Magical Soul Parade - Chapter 369: The Errant vs The Ossuary (II)

If it wasn’t for the passive aura of the Errant himself serving as a protective shield over the surroundings for miles, along with the drums and dance of the Anaelle filling them with feverish courage, nearly everyone present would have succumbed to the pressure.

The Arcanists especially would have gone unconscious immediately from the sheer pressure of the world.

Finn’s voice continued to resound clearly across the vast expanse, reaching everyone’s ears with clarity.

As he reached the final words of his chant and clasped his hands together, the groaning from reality became terrible. This world did not naturally permit divine power because it could not sustain the superior energy of faith. Yet Finn was forcing a use of it, or at least something closest to it, to the point where the world was violently protesting against the strain.

Of course, this was nowhere close to his normal output of divine power at all. In fact, it could be said that this was not even true divine power, just something lingering at the very brink of it. And that was exactly why a ritual was needed.

How much the Anaelle ritual actually aided his use of this power, or if it had any real effect at all given the world’s harsh constraints, remained unknown. But no matter how negligible, Finn latched onto it anyway. For this specific spell, he needed every single bit of output he could get.

He had already sensed what the Ossuary had prepared for him outside the world tear, and he knew he would have to be in his absolute best form to counter their numbers. This attack was a very draining one, as it required him to not just use his own dense soul and consciousness, but also to spread his reach and latch onto the conscious aspects of things that were otherwise not conscious in the normal sense.

The importance of making sure his reserves were still high enough after the spell was vital.

Finn paused before the last word of the spell, feeling the sense of interconnectedness spread out to everything within a mile radius from him, the boundary increasing with every second.

He felt the feeble boundary of what humans had termed as consciousness and moved far beyond it, reaching for the inert unique consciousness of the stones on the ground, of the atoms in the air, in the dust, and in the molecules of water.

He felt everything for what it truly was: interconnected parts of what he could clearly feel was a conscious universe.

The feeling was purely euphoric. He had forgotten the taste of the sensation since the last time he had deployed the spell. Now that he was immersed in it, he didn’t want to let go. But he knew he must.

He felt the vast range of the connected consciousnesses he had tapped into, and with a gentle, mental nudge, he borrowed their energy to fuel his spell.

He opened his mouth and whispered the final words, his hands pointed at the horizon like he was drawing a graceful, invisible bow.

“…Spell Amplification: Invalidation Cascade.”

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On the Grand Peaks, behind the Ossuary’s battle lines…

The dark-skinned, white-haired woman had just introduced Himothy, when the Glory Bearer stepped forward, taking over from her to announce his presence of his own will.

He spoke with an absolute, undeniable affirmation, and with every word he uttered, reality seemed to warp slightly to acknowledge his speech as objective fact.

“Of course I am the sword destined to bring the Errant down,” Himothy said, his arms spreading wide to embrace the wind. “The stage has been set perfectly. The moment the Errant steps out of the world tear, his most vital and most powerful ability of nullification, or anything spurned from the inversion aspect of his error, will be robbed instantly.”

He let out a short chuckle, his eyes bright with victory. “Without the defining aspect that makes his error an error, what exactly is left of him? Just his normal soul masses, which I will tear apart with these bare hands that haven’t lost a single battle in a thousand years.”

Himothy wasn’t joking or exaggerating at all. The weight and authority emanating from his physical body had put everyone on the cliff on edge the entire time, including Casmir.

For someone whose unique ability depended on making declarations, each successful realization of a claim made it easier and granted him more conceptual power to repeat the feat. His statement of not losing a single fight in the span of a thousand years made everyone’s eyes widen in immediate shock.

Casmir’s head whipped toward Himothy in genuine surprise. If the Glory Bearer had truly been winning every single confrontation he had engaged in over a millennium, then just how terrifyingly certain would the world have made his current attacks become? The conceptual momentum behind his words would be practically absolute.

“Once the factor of Transcendent abilities is entirely removed from the equation, the Errant becomes nothing more than a lamb for the slaughter,” Himothy continued. “As a pure Ossuarist, it is but a simple fact that he cannot compete with me in a battle. I have lived as an Ossuarist a hundred times the span of his entire lifetime.”

He paused, letting out a short, dramatic sigh as he stared down at the massive army deployed on the plains below.

“It’s a shame, Finnegan Slade. But here is where your journey ends today. The history books will write—”

“Something’s happening,” Seer’s shaky voice suddenly cut him off mid-sentence.

“What is it? What is the Errant doing now?” Sue asked, the words slipping past her lips before she could stop them. She caught herself immediately, her brow furrowing as a dark flash of irritation crossed her face.

It annoyed her that the Error Bearer already held so much real estate in her thoughts that she had reacted with such frantic haste. Before she could dwell on the frustration, however, a choked gasp drew her attention back to Seer.

The large third eye on her forehead began to bleed profusely. Crimson trails ran down the bridge of her nose, and her expression twisted into an ugly mask of pure, unadulterated disbelief.

“There is no way,” Seer whispered, her voice cracking as it dropped into a breathless stammer. “W–What in the world is that?” The massive eye squirmed and convulsed within its socket, fighting violently to snap shut against whatever horror it was witnessing.

But Seer refused to let it close. She clamped her jaw together so hard that a faint clicking sound echoed from her teeth, the veins along her neck bulged like thick cords under the tense exertion of holding her foresight open.

Then, with a sudden, agonizing rattle, the resistance broke. She released a sharp breath and collapsed onto the frozen earth. Blood poured freely from the corners of her tightly sealed eyelids, staining the pristine snow on the ground.

Without even allowing herself time to catch a breath, she pushed herself up slightly and screamed at the top of her lungs, her voice carrying a raw, primal panic that echoed across the entire peak:

“Incoming! Go all out now!! Do not hold back a single thing or we are all dead!!!”