Chapter 225 (1): Elven State

“You want to learn divine arts?”

In the bedroom of her manor, Filomina sat before the vanity with her sleeping robe untied, looking at her young boyfriend through the mirror. Standing behind her, Wayne was slowly rubbing night cream into her skin with a serious expression, as if the task would somehow decide the fate of the world.

“Yeah, the divine art for transforming into an elf. I’m partial to elves, such as the elven beauty you are.”

“You’re talking so sweetly. Let me check if you taste that way, too.”

The lingering taste of love was indeed sweet. She said with a smile, “Why would you want to learn? You can’t transform into an elf.”

An ancient god far outranked an elf. Wayne’s evolution was already set and wouldn’t be influenced by a lesser evolution.

“I’d like to try. Who knows if it’ll work?”

“Alright. If you want to try and fail, I can teach you.”

Filomina gave away the secrets of the Church of Moonlight without even a moment of hesitation. She asked with crinkled eyes, “Why didn’t you ask your High Reverend master? You’re an obedient student, aren’t you? You should seek her out.”

“She taught me, but only the Nature way. I want to collect the three types of divine arts of the Life Alliance.”

Of course Silvia wouldn’t reject him when he said he wanted to learn, but his dragon-blooded master’s evolution had long been determined, and unable to transform into an elf, she hadn’t studied the magic much. Her teaching wasn’t good enough for Wayne.

On the other hand, Filomina was half a step from reaching Legendary rank, so her elven state was more perfect.

If he was going to learn something, he would learn from the best!

Kristen, let me borrow your master for a bit. I’ll return her to you afterwards.

“It’s a good thing for you to be diligent, but you’re an archdeacon of the Church of Nature, while I’m a high reverend of the Church of Moonlight. You’re making things difficult for me by asking for our divine arts!”

She turned to the side to look at Wayne, tapping her lips with a finger. “How much are you prepared to pay for the lesson?”

“Hundreds of millions!”

Wayne smiled suggestively. The tension between the shameless man and woman became thick enough to cut, and any move would push them over the edge.

“No, I still have to participate in the Holy Maiden selection. I have to remain pure, at least not crossing this line.”

When Filomina got bolder, Wayne hurriedly held and stopped her. After the selection, he promised to give her what she wanted.

Filomina was dissatisfied. “Didn’t you say you didn’t plan to become the Anointed One? Even if you did, you’ve been impure for quite some time. Why are you worried about purity now?”

“Just to be on the safe side,” Wayne insisted. Logically speaking, he did think that he was impure. It had nothing to do with Filomina and Kristen, but the fact that the original Wayne was a spy who had been trained by Windsor’s MI6 before receiving training from its counterpart in Franc. The chance of him being pure was slim. He might have already given himself away to some female officers.

𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

He could picture it: late at night, he, an apprentice spy, followed an order and infiltrated the enemy’s base, clad in black. Unfortunately, he was caught in action, and a dozen masked officers emerged, claiming him.

But what if that hadn’t happened? What if they did nothing but force him to play cards with them? People should dream big and hold onto hope.

Thus, Wayne decided to stay away from the home base and walk into the Holy Maiden selection in his purest form on the off chance that a stone capable of testing purity turned out to be part of the selection, becoming pure black when he touched it and remaining crystal clear when others did.

It would be humiliating when everyone was watching!

Besides, Veronica would be there, too. He wouldn’t be able to explain—oh, he could just blame Veronica.

Filomina laughed brightly, poking at his chest. “Why don’t you become Nature’s Anointed One? Then I’ll bed you and create a massive scandal for the Church of Nature.”

Wayne patted her on her behind. “Stop joking around and teach me. It’s still late. I’ll try to learn it in one night.”

“This isn’t the right place for a lesson. Come with me...”

Filomina opened her dark domain and led the way to her training ground. Wayne asked her about her progress to the Legendary rank. She told him that there was no rush. Her life essence was improving day by day, and laying down a solid foundation was more important than anything.

“Where’s the manual? Are you teaching me orally, or do I read a book?” Wayne couldn’t wait.

“It’s here.” Filomina pointed at her temple. “The secret method is complicated. It’ll take three to five months to teach you.”

“Give it to me in the most straightforward way. I can take it.”

Wayne asked Filomina to teach him through her thoughts. Given their relationship, they didn’t have to keep any secrets from each other, so communicating with thoughts would be most efficient. Besides, his thoughts were so unusually vast that she didn’t have to worry about stretching him beyond recovery.

