"Glub, glub..."
The black liquid in the large pot bubbled, thick and viscous.
No matter how you looked at it, it didn't seem easy to swallow.
But Silas only glanced at it before continuing the preparation.
He picked up the bottle of lemon balm essential oil from the table and used a dropper to carefully add exactly 10 drops.
"Hiss, hiss..."
The oil fell into the black liquid with a sound, but what emanated wasn't the fresh scent of herbs.
Instead, it was an even more decayed and gloomy smell.
So far, only one supplementary ingredient remained.
One drop of blood from each person who fell due to the ritual.
Silas's ritual subjects were souls who had no physical bodies, let alone blood.
But after the ritual, he had merged with those souls as one. Theoretically, his blood could substitute for theirs.
He set down the oil bottle, held his hand over the large pot, and sliced open his fingertip.
"Whoosh..."
With just one drop of blood, the black liquid underwent a dramatic transformation.
The originally viscous fluid rapidly thinned and dissolved. Now its consistency resembled very thick ink.
It's working!
Silas felt secretly delighted.
Next, he carefully picked up the main ingredient of the potion: the Black Knight Beyonder characteristic extracted from Leomaster.
"Thunk."
The crystalline black hand bone fell into the pot. The previously bubbling liquid suddenly stilled, stopping its boil.
The hand bone dissolved silently, melting into the liquid. With each part that dissolved, the liquid became several degrees more viscous.
By the end, the entire pot of potion had nearly solidified into a single mass, even more exaggerated than its initial state.
But unlike the initial black tar, the potion now resembled a crystalline black gemstone, lying quietly at the bottom of the pot.
"It should be successful."
Bernadette, who had been observing from the side, said, "I don't see anything wrong."
"Mm."
Silas looked at that "gemstone" and poured it into a prepared metal bottle.
Though it looked like a solid, fortunately the potion still flowed out of the pot.
He picked up the bottle.
The metal bottle containing the potion was many times heavier than it appeared, and its touch was extremely cold.
Silas simply brought the bottle to his lips and poured it in.
"Gulp..."
The viscous potion flowed down his throat and esophagus into his body.
Silas maintained his head-tilted drinking posture, frozen and motionless.
"Whoosh!"
The next second, his body suddenly collapsed.
Under Bernadette's gaze, Silas's flesh dissolved into pure blood and tissue, spilling onto the floor of the Dawn.
Then, this pool of originally crimson flesh gradually took on a pitch-black color, as if transforming from flesh into shadow!
But Silas didn't know his current condition. He only felt his consciousness rapidly descending, descending.
As if passing through the ship's planks, through seawater, sinking into endless shadow, sinking into eternal darkness.
Deep within that darkness, something seemed to be calling him.
Gradually, Silas felt a strong impulse to sink into the deepest depths, to approach that great existence calling to him.
He clearly knew this was wrong, but he couldn't control himself, could only continue sinking endlessly...
Suddenly, something caught him.
It was a vast expanse of something more solid than shadow. Its presence abruptly halted Silas's descent.
He instinctively looked and discovered what was holding him up was countless phantom palms.
Those palms were pitch-black, fallen, radiating extreme and intense auras.
The souls of the fallen!
They had fallen before Silas, and thus appeared below him, catching his body!
The descent was terminated. Before Silas could be surprised, he immediately seized the opportunity to rise, pulling his consciousness out from the pitch-black shadow world.
Only then did he finally sense his own existence and feel the potion dispersing within his body like a pitch-black swamp, saturating every cell.
"Thump..."
In an instant, Silas felt his astral body along with his flesh simultaneously dyed pitch-black.
It was the black of corruption and madness.
"Rip!"
As if a crisp tearing sound rang in his ears, Silas felt his spirit body and flesh forcibly separating under the potion's influence!
From Bernadette's perspective, she saw the shadow Silas had become gradually expanding, like a boiling ink pool.
Countless agonized faces surged on its surface, all of them Silas's own from the looks of it.
It seemed about to split apart like this, becoming individual pitch-black monsters...
"Pop!"
The shadow's surface suddenly ruptured, and crimson flesh emerged from the fissures.
This flesh was bloody and vivid, sacred yet sinister. Thus those shadows seemed to become projections of each piece of flesh, matching with them one by one.
The flesh writhed ceaselessly, and the shadows beneath swayed accordingly, as if the two were becoming one.
Silas's consciousness expanded outward.
He no longer sank but floated in the shadowy world, as if he himself had become part of shadow and corruption.
Above the shadow, there were even more dazzling things: countless stars.
But the stars were merely appearances. Behind them were countless conceptualized, abstracted representations.
They were extremely, extremely far from Silas, yet in some way resonated with him...
At this moment, countless voices rang in Silas's ears.
The cries of the fallen, their intense emotions, the pain and sins they entrusted to Silas to bear.
The influence brought by the fallen was so vivid, heavily grasping Silas's scattered consciousness, letting him gradually recover his sense of self.
A strange sense that originated neither from the astral body nor the mental body gradually formed from the pitch-black shadow, gathering Silas's consciousness and allowing him to view himself from a more detached, calmer perspective.
Was this divinity?
Having devoured Lanevus, Silas had long had this thing's presence within him and wasn't unfamiliar with it.
He used its pull to gather his torn spirit body back together.
Deep in his spirituality, that trace of pure divinity from the evil god's offspring was also attracted, dissipating out and merging with the divinity formed by the potion.
Thus, this divinity that had tormented Silas for so long was finally completely dissolved and integrated into his body.
In the Dawn's dining hall, the shadow no longer spread. Instead, it gathered together with the flesh and began to pile up, to construct...
A tall and imposing figure gradually formed.
It was a burly knight with glowing red eyes, wearing pitch-black armor.
He was extremely tall, almost touching the dining hall's ceiling.
In his right hand was a dark and profound greatsword, its blade wide and straight, looking incomparably sharp, as if a single strike could make both body and soul perish simultaneously.
"Congratulations."
The Queen Mystic Bernadette said softly.
"Click."
The black knight lifted his visor, revealing Silas's calm face.
Advancement to Black Knight, successful.