Blinding white light robbed the knights of all vision.
At the same time, 【Soul-Binding Thread】 shot from Isolde's sleeve, the slender silver threads wrapping tightly around the throats and bodies of the two knights.
Isolde had no intention of giving these two any opportunity to sound an alarm.
The Soul Threads suddenly tightened, biting into the gaps of their armor with terrifying cutting force, forcefully locking down the vocal cords of the knights just as they were about to cry out.
The knight on the left reacted extremely quickly. Relying on combat instinct, he activated the purifying runes on his full plate armor.
With a flash of holy light, he actually managed to withstand the first round of the Soul Threads' strangulation.
With a twist of his wrist, his heavy spear swept out, kicking up a gust of wind.
The spearhead grazed past Isolde's ear, barely missing her.
Isolde took a few steps back, her heart leaping in her chest.
The guards here were on a completely different level from the slackers outside.
The knight on the left, at the cost of ruining one of his hands, already had a faint holy rune for communication lighting up at his fingertips.
Seeing the communication spell about to form, Isolde didn't even think. She swung the holy lantern and smashed it straight into the knight's face.
The knight froze.
He probably never expected anyone to use a holy lantern enshrined by the Holy Court as a brick.
In that split second, Isolde used her Soul Threads to pull up the spear from the ground. Empowered by the threads, the spear flew up and impaled the gap in the shoulder armor of the knight on the right, who had just been trying to break free.
The knight on the right let out a muffled groan, his knees slamming heavily onto the stone steps.
Isolde raised her hand and made a gripping motion in the air.
【Target detected in a state of extreme fear】
【Soul-cutting damage significantly increased】
“Strangle.”
Soul Threads erupted from the guard knights' bodies like thorns, shredding their souls within.
Since the Soul Threads acted directly on the soul, they left no obvious physical wounds on the surface.
But because of the Soul Threads, their soul bodies were now shattered into pieces. Even the highest-tier mage would find it absolutely impossible to piece their shattered souls back together to resurrect them.
Except, of course, for a Soul Stitcher.
Isolde expressionlessly brushed off the dust that had splattered onto her sleeves.
With a subtle flick of her fingers, she manipulated the binding threads to pull the two cold corpses, posing them like puppets back in their original guard positions.
As long as no one walked up to inspect them closely, it was impossible to tell the difference in the dim underground corridor.
The Quiet Bone Prayer Room was just ahead.
The stone steps were deep and long, with holy lanterns lining the walls on both sides.
The pale, ever-burning flames illuminated the passage as bright as day, seemingly designed specifically to dispel the dark forces deep underground.
As the holy light shone on her, she could still feel a struggling, stinging pain.
Had it not been for the residual holiness of the Mooncrown Unicorn on her, any ordinary witch standing here would probably have been baked into a wisp of blue smoke on the spot by the pressure of these hundreds of holy lanterns.
Looking at the long, dragon-like trail of lights, Isolde couldn't help but click her tongue inwardly.
How many living human hearts did it take to put together an ever-burning corridor like this?
Committing evils in the name of holiness—the hypocrisy of the order was truly ironic to the extreme.
At the end of the stone steps, a somewhat cold white light seeped through the crack of the door.
Isolde quickly walked to the closed stone door and pressed the silver pass into the mechanism's groove.
Accompanied by a low grinding sound, the heavy stone door finally opened inward, inch by inch.
The Quiet Bone Prayer Room was so bright it didn't feel like it was underground at all.
The entire space seemed to have been carved directly out of the mountain. The surrounding walls were clean to the point of being cold—there were no murals or the reliefs typically favored by the Holy Court, only pale bone pillars supporting the domed ceiling.
The floor was engraved with circular array runes that glowed softly.
In the center of the array runes, a half-man-tall colored crystal floated.
The crystal was transparent, with seven colors of light slowly swirling inside.
Wrapped around the outside was a bone-like material, polished to a near-holy sheen, encircling the crystal segment by segment like a chain that had been disassembled and pieced back together.
The Mooncrown Lock.
Isolde paused at the door, her breath hitching slightly.
The closer she got, the hotter the Mark of Last Wishes in her palm burned.
In her daze, she seemed to hear the wind and snow, and the sound of a young beast's hooves scraping against stone flags as it was dragged across the ground.
Ur had said that the Mooncrown Lock could lock away hatred, despair, sorrow, anger, and all existences related to darkness.
In that case, to whom did the darkness locked away by the Mooncrown Lock belong?
She took a deep breath and was about to move forward when the corner of her eye abruptly caught her own shadow twisting weirdly on the ground.
In the next instant, a glob of viscous black shadow tore out of her shadow without warning. Like a slimy tentacle, it reached toward the Mooncrown Lock in the center.
Oh no!
Silver Soul Threads shot out, crisscrossing to block the shadow's path, but before they could touch the tentacle, the opponent easily dodged them, slipping through the gaps like liquid.
The Soul Threads missed and struck the array runes on the floor. The backlash traveled back up the silver threads, making Isolde's fingertips go numb.
However, the black shadow did not greedily press on toward the Mooncrown Lock. Instead, it stopped abruptly a short distance away, then gathered into a slender human figure like ink spreading in water.
The newcomer wore form-fitting black night-gear, their face covered by a half-mask with bizarre dark patterns, leaving only a pair of heterochromatic blue and yellow eyes exposed.
When the figure spoke, their low, raspy voice muffled by the mask made it completely impossible to tell their gender:
“I originally thought you were just a minor character.”
“I didn't expect that following you would bring me to this place so easily. It seems I made the right gamble this time.”
Isolde watched them, her back tensing up inch by inch.
This fellow had actually been hiding in her shadow from the very beginning.
Was it from the moment she entered the snowy forest? Or at the monastery gates? Or perhaps after the chaos broke out in the baptismal chamber?
She had been using others all along, but she never expected that she would end up providing a free ride for someone else.
Talk about instant karma; it didn't even give her a moment to catch her breath.
Despite her internal shock, Isolde's face showed no panic. She slowly wrapped the silver threads tighter around her fingertips and said coldly:
“If you love hiding in other people's shadows so much, aren't you afraid of getting stepped on and crushed to death one day?”
The black-clothed figure let out a low chuckle.
“If anyone actually had the ability to do that, I wouldn't be standing here talking to you right now.”
Isolde didn't want to waste breath on them. Relying on her high Intelligence, she rapidly analyzed the situation in her mind.
The Quiet Bone Prayer Room was filled with an extremely powerful holy pressure. This environment was highly unfavorable for a castle witch like her, but it was certainly not friendly to a Black Tower warlock who practiced dark magic either.
She noticed that the edges of the other party's black robes were fluctuating slightly, indicating that they were also suffering from the rejection and suppression of the Mooncrown Lock.
At least one thing was certain: this Black Tower warlock only knew that her strength was mysterious and had not yet completely seen through her identity as a witch.
The black-clothed figure tilted their head slightly, glancing at the Mooncrown Lock in the center, their tone returning to a calm state:
“The perimeter of the Mooncrown Lock is covered by the order's supreme sealing array. Even if you kill me now, you won't be able to take it away on your own.”
Rate on N.U.
