Chapter 164: His Stolen Aura

“Let us see if you bleed code like the rest of them,” Elector Mordecai said.

He raised his bare left hand and swiped it across the empty air.

He aimed right at the cloister where Raziel stood.

Raziel threw his body sideways and hit the cold stone tiles.

A massive section of the stone pillar right next to him ceased to exist.

It just vanished and left a gray, textureless void behind.

The sudden deletion created a vacuum in the air, and the rushing pressure popped Raziel’s ears again.

He hit the dirt floor and rolled to his feet.

Mordecai did not look at Raziel again.

He lowered his hand and turned his head toward the western tree line to look at the thick brush where Lucian and Gideon hid.

“Kill the rats in the trees,” Mordecai ordered his men.

Ten elite Inquisitors broke away from the main formation.

They raised their heavy steel halberds and charged toward the gap in the wall to hunt down the saboteurs.

“We are compromised!”

Lucian yelled through the communication rune painted on Raziel’s collar.

“They are flushing us out!”

Lucian and Gideon burst through the remaining bushes.

They sprinted through the unrendered gray gap and re-entered the main courtyard.

They had nowhere else to go because the red digital static from the Silencer chewed up the forest behind them and erased the physical dirt.

Three heavy Inquisitors intercepted Lucian.

They wore thick silver breastplates glowing with bright blue holy kinetic energy.

The Church provided their elite executioners with permanent defensive buffs to make them untouchable in close combat.

Lucian dodged a downward halberd strike.

He spun around and drove his steel dagger right at the first guard’s exposed neck.

CLANG.

The steel blade bounced off an invisible kinetic shield.

The holy magic protected the armor and repelled the physical attack completely.

A second Inquisitor swung the blunt wooden shaft of his halberd and hit Lucian hard in the ribs.

Lucian grunted and crashed into the dirt.

The three guards raised their weapons to execute him on the spot.

Raziel did not hesitate.

He sprinted across the forty yards of open courtyard and gripped his iron dagger tight.

“Get away from him!” Raziel shouted to draw their attention.

The Inquisitors turned their heads.

One of them stepped forward to block Raziel’s path.

The guard channeled his mana, and the bright blue kinetic shield intensified around his silver armor.

Raziel knew his basic iron dagger held zero value against a master-level holy shield.

He needed to break the rules. He needed to use the anomaly.

He slid to a halt in the dirt and dropped his dagger.

He did not have time to draw a weapon across his palm.

He raised his left hand and bit down hard on his own thumb. He tore the skin open with his teeth, and warm blood dripped down his fingers.

He activated the fifth Forbidden Gift.

Anchor Blood.

He burned his own spilled blood as a physical catalyst.

The veins on his wrist flared with blinding gold and black light. An intense, boiling heat rushed up his arm and settled in his brain.

He used the raw fuel to amplify his newest weapon.

He boosted the Devourer by three times its base capacity, bypassing the Level 1 consent limitation through sheer, corrupted brute force.

Raziel lunged forward.

He ducked under the heavy steel halberd and stepped directly inside the guard’s reach.

He slammed his bleeding, glowing hand flat against the center of the Inquisitor’s silver breastplate.

VMMMM!

The Devourer opened a massive sensory channel inside his mind.

Raziel felt the holy kinetic energy pumping through the guard’s mana veins. He felt the structured, disciplined Church magic powering the defensive shield.

He did not just detect the magic. He grabbed it.

Raziel ripped the holy energy straight out of the guard’s core.

The blue kinetic shield covering the armor flickered and died instantly.

The Inquisitor gasped, and his eyes widened in pure shock.

Nobody had ever stolen his magic before.

The Church maintained an absolute monopoly on divine power, and Raziel just committed the ultimate heresy in front of the supreme commander.

The stolen holy energy rushed into Raziel’s arm.

It burned his mana channels.

The holy power clashed with violent force against the Shadow Parasite resting inside his chest, and the parasite hissed to fight the foreign magic.

Raziel did not try to keep the stolen power. He repurposed it.

He reversed the flow.

He concentrated the entire volume of stolen holy kinetic energy into the palm of his hand and pushed it straight back into the guard’s chest.

BOOM!

The kinetic force exploded point-blank.

The silver breastplate shattered into jagged pieces of shrapnel.

The guard flew backward through the empty air and crashed hard into the dirt. He did not get back up.

The other two Inquisitors froze.

They stared at their fallen comrade and then looked at Raziel.

Raziel stood over the broken body.

His hand dripped with his own blood, and the stolen blue mana vented from his knuckles in thick sparks.

“Get up, Lucian,” Raziel ordered without taking his eyes off the guards.

Gideon ran over and grabbed Lucian by the shoulder to pull him up.

Lucian scrambled to his feet and clutched his bruised ribs.

He gripped his steel dagger and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Raziel.

Gideon raised his iron mace and guarded their flank.

The two remaining Inquisitors recovered from their shock.

They raised their halberds and charged forward to kill the anomaly.

Raziel stepped forward to meet them.

He burned more blood from his bitten thumb and kept the Devourer amplified to maximum capacity.

He deflected the first halberd strike with his bare forearm, trusting the residual kinetic energy he just stole to protect his bone.

He grabbed the wooden shaft of the weapon.

He channeled the Devourer through the wood and drained the holy magic directly from the guard’s hands.

The blue light traveled up the halberd and sank into Raziel’s grip.

He ripped the weapon away from the weakened guard.

He spun the heavy halberd around and slammed the blunt end into the Inquisitor’s helmet.

CRUNCH.

The guard dropped to his knees.

Raziel pressed his bleeding palm against the man’s silver shoulder guard and unleashed the second stolen kinetic blast.

BOOM!

The armor cracked open, and the guard collapsed into the grass.

The third Inquisitor hesitated.

He saw a fifteen-year-old novice dismantle two elite executioners using their own holy magic.

The absolute impossibility of the situation broke his rigid military discipline, and he took a single step backward.

Raziel did not give him the chance to retreat.

He dropped the halberd and dashed forward to grab the front of the guard’s breastplate with both hands.

He drained the remaining holy shield in a fraction of a second and fed the raw energy back into the metal with devastating force.

CRASH!

The third breastplate caved inward. The guard hit the dirt and rolled to a stop near Elector Mordecai’s boots.

Raziel stood in the center of the courtyard.

He breathed hard, and his left hand shook from the violent combination of Anchor Blood and the Devourer.

The physical cost of burning his own blood made his vision swim for a second, but he forced himself to stay upright.

He just destroyed three heavily armored veterans in less than a minute.

The blue interface materialized in his vision, and the screens flashed with bright red text.

[WARNING: HOSTILE HOLY ENERGY ABSORBED.]

[THE SHADOW PARASITE REJECTS THE FOREIGN MANA.]

[PHYSICAL DAMAGE SUSTAINED.]

Raziel dismissed the screens and wiped the blood from his mouth. He looked across the courtyard.

Elector Mordecai stood twenty yards away.

The supreme commander did not look angry about losing three elite guards, he looked down at the shattered silver breastplate of the man lying near his boots.

Mordecai slowly raised his head. He locked his cold eyes on Raziel’s bleeding hands.

“You steal the light,” Mordecai stated, his amplified voice carried absolute clarity across the entire academy. “You carry the Forbidden Gifts!”

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