The Lord Is Too Overbearing

The previously sickening pressure overwhelming the air instantly vanished the moment Charles lost his consciousness. At least, that was how he looked currently with his eyes rolling into the back of his head.

The only thing one would see when one looked into his eyes was the white part. He still stood strongly however, so it made him unnecessarily more eerie than he already was.

"What happened...?" Ione wondered as she looked at the scene in front of her. "Why did he suddenly stop?"

Turning to Basil, who was gradually eliminating the distance between himself and Charles with his right hand extended, she immediately concluded that Basil was the cause of the phenomenon.

She immediately sighed in admiration, since that means, everything that had led to this point had all been planned by Basil. She didn't actually know what Basil had actually done to Charles, but it didn't stop her from admiring.

On the other side, Basil, although he looked extremely calm outside, was actually walking on a tightrope. He was, after all, performing one of the most burdensome Pacifer Arts that he had just learnt—it was hard to maintain it.

Said Art relied on one's carelessness in guarding one's consciousness to work. It was an Art that allowed the user to momentarily take over the soul of the person whom the Art was used on.

There were still some conditions that needed to be fulfilled, of course, and the most important of all was, creating a situation where the soul was unprotected.

Creating such a situation was very hard if one's opponent was a Pacifer—all of them practiced a special Art to guard their soul—but luckily, Basil was fighting against Charles, so he didn't encounter any problem at all.

Of course, it hadn't been as easy as it sounded. Although Charles didn't practice any Art to guard his soul, his body still had a defense mechanism that guarded his soul whenever it sensed a danger to his soul.

It was not that hard to breach—Basil was a Pacifer, thus capable of such—however, Basil had refused to use such a direct approach. Charles was, after all, smart enough to figure out the way to defend his soul the moment he knew it was being attacked.

With that reason, Basil decided to create a situation where Charles' body unconsciously dropped its guard down over his soul.

As one might have already known, body and soul are different yet inseparable. The moment the soul is separated from the body, one will lose one's right to live.

One's soul and one's body is connected by one's mind. The stronger one's mind is, the stronger one's soul, which also makes the vessel—the body stronger.

One's mind is the only way for the soul to communicate with one's body—it shows how beautiful and ugly one's soul is. Without it, the body will plainly move like a machine as the soul can't communicate with the body to give it some colours.

Going by that knowledge that he had also gotten from his mother, Basil riled Charles up so he could destabilised Charles' mental state. He succeeded, and because of that, the link between Charles' body and soul was weakened.

Charles' soul was prone to any attack at that point, and that was when Basil had used the Art on him. [Soul Confinement]—the Pacifer art that allowed one to gain a full control over another's soul.

"Tsk... He is really hard to control, isn't he?" Basil muttered under his breath.

Basil might look like he was just making a dramatic walk. In truth however, he was doing his best to prevent Charles' soul from regaining his control over his body.

Basil was reluctant to activate his Pacifer Seal, so performing the Art was three times harder than it already was. He really wanted to activate his Pacifer Seal there and then, yet he was afraid the slightly different him would do something he didn't want.

He noticed he always had a change of demeanor the moment he activated his Pacifer Seal. He became softer yet as fierce, and more compassionate yet as merciless.

He wouldn't be concerned about it if he didn't have a Fragment attached to his soul, but he had—the moment he activated his Pacifer Seal, his soul's connection with the Fragment strengthened. That always made him feel like he wasn't himself.

It was hard for him to actually describe how he felt during the activation of his Pacifer Seal. He could still think clearly enough to know he wasn't himself, but he was reluctant to behave like usual despite so.

Nonetheless, he didn't want to risk letting go of Charles because of that.

"... All right, let us see what he has in his mind."

Basil sighed lightly in relief upon arriving right in front of Charles. He immediately put his right hand on Charles' forehead, and closed his eyes in the next moment.

He was performing the next step of the Art after breaking the connection between the soul and the body, which was invading the Mindscape.

Basil slowly poured his consciousness into Charles' mind, and the moment he opened his eyes, he was already in a different world—Charles' Mindscape. It was a plain, blank, white space with two flowers covered graves in the distance.

Basil was actually curious about how beautiful the graves up close, but he immediately turned his gaze away from them as there was something, or rather, someone that attracted his interest more.

