fireball to deduce Gethsmoor’s position and actions in Francesco’s viewpoint. Finally, she could instruct her flesh puppets to preemptively fire the electromagnetic cannon.
With the help of the electromagnetic cannon, Doro and Francesco successfully knocked Gethsmoor from the sky. However, neither believed that she would be defeated so easily. Doro continued manipulating her puppets to survey the vast lake of Twinkling Star, remaining vigilant.
Suddenly, a splash erupted on the surface of the lake beneath Doro’s puppets, and Gethsmoor, with an angry expression and recovering from her injuries, shot out of the water, speeding towards Doro’s puppets. Seeing this, Doro urgently commanded her puppets to dodge, but her magnetic flight speed couldn’t match Gethsmoor’s, and ultimately, one of her puppets was caught by Gethsmoor.
Without hesitation, Gethsmoor plunged her bl**d Blade through the chest of the captured puppet, maliciously declaring, “So it’s a flesh puppet. But don’t think that by sending out puppets, you can escape the punishment of the Deep Web Queen, coward!”
As she spoke, the divine enchantment on her bl**d Blade took effect. Since puppet manipulation was also a form of continuous extraordinary ability, the immense pain naturally transmitted back to Doro through the spiritual threads.
Prepared for such a response, Doro closed her eyes when the agonizing pain hit her, falling into a slumber. Within her dream cocoon, she manifested a dream realm giant dragon; when the pain reached her, she redirected it into her dream self.
In an instant, her dream dragon, more than fifty meters long, let out a furious roar under the extreme pain, and Doro’s real self couldn’t help but tremble. After enduring a wave of intense agony in her dragon form in the dream, Doro recovered, kneeling on one knee and gasping for breath, beads of sweat pouring down her forehead.
This was one of the abilities of the White Chalk Tier Illusion Dream Traveler on the path of Spirituality, enabling the mental impacts directed at her in reality to be transferred into her dreams. Doro, as the giant dragon in her dream, endured an attack imbued with the divine enchantment of the Spider Queen. It was fortunate that in her dragon form, Doro could withstand such intense pain without temporarily losing her combat ability; had she received it in her usual form, it might have knocked her out. But even then, the agony was overwhelming.
“Wow, such strong will. You didn’t fall over immediately…”
In the air above the lake, Gethsmoor appraised the remaining puppets that hadn’t fully collapsed and commented, then immediately changed her strategy. She brutally thrust her hand into the body of one captured puppet and drained its bl**d, quickly turning it into a dry corpse.
By absorbing the puppet in front of her, Gethsmoor naturally absorbed its spiritual threads. Similar to how Ed had done before, upon acquiring the threads, Gethsmoor immediately sensed the source—where it originated and how it extended.
“I found you…”
Upon sensing the location of the puppeteer behind the scenes, Gethsmoor shot towards it swiftly, during which she remembered to sever the spiritual threads to prevent any strange interference from her opponent, a learned precaution from her experience with Ed to avoid any injury transmission from Doro. Since she had confirmed the location, keeping the spiritual threads was meaningless. She was confident that the manipulator behind the scenes could not escape faster than her.
Following the position sensed when the threads linked, Gethsmoor rushed towards a forest by the lake. Soon, she arrived at the location she had detected and found a masked figure hurriedly fleeing forward.
“You can’t escape!”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Gethsmoor charged at the masked figure, piercing through their chest with her bl**d Blade.
Inside the Mirror Moon Statue, Doro again came close to fainting from the pain transmitted back to her, but fortunately, the pain hurting her was much less intense than receiving direct damage to her body. Doro, clinging to her dream dragon form, barely endured another wave of torment, gritting her teeth as she continued manipulating the distant stabbed puppet.
Indeed, what Gethsmoor had tracked through the spiritual threads was not Doro’s main body but another of her puppets! Thanks to her puppets’ ability to use active powers, they could also manipulate spiritual threads to control other puppets! Doro could command one puppet to control others, building layers of manipulation!
While Gethsmoor stabbed her puppet, Doro activated the trap laid in that location. A crimson thread shot out from the pierced puppet’s body, directly towards Gethsmoor, and at the same time, several other similar red threads emerged from the ground beneath Gethsmoor.
“Manifest Spiritual Thread!”
