Chapter 23 Ritual

At the end of the seventh day, Lucifer tricked the ghosts from Taro's army and consumed them after torturing them. With that, he reached the level 12 initial stage. His will attack also became better. He also inherited an ability of charm through which he could make one feel lost for a second by looking in their eye.

After reaching level 12 Lucifer started on making traps of light and dark energy all over the castle and turned the castle into a maze. Karl on the other hand reached the level 10 peak stage after undergoing a certain ritual.

On the fourth day after the walls were created, Karl meditated inside his chambers there were various things all around him. The flame from candles was not golden but purple. There was a big chandelier above him which was reflecting the light of the moon. It was a celestial item that could store energy from the moon and spread it when kept in a room. With it, certain rituals can be done.

Karl was sitting in a meditative pose, his form was of that of a human. His legs were crossed and his eyes were closed. He was focusing on absorbing essence from the atmosphere and mixing it with the corruption of ritual. The ritual which he was doing was that of corruption. The skulls were representations of death and emptiness. The purple candles which were shining inside them were a representation of light in its corrupted state. He was using skulls to draw out little fragments of consciousness that were still inside them. The purple flame was capable of absorbing minute fragments of consciousness and corrupting it.

So where in direct consumption a ghost would consume the soul and consciousness and would not receive much dark essence due to state of the soul, in rituals they could manipulate the state of consciousness and can make it more corrupted. A minute consciousness from ritual was much more corrupted than the corrupted consciousness of ten-plus ghosts in direct consumption. Because of that, the ghost who did ritual magic had a better quality of soul as compared to the ghost who only consumed souls.

The reason Lucifer did not opt for ritual magic was because he was a new ghost and ritual magic was slow when it came to increasing the essence. A ghost can only use both methods when they are 3 months old until then they can only consume essence.

As the purple flames consumed and sent the essence into the atmosphere, Karl absorbed them and mixed them with his essence. Slowly his soul was undergoing a qualitative change. His soul was getting new powers. As time passed the fire of purple flames kept on increasing then finally it became sharp enough to break the skulls. The skulls then lost all of their remaining essence and consciousness. They became brittle and fell apart. Some got cut in halves while some incurred a hole. After all of them get broken the light from the chandelier turned blue. The dark room now had various spiders and a bright blue light. There were broken skulls and on them burned the purple flames. Karl opened his eyes and the skulls started floating in the air. Slowly, they encircled him and formed a ring around him in the air. Then they started revolving, Karl closed his eyes and started focusing on revolving skulls. Suddenly various voices started echoing around him, they were the fragments of wills of the dead humans. Because they were corrupted the voices were strong, they slowly entered Karl's consciousness and attacked his will.

His consciousness started banging, and lots of screams, words and cries entered his consciousness. He could feel their pain, their agony and also their death. It was as if he was undergoing death again and again. And not just the death of the body but that of the soul. His consciousness started shaking, but he kept his focus. His will wanted to give up and stop but he kept on going. His soul was shivering with agony but he kept on going. Finally, after an hour of trauma, the wills from skulls perished and the will of Karl underwent a qualitative change it became much stronger. The floating skulls and purple fire perished. The spiders from the wall perished. The once bright chandelier turned dark. And now there was just the darkness and a ghost with a liquid form lying lost on the surface.

After a day the qualitative change of will and soul was completed. Karl regained his shape as a human and also his consciousness. He could feel his new abilities with this ritual he got two powers, one was corrupted will and with it, he could corrupt the wills of his enemies and the other power was corrupted touch with that ability he could corrupt anything that would come in his contact. So if by any chance he would touch the consciousness of a ghost he would be able to corrupt it.

After experimenting he found that he can corrupt wills by using essence to penetrate the soul and then transferring a part of his will into his opponent. Once the consciousness of other ghosts would try to defend, it would get contaminated instead. The only way to stop the corruption would be to do a soul cleanse. But a soul cleanse would put a ghost in a vulnerable state. as it would empty all his essence. So if by any chance Karl manages to put his will inside the other ghost's soul he would have an edge as the other ghost would constantly undergo corruption and would lose reasoning while he would become stronger due to the growth of his will.

His second ability was the same as Will however with his second ability the soul with corruption would become stronger so his opponent would get a power up. However, the power of the opponent would keep on rising until his soul could no longer contain it and would result in a blast of the soul. The best way to defend it would be a soul cleanse however it would be only possible after they would be at a safe place away from the battle. So both of the skills were kind of broken and hence Lucifer trusted Karl to lead the army and made him his hidden trump card.