novelonline Chapter 3666 The Wolf and the Silk Thread
Chapter 3666 The Wolf and the Silk Thread
Chapter 3666 The Wolf and the Silk Thread
Apart from Sylvia and Galina, all the witches who were supposed to come had arrived. Considering that Granny Cassandra had traveled a long way, there would be no celebratory banquet on the ship tonight. And seeing the girls walking around the ship again, Shad was in a good mood.
Now all three portals of the Ice Castle in the mountains are in use. Centered on the Ice Castle, you can reach the Silvia Tower at the top of the mountain, the Snow Mountain Hall on the mountainside, and the Radiant Messenger by the sea.
Therefore, when arranging accommodations, most of the girls stayed on the boat, Claire's followers moved from the town's inn to the Snow Mountain Hall, while a select group of elites chosen by the witches stayed in the Ice Castle in case of any eventuality.
The semi-permanent portal means that even after the local events end, the Ice Castle will not become deserted again. The witches seem to intend to turn the castle into a witch gathering place like the second "Moon Sanctuary".
Of course, Shad still hasn't found the key to the castle, so the castle doesn't yet belong to him.
Dorothy was attending a dinner party with fellow writers tonight, so Shad brought Mia along when he and Megan returned in the afternoon, so he could eat on the ship. He planned to go home at 7 PM after dinner, but before he left, news came from town that traces of cultists from the [Cult of Doom] had been discovered near a village on the eastern side of the island.
"What are they going to do?"
Visibility was extremely poor on this snowy night, so Shad didn't send the witches to investigate. Instead, he took Flora and Claire with him to check the situation himself. Flora's shapeshifting abilities were very useful in the wild, while Claire was most familiar with the island's layout.
The village where the cult members were discovered was called "Olin Village." The village was unremarkable on the island, and most of the villagers made a living by fishing.
Claire braved the blizzard to bring Shad and Flora into the village, where they soon met the village chief. Nothing unusual had happened in the village; the one who had discovered the cultists was the village priest, who had ventured out to gather herbs in the snow. The old priest, seeing that the cult had a large group, hadn't followed them.
He marked the approximate location of the encounter with the cultists on the map. When Shad and the two witches arrived, there was no trace of them, after all, the snow was just too heavy.
"No one in the village has gone out much these past two days, so no one else should have been here—an echo of the past."
Shad tried activating his magic, listening for a while amidst the howling wind, then spoke to Claire, who was huddled beside him, and Flora, whose cat had turned gray-blue and was hiding in his chest:
"They didn't come for the village; they were tracking a pack of wolves in the area."
"Wolves? There are indeed wolf packs on the island, but they probably didn't come here to hunt, did they?"
"From the voices I heard, they mentioned that the wolf pack was a Guardian-level relic called the Ominous Wolf Pack. Bella seems to have mentioned this before, right?"
The Guardian-level relic, [Ominous Wolf Pack], consists of 23 spirit wolves. This peculiar wolf pack carries misfortune, and disaster is sure to occur wherever they appear.
There is currently no record of these relics actively harming humans. They appear silently at night, and those who see them only think it is their own hallucination, unaware that misfortune has already been brought.
Their spiritual and doomed nature makes them difficult to stop and capture. Even when these wolf packs are eliminated, they are only temporarily made to disappear, not completely destroyed. The Church of Peace, which records these relics, believes that their true forms should be hidden somewhere in the void beyond the world, and that the soul images they appear in are merely projections.
In short, the Ominous Wolf Pack may not seem like a big threat among the Keeper-level relics, but it is actually quite troublesome. Many people even believe that it should be classified as a "natural phenomenon" relic.
Their presence on the island is likely due to their attraction to the chaotic local environment.
"But what are the cultists going to do hunting them down? I remember that even if they wiped out the wolves in the pack, they would only get some spirit dust contaminated with the Whispering Element. Would that be useful to the cultists?"
But now that they were already here, all three wanted to find out the enemy's true intentions.
So, relying on the "echoes of the past," Shad continued to follow the witches forward, going counterclockwise along the coastline through the woods outside the village, and then turning west towards the foot of the mountain. Soon they saw the footprints left by the cultists on the snow.
Continuing their pursuit down the mountain, the howling of wolves amidst the howling wind grew clearer. When Shad and the witches finally spotted the cultists in the moonlight, they were locked in a fierce battle with the Ominous Wolves in a snowy field.
Although it is a Guardian-level relic, the wolf pack is not very strong in combat. Their high danger level is more due to their ability to bring bad luck.
The ring sorcerers of the [Cult of Doom] can also summon doom, but the doom brought by the relics doesn't have a significant impact on them. When Shad and the two witches arrived, only 15 of the 23 spirit wolves remained in the wolf pack.
