Chapter 636 – The Power of the Soul

When the {Knowledge Card – Demons Explained} and the series of holy light cards went up in the Card Shop, they caused quite a commotion.

“Demons actually feed on souls?”

“I’m such a fool! I used to think the succubus our lord captured didn’t look like a bad person — tortured into that state, I actually felt sorry for it!”

“Demons being rated as ‘extreme evil’ on the friendship scale is completely deserved. Witches are all spellcasters with guaranteed good character, each with a strong and virtuous soul — in a Demon’s eyes, that’s basically a gourmet feast! No wonder Card Sorceress Moira established those regulations. She must have discovered something!”

“Compared to Demons, the Abyss is clearly far more terrifying! I can’t even imagine what it would be like if all of Valen turned into the Abyss.”

“Good thing we have these holy light {Magic Cards}. I need to save up some Gem Coins and buy a couple just in case — what if I run into a disguised Demon?”

“From now on, people who can’t use cards need to stay far away. Thank goodness Demons were expelled from the Dawn Society. With their nearly indistinguishable perfect disguises, who knows when your soul might get marked.”

“Wait… am I the only one curious about how the Dawn Society got its hands on these holy light {Magic Cards} and dark {Magic Cards}? Aren’t holy light magic and dark magic the signature magics of Angels and Demons?”

“What’s so strange about that? There have been tons of mage magic {Knowledge Cards} for ages.”

“But holy light magic relies on the Angels’ bloodline power to cast! How can that be the same as a mage’s magical knowledge?”

“What’s different about it? I’ve not only seen Witches use {Magic Cards} with effects identical to mage Psychic Magic, I’ve even seen Witches use dragon-tongue magic {Magic Cards}! I suspect Moira is an omniscient and omnipotent Sorceress — otherwise there’s no way to explain how she can produce so many miraculous magic cards.”

“Don’t forget, we’re members of the Dawn Society now too — we serve under Lady Moira. Show some respect!”

“All I hope right now is that she stays safe. I don’t want her to be like the Fireworks Witch, just suddenly gone one day. Without these cards, magical knowledge would be monopolized by those great nobles all over again!”

“Do you think the Fireworks Witch actually perished? They say it was a prophecy from the BeastmanElder Prophet! That one is quite famous…”

“I’d say it’s almost certain. If she were fine, would the Witches need to plant all those strange trees along the edge of the Wilds? A single Firework Blast would be enough to blast any intruder to pieces.”

……

The hunt for Demons grew ever more fervent after this batch of cards went on sale.

Mo Lan’s Blazing Flame Prison welcomed yet another surge of prisoners.

Now that she had holy light {Magic Cards}, after copying their memories, Mo Lan could simply use a single card to thoroughly purify a Demon prisoner — body and soul alike — letting them dissolve into the purest soul energy and dissipate between heaven and earth.

Even if a soul coalesced again afterward, it would be a pure white soul, free of good and evil.

Later, Mo Lan even applied her holy light magic knowledge to the Blazing Flame Prison, upgrading the {Blazing Flame Prison} into a {Holy Light Prison}.

However, the number of Demons outside the Abyss was finite after all.

As more and more were hunted down, the remaining Demons either hid away in remote mountains and deep forests far from human habitation, or retreated back into the Abyss. They were no longer so easy to find.

Gradually, it became possible to go several months without a single new Demon appearing in the Blazing Flame Prison. Mo Lan simply discontinued the business of purchasing captured Demons. She did, however, run occasional discount events for holy light {Magic Cards}, ensuring that — without taking a loss herself — Dawn Society members would all have the chance to stock up on a few extra holy light magic cards, just in case.

Demons needed souls to survive. As long as souls weren’t so easy for them to obtain, and as long as every captured Demon was immediately purified, their numbers would only continue to dwindle.

Mo Lan had read the memories of so many Demons. The Demons themselves weren’t particularly inclined toward research, but the Abyss had given them no small amount of knowledge about souls. Her understanding of the soul was no longer that of the novice she once was. Even the research inspiration she’d previously gained from holy light magic — regarding the amplifying effect of willpower on magical potency — had become much clearer.

The so-called willpower within the faith power of holy light magic was actually quite similar to the power of wicked desires and malicious thoughts in Demon magic. Both were the power of thought and cognition. And thought was something unique to beings possessed of spiritual awareness.

Regardless of whether that awareness was high or low, all such beings possessed some degree of cognitive and thinking ability.

Only beings with spiritual awareness had souls, and only intelligent beings with high spiritual awareness possessed powerful souls.

Clearly, whether it was will or desire, virtuous thoughts or malicious ones, cognition or contemplation — all of these were powers residing within the soul.

This also aligned with why Demons only hunted beings with spiritual awareness, especially intelligent ones.

The problem was that the soul lay hidden within the physical body. Unless the body died, there was no way to locate it, let alone directly harness its power.

However, both Angels and Demons had found ways to utilize a portion of soul energy.

Angels sacrificed their own emotions and collected the extreme worship that others directed toward them. Demons amplified the malice and wicked desires within their own souls to the utmost, using this to encroach upon the souls of others.

They shared a common trait — both involved soul power rooted in cognitive extremes.

Against a soul that maintained clear and healthy self-awareness, neither Angels nor Demons could extract any power whatsoever.

This proved that cognition was indeed the key to unlocking the power of the soul.

And clear, healthy self-awareness was the most effective way to protect one’s own soul power from becoming a weapon in someone else’s hands.

Correspondingly, however, to harness one’s own soul power, one could only do so through extreme cognition.

If one’s cognition wasn’t extreme enough, the physical body served as a barrier — one simply couldn’t fill one’s soul with aggression, let alone use it to amplify magical effects.

Whether good or evil, any cognition or conviction taken to extremes was never a good thing.

In the end, Mo Lan abandoned her research into “the amplification of magical effects through soul power.”

Having holy light and dark magic cards was enough.

She had no intention of tampering with a soul she didn’t fully understand, not without absolute certainty.

She valued her own safety over power, and never did anything she wasn’t confident about.

The downside was that, aside from Witch Magic — which she could continue practicing and improving — she had little room for advancement in any other school of magic.

She had already learned everything there was to learn in dragon-tongue magic. Whatever remained unlearned required a higher tier of Mana than she currently possessed.

For mage magic, she had only collected spells up to Peak level and below. Anything higher simply didn’t exist in her collection. To advance further, she would need to research more powerful spell structures on her own.

Everything that could be done with Angel and Demon magic, she had already made into {Magic Cards}.

She had even finished reading through the Elf magic books that Sylph had gathered for her.