Chapter 725

Chapter 725: Knowledge Changed Fate

All the runes were ready. The “text” of the symbiotic pact contract was written on the ground of the Abyssal Deep, in the soil of the Deep Sea. The summoner stood in place. The demon had also taken the proper position. All the conditions to start the ritual were now complete.

Dog stood in the center of the rune matrix. Its eyes, lit by dim green flame, fixed their gaze on Shirley at the edge of the array. As its mind grew more and more muddled, it slowly nodded.

With Dog’s encouragement, Shirley walked to the node of the array and tried to calm her thoughts.

She knew nothing about these complex runes. She had never received any formal occult studies training. She knew even less about the deep, dark rituals of Annihilators. Now she was full of unease. Faced with these mysterious symbols, she felt nothing but nerves.

But she trusted Dog – she needed this friend. She had to reforge their bond.

She took a light breath and slowly closed her eyes, using all her memories and imagination to sketch the demon she wanted to “summon”.

That figure had already long been carved deep into her mind over many years. She did not even need to draw it carefully in her heart. The familiar shape rose up in her thoughts at once.

The runes on the ground began to glow slowly. The Ancient Communication Protocol of the Deep Sea era woke with its own strange logic and shape. A hidden, subtle sense of connection appeared at the same time in both Shirley’s and Dog’s awareness. As the rune matrix brightened, that link grew steadier…

Yet only a few seconds later, all the runes went dark with no warning at all. The link that had just formed snapped in an instant. A short, piercing screech split the air, making all of Dog’s charred bone plates rattle and the twelve bony limbs behind Shirley shiver.

Shirley jerked out of her trance, eyes wide with shock as she saw all the runes die at once. Her body swayed. At the same time she saw Dog in the center of the array snap its head up.

The ritual to reforge the symbiotic pact contract had failed.

“How could this happen…” Confusion filled Shirley’s face. She glanced at the runes she did not understand at all, then looked up at Dog, who looked just as lost. “Did I mess something up? Or did you get the runes wrong?”

“That shouldn’t be… I felt it start up…” Dog was clearly puzzled too. It stepped away from the spot that stood for “demon” and came to Shirley’s side to examine the area around the node. “These runes are definitely right. This knowledge is almost burned straight into my mind. You should have done fine too, or they wouldn’t have lit up… I don’t know where it went wrong… The whole process just jammed halfway…”

Shirley frowned hard. She noticed the fire in Dog’s eye sockets had begun to dim, and its speech was breaking. She grew flustered at once: “I… let’s try again!”

Dog nodded at once: “Yes, try again!”

They returned to their positions and ran through the process once more – but the result was the same.

The rune array flickered into life for a moment, but only held for a few seconds. Then, like a broken machine, it “jammed” and shut down completely with a short shriek.

Shirley started to panic. In that brief link just now, she had felt Dog’s state growing worse and worse. Reason and humanity were fading from it. In its waves of confusion, it could hardly even recognize her shape.

As the dizziness grew stronger and its thoughts cut out more often, Dog staggered over to the node where Shirley stood. It could barely support its body, so it forced itself to lie down. It tried to focus and spoke in a low voice: “No… I must still be missing something… The ritual layout is… is fine. The problem should be… in our current special states. We have to… make an adjustment…”

“Adjust? Adjust how?” Shirley asked quickly. “Should I stand somewhere else? Is the node in the wrong place? Or is this area not suitable…”

But Dog seemed no longer able to hear her. Its head drooped. Disturbing clicking came from inside its body. Its skull swayed from side to side, and only a string of low murmurs came out, words that Shirley could not understand at all.

Just then, Shirley suddenly sensed a familiar presence. A deep, stern voice followed, one that in this moment made her feel both safe and overjoyed: “What are you doing?”

Shirley and the groggy Dog lifted their heads almost at the same time and looked toward the voice.

Duncan and Alice stood not far away in the wasteland.

“Captain!?” After a short pause and blank stare, Shirley reacted with a jolt. She seemed to forget how her body had changed. When she stepped forward, she almost tripped over herself. But she quickly caught her balance with her long bony limbs behind her and rushed to Duncan. “Captain, you have to help Dog. It… it’s in terrible shape. Our link is broken, and the reforging ritual just now also failed, and I don’t know…”

“Stop, stop, slow down,” Duncan quickly raised a hand to cut off Shirley’s fast babbling. He frowned a little as he looked at the girl before him, who had changed into a completely different form. He could still confirm by her mark that this was the Shirley he knew, but her current demon posture shocked him. Dog in the distance also looked very different. “What exactly happened to you two?”

