In addition to that, these arts could be used to create curses, or undo them.
William thought these arts were used to counter the curses, never imagined they were the same methods used to lay down these curses in the first place.
"It's like a sword, can be used to defend a nation or take the life of its monarch," William muttered, while reading his way through the basics of these arts.
In general, there were seven different paths of these arts, all depended on the type of spirit affinity of the master. William already had his own speculations about the right spirit affinities to use such arts. And now he got the answer in much detail.
The affinities included time, fate, and destiny. These three were ones of the rarest and most unique affinities in the world. William met Panther, a master with spirit that could see through time and pry over the future.
He knew it wasn't impossible to find monsters with spirits related to time, fate, and destiny, but it was much harder to find spirits with affinities towards these.
The scrolls were clear on this, having just spirits related to these wouldn't do. The spirit must have an affinity element towards one of these, and that was what made William have a headache.
He even doubted that Panther would be able to train on these arts with his spirit. And in addition to Panther, he also knew someone who had potential to train in these arts if he got the affinity as well.
The other four affinities were Karma, Divination, Luck, and Cosmos. William knew the first three, but never heard of someone having a Cosmos spirit or even an affinity.
"Weird… The scrolls don't have any in depth information about any of these," William tried to get a better understanding of these affinities and why the arts only worked on them and not on the spirits. Yet he found no data about such an explanation, and that made him realise this was considered as a higher level of information, not just basics.
"At least I know what I'm going to ask about," After five entire days, William managed to go through all the basic scrolls he got before. The information he gained was simply too much for him to handle in just one session. Yet he learnt all the basic facts about the Cult and the Mystic Arts.
From the scrolls, the Cult was established close to fifty thousand years ago. It might seem like a very long time, but William knew compared to the real age of this world, this was nothing.
The Cult came from the outer world's main headquarters as he expected. And the ones who came here used a crack in space fabric to arrive here, establishing the interworld portal he once saw here, and left enough masters to run the place.
The Cult branch here was connected to the main headquarters in the outer world, but there was no mention about where this Cult was situated out there or any reference about their activities or anything.
William wanted to guess where that Cult was in his past life, and why they didn't take actions against the nine-tailed fox before. In his estimation, the fox attacked them first, getting rid of an annoying enemy like the Cult.
Putting such a thing aside, William knew a little and a much disturbing fact about the Cult. to be able to perform the Mystic Arts, one had to be young, less than twenty-five years old. And that meant Panther was now out of his options.
William wanted to test Panther and see if he had an affinity towards time or not. If so, then he'd do anything in his power to lure this master on his side and let him start learning and executing the Mystic Arts.
His only option now laid in Thomas, that if he got an affinity towards Karma. William recalled the moment that he tested this youth five years ago, and he couldn't tell if he got an affinity or not.
"Now I have to wait for them to call me, and then I'll shower them with all the questions I have in mind…" William decided to rest and train until the Cardinals would make up their minds.
During his stay here, the Cardinals were having very productive discussions. They started off by just simply discussing the decision of the Grand Cardinal, going all the way towards taking all the detailed maps of their branches in the entire world and started to discuss how to fortify them.
When they took the maps out and studied them, they were shocked to see how vulnerable and weak their bases were. This was something that never crossed their minds, a fatal mistake anyone descending from a mighty and powerful force would easily fall into.
The arrogance and overconfidence in their power and might were inherited by the moment they joined the Cult. The teachings they provided to their offspring never spoke about the possibility of getting attacked.
In their eyes, they were the true kings and rulers of this world. And it wasn't that easy to convince a king that he grew old and was so weak to get attacked and killed at the hands of peasants.
At first, they thought the task was easy and wouldn't need lots of their time and effort. But when they studied the maps, they discovered how hard and tiring this task would be.
The first challenge they had to solve was the way to find resources and workers to build the defences. This wasn't an easy task, especially when they lived their entire lives doing nothing but fighting and dealing with curses all over the world.
They might have met tons of riches before, yet they never cared to carry them back. Not to mention most of their tasks ended up in total devastation, one that wasn't any lesser than what happened back at the Blue Hills for example.
The source of this c𝐨ntent is fre𝒆w(e)bn(o)vel