"The Gear is mine!" a man draped in a linen cloth woke up in a secluded alleyway.
He laughed shamelessly as the foul smell of corpses drifted from his body.
Saron was originally an undertaker for the church. Every early morning, he would push a wheelbarrow on the streets of the city up until dusk collecting any corpses he could see.
This job was disgusting, and even dangerous to a certain degree, but for someone born with a facial abnormality like him, this was already the best possible job. There was no shortage of unemployed people more than willing to replace him.
And it was from one of the corpses he collected on the job that he obtained his opportunity.
Most of the time, the corpses he collected were naked human-turned-monsters from the blood of evil, very rarely would he run into a fully clothed corpse. On the occasions that he did, they were evil cultists whose possessions had all been stripped away, leaving only their corpse behind.
On that day, Saron picked up another evil cultist corpse who had nothing left on him except his tattered clothes.
However, as he lifted the body, thanks to his many years of experience, he noticed that there was something unusual within the corpse's stomach.
Being as ugly as he was, he was still a meticulous and cautious man. He carried the corpse to be burnt like always, during which he sneakily ripped open the corpse's stomach and extracted the item within: a magical tome.
Apparition magic, a unique kind of magic.
The practitioner also needed to perform an axle ritual in order to change their own existence. However, this alteration wasn't for the sake of becoming closer to some Evil God, but to modify oneself to reach a unique frequency.
After modifications, the practitioner would be able to retain the remnant souls of the dead, developing them into Apparitions, while the spell casting material would be body parts of the deceased.
As an undertaker, he was extremely suitable for this magic. Especially since the corpse burners wouldn't mind the delivered corpse missing one piece or other, not to mention that he wasn't the only person who did such things to corpses.
There were quite a few people in Lohr who couldn't afford to fill their stomachs, and once you forgot that they were humans, corpses would be no different from any other cooking ingredients. At most you'd contract one disease or another after eating too much, but when survival itself became a concern, who would care?
Because of this, a corpse missing a piece of two by the time they were delivered to be burnt was already a common occurrence.
In this way, Saron gradually studied Apparition magic while using his undertaker work as a front, which allowed him to quickly grasp Apparition magic and even made quite a few Apparitions for himself.
However, he lacked a complete system of knowledge, relying on nothing but a single magical tome for everything he knew. In fact, since he didn't know how to read, he had to ask others to translate the content of the book for him one passage at a time.
Furthermore, as this copy of Apparition magic wasn't particularly friendly to the body, combined with some of his mistakes and long-term contact with Apparitions, Saron's body had already begun to manifest corpse bruises and a rotting smell. Without a doubt, his body would soon die off completely, which was unacceptable to him.
He wanted to steal the Gear of Impurity for himself in order to remedy this. The Gear of Impurity granted its wielder several unique characteristics, one of which was a near-immortal vitality. Not to mention, it wouldn't hinder the user's magical abilities at all and would instead boost it greatly.
Without any exaggerations, in the eyes of people like Saron, the Gear of Impurity was nothing short of the fruit of god.
"And it's now mine!" Saron caught the Gear from the hand of his Apparition, then began to flee through the path he had prepared.
Fusing with the Gear required a period of time, during which the user would fall into a state of weakness. If any of the competitors reached him during this time, they would be able to easily kill him, so this fusion required an appropriate place and time.
…
"You really can't underestimate anyone at all" Chromie leapt on top of a building and saw the fleeing Saron. Anyone else would have been fooled by Saron's Apparition and wouldn't be able to pursue him, but Chromie wasn't the same.
Having sacrificed his sense of fear, he wasn't stunned from fear by the Apparition's ability, so he was able to observe the magical fluctuations as the Gear was taken away and pursued.
Wielding his sword, Chromie directly pursued his target without hesitation, regardless of what happened, the Gear mustn't fall into the hands of other organizations. Each Gear was capable of creating an extremely troublesome enemy, and Negary surely had some sort of goal by releasing these Gears, so the best solution was to confiscate all of them.
Chromie's constitution was completely superhuman; after some maneuvering on top of many roofs, he managed to close his distance with Saron whose body wasn't at his peak.
…
Damn it, how did this hound of the church reach me so quickly!?
Saron thought as he panted heavily because of the running. His plan should have succeeded, by using Apparitions to draw the eye, taking advantage of when they were busy competing against one another and using the Apparition's deathly shriek, he managed to nab the Gear and escape.
The city moat was right in front of him, which was also where he had planned to escape to. Once he entered the complicated underground sewer system, he would be able to quickly cut off the mad hound chasing after him.
"Reveal yourselves, my servant!" Saron's ugly expression slowly started to display madness, he drew a small dagger while still running, then stabbed his left arm without hesitation. With a curt swing, he slit open his skin, allowing his rotten blood to flow.
At the same time, an Apparition that normal people couldn't observe also rose from his corpse-like left arm.
This Apparition was similar to Negary's soul, but also different. The magic ritual had altered the soul's essence, allowing it to exist in an aspect of reality that humans could not observe. At the same time, this Apparition had been constantly nurtured using miasma of the dead, it didn't make them particularly powerful, but eerie instead.
This Apparition also had other abilities: their interference force had been turned into a power that could induce the emotion of 'conflict', they could create illusions, and absorb vitality of the living.
If this Apparition was nurtured using the host's blood, they could develop even stranger and more terrifying abilities, but they would also pose a greater threat of recoil. For this reason, Saron only used his flesh to raise one Apparition of this type as his trump card.
…
Reinforced by Fearless Spirit, Chromie was easily able to observe that blood-red Apparition. The ominous sensation induced by the scent of death would cause anyone who sensed it to instinctively feel fear, but Chromie originally chose to sacrifice his sense of fear to counteract this exact situation.
The Soundless cult's research of the blood of evil had allowed them to create many similarly eerie objects, and in order to further his battle against them, Chromie purposely chose to sacrifice his fear.
The sword imbued with red aura directly stabbed through the Apparition's body, but an Apparition that Saron considered his trump card wasn't that weak. As soon as it sustained injuries, the Apparition immediately scattered into several streaks of red light that attacked Chromie from another aspect of reality.
I won!
Saron watched as he reached the city moat, this was his path of escape, as long as he could enter the underground sewers, he would quickly be able to reach his safe room.
Once I've fused with the Gear and gotten rid of the side effects, I'm going to raise an army of Apparitions.
However, at the very next moment, a single tree branch suddenly poked out from exactly perfect angle to pierce through Saron's throat.
