novelonline Chapter 4138 Molting and Life
Chapter 4138 Molting and Life
Chapter 4138 Molting and Life
"No matter how exquisite the leather goods are, they cannot cover up the rotting flesh and bones. All I see is flesh and blood decayed by time, and a soul that has succumbed to and rotted in desire."
The Great Witch of Chaos spoke sternly, and the leatherworker who looked like a bartender raised his glass to Xia De and Wei Ge:
"Lucky people like you, who are born with good looks, can hardly understand why these people would be willing to make a deal with someone like me for a seemingly useless appearance."
But that's alright; jealousy and vanity are original sins inherent in intelligent life. Some people care more about appearances, some more about wealth, some more about power, and some more about who is by their side.
He drank the glass of wine in one gulp:
"Did you know that leather craftsmen from the [Leather Goods Guild] have very special abilities? We can sense whose leather is more suitable to be made into leather goods, and we can easily discover the most beautiful leather."
The closer I get to you, the more I realize how perfectly your skin is suited for making leather goods. The thought of covering myself in your skin, experiencing its warmth from within, and displaying its beauty from the outside, even fills me with a sense of vanity.
As it spoke, it raised the small knife in its left hand. The knife collided with the silver moonlight that had already reached it, but this time the knife, which was powerful enough to cut through space, failed to shatter the moonlight.
Bang!
With a deafening crash, the leatherworker was sent flying by the moonlight, his bartender-like leather garment instantly ripped apart. As the middle-aged gentleman-looking leatherworker attempted to escape, chains appeared from behind the moonlight and wrapped around his waist.
Hermons had the ability to sever the [Chains of Great Sin], but the leatherworker clearly did not. It immediately shed its current skin like a snake, using the properties of its relic to break free from the chains, only to be bound again by a second chain that bound the body of the middle-aged noblewoman.
"Space-stabilizing halo!"
"Echoes of Chaos!"
The leatherworker "shed his skin" again, his knife attempting to cut through space, but the blade sparked as it struck the air. The surrounding space seemed to transform into solid vault walls, the stable environment completely preventing his escape.
The third chain of great sins had already flown in. After the knife collided with the chain, it was knocked away by the immense force and embedded itself diagonally into the ceiling, where it was still vibrating.
This time, the chains didn't bind the leatherworker; instead, they were inserted directly into his chest. While there's no definitive answer in academia as to whether relics are truly alive, most humanoid relics do indeed possess a sense of life.
The relic's life force was also imbued with the whispering element, and after the chains extracted it, it continuously flowed into the source of fire in the mark on Shad's palm.
The leatherworker now appeared as an old woman with silver hair, and the leather item was rapidly deteriorating because the fire had been removed.
"What did you do!"
It wanted to break free of the chains again by "molting," but the chains piercing its chest went straight through every layer of its skin, thus restricting its ability to molt.
Shad approached it, wielding the Moonsword. The leatherworker, gripping the chains with one hand, realized he couldn't break free. Then, as the whispering element spread, all the corpses lying on the floor of the ballroom rose to their feet.
It's not that the corpses are resurrected as spirits, but rather that the leatherwork controls them. Each corpse here is essentially a clone of the leatherworker, and the strength of these clones is related to the power of the leatherworker.
They pounced on Shad, but a low growl came from behind him:
"Chaotic Torrent!"
The chaotic light released by Vigo instantly annihilated the monsters enveloping it, but footsteps were coming from all directions. The amount of leather stored in this painting was obviously more than what was in front of them. And the most difficult thing to fight against a "leatherworker" was not its own power, but how much leather it actually possessed.
Click!
A thunderous roar echoed from the sky, and lightning bolts streamed in through the windows, illuminating the interior of the banquet hall, where the dim yellow light grew even brighter.
The outsider even felt that the scene was like a nostalgic old-fashioned horror movie, but he was probably the only one in the world who knew what a "movie" was.
The sparks drawn from the chains seemed inexhaustible, and within half a minute, the leatherworker had already torn three pieces of leather. Even without his knife and controlled by the "Great Sin Chains," he could still fight Shad with the help of the surrounding corpses.
The leatherworker employed all sorts of magical spells and even the innate abilities of different races. These abilities all originated from the leather objects he wore; the deeply integrated leather not only imparted some of the original owner's habits to the wearer but also granted corresponding abilities.
Shad appears to be fighting only one person, but in reality, he is fighting a massive group that has survived since ancient times. He even sees that they are using what appears to be the power of a Witcher.