Shirley froze, her lips trembling a little: “I… our chain broke.”

Dog seemed to recover a bit just then. It struggled to raise its head: “We… tried to hold the symbiotic pact contract ritual again, but the ritual failed…”

“The ritual failed?” Duncan frowned at once. As he walked toward the rough, makeshift array on the ground, he asked: “What exactly happened?”

“It started up and then suddenly stopped,” Shirley said. She braced herself with her limbs as she followed Duncan and quickly explained what had happened, repeating the “knowledge” Dog had just shared with her. “…I stood here, and Dog stood in the position for the ‘demon’, but it didn’t work…”

As she spoke, she stepped past the Dog that still could not move and hurried into the center of the array. She pointed at the ground while explaining to Duncan: “This was where Dog stood just now. The runes all lit up around here, just… like they’re… now…?”

She trailed off.

She had seen the runes around her suddenly give off a faint glow. Next, every rune in the array began to light up one by one and flash in a complex pattern.

Duncan, who had only just worked out how this so-called “contract ritual” flowed, also saw this. His expression slowly grew a bit odd: “…?”

Shirley and Dog shared the same reaction: “…?”

The ancient communication protocol had taken effect.

Alice saw special “lines” stretch out at the same time from both Shirley and Dog. In the blink of an eye, those lines met in the air, guided together by the dim light of the array. They merged and quickly underwent a transformation into solid matter, reforging the broken chain.

The process happened so fast there was no time to react. By the time Shirley truly realized what was going on, the chain between her and Dog was already whole again.

Then the Pact Array finished its duty. All the runes completely darkened and slowly took on a dry, ashen look of exhaustion.

Shirley stood in the center of the array, stunned for a moment. At last she stepped away from the “demon” position. She lifted her arm. The black symbiotic pact chain clattered and rattled. At the other end of the chain, Dog, now recovered, slowly pushed itself up from the ground and shook its huge skull.

The fire that had almost gone out in its eye sockets burned bright once more. It shone again with the wisdom of someone who had reached the absolute peak of high school graduation, half a step into City-State University.

The air grew a little awkward for half a minute.

“So, if I understand this right,” Duncan said at last. He stood beside the ruins of the array, looking at the two “crew members” before him, whose chain had been rebuilt while their forms stayed the same. “Dog, you really are Shirley’s ‘guardian dog’ now. And Shirley… you’re now Dog’s ‘contract human’.”

Shirley stared blankly. Dog also froze in place.

Alice had been spacing out at the side this whole time. Now she finally reacted and suddenly asked: “Why did it turn out like this…”

Shirley kept staring.

But Dog’s wisdom suddenly got moving again. It thought for a moment and then spoke, hesitant: “…Purity.”

Duncan’s look turned strange: “Purity?”

Dog lifted its head and pointed at Shirley, who now had some human features but, overall, looked almost like a full Abyssal demon: “Her purity as a Abyssal demon… is very high.”

“…That’s not right,” Shirley finally snapped out of her daze. After hearing Dog, she spoke at once. “No matter how pure I am, I can’t be purer than you. I just have the demon part of me showing on the outside. You’re from ‘over there’ from the start…”

Listening to their wild yet very serious analysis, Duncan looked at Shirley, then at Dog. He also felt this whole thing was rather unbelievable, so he couldn’t help thinking it over. Then a strange idea popped into his mind, one he could not quite push away: “Maybe…”

Shirley and Dog spoke together: “Maybe?”

“Maybe it has to do with Dog being ‘marked’ by the god of wisdom Rahm,” Duncan said. He thought a bit, and though he knew the idea sounded ridiculous, he still looked very serious. “It didn’t get dragged away back then, but now it really is the god of wisdom’s Saint – that is probably the reason.”

Shirley’s expression went blank again: “…”

After a short pause, Duncan stepped forward and patted Shirley’s arm (she was so tall now that he could no longer reach her head). He spoke in a heavy, heartfelt tone: “This is why I always say that knowledge changes fate.”