Abe the Wizard

The fanatic knight stared towards Abel. Its eyes went from having full admiration to zealous ideology. Abel was his everything. He was seeing him as his life. Abel could feel this faith very directly from the power he received from his crystal angelic statue. If he were still on the central continent, this power wouldn’t even feel as apparent as he was feeling now. This was the dark world, however. The statue was not enough to receive the power of faith on the central continent, so this new stream of energy was especially easy to notice.

Having sensed the statue, a pathway of faith was opened. Abel could see that the fanatic knight in front of him was a true follower now. In terms of his level of worship, the man in front of him was about as extreme as it could get. It wasn’t hard to comprehend that. No one could be as devoted as the fanatic knight in terms of worship, and since the faith was connected to his crystal angelic statue, the knight could feel that it was becoming a member of the statue as well.

The statue was connected to Abel, actually, and it was bound closely to him. As a matter of fact, Abel possessed two titles now. He was the spirit known for stealing worshippers from the demon from beyond, and he was known as the target for worship by the high-level elves living inside the dark world. Since he was in the Rogue’s Encampment of the dark world, he couldn’t store the worship power he collected either way. He was not an actual divine being, in that sense, as both of his forms had some sort of features about them that would put him in another category.

Abel sent a command to the fanatic knight in front of him. The statue was automatically connected to the pathway leading straight to the faith of a fanatic knight.

The crystal angelic statue said something to the fanatic knight, “My worshipper! I have received your devoted praise. I shall grant you the title of a sacred knight in the name of divine spirit.”

The fanatic knight didn’t know what the words meant exactly, but he knew he didn’t need to. All he needed to do was to feel the comfortableness as the sacred force surrounded his body. The force was born for him, in a way, so he felt a natural but special connection to it as soon as it appeared. Abel knew that the fanatic knight gained the right to become a sacred knight. It was strange to think that he was changed to another subclass, but that was just how things worked. Without the qualifications to become a sacred knight, all that was left was the regular combat skills.

Abel couldn’t help but think, “Will this take a while to learn?’

But there was not a single spellbook in his hands. Even though he possessed the ability to grant followers to the sacred knight, that was only achievable if he passed the souls through the faith pathway. He didn’t have enough research into the sacred knight’s spells yet to do that, and it was even harder to pass that spell to the fanatic knight in front of him. It was a painful thing to think. He thought about maybe using a divine blessing to insert the souls from the angelic statue, but he couldn’t risk wasting too much of the worship power inside each one of the fanatic knights. Ever since coming into the dark world, Abel found it even more difficult to collect worship power from the central continent. This was when the ten fanatic knight spirits were becoming ever so important.

Abel did all he could to calculate his potential loss. If it were up to him, he did not want to use one soul every time he had to resurrect a fanatic knight because that would bankrupt what he had in stock. Izual seemed to understand his sentiments, actually. He stopped praying inside the crystal angelic statue very quickly and started flapping the energetic wings behind its back. Slowly and steadily, the spell runes started flying towards the worship pathway of the fanatic knights.

No, Abel didn’t understand all of the runes, but he could try to remember the names of some of them. There was “sacrifice,” “vengeance,” “sacred shield,” “shield attack,” “charge,” and other runes that continued flashing on the fanatic knights. They quickly started sinking into the pure white energy crystal within the fanatic knight’s soul. The fanatic knight seemed to be in anguish when all these runes were going inside him. Maybe it had to do with how overabundant the information was. Izual ignored that, though. His wings continued to flap until absolutely every rune was transferred. Following that, a huge amount of information was passed through.

Izual seemed like he wanted to pass all the knowledge over in one go. Abel was starting to feel concerned. He was ready to help the fanatic knight if he had to. He wasn’t going to stop the knowledge transfer right away, however. He understood that this was the fastest way to do it, so even if he was using his divine blessing, the fanatic knight had to practice to actually learn the spells from scratch.

