Chapter 164

“Hold still,” Nick muttered, planting a knee on the spirit’s heaving chest. “You’re going to die either way, but at least do so with some dignity.” Crazed spirits didn’t often receive goodbye ceremonies or peaceful sendoffs anyway. At least this one would be useful even after passing on.He drew his ritual dagger again and sliced a shallow seam from sternum to throat. Instead of blood, liquid moonlight poured across silver fur. The spirit howled, its jaws snapping at him even now, yet the chains held, and whatever fire it conjured continued to be funneled away, only strengthening the ritual. “What a mad creature. It’s surprising you could keep up a facade for so long.”

Half-solid ribs parted under a second cut, revealing a palm-sized ofuda—a glowing talisman— sealed to what passed for the creature’s heart. The parchment looked impossibly fresh—its edges crisp, and its charcoal strokes unmarred by a century of rot. Thin cords of vermilion thread stitched it directly to metaphysical muscle.

, Nick noted.

He pressed two fingers to the parchment. A cold pulse rippled through his channels, allowing him to sense its inner workings; the woven knots of power were exquisite, each stroke a miniature array harmonized to the next.

Despite being unable to read the angular script—something halfway between classical kanji and a shorthand unknown to him—Nick could feel the semantic current, the meaning it was imbued with: Defend until the land is safe. Simple. Brutal. Open-ended. No expiry clause—no wonder the fox had rotted in its duty.

“And with the temple wrecked, ‘safe’ meant kidnapping the first candidate suitable for restoration it could find,” he whispered.

The spirit snapped again, more plaintive than feral. Its luminous eyes flickered between hatred and pleading, as though begging him to remove the tag, yet terrified of death. A hint of understanding glimmered, revealing that it knew its actions hadn’t been righteous.

Nick’s grin showed no sympathy. “You’d have devoured Elia’s life for a ridiculous purpose. But your crafter… they interest me.”

While the spirit fox wasn’t the most powerful foe Nick had faced, the ofuda had certainly been created by someone much stronger than he. Although that meant he couldn’t overpower it, it was so old, and its purpose was so distorted that a simple interruption should allow the spirit to die.

He set a thumb upon the paper, pushing thoughts of freedom, of finally resting, and peacefulness into it. His blood smeared the parchment, and the ink convulsed, misaligning the mana knots for an instant. The fox gave one last, warbling yip before its torso detonated into motes of argent flame.

Chains cinched inward, crushing the collapsing form he had hollowed out. Silver sparks spiraled into the ritual lines, followed by thicker streams of pink-white essence. Nick’s circle drank greedily, routing every strand toward the focus lines beneath his boots, then through his feet, up his legs, exploding through his coils.

He sucked in a breath as liquid power hit his core. There was no gentle diffusion; the spirit’s nature—cunning, swift, foxfire-bright—slammed against his soul. It could have torn him apart if he had been less prepared for a last-minute attempt.

But he had known to expect this. The fox might have been mad, but there had been an underlying logic to it, and it would have surprised him if it had gone down without trying to attack when he should have been distracted.

Protecting himself from the onslaught didn’t take the form of a shield this time. That would have wasted all that sweet, spiritual mana, and he had plans for it. Instead, Nick activated just as it exploded, and all that power was quickly absorbed, leaving him with a chaotic mess where the spirit’s mind had once kept everything together.

But within that chaos floated the cold logic of the ofuda itself: precise strokes, binding architectures, conditional nodes—all the craftsmanship, now ownerless, tumbled into his mind like puzzle pieces seeking a new frame. Nick caught them, bent them, and welded them onto his own spell, watching it change.

—his clumsy paper-familiar cantrip—buckled, broke, and re-knit. Lines spread outward, weaving into a much broader diagram like black brush strokes unfurling across invisible silk.

CONGRATULATIONS!

You have performed the

Your spell has ranked up into:

You can imprint and house mid-tier spirits within scrolls, paintings, or tagged constructs. The art of calligraphy and illustration has been opened to you.

+78,000 Exp

Instinctive understanding followed: inks of cinnabar and ground quartz; five-layer wards to restrain wrathful spirits; winding-stroke talismans to coax cooperative ones. It meshed smoothly with his existing runic studies and the blood-ritual practices of his past life. There was no truly new concept, but it reconfigured what he already knew into a more efficient, powerful form.

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Things he’d read about in another life, lectures he’d caught while trying to develop his shikigami, all suddenly became homogeneous.

Nick got the feeling that more than a spell, he’d received an art form. It would take a very long time to master, but its power and versatility was vastly superior to his cantrip.

Another chime pinged inside his head.

You have defeated

+ 49,000 Exp

Level up!

His stats swelled as he reached level forty. Both INT and CHA were so close to the one-hundred mark he could almost taste it, and he knew his abilities would swell once more when that happened.

NICK CROWLEY

LEVEL

MANA

STR

DEX

CON The latest_epɪ_sodes are on_the an

He exhaled, steam curling as the heat of the ritual faded.

The knowledge that he could use spells as a basis for incorporating new knowledge was invaluable.

The chains dimmed; task done, one final wisp spiraled into his palm. Nick closed his fingers around it, snuffing it out.

