Chapter 742
Survivor Syndrome
It was apparent.
The girl’s struggle had clearly displeased the Count.
Or perhaps the Count had dismissed her because he deemed her moral bottom line not low enough, nor her depravity deep enough.
Or maybe the Count, already annoyed by Viscount Konalei’s clamor, chose to lash out at the poor girl… Or even, perhaps, just to issue Viscount Konalei a warning.
Yet, Viscount Konalei remained relentless.
After all, Count Dawn had no record of killing a Child of the Moon. This was the basis for his cooperation with the Children of the Moon.
Viscount Konalei knew that his opponent would never break his word with him—because he wasn’t worth it.
This was why Viscount Konalei was so brazen.
However, what Viscount Konalei didn’t know was that Count Dawn had learned through some means that he had fallen into one of Red Phase’s plans—the false peace was about to end, so Count Dawn had directly imprisoned him.
…Who told him?
Thinking of this, Alistair’s eyes rolled, lost in thought.
“You should be free now, Mirror Demon?”
Alistair chose to directly question Count Dawn’s “butler”: “Who told Count Dawn that he was being targeted by Count Leipzig and the others?”
“It was Madam Madam Anna Kingsford, my lord.”
The mirror beside her suddenly turned black, emitting black mist.
The Mirror Demon immediately provided a precise answer.
Alistair was very familiar with this name—because she was his foster father’s wife.
Or rather, ex-wife? She wasn’t sure if they had divorced… but in any case, she was Freya’s biological mother.
If viewed from this perspective, Viscount Konalei’s act of delivering himself on a platter was likely Count Leipzig’s intention…
…Never mind. Leipzig or Red Phase or Kingsford—
Whoever dares to provoke me, I’ll kill them all.
Alistair briskly leaped past the temporarily unnecessary thoughts.
Nowadays, she indeed had the confidence to make everyone yield to her when she moved against the current.
Alistair walked over to the large bed that was holding a dense mass of souls. After pondering for a while, she found the one with a relatively clear appearance among the female souls, whose faces were blurred to varying degrees.
“Mirror Demon, don’t leave yet—”
Alistair commanded again: “Find me some rotten wine, and mother snake blood.”
A low voice echoed from the mirror: “My former master isn’t dead yet, I still have to wait a while— you’re talking about Harmonizing Elixir, aren’t you? Master has finished Harmonizing Elixir paste. It’s a top-quality Alchemy product.”
As she spoke, a small, silver round box, resembling some kind of skincare product, appeared before Alistair.
Alistair twisted it open and found that it was indeed the prepared Harmonizing Elixir paste. It looked like a yellowish-brown grease with a faint smell of mud.
After all, she had no direct means of contacting souls. Although the power of the Transcendent Path could allow Alistair to directly touch souls, her power was too great for these mortal souls; she could easily kill them. It was like how human body temperature and microorganisms could be fatal to some fragile plants and animals.
She had to use the Harmonizing Elixir paste, which could isolate her power and nurture wandering souls, to weaken herself before daring to touch the other party’s soul. The wine, rotten to a mouse-grey color, mixed with mother snake blood, was a simple “Harmonizing Elixir.” If an Ordinary Person drank this, they could easily be possessed by evil spirits.
Alistair reached out and took a little out, rubbing her hands together.
She looked at the soul silently groaning and sighed inwardly, “You should be thankful for your good fortune…
“…If it were yesterday, there would be absolutely no possibility of you returning to your body. After all, this ritual required your own body as material…”
—One of the traits of the Transcendent Path is to break oaths.
No Transcendent would honestly abide by a contract, just as demons always tried to break contracts and kill their contractors; and just as these contractors, after growing stronger, would violently control their demons as slave masters.
Alistair was no exception.
