Marvel's master of cosmic magic-Chapter 771

Rowan Mercer did not bother hiding his reaction.

The moment his fingers closed around the Wishing Lamp, his eyes lit up.

Not because of its legends.

Not because of its reputation.

But because of what he could see.

Beneath the layered seals and warped enchantments, the lamp carried the residue of a high-order mystic essence. Dense. Stable. Refined.

Comparable to what Rowan estimated to be second-tier godhood material.

That alone made it priceless.

The Night Church had already been honest with him about the limits of their resources. They possessed formulas for his path only up to a certain ceiling, and even the rarest materials they could reliably acquire stopped well below true apex tiers.

Once Rowan reached the next major threshold, he would be forced to source everything himself.

This lamp solved that problem.

If necessary, he could dismantle it and extract the essence inside to prepare a high-tier potion.

But that was only the second-best option.

Because inside the lamp, Rowan sensed something far more disturbing.

A sealed soul.

Not a human soul.

Not even a demigod’s.

Something older.

Heavier.

Vaster.

A presence that made ordinary divine spirits feel thin by comparison.

The reason the Wishing Lamp twisted desires so grotesquely suddenly made perfect sense.

The lamp was not granting wishes.

The imprisoned entity was interpreting them.

And it was doing so according to its own incomprehensible logic.

Rowan’s thoughts accelerated.

If he could bring that soul into his inner space and consume it...

He wouldn’t need to complete a full ascension.

He wouldn’t need to restructure his existence.

He could directly raise the quality of his internal energy to a true divine tier.

At present, Rowan’s internal reserves were roughly equivalent to an upper-mid mystic.

Enough to fuel powerful spells.

Not enough to unleash genuine god-level phenomena freely.

That limitation vanished if he devoured what slept inside the lamp.

For most mystics, possessing divine-tier energy while remaining low-tier would be meaningless. Their bodies and pathways could not express that power.

Rowan was different.

His converted magic system did not rely on rigid hierarchies.

Give him divine energy, and he could cast divine-grade magic.

Simple.

There was more.

Any soul of that magnitude would inevitably contain immense knowledge.

Rituals.

Histories.

Possibly even complete supernatural frameworks.

Rowan was already satisfied.

He handed Bernadette a small crimson bead, warm to the touch.

"When you locate the island, channel a trace of power into this. I’ll know."

Bernadette closed her fingers around it.

"I’ll find it as quickly as possible."

With that, she stepped sideways into the spirit world and vanished.

Rowan remained alone on Beckland Bridge.

The green vines that had carried him earlier crumbled into drifting motes of light.

He chuckled softly.

"Interesting technique."

Bernadette’s ability to manifest fairytale phenomena was not a simple illusion.

It drew upon obscure stories, forgotten myths, and half-remembered legends, reshaping them into functional magic.

The rarer the story.

The fewer people who knew it.

The stronger the spell.

Bernadette had grown up listening to tales no one else in this era recognized.

Stories from another age.

Another civilization.

Which explained why her conjurations carried such disproportionate force.

Rowan took to the air, shrinking back into his infant guise as he drifted across the city skyline.

He was in a good mood.

The diaries had not revealed the locations of any additional Blasphemy Cards.

Most of them were... disappointing.

Pages filled with romantic excess, reckless indulgence, and questionable taste.

But they had yielded something far more intriguing.

Mentions of an organization.

A hidden circle that called itself the Twilight Hermit Circle.

According to Roselle’s notes, the group preserved ancient knowledge spanning countless eras.

They believed humanity slowly lost its sense of self over time.

That people "fell asleep."

Their answer was relentless self-observation and the pursuit of knowledge as a means of purification.

They did not deny the coming apocalypse.

They embraced it as inevitable.

They believed the original Creator had not truly perished.

That when the final dusk arrived, this being would awaken, reclaim everything, and begin creation anew.

They despised the so-called True Creator, describing it as a corrupted mockery.

The organization possessed terrifying abilities.

Merely speaking of them could draw the attention of their leader.

Their gatherings occurred within dreamlike spaces rather than physical locations.

Most disturbing of all...

They possessed the second Blasphemy Slate.

The foundation upon which Roselle had crafted the Blasphemy Cards.

Rowan already had a strong guess who stood at the center of that circle.

A being tied to imagination itself.

A surviving fragment of an ancient sun-god.

One of the eight primordial angel-kings.

Adam.

If that guess was correct...

Then this world was even more interesting than Rowan had originally assumed.