Myths Reawakened

Veronica was frantic with worry because she cared too much. Seeing that Wayne was unharmed—his torn clothing concealing an uninjured body—she quickly closed her eyes. It wasn’t because she had seen anything inappropriate, but because the succubus in her peripheral vision attracted her attention too much, constantly radiating a deadly allure.

Wayne held the Forgotten One’s severed head and hurled it at the succubus. The instant the head left his hand, its hair extended and coiled around his wrist tightly.

The hair was shaped from the Forgotten One’s chaotic thoughts, which transformed its physical body and made it resemble the inhabitants of the Astral Plane. Case in point: the legendary mage Marshall, the egg peddler.

The Forgotten One’s long hair writhed like a living thing, wrapping around Wayne’s arms. Strands burrowed into his skin and sought to parasitize his flesh, causing his veins to bulge along his arm like writhing earthworms.

He raised his hand, examining the head.

The Forgotten One’s pious facial features blurred. A lump of brain matter was squeezed out of its head, turning into white foam along with the hair and flooding into Wayne’s body. Meanwhile, the headless corpse held Wayne from behind, dissolving into the same white foam and fusing with his skin, clinging to him like glue.

Roar!

Under the succubus’s control, the remaining Forgotten Ones swarmed forward. They all expelled their brains, abandoning their last shreds of reason. Flesh, bones, and organs dissolved, engulfing Wayne’s limbs and torso and wrapping him in a giant white fleshy ball.

“Auston, save me!” Wayne cried out dramatically, then, with a scream, he went silent, his entire face submerged.

Alerted, Veronica rushed to rescue him, faith magic overflowing from her fingertips. Auston didn’t stop her. He impassively watched his daughter charge into the white mass, toying with his antique silver coin without the slightest worry.

When Forgotten Ones succumbed to the Astral Plane and abandoned their last shred of rationality, allowing the void’s knowledge to reshape them, the Ministry of Magic’s research called the process ‘evolution’—an uncontrollable, erroneous evolution.

Knowledge drove the thoughts mad, which then reshaped the life essence, leading to the complete collapse of all semblance of balance—whether in the form of the Silver Cross or the Golden Triangle.

These mages became nothing. Their evolutions failed entirely. The magical world called them Void Wanderers. They wandered the gap between the mortal world and the Astral Plane, with no place to call home. They knew nothing but to feed and devour based on their instincts.

According to the ministry’s hypotheses, Void Wanderers might still have a chance of recovering clarity. After a failed evolution, they had another evolutionary path: Astral Beasts!

Wanderers were sources of corruption, using their chaotic thoughts to drag the creature they parasitized into the same madness. They devoured, assimilated, and fused with their host, bringing chaotic thoughts together until they fully merged with the Astral Plane. Then they became life forms capable of walking in the ocean of knowledge.

There was only ever one category of lifeforms that were unaffected by the Astral Plane: the Astral Beasts.

Of course, the theory was merely hypothetical. Neither Planck, the expert of Forgotten Ones, nor Bourne, the expert of Astral Beasts, had witnessed the complete evolutionary process.

When Wanderers went into the Astral Plane, their thoughts would be further corrupted by knowledge. How long they persisted varied, but in the end, they always collapsed mentally and disintegrated physically.

Perhaps something was missing.

Back to the topic at hand: Wanderers were extremely corruptive, second only to the Astral Plane and the flesh of Astral Beasts, but to say that they could corrupt Wayne’s thoughts? Auston would never believe it.

Wayne’s original bloodline followed the path of the ancient gods. No number of Wanderers could change him. To quote the magical community’s widely accepted wisdom: lower-level evolution cannot affect higher-level evolution.

Auston had the perfect examples in his life: Dragonbloods.

As High Reverend of the Church of Nature, Silvia had mastered the multiple faith magics from the Life Alliance—Nature, Sun, and Moonlight. She knew at least a little of each faith, yet her evolutionary path had never been elven from the start. She made steady progress along the dragonic route instead.

Great dragons were superior to elves!

