Super Righteous Player
Chapter 399 - 396: The Struggle Between the Old and New Soul Reaping Sects_1

Chapter 399: Chapter 396: The Struggle Between the Old and New Soul Reaping Sects_1

The sky was turning dark.

Over the Royal Capital, clouds gathered densely, with a cold wind blowing.

An icy and fierce rainstorm fell without warning.

Even though it was the start of spring, such a heavy and sudden rain was quite unusual. The rain, mixed with the scent of soil that carried an odor of carcasses, fell on the structures with a noise aggravating to the spirit.

Even if one had encountered some joy, that elated feeling would turn sullen and irritable because of the sudden downpour.

Some might complain that the rain came too abruptly—

And indeed, it had.

Merely touching that rain would worsen one’s mood... or rather, would synchronize one’s mood with that of the spellcaster.

—For this was the signature spell of "Dream Stealer" Denton from the Soul Snatching School, "Thoughts as Rain".

"The Pure Medium..."

The old man, his hair grey and wispy, murmured softly as he looked out at the heavy rain.

His icy blue pupils were as calm as still waters, offering reassurance to anyone who met his gaze.

Denton was now caressing the wall, focusing intently on the wall in front of him—as if he could see through it to the person outside the palace.

He was not a Hunter and certainly did not possess the vision to penetrate through walls.

But for Denton, the heavy rain in the city was his eyes—

If one could see in spiritual form, they would see a towering ice-blue radiance above Denton’s head, reaching straight to the heavens.

The dark clouds were pierced by that column of light, as if it was opening a cold, emotionless eye, gazing tranquilly at the earth below.

Beneath the clouds, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of faint silver strands fell straight down with the raindrops, connecting to the tops of the heads of the royal guards.

Without receiving any orders, they directly took up their weapons, fully armed, and hurried to the side palace where the fourth Prince was located.

Following them was the Transcendent squad based a little further away.

Then, the secret squads converged from all directions.

Those exposed to the rain arrived swiftly and silently at the same moment.

Their pupils displayed a faint glow of ice-blue shimmer.

—This was the hallmark of being affected by the Gold-rank Soul Snatching Spell "Total Control".

Whether they were mortals, Ritualists, or Transcendents: if they were hit by Total Control and failed their will resistance check, they would lose control over their bodies.

Unlike the silver-rank "Heart Control" aura, "Total Control" did not need to look directly into the opponent’s eyes... It could snatch away the opponent’s will through any object or sound as a medium.

As long as the medium was not interrupted, even if the target moved far away, the condition would not be lifted.

Denton could also feel the state of these "zombies" under his control, performing precise control down to the individual and the action at any moment.

He could pull those in a worse state to the back and push the healthier ones to the front; he could have strong ordinary people resist the attacks of evil spirits, while the Transcendents combined forces to kill the spirits from behind.

Naturally, they could not see the location of the souls.

—But Denton could.

Through the spell "Thoughts as Rain," he shared everything he saw with the many puppets whose minds he had seized. Letting them see where those souls were... and concentrate their attacks.

In the face of death’s threat, people may feel fear, anger, or go mad—but compared to those who can unleash all their potential in the face of death, the vast majority have no room for command, tactics, or calm.

However, this was no problem for a Soul Reaping Wizard.

For they were not his body.

These were not his lives.

What he controlled, modified, and discarded were merely "others".

Wizards of the Soul Snatching School have the highest demands for ethical standards.

Because for them, "hearts" are just within reach, the least concerning, and the least valued thing.

—They simply need to be modified.

The will of others, the emotions of others, the memories of others—aside from the fast-acting spells used in combat, the Soul Snatching School naturally also has spells that subtly change the will of others over time.

He was like a player who held the passwords to the control console.

Even though he knew from the beginning that if he merely pressed that wave key the fun would be halved... he still sometimes couldn’t control himself when rage surged within him.

In front of him, "The Pure Medium", represented another direction of the Soul Snatching School. Anciently known as "Necromancers", these were the "Traditionalists" of the Soul Snatching wizards who casually controlled the souls of others.

The reason different Transcendents could gather together to establish a "School" was because they had commonalities, a core philosophy that could be understood by all.

Just as the core philosophy of the Transformation School was "from something to nothing"...

—The core and essence of the Soul Snatching School was "everything for me".

Whether it was about controlling the mind and will, or the souls of the living and the dead, it was an act of treating others as pawns to be manipulated at will.

But they eventually split anyway.

The reason was nothing else... even if their will was forcefully stolen, it could be broken free of at any moment; as long as the will was strong enough, the controlled person could regain control of their body at any time, at most until death do them part.

The Necromancer was different, though.

Spiritual Bodies could not resist a Necromancer.

They only had two options: being successfully controlled or failing to be controlled, and once controlled, it was permanent—enslaved to fight or to kill, used as materials for rituals.

And mortals couldn’t even see Spiritual Bodies. Attacks that Necromancers drew from Spiritual Bodies were, for the most part, irresistible to the living.

As a result...

Compared to Soul Snatching wizards who could subtly twist the mind, people were more wary of and disgusted by Necromancers.

This wariness was based on the "absolute inability to resist" them.

And likewise, for the wizards who followed the core philosophy of "everything for me", the living, who could grow, learn, and communicate, were far superior to the dead.

External suppression, internal alienation, and resource plundering...

As a result, Necromancers became extinct.

"The Pure Medium" Bernardino Treshaw was the last gold-rank Necromancer of his time. He was also the only Necromancer with a complete tradition who understood how to summon Spiritual Bodies from corpses over a hundred years dead, how to call forth Spiritual Bodies from The Void World, how to extract the Spiritual Bodies of the living unscathed, and how to let Spiritual Bodies attach to oneself and receive blessings.

—His death would signify the complete severance of the Necromancer tradition.

"Dream Stealer" Denton, of course, was aware of this.

Not just of "The Pure Medium".

He himself, too, was a dark wizard cast out by the Righteous Path.

Official Soul Snatching wizards usually served by operating on memories. They could make others forget certain memories, or help someone quickly learn a skill or spell, create a consciousness space where one could die infinitely, or forcibly interfere with someone’s nightmares, intervening to rescue them midway.

The Soul Snatching School was a very important wizard school.

It was because they could easily change the minds of others that they cared so much about reputation and morality.

"Dream Stealer" Denton was different, though.

Under the pretext of helping others heal mental illnesses, he silently stole other people’s skills and privacy. He quickly became a true jack-of-all-trades and used the memories he obtained from the minds of others to specifically target the original owner, under multiple fake identities, to amass a fortune and gain a lofty status.

Up to that point, his actions had gone unnoticed.

Or perhaps they were tacitly permitted by the higher-ranking wizards.

He was wanted because, during a psychological treatment session for a Royal successor from the United Kingdom... he took all his memories, killed him outright, and destroyed the body.

Using the ritual he learned from other people’s minds, he played the part of two individuals—at last, he disguised another person as himself, allowing the "Dream Stealer" to leave the Royal Capital, and seized this opportunity to directly replace the successor.

In the end, it was at the final moment of his plot to usurp the throne that Yawen, truly unable to stand it any longer, personally exposed him—before that, no one had ever suspected him.

And so, his act of stealing a nation had him simultaneously wanted by five countries.

One could say...

"Dream Stealer" and "The Pure Medium" were the representatives of the two paths of Soul Snatching wizards.

—They were also both unforgivable examples of those who exploited Soul Snatching Spells for their own gain.

For this very reason...

Even though all eyes in the Royal Capital were focused on them.

There was nobody to stop the battle between them.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.