Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic

"Oh, Priest!"

Shard hurried over, intending to help Priest Augustus heal, but the old man frowned and shook his head:

"It's alright."

He grunted, and a slow-emerging white glimmer revealed itself in the palm of his hand. That sanctified white glimmer, casting light over Shard's side, made him feel as though his soul was being baptized. The light deeply captivated Shard; he widened his eyes because the Enlightenment gained from reading "The Mad Light Chaser" was slowly accumulating, but it wasn't enough yet to form a new Spirit Rune.

In the light, Augustus's arm gradually healed, and the dagger too began to tremble under the white light, eventually being completely suppressed by the brightness.

"It seems I'm not quite old yet."

Voice low, Priest Augustus lamented, removed the Holy Emblem from his chest, pressed it onto the dagger, then whispered a prayer for a good while before stopping:

"Do you have any kind of container? Something that can hold this?"

He asked Shard.

"Yes."

Shard, recovering from the vanished light, touched a bunch of trinkets in his pocket and handed a wooden box, restored to its original form, to the priest.

The priest pressed the Holy Emblem onto the dagger, wrapped it with red string, then cautiously placed it in the box. Afterward, he pulled out a piece of blue chalk and drew intersecting and coherent diagonal lines on each of the six faces of the box. Then, in the spaces between the lines, he wrote the Exorcism Symbols commonly used by the Dawn Church.

Having Shard hold the box, Priest Augustus placed one hand on top of it, closed his eyes, and whispered a prayer in the night breeze of the graveyard before finally ending the entire process.

Shard realized that witnessing such professionalism was a true eye-opener.

"Priest, since this is not a Relic, what is it? An Alchemical Item?"

Shard asked curiously as Augustus handed the box to him to hold. Together they watched the corpse on the ground burn fiercely. The flames, fed by the lamp oil, should have been orange-red, but at that moment, they glowed with an eerie green.

Thick black smoke billowed from the corpse, and Shard felt fortunate they were outdoors and that he and the priest were standing upwind, or else the stench would have been truly deadly.

"I'm not sure what it is, but hiding a weapon by desecrating a corpse is certainly very evil."

The two of them stood there, watching the corpse burn. Shard even glanced up at the cat in the tree, which was lying comfortably on the trunk. Noticing Shard's gaze, it responded with a soft meow.

Shard realized this was the first time he'd seen Mia climb a tree; the cat was more agile than he had imagined.

"Once the flames die down, we'll move the body back into the coffin. I need to perform an additional Exorcism ritual to prevent other things from happening."

The priest instructed.

"The corpse is already like this; what else can happen?"

Shard asked in surprise, to which the priest began to educate him about the basics:

"To prevent this charred corpse from contaminating the other corpses in the graveyard. We don't want to hear news of a corpse uprising at the Nameless Graveyard outside the city in a few weeks."

Saying this, the priest couldn't help but sigh:

"One must be careful in all matters; young people often don't understand this."

The unusual green flames burned for fully twenty minutes before extinguishing, but instead of turning the corpse to charred remains, the flames made the rotting body appear fresh again, even healing the wound that Augustus had kicked open as well as the rift that Shard had caused.

A woman's whispering voice hinted to Shard of the emergence of the "Whisper" element. But Priest Augustus's "other self" didn't seem to indicate the "Whisper" element; the old man suddenly furrowed his brow:

"Detective, look quickly!"

When Shard looked at the corpse's hands, he was immediately stunned to see them placed across the chest, clutching a black metal dagger. The source of the "Whisper" element was not the dagger, which had reappeared, but rather the lying corpse itself.

The trace of the element was very faint, not like that of a Relic, but more like a residue left by a Relic.

Shard immediately looked at the box he was holding.

"Open it."

The Priest said.

Once the box was opened, it was indeed empty. However, the box had never left Shard's hands, and the woman's voice by Shard's ear had not mentioned any abnormal occurrences either. Enjoy new adventures from My Virtual Library Empire

"This is getting interesting,"

The Priest nodded at Shard, who then threw down the box and once again tossed out playing cards. As expected, the relatively fresh corpse, holding a knife, pierced through the playing cards once more.

It slowly rose from the ground, and despite being closer to Shard, it still turned to pounce towards Priest Augustus.

Having learned from the last encounter, the Priest dodged without lifting his leg to kick. With his right index finger, he traced an arc in the air, then pointed at the corpse's head:

"Thunder!"

After the astonishing explosion, the thunder strike tore through the air towards the corpse. Yet, the corpse managed to lift its hand, blocking the thunder strike with the knife.

In the darkness, it raised its hand to stab at Priest Augustus again. The Priest agilely sidestepped, then made a forceful Right Foot Stomp on the ground, causing the corpse to stumble backward:

"Detective!"

"On it!"

Shard, once more dual-wielding his swords, struck down behind the corpse, but the corpse turned around and lifted its hand, blocking Shard's great sword with the short knife unmarked by any elemental trace. The physical strength of the corpse was immensely strong.

The corpse shook its right hand, and with a unique force technique, made Shard stagger backward, numbing both wrists, but quickly recovering due to his robust physical condition.

Yet the corpse still did not take the initiative to attack Shard, despite his exposure, and turned again to deal with Priest Augustus.

"Priest, are you sure you don't have a grudge with it?"

"Is this really the time to be joking?"

The old man asked, discontentedly. The Ring of Fate appeared behind him as he loudly instructed Shard:

"This little trouble is something I can handle. Retreat quickly, take your cat, and get as far away as possible."

"No problem!"

Priest Augustus seemed to be preparing a powerful move, so Shard stepped out and instantly moved ten meters, gesturing for the cat that jumped down from the tree, and then continued to run forward.

Behind him came Priest Augustus's clear voice:

"Corpse Explosion!"

Boom~

The dull sound almost made the ground tremble. Shard, who had tumbled to the ground with the cat, worriedly looked towards the Tomb Guardian's cottage, then turned to look back.

When he returned to the Clergy Member in the long robe, there was a new pit in front of him, still emitting black smoke. Holding the cat, which was startled by the explosion, Shard could hardly believe that the old man in front of him had blown up a corpse:

"Do the followers of the God of Light and Shadow all learn 'Corpse Explosion'? "

This didn't sound like an Arcane Technique that should be learned by characters on the side of good.

"I'm not a Circle Sorcerer of the church, and besides, power doesn't distinguish between good and evil,"

Priest Augustus said softly, and Shard noticed the recently illuminated Spirit Rune on his Ring of Fate was indeed "Corpse". These runes didn't seem like something a devout True God follower like Priest Augustus should possess.

The smoke from the explosion gradually settled, and from within the pit created by the blast, a creepy rustling noise began to rise steadily. Amidst the smoke with the scent of scorching, Shard, holding the cat, and the Priest saw the corpse, which appeared as if it had only been buried recently, crawling out from the pit once more.

Now, it not only looked more human, but its movements were swifter, and it continued to charge directly at Priest Augustus, not Shard.