Of course, be it corruption or evolution, the strong always triumphed over the weak, so whether a dragon was superior to an elf would depend on the individual dragon and the individual elf. If a goddess-level elf personally guided Silvia, her dragon blood would not have resisted the influence.

As far as Auston knew, Wayne had bet his original bloodline on the ancient gods. Even if he only imitated the form and copied a few external traits, it would still be impossible for Wanderers to corrupt him. They simply didn’t have the ability!

While it appeared that Wayne had been surrounded, he might be trapping the Wanderers with him instead!

Auston knew that Wayne wanted to force him to reveal his true self. He had planned the same thing! Only he had been a step slower in rushing toward the Forgotten Ones.

Looking at the succubus eager to make a move, Auston clutched his silver coin. The enemy was powerful, and without Megan protecting him from his side, he, a weak Silver-ranked mage, would likely be locked in a basement as a boy toy.

Fortunately, it wasn’t a big problem. He had long prepared for such predicaments, crafting a series of plans in case Megan wasn’t with him. His solution was simple: money.

Black light flickered in his eyes. Behind him, a dark domain opened up, and a deck of poker cards fell into his palm. The regular-sized cards were each a magical item, with the Lando family’s tulip emblem drawn on the back. They were forged from the magical materials that Auston had accumulated through years of corrupt—ahem, years of creative accounting.

“A dark domain that only Gold-ranked mages should be able to use...” The succubus looked at Auston with surprise, her gaze drifting to the cards in his hands. “As far as I know, you’re a Silver-ranked mage, without the ability to open a pocket space.”

“I am a Silver-ranked mage,” Auston said. “I can only open a dark domain because I’m rich.”

Inside the fleshy sphere, Wayne nodded in understanding. So the Old Two-Face was at least Gold rank.

In his arms, Veronica tried to say something through her muffled mouth. The mess of white flesh was transparent from the inside, so she could see everything clearly if she just opened her eyes. She was curious about her father’s secrets, but she was also annoyed at the two degenerates’ battle of wits.

“Don’t talk, just watch. Auston is most likely a formidable mage,” Wayne whispered into her ear. “You can open your eyes. Inside, you won’t be affected by the succubus’s allure.”

She tentatively opened her eyes and found it true. Curiously, she examined the succubus, giving her a once-over. The busty woman with long legs wasn’t wearing any fabric. What a bad woman!

“Why aren’t you affected by the succubus?”

“I told you, I keep my distance from women!”

Then why are you pushing so close to me?

Veronica looked down at the right hand on her left chest. First of all, it wasn’t her hand. Second, how long was it going to stay there?

“Sorry, if I don’t stay close enough, you’ll be affected by the succubus and the surrounding chaotic thoughts.” Wayne withdrew his charitable right hand, replacing it with his left hand like it was the natural thing to do. “Look, it’s the Old Two-Face’s turn. He’s drawing cards.”

Never thought he would be a card player!

“Who’s Old Two-Face?” Veronica removed the hand from her chest.

“Your father.”

“...”

Outside, Auston shuffled the cards deftly, speaking at an unhurried pace, “As far as I know, you’re a vessel for a demon lord that the royal family keeps in Saint George’s Church at Windsor Castle, representing the Lord of Lust in hell. Some time ago, you were taken by Caim, the familiar of the Night Tyrant, Stolas...”

“The familiar came for the Death Knight, yet later ignored the Death Knight and sent you to ambush me. Judging by your nonchalant manner and the fact that you gave me time to shuffle the cards, may I assume that the Ministry of Magic’s traitor has allied with the familiar and holds a higher position than the familiar?”

The enemy wasn’t the demons; it had always been the Ministry of Magic.

Auston wasn’t angry at all. Experts fought their own, and amateurs fought others. The principle applied in every case; he had long gotten used to it.

The succubus smiled slightly. The scorpion tail around her legs loosened, removing what little modesty it provided. She crossed her pale, long legs.

Inside the sphere of flesh, Veronica reached up to cover Wayne’s eyes, warning him not to peek.

“Auston looked.”

“I’ll tell Mother. Someone will deal with him.”

Then I’m good!