"Pacifer... It's your doing, isn't it?!"

Turning to the left, Basil could see Charles being crucified. All of his limbs were nailed to the cross, whereas his neck was tied to it with a chain.

Charles didn't look happy if his red face was any indication—who would be happy being in such a state in one's own Mindscape anyway?

Instead of paying attention to how enraged Charles was, Basil quirked his eyebrow at the shackle on Charles.

Since [Soul Confinement] didn't specify a certain kind of shackle on the soul, depending on how the Mindscape comprehended it, it would be different for everyone. Mindscape, after all, aligned with the way the owner saw things.

Considering Charles' personality, Basil had never expected him to choose crucifixion as his shackle. He had thought it would be a room filled with Sealing Runes, due to Charles' love of Magic.

What made Basil quirk his eyebrow, though, was the irony; he had just seen his mother crucified a few days ago, but now there he was crucifying someone. It was just ironic to think that he would do what his abhorred enemy had done.

"Is it fun to be here?" Basil asked with a quirked eyebrow.

"Fuck you!" Charles growled.

Basil smirked at how "fiery" the current Charles was. In his past life, the Charles he knew hardly even reacted when something didn't go as he wanted, nor was he as sensitive as the current Charles.

It might be because of the fact that the Charles Basil had known in his past life was already an experienced man—he was in his late forties—but it still amused him how "immature" the current Charles was.

Comparing how the current Charles behaved and how the Charles he knew had behaved made him doubt if they were indeed the same person. He knew they were—still, it was amusing.

"I will wipe that smirk off your face once I regain my control over my Mindscape!"

"Oh, you know that it is your Mindscape? Interesting!" Basil commented. "Those two graves... They are your mother's and sister's, aren't they?"

Charles' eyes turned cold as he looked at Basil, and Basil merely smirked at that. He had hit another one of Charles' nerves, and it was amusing to look how easily triggered Charles was.

Besides that, there was also the fact that the shackle on Charles was getting stronger, which in other words, Basil's hold on his soul had gotten firmer—he couldn't help smirking at that. It was too easy to make Charles dance on his palm.

Thinking of a great idea, Basil decided to rile Charles up to further fortify his hold over Charles' soul.

"You know, I actually know what exactly happened that day," Basil whispered into Charles' ears. "Rather than you, the problem was your father, wasn't it? I mean, it was technically you, but your father was the reason why you lost everything, wasn't he?"

"Shut your hole, Pacifer! What do you know about me?" Charles retorted spitefully. "The truth shall be buried with me—no one will ever know what really happened that day."

"Oh, I know more than you think," Basil remarked playfully. "It was, after all, a simple story of a father's jealousy towards his genius son's success that eventually drove the son into the wrong way."

Widening his eyes in shock, Charles thought hardly how Basil could know what had actually happened on the day of Blois Family's disappearance.

He hadn't heard the complete story from Basil yet, but Basil had summed it up correctly. He needed to only hear that to know that Basil really knew what had happened that day.

"Redford Blois, known as a good man by all of his fellows, was actually a narcissist. He had an abnormal thirst for fame—he even wanted to kill his son just so his son's fame didn't exceed his."

"Stop while you still can, Pacifer."

Charles looked at Basil with face bereft of any expression, however Basil could see from his eyes, Charles was secretly begging for him to stop. Paying no mind to it, of course, he kept talking.

"The day he figured out his son practiced Dark Magic, he used it as a chance to taint his son's name ... He tried to. He failed miserably however, because his son managed to cast a mind controlling Spell on him..."

Curiosity was the cause why Charles didn't prevent the problem, which he had known could possibly happen, from happening that day. He had turned his father into an experiment subject, and it cost him his family.

A failed Dark Spell had caused Charles' father, Redford to lose his mind, which in turn made him do things he would never do. He had raped her sole daughter and killed his wife, all the while his son was watching.

Charles could do nothing to stop his father—he could, but he was too curious to see what his failed Spell would do to a person. He only killed his father after his father killed his sister, and that was how Blois family actually disappeared.

Finding himself ridden with guilt when everything had ended, to erase it, Charles fabricated a story painting him in a bad light, which he would spread in the next 10 years.

It was a story about how he killed his entire family because of his father's choice to punish him after finding out his illicit relationship with his sister.