Chapter 461 — The Act of Defiance

The "Mind Brand" hypothesis had been proven true.

With the appearance of the Holy Light rune substrate, the researchers of the Cecil Territory had, for the first time, observed the effects of the Mind Brand through experiment.

But this was unquestionably no good news.

Divine magic belonged to the gods; mortals could only "pray" for the gods' grace through devout faith and obedience to dogma, thereby borrowing the power of divine magic. This had always been regarded as self-evident truth. Yet through analysis of the shifts in druidic divine magic, through the intelligence Camille provided, and with Wright—a living "White Knight"—as a case in point, Gao Yang, Pi Yun, and the others had jointly proposed the "Mind Brand" hypothesis, and held that the key to letting mortals master divine magic lay in breaking that brand. And after witnessing Amber's test, Gao Yang had come to realize all the more deeply that breaking the brand was likely no easy matter.

Among all the people Gao Yang knew, there was perhaps no one who held the God of Holy Light in greater contempt than this disgrace of an elf—and yet even she could not break free of the Mind Brand's influence. That proved the brand did not act upon the level of thought, but was rather an instinctive reaction, difficult to control and difficult to perceive.

As for what Wright had just mentioned—that Camille, too, was unaffected by the Mind Brand—Gao Yang was not much surprised. Camille had been a senior researcher of the "Defiance Project" a thousand years ago, and had endured a full millennium of sealed existence; the strength of his will was likely no less than Wright's, perhaps greater. Moreover, the project he had studied back then was precisely the theft of the gods' power—his Mind Brand had probably shattered the moment he laid eyes on the divine corpse of Amon, the Giant Stag.

"Actually... this counts as an unexpected gain," Gao Yang said, taking the rune substrate from Wright's hands with an involuntary sigh of wonder. "It has become our 'observation device' for verifying the Mind Brand..."

Then he set his fingers on the copper medium at the substrate's edge and slowly fed it his magic: "Perhaps... I can give it a try."

The pale golden lines on the rune substrate brightened rapidly under the infusion of magic, and in almost an instant, a sphere of pure, holy radiance condensed above the substrate.

"This..." Wright was struck dumb. "You... you have broken the Mind Brand as well?!"

Amber, too, stared at the Holy Light spell Gao Yang had released through the rune substrate as though she had seen a ghost—the last time she had worn such an expression was when she had watched him crawl out of a coffin: "How can you do it too!"

But Gao Yang only gazed quietly at the orb of light floating before him, feeling its stable, pure magical response, with little surprise in his heart.

Just as he had expected—as a visitor from another realm, one who could be said to have no connection whatsoever to the local gods, he had been born without a Mind Brand.

A swift little figure flew to Gao Yang's side. Emily reached out toward the orb of holy light, but hesitated halfway and stopped.

She tilted her head up to look at Gao Yang, her big eyes full of anticipation: "Can I eat it?"

Though the little girl was simple of mind and her way of thinking differed somewhat from ordinary people, she clearly still knew that Gao Yang was the lord and therefore she could not simply do as she pleased.

Gao Yang smiled faintly and laid his hand lightly above Emily's head: "It's yours."

The little girl happily carried the orb of holy light away, while Amber continued to study Gao Yang from head to toe with her ghost-stricken look: "I really couldn't have guessed... when did you break the Mind Brand?"

"A legendary hero who fought the demon tide seven hundred years ago—it's no wonder he has such strength of will," Wright said from the side. But though he explained it thus to Amber, he still felt some doubt in his own heart: the Mind Brand was a "lock" that could not be perceived by one's own will; breaking it required not only a firm will, but also some "resolve" and "shift in thinking" whose principle was unknown—and those latter two elements in fact had little to do with the strength of a person's will.

How could an ordinary person, under normal circumstances, undergo a shift in thinking? He himself had broken the Mind Brand through long questioning and reflection upon the God of Holy Light, and through the shock of the Emily incident; Camille, through the Defiance Project of that year, and through the changes in life-form and mode of thought during a thousand years of sealing. So then Gao Yang...

Had this legendary hero also defied the gods in his day?

Gao Yang noticed the doubt in Wright's eyes, but he had no intention of explaining any of it; instead he steered the conversation back on course: "The Mind Brand prevents a user from driving the Holy Light substrate with their own magic, but if I'm not mistaken... this Holy Light substrate can still be used, can it not?"

"Just as you say," Wright nodded. "The Mind Brand affects only the user's mobilization of their own magic. But the Holy Light substrate is also a kind of rune substrate, and rune substrates need not be driven by human magic—they can be driven by energy from the Magic Web, and the Magic Web... has no mind."

The Magic Web had no mind, and thus was naturally unaffected by the so-called "Mind Brand." To drive the Holy Light runes with the self-operating Magic Web was to bypass the factor of "human" altogether—and this mode of working, casting spells through the Magic Web and external devices, was precisely the foundation of Cecil's arcanotech industry.

Cecil's arcanotech industry had, by a fortuitous twist, slipped through the gap left by the Mind Brand.

But Gao Yang knew things would not be so simple: "Using the Magic Web to power the Holy Light rune array... requires a crucial intermediate process."

Wright opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Camille's voice came suddenly from the direction of the church doors: "The inverter array."

Gao Yang turned and saw Camille, his whole body brimming with arcane radiance, drifting toward them. The arcane master spoke as he floated over: "I was just coming to report to you on the Holy Light substrate, but I never expected you had already come to the church. I heard you outside the doors just now, discussing the power-supply problem of the Holy Light substrate."

"I happened to come by," Gao Yang nodded, and followed the thread onward. "The inverter array is a delicate thing. I'm sure that if you hadn't run into a bottleneck here, you would have brought me the results on the Holy Light substrate long ago—after all, you've already produced the physical prototype."

"There was once a priest who tried to improve divine magic by driving the Holy Light array directly with arcane means, and was burned to ash by divine punishment—the failures of our predecessors force us to tread carefully," Camille said gravely. "We do not know what the essence of the gods is, but the phenomenon of 'divine punishment' is real."

He paused there and looked at Wright: "Fortunately, Wright broke the brand and awakened the power of the White Knight. By measuring the flow of energy when he casts, and deducing the spell model he senses, we reconstructed a new Holy Light array, thoroughly excising from the array any structure that establishes a connection with the God of Holy Light, and cutting off the judgment process of 'divine punishment.' Subsequent experiments proved this approach effective. But if we power the Holy Light substrate through the inverter array... we would very likely re-establish that dangerous connection."