Magical Soul Parade

Chapter 378: Domain

The moment Casmir wiped out the Errant’s believers in the sky, several things happened in an instant.

First came a terrible dread, one greater than any the Ossuarists on the battlefield had ever felt. It was a sensation entirely separate from the soul, separate from mana, and completely distinct from any kind of power they had ever known.

But to the other ancient Transcendents, it gave a vague, familiar feeling... one they had chased for their entire lives:

Divine power.

It was incredibly brief, but it was unmistakable and entirely inexplicable. Casmir didn’t understand the exact mechanics of what was going on, but he could decipher enough to know it was bad, and it was undeniably tied to the divine.

Down on the grand wall, Finn’s face, which had whipped backward toward the sky, suddenly broke into a wide smile.

Behind him, Nocturne and Storm, the two now-Transcendents who had once been true gods, bore down on Finn with intense speed. But they came to an abrupt halt the moment that sensation emanated from the clouds...

If the other Transcendents were confused by the sensation, these two who had once ruled as true deities could not mistake it. It was completely apparent to them what exactly that feeling was. They stopped dead in their tracks, immediately dashing backward to give the Error Bearer a wide berth.

Lyris, Odette, Sue, and the Soul Transcendent were all dashing toward the Errant to reinforce the assault. But the moment they saw Nocturne and Storm abandon their charge and retreat, a flicker of wariness and suspicion crossed their faces. Coupled with the uncanny pressure suddenly filling the atmosphere, doubt crept into their movements. They hesitated, waiting to see what would happen next rather than being the ones to bear the brunt of it.

All around the Errant, the remaining Sepulcher House Ossuarists began to sense the trend. Everyone was backing away from the Errant as if he were a plague, instinctively realizing that something catastrophic was about to happen. The sharpest among them did the same, scrambling backward. The ancestor of the Vail family, along with the young heiress, retreated in an instant.

The situation turned poetic. All around the Error Bearer, the people who had just been lunging forward to end his life were now diving away from him in slow motion. Finn’s hair whipped about his face as he brought his two hands together to form a spell.

In the skies behind him, the Glory Bearer was finally released from his bind. He had been locked in a furious struggle with the Collective, the microscopic soul masses constantly stalling the effects of his glory declarations by limiting his strikes to tiny sections of their swarm rather than the whole. All of a sudden, the Collective dispersed, freeing him.

Frustration and fury brimmed in Himothy’s eyes. He had been stuck in place for an unnecessarily long period of time, and his patience was entirely spent. Locking his gaze onto the Error Bearer down below, he rushed toward the wall immediately.

But as he descended, he felt that strange feeling too. Because of his specific glory concept, which relied on declarations and feeding off the awe and perception of others, he perceived the shift more distinctly than the other Transcendents, just as Finn finally opened his mouth to speak, his voice echoing with an impossible weight:

"Blood of the vengeful pious, I hear your cries for retribution and declare upon your assailants..."

He paused, opening his glowing green eyes.

"...Judgment."

The moment Finn spoke those words, a surprising effect occurred. It was somewhat similar to the Glory Bearer’s declarations, yet entirely different because it followed a completely separate logic.

Around Finn, a localized domain formed, creating an area that seemed to separate him from reality itself. It was as if the world had decided to conform to his will simply because those words had been spoken. The feeling was uncanny, filling everyone with utter dread.

It was as though the world itself recognized the Errant as a true divine entity, and even though reality struggled to accommodate divine power or faith in any manner, there was something about this command that it begrudgingly allowed to pass... some sort of rule particular to the preface Finn had opened the declaration with.

But just because reality allowed the command to pass did not mean it was going to accommodate it fully.

Within those few feet of space surrounding Finn, the domain he had formed with those spoken words became a localized anomaly. Reality pressed down on that exact pocket with crushing force, treating it as a cancer separate from the rest of the world.

The fabric of existence worked frantically at the edges of the domain, trying to rectify the tiny patch of space that was operating under a logic it could not naturally sustain. It was forcing the world to exert its absolute maximum resources just to accommodate the divine power that was being formed in that space.

Himothy’s eyes widened in the sky. He did not withhold a single thing, seizing the moment to charge directly down toward the Errant. He poured every single shred of his millennia worth of stacked victories into a single strike, bellowing his own counter-declaration:

"This fist of mine shall end your judgment!"

Reality trembled in an instant, adhering to the words and focusing all of its localized weight onto Himothy’s knuckles. The world was already straining to handle the energy output Finn was forcing into existence in the first place. Because it could not naturally tolerate divine power, it now actively sided with Himothy.

The Glory Bearer’s grand declaration, backed by a thousand years of unbroken victories, became the perfect conduit for the world’s rejection.

A terrifying tremble shook the plane of existence like a piece of cloth being pulled taut. This was far beyond a simple spatial ripple or a tremor through the ground. This was something more fundamental.

In that microsecond, even Finn felt his hair rise. He felt a sudden, suffocating weight, like a microscopic bug trapped under the direct, killing gaze of the world itself. The entire plane of existence was focusing its intent to end him, using Himothy’s fist as its weapon.

Without hesitation, Finn changed the target of his attack. He abandoned any thoughts of striking at Casmir in the sky, turning the full force of his judgment directly onto the descending Glory Bearer.