'An excellent mage wasn't necessarily a powerful mage', but there was a second half to this statement: 'but if an excellent mage was perfectly prepared, then they were powerful'.
Without enough preparations, one mage would never attack the magical ritual of another mage.
Because a mage's power could be magnified exponentially with the support of a ritual.
Under normal circumstances, Field wouldn't necessarily be a match for Marche; after all, he had to flee while being pursued by just Brali and her lackeys.
Field's strength lies in the fact that as long as there existed someone that remembered and feared him, then he would not die; his other strength lies in his heightened sense of perception granted by his spirit sense. Both the human Field and Roger were people with powerful spirit senses, and it was thanks to this spirit sense that he managed to avoid being surrounded and caught by the enforcers several times.
Furthermore, Field's direct combat capabilities could only be considered 'decent', so Marche should have been able to easily defeat Field with the reinforcement of his ritual when the latter recklessly rushed into it.
However, something unexpected had happened that caused Marche's ritual to become his shackles instead of his aid.
…
'Negary' was currently preparing his attire for three hours later, which was 9 PM, when the banquet would officially begin. Every Mystic-related organization within the Academic City, be it small or large, would receive an invitation.
Since Michael was a member of the House of Mages' Academy faction, 'Negary' would surely receive an invitation as his successor.
While he was preparing a welcoming gift, 'Negary' saw the small box that Kalanci gave him. Little did they know, it was this object inside the small box that had pushed them into despair.
The box contained an almost ruby-like crystal, which Kalanci called a Blood Crystallization. At face value, this could be seen as vitality mana that had been made into crystal form.
Anyone who consumed this Blood Crystallization would obtain a bit of vitality mana that could be used to prolong their life by one or two days.
It could be considered to be quite the precious commodity; for minor mages, this was something that they couldn't obtain even if they wished upon a falling star, so the fact that it was used as a means of reimbursement could perfectly show just how sincere they were.
Unfortunately, the one they faced was 'Negary'. By combining information from the spirit inside the corpse oil as well as his own sources, 'Negary' was able to accurately determine Marche's plans during this period.
The radical faction and the Mud Water organization, one side demanded privileges for the Uppers, suggesting to banish or even kill the Sediments who had obtained status; while the other side was an organization formed by Sediments who had obtained status in order to retain their own privileges.
If 'Negary' hadn't already left his previous identity behind, the Mud Water organization would eventually arrive and ask 'Negary' to join them. They would then slowly but surely convert 'Negary's' assets into the organization's assets, after which 'Negary' would become a mere manager of his own company.
These two organizations clashed so frequently that those who didn't have enough authority would actually believe that their upper-brasses had some sort of irreconcilable grudge. No one could imagine that both of them were actually the right and left hand of Marche.
These two organizations were a pivotal factor in Marche's plan, the artificial Evil God plan.
As far as Marche saw it, a part of Great Magus Stim's strength lies in the fact that he had complete control over an Evil God.
Of course, Marche wouldn't be so dumb as to attempt something like capturing and modifying an Evil God for his own use, since he knew his own limits very well. However, creating an Evil God with close relations to him might be plausible.
It truly must be said, Marche's thought process was quite praiseworthy, after researching some documents of Evil Gods and the Righteous Gods, he discovered that each God generally represented a certain concept.
Marche didn't understand the concept of Pathway or Principles, but he had managed to touch the surface of the truth, which was the fact that a God could substitute for everyone's impression of a concept.
For example, Eternal Heat in everyone's eyes would be the manifestation of the Sun; while Life Bearer was the representation of life itself.
And so, after long-term planning and theorizing, Marche came up with the plan to create the representation of Bloodline.
He manipulated two organizations behind the scene, continuously escalating the conflict between the Sediments and Uppers, then having the concept of Bloodline permeate into the two organizations, eventually coming up with a reasonable doctrine.
The reason why the Uppers were noble was because of their bloodline, and the reason why some Sediments were able to succeed was purely because the bloodline of the Uppers had flowed into their bodies.
For that reason, an Upper could kill a Sediment who had obtained status in order to reclaim their bloodline; at the same time, a Sediment could also kill an Upper and sacrifice them to the Bloodline God in order to obtain the status of an Upper.
His plan was to manipulate both the Uppers and Sediments into believing that their success and failure were all determined by their bloodlines.
After that, through the use of the ritual, he would then periodically sacrifice the members of both the radical faction and Mud Water organization to a nonexistent Bloodline God.
Every member of both organizations would have to conduct a ritual to pledge their allegiance to the organization they had joined, but in fact, they were establishing their link to Marche's larger magical ritual.
The mana within the magical ritual would be affected by the people of both organizations, their sacrifice and ideals would slowly alter the attribute of the mana, causing those influenced by this mana to become increasingly stronger, smarter, and achieve success easier.
Eventually, this type of mana would become the so-called Bloodline in both organizations, deeply rooting itself into each and every member.
Thanks to the inheritable nature of a bloodline, as the members of both organizations got married and gave birth, those related to the concept of Bloodline would grow in number, resulting in the creation of an actual Bloodline God.
The Blood Crystallizations were the by-products of this God-creating process. Due to the lack of a real Evil God, most of the energy from the sacrifices of both organizations became wasted, everything that remained would then manifest into these crystals.
'Negary's' judgement of this idea was that it was possible, but when it was executed by someone like Marche, whose understanding was only surface-level and superficial, it would only result in the creation of a monster, a far cry from the desired Evil God.
Additionally, it was most likely that before this monster could even properly take shape, it would first be discovered by other Evil Gods or powerful entities, then the fruit of the entire process would be curtly stolen away.
Furthermore, this Artificial God plan also had another huge weakness. In order to control the Evil God that would later be born, Marche had risked everything and attached himself to the ritual. But each member of the organization was also connected to the ritual by design, so their sacrifices and influence eventually led to a large gap in Marche's control.
One of the sources of the corpse oil, the member of the radical faction, was in fact one of Marche's disciples. Other than his biological son Kalanci and his former real disciple Cade, all of his other disciples were no different from experimental subjects.
That disciple was also the same. He ran away after discovering some of the ritual's secrets, but he already became a part of the ritual at that point, so he was simply killed by Marche's curse and became a corpse in the sewers.
All four of the corpses were personally found by 'Negary' through his inner sight. Among them, two of the corpses had had their mana extracted together with other important body parts, but the person or people who killed them obviously didn't know the method to completely extract mana, so they just tossed the half-dissected bodies into the sewers. This was the act of bottom-level Mystics, which went on to benefit 'Negary'.
One of the bodies was burnt by magic but managed to crawl into the sewers without dying right away, and the last one was Marche's disciple who died from the curse, a total of four corpses.
'Negary' had noted down this information together with numerous other similar information into a set of records, so as soon as the Blood Crystallization was brought to 'Negary', having understood generally what Marche wanted to do, 'Negary' actively directed this situation to occur.
…
By borrowing the spirit within Roger's soul, Field managed to avoid the detection of Marche's ritual while also disturbing its operation.
If the ritual was disturbed under normal circumstances, then Marche could still resolve it, but since this was during the advent of the mana tide, this act alone threatened his life.
Now that all of Marche's attention had to be focused on operating two rituals at once, never mind channeling their powers, even casting normal spells became an issue for him.
