The next day, Zack stayed at the base on Xeles to rest and recover from his wounds. Without realizing what he was doing, after a few hours of doing nothing, he ended up reading again the diary that they had found on the stone tower.

Even though he should have destroyed it or given it to Jules so he could dispose of it, he found pretty interesting a lot of things that were described in the book, as not every topic was about corruption, or at least most parts could be adapted to be used without it.

While most scholars defended that corruption was some kind of phenomenon where anything could become a wild and dangerous, brainless monster, the author of the book saw corruption as another kind of energy, being the same as the other elemental energies, with those effects that characterized corruption being the innate properties of that kind of energy, being the same as the heat for the fire energy.

With those ideas, creating techniques made of pure corruption didn't seem too complicated, but that wasn't the most important thing. The thing that surprised Zack the most was that most cultists, without even knowing it, were using two elements at the same time when using their spells.

Because they didn't consider corruption as energy but as something different, they could be using fire energy and corruption at the same time, creating spells that had characteristics of both elements at the same time. That could be, for example, burning and corrupting something at the same time.

But this raised some questions when I read it.

For example, could this work with two other elements? In general, if you use two different types of energy to power a spell, you will only get its power reduced or get it to backfire, but that's because they are designed to be used with a specific element. So, what happens if you create a spell with the idea of using two different elements that would work well with each other?

If that's the case, why has corruption been the only element that has been combined with others? Is it because it is special, or is it simply because no one has ever seriously tried to do it before?

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But that wasn't all. The diary talked about a lot of other topics as well, such as the effects of the corruption on different creatures, studies about how to adapt spells to new elements, or how the corruption interacted with the different elements.

It was obvious that, whoever the writer of the diary was, he had probably been an important Esvert scholar before becoming a cultist, or at least he had dedicated a lot of time to his investigations.

After hours of reading, Zack was about to leave the diary to go get some food, but when he saw what the next topic was, his eyes became glued to the book.

"How to strengthen one's cultivation using the lives of others." "How to instantly heal your injuries using the body of someone else." "How to gain complete control over someone else's mind."

Those pages were filled with forbidden knowledge that could become a really big problem if someone were to obtain it. Even for someone like Zack, it was pretty hard to just let go of the idea of recovering his arm.

He began to read it.

With every page that he read, he became more convinced that it wouldn't be difficult to do. Just a few more lives and his limb would be as good as new, if not better.

They didn't need to be innocent. They could be the biggest scum that he could find, someone that deserved it. With that, the good that he could bring would be much bigger than the bad that he would do. He just needed to find the moment.

At that moment, Zack stood up and decided to start planning how he would do it, but as soon as he did it, a feminine voice began to sound inside his head.

"Zack, my child. You shall not stray from the path of good and rightness. You are destined to do great things. In less than a week, you will accept Jules's offer to travel to the new continent. There, you will walk through sand and fire until you reach your deserved rest. Only then, you will find your inner peace. " Said the voice.

As soon as Zack heard that voice, he realized what had just happened.

"It has to be; there is no other option. It was the voice of Heaven. " Zack thought to himself without managing to believe it completely.

Without thinking it twice, he put the diary in a chest, closed it with a key, and quickly left the room to go and talk with Jules.

He couldn't believe that he had been seriously thinking about using some of the rituals that were written in that book. Thankfully, the voice of Heaven had warned him just in time, and thanks to her, now he had a new goal to focus on.