Ye Chui had a strange dream.
He experienced everything in the dream, yet felt like an outsider, as if living through a bizarre VR movie.
He dreamt of a nun named Rosia.
Rosia was studying in the Holy City monastery at the heart of the Kaslot Continent. Nuns and believers adhered to strict vows, forbidden from romantic feelings. But young Rosia secretly broke this vow with a priest, bearing his child. To spare the high-ranking priest trouble, she volunteered to oversee the church in the remote, desolate Stan Town.
There, she secretly gave birth to the baby.
The child was named Sius.
The tender infant grew, intelligent but lacking his parents’ holy talents, showing no skill in chanting scriptures.
To conceal Sius’s identity, Rosia never let him call her mother in public. Only in the quiet of night would she hold her poor child, listening to him call out, “Mummy, mummy…”
Sius grew up, deemed unfit to become a believer, but the faint magic in him gave Rosia hope he might awaken as a mage. Yet, disappointment followed.
The former keeper of the Magic Tower, old Merlin’s predecessor, granted Sius several chances at Rosia’s request, but each attempt failed. Sius had no talent for becoming a mage.
Physically frail, he couldn’t become a skilled swordsman either. A mundane life seemed his fate.
Living an ordinary life didn’t seem so bad. Rosia, watching her sixteen-year-old son, still small as a twelve-year-old, felt content and happy, as long as he could stay by her side forever.
But Sius refused to accept such ordinariness.
Unable to become a mage, his fascination with magic persisted.
He tirelessly explored magic’s mysteries. One day, in the church garden, he discovered he could make wilted flowers bloom again and dying birds take flight.
He had no magic book, yet he wielded magic.
For five thousand years, it was a universal truth on the continent that mages needed a magic book to cast spells, using magic to channel elements into spells. But Sius bypassed the magic book, wielding magic through sheer will, proving humans could cast magic without one.
Unbeknownst to Sius, this was deemed heretical by the Church.
“Demon!”
“Heretic!”
Soon, the Church’s believers learned of Sius’s powers. They infiltrated Stan Town and executed the demonic Sius before Rosia’s eyes.
For five thousand years, the Church, worshipping elemental gods, viewed magic books as divine gifts. They had a sacred mission, slaying countless heretics like Sius who cast magic without books.
Watching her son die before her, Rosia aged immeasurably in that moment. She sensed the believers knew of her bond with Sius, yet they killed him in her presence, departing with scornful sneers.
How could they be so cruel?
Rosia stayed by her son’s body for a day and night. Her confused, pained gaze gradually hardened, becoming resolute and cold.
“Rosia, please grieve. Sius chose the wrong path…” the Magic Tower’s keeper said, unable to bear her suffering.
But he met Rosia’s bloodthirsty, icy stare.
“Demon, heretic? No, everything is wrong.” Standing by her son, Rosia rose and approached the keeper. “Sius was a kind child. How could he be a demon or heretic? The Church is wrong, you’re all wrong…”
She placed her hand on the keeper’s chest and, to his disbelief, extracted his magic book.
The keeper roared, “The Dark Bible, you’ve read the Dark Bible…”
In the Holy City monastery, Rosia’s duty was guarding the Forbidden Book Tower. Once, out of curiosity, she read the forbidden Dark Bible, learning taboo knowledge. Terrified, she buried it deep within, never recalling it until now.
Magic books were a deception.
The so-called demonic mages were right. Using the Dark Bible’s knowledge, she stole the keeper’s magic book and, through dark chants, fused Sius’s soul with it, turning him into an evil spirit.
The stolen book became a dark magic book. Rosia grew cruel and bloodthirsty, like all fallen believers. She used blood to honour her son, pain to strengthen him, determined to revive him no matter the cost.
She persuaded many to worship her son, turning them into dark believers of the evil spirit.
This took years, transforming her from a young nun into an old matron.
Among the orphans sent to the church, she chose a boy named Wade as Sius’s revival sacrifice. She schemed for the dark believer Bond to adopt Wade, and after countless attempts, she secretly fused the dark magic book into Wade’s body.
On Wade’s sixteenth birthday, killing him and sacrificing his body would let the evil spirit Sius reform a physical body.
Ye Chui sank into this dream, both real and unreal. He felt as if he became Rosia, then Sius. Surrounded by endless darkness, he stumbled forward in fear. A speck of light appeared ahead, and a crisp, childlike voice called, “Mummy, mummy…”
It was Sius’s voice as a toddler.
For both Rosia and Sius, those were their happiest, most cherished times.
The emotion drew Ye Chui toward the light, as if climbing a mountain, crossing a dark sea, moving ever closer to the brightness…
Then, urgent shouts jolted him awake.
“Ye Chui!”
“Big brother, what are you doing!?”
The dream faded swiftly. The night’s cold wind brushed Ye Chui’s body. To his shock, he stood atop the ruins, blood-red tendrils tightly coiling around him. At the ruins’ edge, Debbie, Reisha, and Green stared in horror.
“What’s going on? How am I here… was it all a dream?” Ye Chui looked around, bewildered. Waking up to this tentacle scenario was a bit too intense!
“You were sleepwalking?” Debbie exclaimed, quickly summoning Ji Ji.
“The evil spirit bewitched him!” Reisha said, clutching her Bible, brows furrowed. “These past days, the evil spirit was quiet, waiting for a chance to control big brother… Is the dark magic book really inside him?”
“What do we do now?” Green asked urgently.
Reisha didn’t answer, her anxious expression showing she had no solution.
The evil spirit was weak but had one last burst of strength.
That night, Ye Chui had drained his magic book’s power watching One Punch Hero, weakening whatever force protected him, giving the evil spirit an opening. Its bewitching power was limited, so it used its deepest memory—its origin—crafting it into a dream. Step by step, it immersed Ye Chui in the dream, using Rosia and Sius’s longing for light after falling to darkness to lure him from the tent to the ruins.
Now, it had succeeded.
If it merged with the dark magic book in Ye Chui’s body, it could gain a new body and immense power.
The blood tendrils gripped Ye Chui tightly, suppressing his magic and movement. The evil spirit Sius’s malevolent will seeped into him, searching for the dark magic book. Before this, old nun Rosia had met Ye Chui in the graveyard, confirming the dark magic book was still in him. Success was near.
Yet…
“Why is your body empty? Where’s the dark magic book!?” A panicked, despairing roar rang out, audible even to Debbie and Reisha. The blood tendrils grew more frantic. How could the dark magic book have vanished from Ye Chui’s body?
Ye Chui grimaced in pain. Reisha, Debbie, and Green exchanged puzzled looks.
Ji Ji, held in Debbie’s arms, suddenly thought of something. “Ji Ji, treasure?”
In Stan Town, in Ye Chui’s wooden house.
In the centre of the hall lay a pile of stones and junk, Ji Ji’s nightly treasure haul. Some food and items she’d boldly taken from other homes were returned by Ye Chui the next day, but the pile of stones remained, awaiting cleanup after their adventure.
Unnoticed by Ye Chui, at the bottom of that pile was a book with a black cover…