Filomina insisted on doing it orally—she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his, completing the lesson while they tongue wrestled.

When they pulled away from each other, Filomina looked around in a daze, still recovering from the kiss, but her young boyfriend was already sitting down with his legs crossed and diligently training.

The High Reverend huffed, plopping herself down on Wayne’s lap and pulling his arms around her.

“You’re not young enough to act like a little girl.”

“I am a little girl!”

...Alright, whatever makes you happy.

Wayne tightened his arms around his girl while browsing the new knowledge in his head—or the formulas, to be more precise.

Divine arts came with their own formulas. Since they were the most advanced faith magic, their formulas were completely different from those of regular magic. If regular faith magic were arithmetic, divine arts would be advanced mathematics. There was a large gap between them.

Filomina was smart in the academic sense if nothing else. She had sorted through the complicated formulas, allowing Wayne to use them without having to understand the math behind them.

There were many ways to transform into an elf, and one could do it with one faith or all three faiths of the Life Alliance. The more complete the collection of faiths, the more perfect the transformation and the greater the potential. That was why Wayne had sought out Filomina.

He applied the formula with his mana, but his body didn’t change.

His mana was so pure that it was flawless. Even though he had mixed in the divine power of faith through the

Book of Greed

, the application of the formula was still flawed, and his transformation attempt failed.

The reason was simple. The large eye of the

Book of Greed

could only look at one smaller eyeball at a time, and looking at another eye would change the property of his mana. That meant that Wayne couldn’t use three types of mana at the same time, not even two.

This is difficult!

“You failed, didn’t you?” Filomina seemed to have expected it. “Your evolution is going down the path of ancient gods, who are greater existences. You can’t transform into an elf.”

“You sound so proud of it.”

“What’s wrong with being proud of my man?”

Well said!

Wayne couldn’t help but kiss her deeply. Then he suddenly thought of something, his eyes glinting. “I’m going to try something else. Bear with me for a moment.”

Confused, Filomina found mana of Moonlight gradually flowing into her body from her boyfriend’s hand on her chest. The mana was crystal clear and flawless.

She was about to try and use it to cast a spell, but then Wayne streamed mana of Nature and then Sun into her until the three struck a balance, matching each other in both volume and mass.

Following that, Wayne extracted the three types of mana from Filomina and applied the formula, all the while looking away from the

Book of Greed

.

The formula did its magic.

Wayne slowly became taller, and dark green, light silver, and reddish gold stripes appeared on his forehead and cheeks. His facial features became more refined, and his ears elongated. Like a filter had been applied, his look became more stunning as his body became taller and more graceful.

His deep black eyes were bright and mysterious, and his body glowed faintly. His ethereal aura made it seem like he and nature had become one. His presence was suddenly much more noble.

Filomina gulped. She wanted him.

Wayne stood up with her in his arms, his height now exceeding two meters. With all three faiths reaching a perfect balance in his body, he had transformed into a perfect elf.

Filomina felt inferior, so she closed her eyes and transformed into an elf, too. Standing on her own feet, she pulled Wayne in by his neck and kissed him passionately.

“Calm down. Where’s the dignified and graceful High Reverend?”

Wayne patted her on the bottom and conjured a water mirror with a wave. He nodded at himself when he saw his reflection. Yes, this was it. His nerfed appearance was finally restored.

Unfortunately, in this strange world, the more bizarre the appearance, the stronger one was, and the more tentacles one had, the greater their power. Otherwise, he would’ve made his elven state permanent.

“Why can you transform into an elf? It doesn’t make sense.” Filomina stroked his face. He was so handsome that she felt the urge to jump him. Still, she didn’t forget that Wayne’s evolution had been set, and it shouldn’t have regressed. It didn’t make sense to her.

Maybe it’s because I’m not merged with the Book of Greed.

Wayne gave himself an answer, merging with the book consciously. At that moment, he turned into a three-meter-tall faceless figure. His tentacles wrapped around Filomina, pulling her toward his large chest eye.

Filomina grimaced and extracted herself from the tentacles, but, worried that her young boyfriend would feel hurt, she took one of his tentacles.

Four reached out to grab her.

Wayne lifted his hands, the large eyeball on his chest looking bemused. The moment he merged with the

Book of Greed

, his elven state went offline without any delay. Something similar had happened once.

When he fought Obed, the legendary mage, he had merged with the book first before summoning Shadow Nightmare. At the time, his body hadn’t become a skeleton.

The facts proved him right. He hadn’t gone down the wrong way. His original state was greater than the evolution paths of the faiths.