The original Eivass, upon having thoughts that were too transcendent, would subconsciously guard against Path deviation and thus curb his inner impulses. But in Alistair’s case, she simply couldn’t curb this instinct. It felt like a smoker’s craving for nicotine, an alcoholic’s craving for booze, or a sugar addict’s craving for sweets.
For trans-users of a single Path, the Path Trait was too clear—so clear that Alistair intensely desired to break the “contract signed by Eivass and the Silver Crown Dragon.”
Because Alistair was now a Sin Scholar. In other words, Heavenly Sin had no influence on her. Fallen Heavenly Envoys could no longer stop her Ascension… She herself had already been branded with the Sin of Arrogance during her Ascension.
Under such circumstances, Alistair thought of the contract Eivass had signed with the Silver Crown Dragon in the past.
“—I swear, I will not use the lives and corpses of my own kind as my ritual materials and sacrifices.”
“—I will never walk down that path of Fallen, from which there is no return.”
When she had her first blood-drinking experience before, Alistair felt a strong sense of unease.
Because Eivass’s current pure desire for devotion meant there was a real possibility that he might choose to sacrifice himself during the merger, making Alistair the main body, and it was highly likely.
—But Alistair absolutely could not accept such a thing.
Without Eivass, what would happen to Isabel? What would happen to Avalon? They knew Eivass, not Alistair… The so-called “Alistair” was just an afterimage built on lies. Without Eivass, many of their causes would have to start from scratch… It was a choice with absolutely no benefit.
Moreover, it would be a form of “alms,” a “binding”—
She could never accept that fate.
Alistair was genuinely afraid that Eivass would have an episode.
Mainly, she understood herself very well—Eivass truly had the potential to have an episode.
“Survivor Syndrome,” or rather, survivor’s guilt. This was a psychological illness of Eivass. When faced with the choice of sacrificing himself to save others, he would do so without hesitation. Not based on morality, but on a sense of “ease.”
Therefore, she wanted to break the Silver Crown Dragon’s contract by means of destroying it, so that her part of the contract would be corrupted. To make her part of her identity Fallen and tainted, so that Eivass would have no choice but to use him as the main body and let herself die and return.
The current Alistair was not a Priest. By right, her prayers should be ineffective… In fact, Alistair had never intended for her prayers to be effective.
The corpses she had prepared were batteries to provide Twilight power.
Crowes and skeletons were called “Heads of Death Substance” in Alchemy. This term referred to skulls and dregs, and also to the residue obtained after distillation or sublimation. This process corresponded to “Blackening” in Alchemy. By breaking down the mixture and obtaining the primordial substance, the substance died and obtained the basis for regeneration.
This process was enough to obtain power.
—As a result, its power was not extracted at all, and Amber responded to her summons.
This meant that Alistair and Eivass were likely the same person in terms of Occult. At least, that was how the Pillar Gods saw it.
So Alistair summoned the Silver Crown Dragon again, to have Him personally judge whether she had violated her oath. To prevent the Seal from being mistaken, she had even prepared a true Seal of words—”All things are born of water, and return to water.”
This was the holy word of “Thales,” the Disciple of the Great Philosopher, speaking the mystery of the “water as the origin theory.” It was a negation of the Winter Demon’s essence that “all things will meet their end in winter,” this was tangible Demonology knowledge.
But similarly—the Silver Crown Dragon intervened and personally helped Alistair defeat the residual consciousness of the Winter Demon and seal it into a card, without even using the power contained in the phrase.
After that, Alistair discovered with a complex mood that her oath with the Silver Crown Dragon had not been broken.
In other words, she still had not committed a great Heavenly Sin.
…Then the problem was even bigger!
This meant that Alistair’s self-perception was not human at all!
But she also didn’t consider herself a Child of the Moon.
Then there was only one answer.
She saw herself as nothing more than a puppet, a tool, a clone of Eivass—or rather, she was an afterimage destined to be discarded.
“…So, we are the same.”
Alistair smiled with relief.
—She was indeed Eivass.
(End of Chapter)