The "Leatherworker" is the highest-ranking member of the [Leather Goods Guild]. Every leatherworker recorded has the power to disrupt the peace of an entire region. The opponent's method of combining multiple powers also opened Shad's eyes. However, thanks to the first-mover advantage created by the "Great Sin Chains," Shad was not actually at a disadvantage.
Besides, he wasn't the only one here.
Vigo was not by Shad's side. The witch detached from the ground and floated in the air. Ice and fire, light and shadow, order and chaos, enlightenment and whispers—multiple contradictory forces were mixed together, forming several chaotic-colored orbs of light that hovered above her head and emitted light downwards at a fixed frequency.
The chaotic torrent severely hampered everyone's perception of the outside world, including the leatherworker, and Shad and the leatherworker had no time to care about what was happening outside.
Magical arts clashed, the cold moonlight and eerie whispers annihilated each other. Lightning spears pierced through human bodies, moonlight slashes cleaved through barriers of leather, and the chains of great sin continued to drain the life force from their bodies.
Just how strong is this thing's vitality?
One of the four chains bound the leatherworker, while the other three helped Shad block the corpses that tried to approach. These corpses were only wearing a layer of leather, and once their life force was drained, the leather they wore would also lose its vitality.
As the chains drew embers from more and more corpses, the nine Great Sin Spirit runes seemed to sense something. Shad, completely absorbed in the battle, didn't pay much attention to this sensation, but gradually he realized what the chains were sensing:
"If I can continue to draw this life force, I may very well obtain a new Great Sin Rune related to leather."
A steady stream of corpses poured into the banquet hall, but the battle had long since expanded beyond the hall itself. The fight between Shad and the leatherworker blew through the ceiling, extending the battlefield to the second floor.
Then, Vigo smashed the wall of the banquet hall, revealing the dim yellow outdoor scene outside the building.
Such extensive destruction of the building naturally caused abnormal changes to the document-level relic itself. The whispering elements inherent in the scene gradually became restless, until Shad, who was fighting with the leatherworker in the second-floor corridor, noticed that the dim yellow scene was fading little by little until it turned black and white.
Then, at the end of the corridor behind the leatherworker, a woman with her head down and her face covered by long black hair appeared, which meant that this document-level relic was completely out of control.
But after the "vengeful spirit Martha" appeared, it hesitated to approach the two people who were fighting and unleashing various magical arts. Just as it finally walked towards the leatherworker after its hesitation, two corpses dressed in leather rushed out from the closed doors on both sides of the corridor. The vengeful spirit-like woman then turned and ran away, and the surrounding colors changed back from black and white to a dim yellow.
Even though this is the home turf of "Masha the Vengeful Spirit," she seems powerless against the leatherworker with his vast collection of leather goods.
The fight between Shad and the leatherworker quickly returned from the second floor to the first floor, and the battle came to an abrupt end at that moment.
It wasn't that Shad or the cobbler gained a decisive advantage, but at a certain moment, the dim yellow scene began to shake violently, followed by a woman's lament that seemed to come from inside the walls of the house.
Wei Ge thought that this oil painting was going to fight the "outsiders" in the painting. With such a serious fluctuation of elements inside the relic, even the most stable relic would lose control.
But the next second, a giant's fist reached out from behind the wall that Viggo had just destroyed, and then that hand with red nail polish grabbed Viggo. A second giant's fist smashed through the wall next to Shad with a loud bang, grabbing him as well.
The two were pulled out of the house by two giant hands and carried into the air. After breaking through an unclear boundary in the air, the dim, nostalgic yellow color around them suddenly disappeared, and the normal night returned.
Viggo stumbled and almost lost her balance. When she came to her senses, she realized that she was holding Vanessa's right hand, while Shad was holding Vanessa's left hand.
There were no houses in the desolate mountains in front of the three of them, only an oil painting floating in the air. The dim yellow light seeped out from the painting, and Wei Ge could even see two large holes in the side of the house in the painting, and inside the holes, a dense crowd of people were standing there as if searching for something.
Iluna and Sirius were casting a spell together to stabilize the relic, balancing the power of the chosen one to calm the restless whispering elements, while Sirius held an ancient crystal with a black dot at its core, but filled with blue and gold light.
The angelic relic, the Core of the Ancients, was also emitting a dim yellow light. Vige paused for a moment before realizing what it meant:
"Vanessa, were you the one who 'pulled' us out of the painting?"