LIGHTNOVELWORLD Chapter 349: Scramble.
The Tarot Club meeting ended there with everyone leaving after a polite bow that almost looked like a practised puppeteered bow since everyone's minds were still on Mr. World's and Mr. Error's words, leaving them filled with confusion with a slight sense of horror.
After everyone was gone, Loki calmly exited the Sefirah Castle with a smile and summoned to his hand the two Beyonder Characteristics from the Abyss pathway that he had with the help of the item he'd created to store and summon things in and from the Sefirah Castle into the outside world, where ever he was.
'What do I make with these things?'
'A danger warning system would be nice…'
'But I should be able to do something better with them shouldn't I?'
'Especially since you-know-who's will is in this thing…I should be able to make something much more dangerous.'
'Or…I could use it to study how the danger premonition system works and try to find a method to bypass it?'
Loki picked up the Sequence 4 Demon Beyonder Characteristic and placed it on an examining kit that Nicolas had gifted him.
It took him some time to isolate the will of malice and revenge contained inside the Beyonder Characteristic but he was finally able to do so in the end as he wiped his brows and looked at the results with a soft frown.
'Malice is the most dominant factor in this thing…'
'Which has made corruption the only ability easily available to me. I can corrupt people around me in a small radius and cause them to lose their sanity or make them make mistakes in their decisions.'
'While the Beyonder Characteristic can also help me detect danger, it is not its prime aim, so it probably won't work as nicely as I expected it to.'
'The Ring of Harvest can serve me for now…I guess I can think about danger premonition later.'
With his aim set, Loki began to carve out runes using his wand and spirituality into a small ring while setting up a small ritualistic altar to perform a ritual later to help fuse the Beyonder Characteristics and the ring.
It took him a few hours of staying up late into the night to finish it, but it was complete. A prototype of what he wanted to make was finished.
'How do I test this…'
'In the castle?'
'I could test it on Malfoy and make him do something stupid…but I'm sure it'll cause a ruckus.'
'And if it's too strong then it might even cause irreversible damage.'
'The forbidden forest then?'
Loki quickly exited his room with the ring on his finger and started walking towards the forbidden forest.
He navigated through the ticket of trees effortlessly, walking deeper and deeper into the forest without care while covering himself with illusions to appear invisible both in sight and scent because of his new Sequence 5 strengthened illusory abilities.
After a few minutes, Loki finally arrived at a deep enough part of the forest where he stood in view of the large number of gigantic spiders hanging from the thick branches of trees spread around the canopy.
Some were resting on webs, while others were sitting directly on trees, but they were all closely packed together as if they were trying to ward away the heavy cold of the winter months.
'Can spiders even feel cold?'
Loki scanned around for a particularly vulnerable spider and calmly floated to it while remaining invisible.
Once he was less than three meters away from the spider, Loki glanced at the new ominous ring on his finger before pouring his spirituality into it.
Nothing happened for a few seconds but when Loki activated his spirit vision to look at the spider he found it to be rapidly becoming corrupted.
A strange dark web-like substance had taken root in the spider's Body of Heart and Mind, making it all look like a parasite had started to grow by consuming its sanity.
And as soon as the amount of corruption crossed a third of the size of its clear body fo heart and mind, the spider woke up with a sudden harsh scream that sounded like it was panicking as it started to realise it was dying.
The sound immediately woke up the nearby spiders as they all looked at the spider that was teetering on the edge of the branch, holding on for dear life as it screeached in pain while trying to maintain its sanity.
Loki was startled since he hadn't expected the ability to be so powerful.
He tried pulling back his spirituality from the ring in an attempt to lessen the effects but the damage was already done.
The spider soon collapsed from its spot on the tree down on the messy forest floor, going through several webs in the process and knocking a few more spiders as it screamed in fear of death.
The body of the spider began to mutate almost instantly, with its body showing signs of turning thick and dry like a bark as each joint in its body began to freeze up unnaturally as it was starting to die from the inside out.
Loki's eyes widened as he looked at all of this before quickly extending his hand and twisting it to steal the corruption from the spider to prevent things from getting worse.
The corruption was instantaneously separated from the spider as it flew into Loki's hands as a rune before he quickly left the area without looking at the result of his actions.
Loki rushed back into the castle and quickly teleported into his room once he was inside the dungeons and less than a hundred fifty meters away from his room, a range that had increased because of him taking the Sequence 5 Dream Stealer potion.
In the forest, where Loki had just vanished from, an old man appeared as he looked at the aftermath of the spider on the floor screeching for its life while the other spiders circled around it carefully and observed it from a distance.
The spiders were all startled when they saw Dumbledore appear in front of them so suddenly and made some distance from him too.
Dumbledore slowly and freely walked up to the spider on the forest floor and began to closely examine it as he pulled out his wand and tapped it at random intervals.
Aragog slowly emerged from his cave, which was formed out of the roots of a tall tree, and looked at Dumbledore in silence before he finally brought up the courage to ask him a question.
"What happened to him?"
"....Hmm…it isn't what's happened to him that's strange…but how he was cured of it that's a little difficult to answer."
"Cured?"
Dumbledore didn't answer the second question and kept staring at the dying spider for a few more seconds before waving his wand and causing the spider to fall unconscious.
He then turned towards Aragog and spoke with a soft frown.
"He will be fine in a few minutes. Did none of you spot anyone entering your area when this happened?"
Aragog looked at everyone else in his small spider clan and when no one gave him a response he looked back at Dumbledore and shook his giant spider body.
"Doesn't seem like it. There's not even a scent remaining for me to trace."
Dumbledoore's frown deepened before he looked at the spider once again as he stroked his silky beard.
'Tom…?'
'Here?'
'That wasn't in the script…and it doesn't feel like him…'
'Whoever did this was startled away…as if they hadn't expected something like this to happen.'
'Were they testing out their Beyonder abilities?'
'Perhaps a new student has stepped into the Abyss?'
'Does Tom want someone on the inside?'
Dumbledore eventually shook his head and looked at Aragog before speaking softly.
"I will not be able to do much more for now."
"Is there a chance of whoever did this to return?" Aragog asked politely.
Dumbledore looked at the giant spider and smiled.
"You don't have to worry about that. Whoever did this was startled away, so I doubt they'll be here anytime soon."
Aragog nodded with his body and that was the end of the matter.
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