Chapter 460 — The Mind Brand Phenomenon
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 3
"Whoa..." Amber exclaimed with exaggerated shock. "Sounds like your church is a good deal more complicated than I imagined..."
Gao Yang folded his arms: "A religion that has lasted so many years and swollen to its present size cannot help but be complicated."
Then, stroking the beard on his chin thoughtfully, he said slowly: "But then again, to shake the Daystar Church at its spiritual foundations, printed matter alone will not be enough... Wright, how goes your research on Holy Light spells?"
"I was just about to report on that to you," Wright said, a complicated look crossing his face; then he tilted his head slightly toward Emily, dozing on his shoulder. "Emily—go fetch that metal plate from my room."
Emily gave an ethereal little laugh, then her whole body dissolved into a streak of flowing light and flew swiftly toward the door at the back of the main hall. It was not long before she came flying back—empty-handed.
Yet just as Gao Yang began to wonder whether the child had failed to find what Wright wanted, he saw Emily reach a hand into her own belly—this translucent spirit girl rummaged about inside herself for a while, first drawing out a little wooden top, then a handful of smooth colored pebbles, and only at last a palm-sized rune plate.
The girl laughed happily, holding the rune plate out to Wright in both hands.
Amber stared, dumbfounded: "How does she... hide things in her belly?!"
"I only discovered it by accident," Wright said as he took the rune plate. "Little things about the church kept turning up in the wrong places or vanishing altogether. After watching for a while I found the reason: Emily is a spirit, yet she can carry small, light objects—and precisely because she is a spirit, her body has no clear 'boundary,' so she hides things in her belly. Honestly, I do not know what she has stashed in there... Last time the reading stand on the pulpit broke, she spat out a handful of nails..."
Amber: "..."
To be honest, Gao Yang was no less astonished than Amber, but he did have a good many wildly eccentric characters under his command, and in those years hanging up in the sky he had seen one strange form of life after another, so he quickly calmed himself, forced a grave and placid expression onto his face, and took the rune plate to examine it closely.
It was indeed a rune plate—the base was a second-generation standard blank template produced by the Rune Foundry, but in its mana-conducting region what was inscribed was not the common elemental runes, but the divine runes used only in Holy Light theurgy.
This was a "Holy Light plate."
"With the help of Director Kamael and Director Jenny, I reconstructed the first Holy Light spell built entirely upon runes, and commissioned the people at the Rune Foundry to make this plate," Wright recounted the plate's genesis. "It discards every rune-word that forms a link to the God of Holy Light, ensuring the entire casting process is 'unconnected to any god' and rests wholly upon mortals."
Gao Yang looked at the pale golden lines and tracery on the plate, and excitement stirred in his heart: "You... you actually succeeded?!"
"Only in part, I would say..." Wright said cautiously. He took the plate back from Gao Yang and passed it on to a thoroughly bewildered Amber. "Miss Amber, try to activate it."
Amber took the plate blankly, not catching on at once: "You want me, a Chosen of the Night, to cast Holy Light?! Where would I learn that!"
Gao Yang could not help rapping the head of this disgrace to elfkind: "Never mind whether that self-styled Chosen of the Night business is even real—have you forgotten how a rune plate works? You just inject mana into it. Who asked you to cast the spell yourself?"
"Oh, right..." Amber came back to herself. She scratched at her hair and looked at Wright with some unease. "Say, this thing won't blow up once it is activated, will it? I am telling you, my defense is super low..."