This was an experiment, essentially. Abel had to figure out the right steps if he also wanted to resurrect the other eight fanatic knights. He wanted to save enough energy inside the crystal angelic statue if he wanted to keep going. Once Izual finished passing through the knowledge, then he would be able to save up the souls. No, since he did not have a complete understanding of the divine, he had to make sure that the souls were enough to make any major decision on how to use them. Doff could gain twenty-something worshippers with the ancient totem it was holding, but this fanatic knight could hold two thousand more than that. It’s why he had to hold onto any resource for divine power if he absolutely had to.

By now, all the fanatic knight’s orifices were filled with blood. Even its spirit was injured, and the brain was under constant shock damage. Abel continued using his soul potions and full recovery potions. He did not spare his potions, knowing that it was not a logical move to force centuries’ worth of knowledge into one single spirit. He knew the risks of doing this, and thankfully, he was a powerful master that knew how to keep the damage to a minimum. Whenever the wounds became lethal, he would continue to supply potions.

After using the tenth bottle of either potion, Izual was done passing the knowledge. He bowed on the ground and resumed praying. He went back to supplying worship power to the crystal angelic statue. Abel could see that the fanatic knight was drawing a “shield attack” rune in front of him. It was a bit awkward at the start, but eventually, it became faster and more relaxed. Finally, the rune was appearing in full form the moment it was unleashed.

Abel was confused with that, actually. As genius as the fanatic knight was, it shouldn’t be possible to master this knowledge so quickly. Soon, he inserted his power of the Will into the soul of the fanatic knight. He was surprised to see that the knowledge transfer was not practice but more like revision. After repeatedly practicing the spells over several centuries, it became possible to integrate each one of them to the biological functions of the fanatic knight. Eventually, casting the spells became something that could be done with reflex.

Once the fanatic knight began learning to “pray,” Abel started laughing. He could see that things were going as he expected. Underneath him and Johnson, a blue mist light ring appeared. It was like he was soaking his body into a hot spring. Strange energy was walking around him, ready to fix any wounds that were on him. He could finally feel the spiritual qi light ring of the sacred knight. Although he did sense the meditation ring with his rune of “inspection,” he had never really understood the true power of the two sacred knight systems. This was his chance now.

Very quickly, spiritual qi light rings started emerging beneath him. Every time there was a new one, the smile on his face would appear wider. He realized that the knowledge transfer from Izual was actually a full set. There was “redemption” and “rescue” for defense, “fanaticism” and “faith” for attack, and “heavenly fist” for tactics. All three systems were learned and mastered, just like that.

When he thought back to Wizard Malon, the process wasn’t this smooth. All that was preserved was freezing spells, whereas the other spells were lost during the resurrection process. Abel tried to let Frankenstein master fire-level spells, and he ended up spending years inside the dark world to actually manage to do that. That was after supplying him endless mana sources and a fire heritage item.

For the class of sacred knights, if there was an incomplete system, Abel just had no ways of fixing it. He had no way of knowing the pre-conditions for training a sacred knight’s top-level spells.

Abel couldn’t help but sigh, “The Sacred knight is a broken class, I see.”

Yes, powerful, but that strength came from faith. If the faith were lost, the sacred knight would be powerless. The spirit could take away the power anytime it wished to, too. It was not like Abel’s worshippers could be stripped of their powers if the demon from beyond wanted to, though.

By the way, Abel admired the power of a sacred knight, but he didn’t enjoy the power that was supplied and achieved through restraint. It was an unfortunate thing because he had no ways of developing his other worshippers apart from his divine blessings. He was not a spirit himself, so he never really had the ability to unleash his crystal angelic statue. There was also another thing, and that’s if the fanatic knight survived this one.

Abel laughed as he saw the fanatic knight, “I’ll give you a name now, I think.”

He had to be careful not to use the fanatic knight on the central continent. He didn’t want to have the whole population hunting him down, so he only brought him into the dark world.

“Bruce? Bruce, I guess.”

It was a reference to Bruce Willis from a movie he saw in his previous life. Having received the name, the fanatic knight called Bruce had all sorts of runes flashing in its eyes. There seemed to be quite some time needed to master this knowledge, so it seemed.