As for the cultists, the archbishop of misfortune did not appear this time; instead, they were led by an eleventh-ring warlock whom Shad did not recognize. There were seven of them in total, but the most conspicuous one in the group was a woman whose hands were wrapped in translucent threads, and who cast spells by waving those threads in the blizzard.
She was at the ninth ring level, and it was clear that the others in the team were assisting her; even the eleventh-ring man was doing his best to let her shine. Although Shad didn't know who she was, he recognized the fine threads she was using as those made by the [Prophecy Spinning Wheel]. Shad had touched this thing before when the cultists lured the Balrog.
Although he still didn't know what these people were doing, Shad didn't want to wait for them to achieve their goal before taking action.
"They can't always be the ones who come looking for trouble with me first."
After a brief discussion of a simple plan with Flora and Claire via telepathy, Shad made his move from the shadows. This time, however, he didn't unleash moonlight directly. Instead, the stranger stepped forward and appeared high in the howling wind. He almost blended into the deep night sky amidst the snowflakes, and as the starlight rising around him grew brighter, he transformed into a star and plummeted downwards.
"Miraculous Technique - Falling Star Strike!"
Like a star streaking across the night sky, silent yet exceptionally deadly. The blizzard greatly impaired the senses of the cultists focused on fighting the wolf pack. By the time they realized the attack from above, it was too late. The starlight fell, and although the thunderous impact didn't travel very far in the blizzard, the effect of this strange technique was remarkable.
The "star" crashed into the center of the cultist ranks, its silver-blue shockwave rippling outwards. Except for the eleventh-ring warlock and a few others on the edge, everyone was enveloped in Shad's attack range.
The pure physical damage combined with the bombardment of starlight caused half of the cultists to be knocked away and unable to get back up in the snow as the falling starlight spread.
As Shad landed at the center of the impact, he unleashed a beam of moonlight at the nine-ringed woman who was manipulating the threads. The woman, who was originally at the front of the group, was also affected by Shad's magic, but she reacted very quickly, got up from the snow, turned around and threw her threads at him.
As the translucent filament touched the moonlight, the moonlight melted away, and the filament was severed. But having learned from his previous experience, Shad wouldn't let misfortune strike again. The clear sound of a sacred bell rang out from high above, completely unaffected by the wind and snow. A white owl clutching the sacred bell swept across the battlefield; its superb polymorph and illusion magic combined to prevent the cultists from seeing the source of the bell even when they looked up.
Shad showed no mercy to the cultists who had repeatedly attacked him. After confirming that the sacred bell lent by the hermits could suppress the misfortune brought by the threads of fate, he transformed into a Grand Cross of Moonlight and charged towards the woman.
Although her expression changed slightly, she reacted promptly. Instead of confronting Shad head-on, the dense threads wrapped around her arms flew forward, forming a hollow shield that met Shad's moonlight slash head-on.
Not much sound came from the air. Amidst the swirling snowflakes, the owl in the sky only saw that the Grand Cross of Moonlight was actually deflected by the shield made of silk threads.
But Shad was unharmed. As he returned to his original form in the snow, he felt as if he had just bumped into a flexible barrier, then realized it was a shield woven from the threads of fate:
"What kind of ability is it to weave fate into a physical form?"
The threads weren't severed this time, but the woman manipulating them turned pale, clearly indicating that taking this attack hadn't been without cost.
"You guys leave quickly."
She shouted to her companions in the wind and snow, and the scattered cultists disappeared in different directions. Ignoring the others, Shad continued to attack the woman.
But the woman was, after all, a ninth-circle sorcerer. As the dense threads swirled around her, she tore off the holy emblem hanging from her chest and tossed it above her head:
"Divine Spell - Doom Descends!"
Flora, suspended in mid-air, felt the sacred bell she was gripping in her claws become incredibly heavy, almost pulling her to the ground.
On the ground, the "she" beside Shad whispered in his ear, reading aloud the rapidly unfolding contents of the "Manual of Destiny." Shad was wary of unexpected enemies like the Balrog, when he saw the threads surrounding the woman twist into a ball, transforming into a tiny thread doll that closely resembled his current appearance.
"Ok?"
After the doll was fully formed, the woman suddenly twisted its neck, causing its head to rotate 180 degrees. Xia De instinctively shrank his neck, and then felt nothing more than a slight itch.
The woman casting the curse looked up at him, quite surprised, or rather shocked, to find him completely unharmed. She glanced at the small doll in her hand, then at Shad, who was looking at her with a puzzled expression not far away. Her finger reached for the doll's heart, but before she could make a move, the doll's heart glowed with a golden light.
Bang!
The doll burst into flames and exploded in a burst of golden light. The threads of fate scattered into ashes in that golden light, and even the woman's right hand, which held the doll, was blasted to ash in the explosion.
For Shad, who possesses divinity, this curse is the most difficult to work with.