The Righteous Player(s)

As those black threads severed, Bernardino’s life gradually died out.

Those spirits bound by the Paper Princess would surely perish soon afterward.

In this case, it was better to utilize their fleeting worth.

Annan thought for a moment, then raised his right hand and chanted softly.

“The frost is thy wheel, and the spirit is thy path.” After Annan’s chant, five transparent flames of blue crystal hue appeared and extinguished at Annan’s fingertips. A hollowed-out gorgeous frost wheel flew out from his palm like a frisbee and quickly enlarged in the air.

As the Frost Wheel hit the ground, its ice broke and regenerated immediately, producing a crackling sound. At the same time, the ground was left with white frost marks akin to tire traces.

After the wheel was unleashed, it slammed into the spirit bodies trapped in the cage.

The Paper Princess had burned the relatively powerful spirit bodies to death in the first wave of attacks. For example, they were the spirit bodies of elves, demons, Silver Rank transcenders’ souls, and two extraordinarily rare Golden Rank souls.

The rest of the bound souls, except for a Silver Rank centaur, were all Bronze Rank Transcenders’ souls.

Also, this was the first time Annan encountered a centaur.

Through the soul state, Annan noticed that the centaur soul must be a muscular young man with wheat-colored skin before his death. His upper body was similar to a human male, but his chest was flat. Furthermore, his muscles were much more robust than humans. It had glossy skin, like a bodybuilder decorated with oil for modeling.

What lay from the waist down was a horse. The skin of the centaur’s lower body was also shiny brown like his upper body, and its fur was unlike an ordinary horse.

The centaur had a weird outfit. The horse section was draped in what looked like chain mail, a mat, or a rug. After the clothing hung down a certain distance from both sides, there was a row of metallic dark iron thorns like shuriken, probably as decoration or counterweight.

The centaur had no shoes on, and his hoofs directly tread on the ground. He wore a leather vest for his upper body with a V-shaped opening at the back. At the same time, the frontal clothing draped down and covered the belly of the horse’s body.

The centaur was an archer, but he did not attack Annan.

He showed complicated feelings and watched Frost Wheel tear himself apart calmly.

The reason why the Paper Princess did not kill the centaur was simple. The centaur did not proactively attack. He might not fight back if the offender explains and justify it clearly after the attack.

The centaur would not misunderstand others. At the moment of being attacked and even before that, they could see the dialogue choice that could resolve the conflict and even turn an enemy into a friend. Sometimes, the enemies were inexplicable to how it happened.

They would only attack an inevitable enemy. Even so, they would only fight back when they could not escape.

In comparison to the foreseen future, the conflict that happened contemporary was meaningless. What they lost was something they could afford. When they peered far enough into the future, they did not even care about their existence but what they could contribute and achieve in their lifetime.

In this sense, centaurs were silent lunatics.

They saw through their mortal nature, so they went mad.

This personality remained even after their death.

This was the “silent’ persona etched in the depths of the soul.

Even when Annan was killing him, he did not try to resist. It might be because of the Paper Princess, or he probably saw something. Instead, he just stared at Annan silently, smiling. He lowered his left hand holding the bow, and there were no signs of his right hand trying to draw the arrow from his back.

The Frost Wheel ran over these souls, entangling them in it and slamming them into the cage. Unfortunately, none could escape and continued to roll forward inside the wheel. Most of the spirit bodies were frozen by the curse and soon shattered into pieces, sending white ice fragments into the air.

[You have killed a Bronze Rank enemy in battle. 300 Shared Experience points are given.]

…

At the next moment, pleasing experience point prompts were displayed in front of Annan.

Perhaps because they were in the soul state, these spirits only gave Annan half of the original experience’s worth.

However, the prompt regarding the defeat of the centaur surprised Annan.

[You’re given Shared Experience points for killing a Silver Rank enemy in battle.]

Why is the experience points unusually high?

Although the centaur was in the soul state, the experience given was higher than all Silver Rank transcenders Annan had killed so far.

Is it because he is a centaur?

Is centaur’s experience so much higher than Yaselan folks?

For some reason, Annan felt that there seemed to be a story in the eyes of this centaur looking at him, and it seemed like there was some expectation in his gaze.

Did he peer into my future?

But it should not be…

The essence of the Prophet’s spell was to acquire the information sent by the “future self”. Since he would be dead, the aftermath pieces of information would not be revealed.

If the centaur were to die here, it should be impossible to know about the future.

Could it be that he knew Annan? A new thought popped into Annan’s mind.

What the hell did Annan do in the first life?

He not only got acquainted with a bunch of true deities and false deities, he even got familiar with the centaur tribes who refuse to contact outsiders or use Prophet magic to avoid strangers.

How on earth did he do it?

Have you traveled the world in the first life?

“Forget about it.” Annan looked away.

After he advanced to the Silver Rank, the required experience points for further upgrades increased significantly again.

However, these experience points were enough for him to promote himself by one level.

But at this time, Annan planned to hold on with his level upgrade first.

He planned to save some experience points first and prioritize his attribute points. Then, he would use the experience points to buy the profession level of [Frostwhisper] and directly push the Perception attribute to more than 50 points.

As for Bernardino’s experience points, Annan would not even consider getting it.

Instead, it was luck that Annan did not kill him just now.

If Bernardino had access to Annan’s memories and knowledge related to his original world, Bernardino probably had the chance to be compatible with the Book of Divine Transporter.

So far, Annan still did not know what the Book of Truth Book of Divine Transporter was about.

But for now, it had involved two realms: “immortality” and “ascension and change”. As Annan continued with his collection process, it could generate four more domains. In the end, if Annan wanted to ascend to a deity, he had to choose two of them, or the selection process might happen at random.

For now, “immortality” and “ascension and change” were player-related realms.

This might be why Annan, as the game planner, was a good fit for the Book of Divine Transporter.

Bernardino’s experience points might not satisfy Annan either.

Since it was only one-third of Bernardino’s soul, the experience points gained after killing him would only be one-third of its original worth at most.

As a Soul Snatch Wizard, he lived up to the “Necromancer” title in ancient times.

This ascendancy process was simply like a typical lich.

“He has picked up a wrong faith.” Annan’s eyes did not show the slightest irony but a faint trace of pity when looking at Bernardino’s dead body.

“What?” the Paper Princess asked.

She vaguely felt Annan exuding a saint-like aura.

“Being the Bell Ringer Oik’s pope, he finds ways to escape death. He’ll be held responsible for it for sure.” Annan said calmly, “Of course, we have to watch out for another thing until then.”

“Nicholas?”

“Right.” Annan nodded and offered an idea, “Even if Nicholas is under Father Stone’s control, what about Bernardino?

“If he gets the power of Sage’s Stone and acquires unlimited elemental power, it will extend his lifespan. Who can put him in check?

“Will Nicholas grant his request?”

“I think so,” said Annan solemnly.