Magical Soul Parade

Chapter 373: Transcendents Clash (II)

Casmir’s instinctive first thought was that this was the work of the Error Bearer. But he threw that thought out of his mind a moment later. Finn was currently smack in the middle of the Chaos Transcendent’s massive array, a boundary designed specifically to nullify his ability to use any inversion or nullifying properties of his Error.

In the first place, the sensation didn’t have that signature distortion or paradoxical feedback characteristic of an Error attack. Instead, to Casmir’s senses, it felt entirely like a contract. There was a strict, limiting clause bound to the souls of the two Anaelle, preventing him from swallowing the fragments.

At some point between when he’d laid eyes on them and made contact in a bid to devour their fragments, a prepared prerequisite had actualized into place. One that he needed to fulfill before he could manipulate their movements.

Casmir immediately frowned, then his mind quickly went to the Pact Transcendent, one of the modern newcomers he had heard of in passing. But wasn’t that person supposed to be under the direct banner of the Chaos Transcendent?

Don’t tell me that old weasel is now secretly on his side, Casmir hissed inwardly.

Losing his patience, he yelled out loud, his voice laced with his spatial authority, enabling it to carry across the entire chaotic battlefield:

"Finn! Are you going to keep hiding behind these petty tricks?! I thought you came here to do battle! Is this how you intend to ’rid the world of Transcendents?!’ By hiding behind parlor tricks and soul masses?!"

He expected a fiery response from the Error Bearer. His tone had been loud enough for every soldier, Arcanist, and Ossuarist on the plains and the grand wall to hear clearly. He wanted to bait Finn into a direct confrontation...

But the proud retort he anticipated never came.

Casmir frowned slightly, a sudden knot of unease tightening in his stomach. He quickly pushed forward, bypassing Madoc and Osmund. The two Anaelle immediately moved to intercept him again, but he brushed them aside like petty annoyances, his space magic warping them blocks away.

He looked straight up toward the section of the sky where the Errant was supposed to be hovering.

But the sky was empty... Finn wasn’t there.

Casmir’s eyes widened, and his gaze whipped instantly toward the battlefield below. There, far beneath the aerial skirmish, he spotted the Error Bearer.

He moved like a blur, dashing straight toward one of the critical anchor points. He had landed atop the grand wall at some point while Casmir was still talking, completely ignoring the duel in the clouds, and was now single-handedly going to town on the Sepulchre House Ossuarists stationed there.

A fresh wave of anger flushed through Casmir. Finn was completely refusing to adhere to the traditional standards of high-tier combat. Two Transcendents were actively engaging him in the sky — himself and Himothy, who was still tied up with the microscopic swarm — yet Finn had abandoned them both without a shred of hesitation. He had headed straight for the grand wall to slaughter weaker Ossuarists.

Gritting his teeth, Casmir quickly reoriented his mental profile of Finn. He had assumed that the Error Bearer, a man who had been said to have wielded faith, and even possessed believers of his own presently, would possess some level of deep pride.

He had expected Finn to demand a glorious clash against opponents on his own level. But Finn was not that kind of fighter. He was practical... infuriatingly, and ruthlessly so. He was bypassing the main titans of the battle to eliminate the very things stopping him from using his power to the fullest, targeting the weaker keystones holding the array together.

Of course, most of Casmir’s earlier shouting had simply been a tactical play to elicit a response and sow seeds of doubt in the minds of Finn’s army. Casmir himself was a pragmatist, he understood that a battle was meant to be won, not used to uphold an ego. But he had deeply hoped the Error Bearer would possess enough vanity to make their job a little easier.

Casmir charged downward immediately, desperate to stop the Errant from running amok among the ranks of Sepulchre family Ossuarists, who eagerly rushed to clash with him, but were all doing a terrible job of it. He locked onto the space ahead of Finn to intercept him before he could reach an anchor point, but before he could cross the distance, Madoc and Osmund flashed into his path yet again.

Utilizing their specific fragment abilities, they distorted the coordinates directly in front of him, abruptly halting his downward charge.

Casmir looked stunned, his expression turning completely livid as the delay cost him precious seconds.

"Get out of my way, you damn experiments!" he yelled, his aura flaring as he immediately released an intense wave of spatial energy toward the two Anaelle, intending to cleave them both in half.

But the exact microsecond he cast the spell, he felt a sudden, heavy weight settle directly onto his soul. It was like a pair of iron gears clicking perfectly into place within his consciousness.

With a jolt of panic, Casmir quickly realized that it was another contract clause, and without hesitation he desperately forced his spell to withdraw, dispersing the spatial fracture as quickly as he could before it could cleanly hit Madoc and Osmund.

However, while he was fast, he wasn’t fast enough to prevent the impact entirely. Before the attack could be fully nullified, the edge of the spatial distortion still clipped the two Anaelle. The blunt concussive force battered them backward through the air, sending severe spatial tremors rippling through their flesh.

In that exact same instant, an identical conceptual feedback rippled directly into Casmir’s soul. The backlash hit him like a physical seizure, making his limbs spasm violently as he hovered in the air. His eyes widened in horror as he immediately understood what had just occurred.

Then without wasting another second, he whipped his head back toward the mountain summit, his eyes scanning the assembly of Transcendents who were still observing the field. His gaze locked onto Seer, his voice booming across the peaks in a frantic, demanding bark:

"Look around for Jun!" he shouted, the veins on his forehead pulsing. "The Transcendent of Pacts! He has to be somewhere close by! He is watching and adapting these clauses on the fly! There is no way he isn’t within visual range to pull this off!"

He then turned his frantic gaze to Nocturne and Storm, bellowing, "You two! Get down there and move into action now!"

The two grey-skinned humans — the ancient entities who had once reigned as true gods back during the era Finn had gone to the past — immediately leapt into motion. They dropped from the peak like stones, hurtling straight down toward the Error Bearer to intercept him in Casmir’s stead.

At this point, the expression on Casmir’s face had gone entirely sour. He finally understood the full scope of the trap he had been walked into. Somehow, probably through the direct assistance of the Error Bearer himself, the Pact Transcendent had figured out a way to stitch a mutual contract through the existing link that connected Casmir to his fragments inside Madoc and Osmund.

It was a perfect, reactive stalemate. All that was required to trigger a clause was for Casmir to take a hostile action or use a specific technique against the pair, and the pact clause would click into effect.