In a world stripped of spiritual light.
The massive hull of the Death Announcer sank inch by inch, fading slowly into the black shadows below.
Tap.
Silas stood at the bow and stepped forward. Just as the hull vanished completely beneath him, his foot came down on solid ground.
Ahead of him lay the corpse of Kisma, the Dusk Saint, torn apart almost beyond recognition.
Beyonder characteristics, glimmering with iridescent light, were peeling away from the body one after another, along with the souls of lambs whose suffering had finally come to an end.
Huh. Mostly Sequence 5s. Silas shook his head.
That tracked. A Sequence 4 demigod Beyonder was already a formidable thing to be.
Even someone as powerful as Kisma, the Black Knight, couldn't easily beat another demigod and take them alive to shepherd.
Which meant the one truly valuable thing Kisma had left behind was...
Whoosh.
He raised his hand, and a bitter, freezing gale sprang to life in his palm. The wind pulled hard, dragging out something that had been hiding behind a pale gray building.
It was a dark, flickering, unsettling shape, black all over except for its eyes, which glinted crimson like moonlight.
The Shaman King lamb Kisma had released.
The fight here was over, and the two most valuable things to come out of it were these Beyonder characteristics.
By rights, both should go to the Church. But luckily, no one else knew exactly what lambs Kisma had been keeping, so he could pocket the Shaman King for himself and hand in the rest to close out his mission.
His nine lamb slots were already full, though. To take on the Shaman King, he'd have to let one of his current lambs go.
Silas didn't hesitate long. He released the Pyromaniac's lamb.
That one had been his for a long time, first locked away in Ma'am M's Rose Ring before it ever entered his body.
He'd once paired its Arson ability with the Faceless One's Flaming Jump to pull off short-range teleportation, but at just Sequence 7 now, it wasn't worth much anymore.
Medici already covered that role better.
So he let it go. Worn thin from years of use, the lamb's soul was already frayed and breaking apart; the second it left him, it disintegrated entirely, leaving only the bare characteristic behind.
In the same breath, he pulled the Shaman King's soul in and locked it into the slot that had just opened up.
As always, he had to choose three abilities to keep.
The Vampire Pathway, sometimes called the Apothecary Pathway, revolved around brewing potions, transforming the body to take on vampiric traits, and drawing power from the moon.
It wasn't much of an offensive pathway, but it was excellent at propping up a fight from the sidelines.
After thinking it over, Silas settled on three: Gaze of Darkness, Illusory Bats, and Potion Brewing.
The first two spoke for themselves, both signature abilities of the Shaman King. Gaze of Darkness meant plucking out one's own eye and using the darkness to seize control of an enemy's movements, and it meshed nicely with his own shadow powers.
Illusory Bats would boost his survivability even further. It let the user break apart into a swarm of bats; as long as even one bat made it through, the whole could reform and heal.
As for Potion Brewing, well, as the Black Knight, tough and hard to put down for good, he had little need for basic healing.
But the potions a Shaman King could brew went past simple healing, into stranger and more complicated effects. He probably wouldn't reach for them often, but they might come in handy eventually.
...
Meanwhile, back in reality, in the Cherwood Borough.
"Captain!"
The moment Soest and his men returned to the real world, a Red Glove who'd stayed behind rushed over to him.
"What's the situation?"
Soest asked.
"Leonard and Miss Daly still have Mr. X cornered," the man said quickly. "He's tough, hard to kill. It's been a standoff."
"That's fine."
Soest gave a short laugh. "We've got the numbers to spread out now. With this many of us on just one man, there's no way he slips through."
But no sooner had the words left his mouth than something shifted.
Somewhere out of sight, the invisible barrier that had been sealing off this area quietly dropped away, and the connection between the Spirit World and reality snapped back into place.
"Damn it."
Soest's face changed. "The Deacon's ritual just ran out!"
He remembered now: Mr. X's greatest strength was moving through the Spirit World, and the only reason they'd managed to pin him down was Senior Deacon Ishmael's ritual severing this area from the Spirit World. Now that the barrier was gone, the man was bound to run.
Sure enough, just as he'd feared, an invisible, uncanny ripple of power surged out from inside the house. As a Soul Assurer, he felt the Spirit World shudder in answer.
Inside the room where Mr. X had been holding his gathering.
"Heh heh..."
Amid the wreckage, Lewis Wien stood with several serious bullet wounds in his chest, and still he managed a steady, unbothered smile.
Across from him, Leonard and Daly, both caught in the blast of his last desperate strike, staggered back, each nursing their own injuries.
The ring on Lewis's hand kept giving off a strange, blood-red glow, and under it new flesh writhed and knitted itself back together across his chest.
Creak...
A hazy door was taking shape in the air before him, his way out before the rest of the Red Gloves could arrive and box him in.
"The Lord's Glory watches over us always."
Lewis said it with real devotion, his smile twisting at the edges. He gave them one last, lingering look. "I've got your faces memorized now."
With that, he stepped through the door.
"Get back here!"
Leonard shouted, pushing himself up to give chase, but Daly grabbed his arm and held him back.
Because even if Leonard could actually follow him into the Spirit World, it was Lewis's home ground there. He wouldn't stand a chance.
As for Mr. X, though, was he really in the clear?
The instant he crossed into the Spirit World, before Lewis could even make his next move, he felt a sudden cold sink into him, as if a chill had crept into his hands and feet, freezing him stiff and slowing every motion.
Fwip!
Having lost his grip on the Spirit World, he watched the shifting colors around him churn and change, and within a few seconds he found himself back in reality.
He'd escaped the encirclement, but he was still somewhere in Backlund, in what looked like a dark alley.
Just as he was taking in his surroundings, Lewis felt his thoughts start to drag, growing heavier and slower by the second.
A man in a mid-height silk top hat, gaunt-faced and grim, stood across from him, though he had no idea when the man had gotten there.
In his eyes, the man's movements looked sluggish, almost frame by frame, as the man raised a revolver and leveled it at him.
Gehrman Sparrow.