In the month since joining the Order, David had worked really hard studying the basics of mysticism, but he was still just a mysticism newbie.
Being able to read ritual ciphers and draw ritual formations was already pretty good, but if this ancient ritual had some kind of "variant," he was completely lost.
David flipped through that scroll over and over several times before finally realizing he'd been overlooking something this whole time.
Both the front and back of this scroll actually had cipher text written on them, and the content was almost completely identical, but the formations drawn on them were reversed.
David had initially thought the back content was just a repeat and didn't pay attention, but when he was drawing the formation, he accidentally drew out that mirrored formation from the back...
Talk about a lucky accident.
The only difference between the front ritual content and the back ritual content was a single name.
With the Fluorite Mask as the formation's center placed on the left was the "Fool Angel Ritual," and placed on the right was called the "Enchantress Nightmare Ritual."
Neither ritual had more detailed instructions. From the names, they seemed like completely different paths.
David hesitated a bit. Should he have the maids both do the same ritual, or do two different rituals...
Soon he sighed and just continued with the part he'd drawn backward.
Already drew it anyway. If both of them failed, worst case he'd just collect the materials again and try a different ritual.
Performing first-tier advancement rituals was actually pretty safe. Even if something went wrong and some low-level void monster got summoned, David could control the situation in time.
Pretty soon, he placed the Winged One's Tongue powder he'd found earlier and that bottled teardrop into the two formations respectively, then had the twins step onto them.
The older sister Zoe was a bit braver. She seemed to notice David's lack of confidence in the formations and voluntarily stepped into the backward-drawn formation, pushing her sister to the other side.
Right now, David stood in the corner of the room, looking at the two nervous maids, suddenly feeling absurd.
Over a year ago, when he first woke up in David Frank's body, these two were standing in front of him too.
Back then he was conducting a ritual about to sacrifice the twins' lives.
Now, he was helping them step onto the path of the supernatural... Was this karma?
The difference was, back then the sisters looked at David Frank with only fear in their eyes. Now there was a lot more trust.
David nodded at them, signaling they could start together.
The twins looked at each other and began chanting the ritual incantations simultaneously. Interestingly, these two forward-and-reverse rituals even had the same incantations...
This made David suspect whether the guy who left the scroll had also gotten the formations mixed up.
As the sisters chanted, the three items in the formations lit up at the same time. From the night sky outside the window, a silver light suddenly descended, frost-white color spreading across the entire room.
In some mysterious way, something seemed to cast its gaze toward the twins in the formations.
The Fluorite Masks split in half suddenly burst with brilliant silver light, "whoosh" sucking the materials in the formations into them, turning into two separately floating balls of light.
Both formations activated at once!
David's eyes widened. These two rituals actually both seemed real. They were both working, and they looked pretty smooth too...
"Well I'll be damned..."
What amazed him even more was that when the twins finished chanting their incantations, something from the void actually responded to them!
When David performed the "Goddess's Blessing Ritual" before, the object of his prayers was actually the Sun Goddess statue. But there was no statue in this room, and he wasn't sure what the twins should pray to.
What David didn't know was that halfway through the incantations, the sisters had an epiphany and directed their request for power toward that beam of light.
Turns out, they hadn't done anything wrong.
Two massive gray "dusts" gushed out from the light. They were like the residual shadows of something shattered, and also like magnificent stardust lying across the void. Silver light shone on the dust, reflecting countless beautiful colors...
So beautiful, so captivating, so... melancholic?
David was stunned. He watched those two streams of dust carrying countless lights surge into the twins' bodies respectively. A small portion of the vast psychic energy in the void was torn off and brought into the twins' souls by them.
Mysterious power made subtle changes to the sisters' bodies in the blink of an eye.
Zoe's graceful figure seemed to become even more charming...
Yui's slender waist and various parts of her body all seemed to become a bit softer...
Their bones were making soft "crack crack" sounds, and overall they were becoming taller and more beautiful.
The twins felt that mysterious great power, felt the wonderful changes in their bodies, and looked at each other in amazement.
Their blue eyes reflected each other's appearances, and they also saw their own reflections in each other's eyes.
At this moment, two more supernatural beings were born into the world.
Roland had said this ritual's power came from the same source as that memory seal curse ritual. He guessed that using this ritual to strengthen the mind might break the memory seal.
He guessed right.
Zoe and Yui almost simultaneously felt some shackle in their minds shatter under the infusion of divine power.
But they didn't remember anything about their past... Instead, they saw a shattered void...
They couldn't understand any of this. The two sisters with connected hearts were both lost in confusion at this moment.
"What is the past?"
"Is that shattered starry sky our past?"
"It seems to be telling us something, what is it..."
"Reclaim everything?"
Suddenly, chaotic visions and complex information all came flooding in, forcibly stuffing a bunch of things into the sisters' minds.
They immediately felt their heads splitting with pain, and their consciousness also grew fuzzy.
In the room, David watched those two forces merge into the sisters' bodies. The light shining into the room slowly dimmed afterward. The ritual seemed to end perfectly.
This got David a bit excited. They both seemed to have succeeded.
But right then, the sisters suddenly seemed to lose consciousness and collapsed softly.
David moved quick, flashing over to catch one in each arm, then gently laid them on the bed.
"What's going on?"
David looked at the two unconscious maids in confusion. He quickly discovered they'd just fallen asleep, but no matter how he called them, they wouldn't wake up...
With no other choice, he could only sit back in the chair and quietly watch the twins on the bed, waiting for them to wake up.
Without realizing it, the candlelight in the room went out. Darkness covered David's face, making him drowsily fall asleep.
...
"Where is this?"
Zoe stood in a fog, her heart full of panic.
"Sister... sister?"
Yui's voice came from nearby. Zoe immediately reached her hand into the fog and quickly grabbed her sister's cold palm.
Both pulled closer. When they saw each other safe and sound, they immediately hugged tightly together.
"Sister, what happened? Where is this?"
"I... I don't know... We were clearly performing the ritual in the young master's room just now..."
"Did we die..."
"No, Yui, I can still feel your warm heartbeat. You're not dead, my sister."
"Sister, I'm so scared..."
"Don't be afraid. We'll always be together."
Right then, the fog in front of them suddenly slowly parted, like a stage pulling back thick curtains.
What appeared in the twins' vision was a magnificent starry sky—grand, silent, but it was shattered...
Below the starry sky, atop layers of high platforms, there were also two side-by-side but lonely thrones.
The thrones were empty. They were waiting for people to sit on them...