Secrets: Priestess

Chapter 106: Sacrifice and Divinity

Watching the figures disappear behind the long bronze table, Claire did not remove her gaze from the gray fog.

She waited patiently.

Then she heard a prayer above the gray fog, the prayer of the Hanged Man.

"You are a fool who does not belong to this age;"

……

"Thy faithful servant beseeches thy gaze;"

"I beg you to accept his offering;"

“Please open the gates of your kingdom.”

Ancient Hermes spells echoed in Claire's ears.

Claire felt her mind becoming dazed by these spells!

In a trance, she saw the hazy gate behind the Fool and the mysterious symbol on the gate. The symbol was composed of the incomplete overlapping of the "Pupilless Eye" symbolizing secrecy and the "Twisted Line" symbolizing change.

In this ancient and strange symbol, Claire vaguely saw a will!
A trace of a high and mighty, irresistible will seemed to tremble in her eyelids. Just the trembling of this mysterious will made Claire fall to the ground wailing, covering her eyes with tears of blood!

Claire wanted to sever her connection with the gray fog, but at that moment she found that she couldn't actively sever this connection of will.

The four mantras of "Blessings to the Heavenly Lord Xuan Huang" began to echo in Claire's heart.

It seemed as if something was awakening in her body!

Yet at the same time.

Deep inside Claire's body—her heart.

Deep within Claire's spirit body—the memory library.

At the same time, a mysterious atmosphere gradually awakens.

Knowledge was constantly being instilled into Claire's mind.

"Divinity..."

"It is God's will."

“God is supreme and God is the only one.”

"Every Beyonder characteristic contains a hint of God's will."

"The higher the sequence, the closer it is to God's will."

"A way to fight against divinity..."

"It's about maintaining one's own humanity!"

Claire saw a series of illusory figures that looked down from above, cold and desolate.

She saw the figures coming together and dispersing.

In these knowledge and pictures, the voice of "Fusheng Xuanhuang Tianzun" gradually became low and hoarse, and then disappeared.

But in her heart, in the memory library, two completely different auras violently swept through Claire's body and spirit!
Claire couldn't help but raise her head and bend her body backwards. Compound eyes appeared in her eye sockets, and sharp fangs grew out of her mouth.

A slender wolf leg suddenly stretched out from behind her, tearing through the clothes on Claire's back. It supported itself on the ground and cracked the ground into a web-like pattern!

The fur on the wolf's leg suddenly undulated!
Among these layers of fur, from the base of the back to the soles of the wolf's legs and feet, pairs of eyes were densely packed open!

At this moment, Claire's body was bent backwards from the waist, and she was supported in mid-air by this slender wolf leg covered with eyes. Blood and tears stained most of her elegant face. The back of her shirt was torn so much that her towering breasts were about to burst out.

Claire's thoughts became unclear. The rows of bookshelves in the Memory Library were dyed black, and her holy heart was bleeding inky blood all over her body.

She heard the knowledge.

She saw the night.

But she also lost herself.

The back was squirming, and with Claire's groan, another slender wolf leg stretched out from the back and stepped on the ground!

As each pair of eyes opened, Claire finally saw her own memories amidst the vast torrent of knowledge.

The memories of the two souls "Jiang Zhe" and "Tai Perslan" gradually became clear.

The longest part of the story, besides the warm memories of Jiang Zhe and his family, is more about Tai's past with that woman.

Not only the past, but also the appearance of that woman during the reincarnation ceremony.

And there was the woman's company as Sharon.

And the woman's madness and panic at the Tarot meeting.

"This is a reaction to the glimpse of divinity..." The moment her shattered sanity returned, Claire realized that her current drastic change was all due to the glimpse of divinity she saw above the gray fog.

This trace of divinity stimulated the pollution and gifts within her, allowing her to begin her transformation into a mythical creature.

However, unlike the advancement after digesting the potion step by step, although she can step into Sequence 4 and become a demigod in one step, she will become a monster like Megose who has lost herself!

In fact, Claire had a similar experience.

During the Battle of Tingen, she was on the verge of losing control when she used the two holy relics, the "Sword of the Goddess" and the "Ashes of Saint Selina" at the same time.

But at that time, the power she borrowed was mainly from the Goddess of Night, and both holy objects recognized her existence.

Under a certain restraint of will, the power of the night was not so brutal to her, so that she did not lose control on the spot after using the power of the two sacred objects.

But now, inspired by the divine power above the gray fog, the "Goddess's Gift" and "Hermit's Pollution" seemed to have entered a fighting mode, wreaking havoc between Claire's body and spirit.

"The way to fight divinity is to maintain humanity..."

While being polluted, Claire also gained relevant knowledge.

Claire tried hard to repeat her own memories over and over again, using the memories that belonged to "people" to fight against the turbulent torrent of knowledge.

Under the flood of knowledge, many of her human emotions are fading and disappearing, and her human memories are becoming blurred and broken.

In the end, only the fragments that are most deeply remembered are struggling to hold on.

Those fragments were also gradually cracking into countless cracks.

Only a vague figure remained in Claire's remaining consciousness.

The figure was constantly twisting and changing.

From the blonde and red-eyed Claire, to the brown-haired and brown-eyed Sharon, it finally settled on the image of the woman with black hair and black eyes.

Just as that figure gradually faded from Claire's memory, the bells of St. Samuel's Church suddenly rang!
Amid the resounding bells, the "Heart of the Goddess" within Claire suddenly gained the upper hand.

Claire saw, and saw, on the streets and in the houses, believers of the Night who had heard the bells began to chant the Goddess's name in confusion and bewilderment.

The hidden power is fading, the power of the night is restraining.

The foreign object in the flesh on the back stopped wriggling.

The pairs of tiny eyes on the slender wolf legs began to close one by one.

Finally, the wolf's legs that had been stretched out gradually retracted into Claire's flesh.

Claire fell to the ground the moment she lost her support.

But her own will was awakening and recovering.

Claire lay on the cold, cracked floor, breathing heavily with her mouth wide open.

After taking a short breath, Claire used her arms to support herself and stood up from the ground. Her torn clothes slipped off her body, and the coolness soaked into the fine beads of sweat on her skin.

Claire's steps were weak as she stumbled to the bedside. As she fell onto the bed, she wrapped the blanket around her naked body.

"This time...it's really dangerous."

Claire lay there for a long time before she regained some strength.

"but……"

Claire clutched her chest and sank her consciousness into the memory library.

In the Memory Library, she saw a pure white book floating above all the bookshelves.

Those books are imprinted with her memories as a "human being".

But among these memories, the figure of that woman occupies a large part of the space.

And the woman's figure was the most vivid and bright.

Seeing this, Claire murmured doubtfully, "It seems that this experience of losing control has actually deepened my understanding of myself? In other words... the probability of losing control again has decreased a bit?"

(End of this chapter)