"—Persona!"
Amidst the desperate shouts, the butterfly mask on Shinji's face ignited with bluish-white flames and burned out in an instant.
The next moment, even more bizarre and larger numbers of existences appeared.
They are everywhere in the mountains, in the sky, on the ground, and even underground. A rough count could tell you there are hundreds of them.
Some of these individuals have wings, and some have tails.
Some have six arms, others have four pairs of eyes.
Some are human-shaped, and some are not.
Some are single individuals, while others are clusters.
There is no repetition, yet they all have common characteristics—each existence can be traced back to the myths and legends circulating on Earth.
There are famous gods such as the Monkey King, Satan, and Loki.
There are fantastical monsters like the giant with a hundred arms and the army of the undead.
There are famous beasts from various places, such as Suzaku, Nekomata, and Unicorn.
There are also cute fairies like Liang Nancy and Pixie.
But it was different from the attack on Sefalu. The gods, demons, or strange beasts and fairies here did not have the feeling of being out of tune with the world as when the gods came, and they did not need magic to break the world order to appear. Instead, they were closely connected with the world, as if they were part of this mysterious modern era.
"You've come up with something very interesting again."
Aozaki Aoko's fighting spirit was further stimulated. Compared with those weaklings that can be found everywhere, fighting with magicians is indeed more interesting.
Kishua's observations go even further.
"The power of faith?"
"You can see this?" Shinji said this, confirming Kishua's guess.
"The longer you live, the more you will see."
Kishua's age is measured in thousands. He has experienced the end of the Age of Gods and the entire Age of Elves, and knows the impact that faith has on the world.
What is faith
The dictionary definition is the belief and admiration for a certain idea or religion or for a person or thing.
This is certainly correct, but in Shinji's eyes, such a definition is too narrow.
In his view, faith is human cognition.
Belief and admiration are faith, negative emotions such as hatred, fear, and jealousy are also faith, and even rumors and distortion are also faith.
Just like there are always good and evil gods in mythology, good gods are the embodiment of good emotions, while evil gods are the collection of negative emotions.
When faith reaches a certain level, fantasy will be born, which may be based on reality or may be an image created out of thin air.
The reason why there are so many gods in human history is because of the influence of faith, which caused the original natural gods to split and gave birth to non-existent gods.
The reason why heroes like Vlad III and Antonio Salieri became "innocent monsters" is due to the power of faith.
The army of gods, demons, beasts and monsters that Shinji has brought out are not, strictly speaking, authentic, but beliefs that still exist in the world and in human cognition.
As long as humans still have illusions about these beings, Shinji can guide and materialize them.
No matter how small the emotion is, it is a kind of belief. When the belief is condensed and given a fixed image, it becomes a "personality mask", which is exactly the field controlled by the third magic - the concept of soul materialization is not narrower than the second magic "parallel world interference", and those used before are just the tip of the iceberg.
By the way, Zepia's "Night of Wallachia" is also within the scope of the third magic. The true identity of the so-called "sixth law" is still unknown. Maybe it really does not exist, or maybe it is a byproduct of magic like the time operation of the fifth law, and conflicts with the third magic.
Aoko became a little impatient when she found that Shinji's words were becoming more and more profound and tended to go off topic.
"Why are you talking so much? We are going to fight anyway! Let me see how capable these weird-looking guys are."
As he spoke, he turned into a red meteor and rushed into the cluster of "Personalities".
However, just one minute later, the red meteor rushed back the same way. Although it was not seriously injured, its posture revealed a bit of embarrassment.
The reason is simple. There are too many personality masks, and each personality mask has strange abilities. One-on-one, Qingzi can easily handle it. Hundreds of them come together, and the quantitative change leads to qualitative change. Qingzi's power alone is a bit too weak. Even the big eclipse trick can't be used, so he has to retreat temporarily.
Qingzi steadied himself and wiped his face vigorously. Instead of getting angry, he smiled: "It's getting more and more interesting. Isn't it just a matter of having more people? I can do it too!"
The next second, a blue beam of light shot straight into the sky.
The figure of Aozaki Aoko in the light column was sometimes blurry and sometimes clear.
When it is blurry, it is still one, but when it is clear, it becomes three.
Then it became blurry, then clear, and it became nine, and so on, until in the end there were more than a hundred.
"Again? I hope we won't add to the burden on the universe this time." Orange muttered softly.
"It won't happen this time. It's not like I haven't grown at all." More than a hundred green children spoke at the same time, staring at the orange child. It looked quite spectacular.
The conversation between the sisters gave Shinji a clue.
"Summoning myself from different points in time... As expected, the essence of the fifth magic is just as I thought, the operation of the quantum fixed band."
During the Night of the Wizard, the turning point when Orange went from being certain to win to being defeated was when Aoko cast magic and summoned herself ten years later.
Aoko also played a one-man army, with half of him facing the army of "personalities" and the other half facing Kishua.
Seeing this, Shinji also separated half of his personality mask. There was no reason to favor one over the other in such a three-way fight.
"Old man, I heard that you are the only existence in the entire space and time of the parallel world. What will you do? Or 'multi-dimensional twists'? "
"What you said is also a method. However, it is complicated and inefficient to twist and turn hundreds of times at a time and make different movements. I am old and my energy is not as good as before, so I choose another way."
The second half of the last sentence is the key point. Aoko and Shinji treated the first half as a joke - how could Zhu Yue's direct (uncontrollable) Dead Apostles not have enough energy
A ripple similar to the "King's Treasure" appeared beside Kishua's hand. He put his empty left hand in, and when he pulled it out, a dark golden metal glove appeared on his pale palm. Six gems of different colors were inlaid on the five knuckles in the center of the back of the glove.
The old man put his little finger and ring finger together, rubbed his thumb, middle finger and index finger hard, and then snapped his fingers with his gloved left hand.
There was a strange "pop" sound, and time and space fluctuated violently.
The "personalities" and Aoko Group that surrounded him were swallowed by an invisible big mouth and disappeared into the air in groups.