“Thanks,” he murmured, patting his dagger, and received what felt like a purr in return. He’d been worried that the remnant could have taken the spirit’s power for itself, but it seemed to know when to hold back.

Before he could get the girls, however, he needed to cover his tracks. Killing a crazed spirit wasn’t anything to hide, but the way he’d done it… Yeah, he wouldn’t want to show his hand this openly.

Thus, he set to work erasing the evidence. A sweep of flattened the scuffed turf; a second pass coaxed moss to creep over the blood-dark lines. A gust of wind gathered the ritually charged ash, which he carefully funneled into a vial.

When he stepped back a minute later, the clearing looked merely scarred—there was no artful circle, no fox corpse, no proof of ritual homicide. A battle had evidently been waged atop it, but one made of elemental magic and pure intentions.

Satisfied, he turned toward the temple’s shattered entrance. A faint golden pulse throbbed below the rubble as the owl totem informed him that the girls were still safe.

The trapdoor had partially collapsed from the shockwave caused by his battle and was blocked by fallen lintel stones. Nick pried them aside, widening the gap with telekinetic nudges until he could slip through.

Stale air greeted him, carrying the tang of crushed limestone and the faint scent of foxfire. A dozen feet below, pale light shimmered behind a curved barrier. His carved owl totem hovered above the girls, glowing like a tiny moon. Beneath its wings were Elia and Rhea, unharmed but streaked with dust, staring upward with wide eyes.

Nick landed lightly inside the shield. The girls flinched, then relaxed as the totem recognized him and folded away.

“You’re alive.” Elia tried for bravado, but her ears lay flat. “We heard a lot of noise and then complete silence.”

Rhea dusted herself off in silence, eyes flicking over his scorched sleeves and blood-splattered coat.

Nick offered a crooked smile. “The guardian spirit went feral and decided you were its personal hostage. I disagreed.”

“What?!” Elia’s tail bristled. “It promised… the elders said… My trial—”

“Was false,” he cut gently. “Its purpose became twisted after the shrine fell. All it wanted was a sacrifice to try to restore the temple. It would have never worked, and you’d never have left.”

Elia opened her mouth, then closed it, fury melting into hurt. She stared at the dark tunnel where broken stairs led upward. “So there’s nothing left of Inari here?”

“Not enough to grant you your Trait,” Nick said, softening his tone. “But the connection to the land… The domain wouldn’t have still been here if the god were fully gone.”

She hugged her knees, growling softly in her throat. “Figures. Mother will be insufferable.”

Nick laid a hand on her shoulder as a cool wind stirred away the dust from her cheeks. “Our adventure is still not over. We’ll find another shrine.”

Elia sniffed once, then nodded. Resolve sparked behind damp lashes.

Meanwhile, Rhea knelt beside a fallen fox-head relief, her fingertips brushing the paw prints on the stone. When she spoke, her voice was thin. “You levelled up again, didn’t you?”

Nick shrugged. “Perks of slaying a spirit.”

“Perks,” she echoed, as if tasting the word and finding it bitter. She stood, facing him squarely. “That power you used… one day, you will have to tell me more. I find it hard to believe a spirit that old could have succumbed to basic elemental spells. Unless you resorted to the big one, which would have caused the tunnel to collapse.”

He met her gaze, unreadable. “For now, we need to get out of here before anything else comes looking for what made all that noise. Now that the guardian spirit is gone, I doubt this place will keep its peace for much longer.”

Rhea’s lips compressed, but she nodded.

By the time they climbed to the surface, the sky had deepened into violet twilight, with stars starting to prick the sky. Elia cast one last sad glance at the toppled columns before squaring her shoulders.

“Let’s get going,” she said firmly. “The next temple should be only a few days away. If we hurry, we’ll be able to get back before the second week.”

Nick nodded in approval, reclaimed his owl figurine, and placed it back in his pocket. “I remember the path from here to the next being direct.”

“We haven’t met any really dangerous monsters so far, but that doesn’t mean we should take it slow. The sooner we get there, the better,” Rhea concurred. Her eyes flitted to his, and he tilted his head toward Elia in question, wanting to know if something had happened in the fake trial, but she shrugged.

They walked for half an hour until the ground began to slope upward, leading them to the summit of a particularly tall hill. Despite the gloom, Nick’s eyes were sensitive enough to see what lay beyond.

A massive herd of thunderhooves stretched for at least a mile. Hundreds of the beasts gathered together in what was undoubtedly the largest group anyone had ever recorded.

Somewhere within, lightning sparked, and a fight erupted. Nick and the girls could only watch mutely as two thunderhooves battled, slamming each other into the ground with sheer physical power and electrical assaults.

When the duel finally ended, Nick regained his voice. “We might have to make a slight detour.”

Rhea chuckled, though it sounded slightly deranged. “You think?”

Elia closed her eyes, and for a moment, Nick worried that she might cry. Today had started off well, but problems continued to accumulate.

However, he could only see burning determination when she opened her eyes. “Alright, let’s get moving. We’ll go around from the herd and get to the northern tunnel. That should take us to the Healing Temple directly.”