When the plot-skips players into the game world

The ability to extract the power of a Superior Phantom and create a Phantom Card using Tarot Cards as materials, came from the preceding profession, the Great Sin Scholar.

The Great Sin Scholar could, after thoroughly researching and analyzing a Phantom Demon, obtain corresponding ritual knowledge—what card this Phantom Demon could be used to print and what materials and rituals were needed. Once this knowledge was known, even a Demon Scholar could make preparations in advance.

The most important prerequisite for advancing to become the Master of Beasts was to use the abilities of the Great Sin Scholar to make six Blank Cards of different attributes, each sealing a Phantom Demon of the corresponding attribute.

Then, by repeatedly defeating Phantom Demons of the same attribute as experience materials, the level of all six Phantom Demons would be filled.

According to Aiwass's memories, there was a Fire-attribute Superior Phantom residing within Yulia.

It was to nourish that Phantom, that her body was so weak.

After the Phantom fully matured, it would claim Yulia's life. To save her, one must confront the juvenile-phase Phantom Demon; and since Phantom Demons are immortal... it meant that conventional means could not save Yulia. At most, it could only delay the time the Phantom awoke and went out of control.

"Master of Beasts" was different, however.

If Aiwass could successfully create a "Blank Card" with enough capacity to contain the Phantom inside Yulia, he could directly extract the consciousness of Yulia's internal Phantom.

In doing so, not only could he save Yulia's life, but he could also prepare the materials for his advancement to Master of Beasts in advance!

And Yulia could also incidentally gain the residual energy from the Phantom—making this unstable and dangerous power stable and growth-capable, thus stepping onto the Path of the Transcendent as well!

All of this was based on the fact that the ritual to create cards from Aiwass's memories was reliable and feasible.

He had already tested other rituals before, and the ritual knowledge from the game was indeed usable!

But the creation of the Phantom Card required additional verification because the profession of the Great Sin Scholar appeared only after the descent of the Fallen Celestial Marshal.

Now, two whole versions earlier, Aiwass was not sure whether the ritual could already be operational.

So, he needed to experiment.

As long as Aiwass, in the capacity of a Demon Scholar, could successfully create any Phantom Card, he could directly confirm that this system was still usable in the current version!

Thereby, he would obtain a power unrelated to the Demon Scholar.

His own vengeance, the mission to silence witnesses, would proceed smoothly.

Yulia could be saved!

Even the destruction of Avalon could be reversed—

—as long as he could successfully create his first card.

Currently, Aiwass was too weak. The only nearly Superior Phantom being he had mastered was the Shadow Demon.

And the only card that could be made from extracting the Shadow Demon's power was "The Moon."

To create "The Moon Card," no matter how strong the sealed power of the card was, you needed a nail from the forehead of a criminal subjected to being drawn and quartered, and three ancient ropes from the gallows as materials.

Aiwass solemnly sat at his desk, taking out a slightly darkened Tarot card from a jade box.

These Tarot Cards, part of a large batch of mysterious items related to various rituals that Aiwass fervently worshiped in the past, which he had no use for, now happened to be suitable for creating the Phantom Cards of the Master of Beasts.

The Tarot card depicted a moon with two towers on either side. Beneath the moon there was a wolf and a dog, both howling madly at the moon. At the very center of the image, at the bottom, was a lobster climbing out of a river, looking up at the sky in confusion.

This was "The Moon." The Moon card in Tarot divination symbolizes bewilderment, hardship, and unease.

The creators of the Tarot, the Prophets from the Path of "Adaptation," scorned the Astrologers who belonged to the same Path and compared them to dogs barking at the moon—because all Prophets agreed that the future was never precisely predictable, whereas Astrologers strove to create an elaborate, accurate "Grand Unified Star Chart" that could predict all futures.

This behavior was laughable in the eyes of the Prophets. It was as ridiculous as dogs barking at the moon, trying to figure out what it stood for. But it only exposed their ignorance and fearlessness.

Aiwass held his breath, becoming extremely careful.

That's because the "The Moon" on the Tarot card had been smeared with mercury by him. Using this as a medium, he infused three points of Dark Attribute Mana into it yesterday.

The maximum capacity of Aiwass's Dark Attribute Mana Pool was also only three points.

And to create the most basic, weakest card, at least five points were required. No matter how strong the card to be made, the other materials used were the same, the only difference being the amount of gemstone powder used.

...Although creating such a weak card was somewhat wasteful of materials, succeeding once to confirm feasibility was more important.

Moreover, at worst, it's a reusable Magic Scroll. Once the card was completed, only one-tenth of Mana was needed to trigger it, any amount less than one point was considered zero. The only restriction was that only one Tarot-based card could be used per day. That means if Aiwass used this Moon Card, he wouldn't be able to use another Moon Card for the rest of the day.

But that did not matter.

When it was no longer needed, he could simply sell it or give it away—portable Magic Scrolls that could be triggered without Mana and automatically recharged daily would surely fetch a good price. From this perspective, these ritual materials weren't really wasted.