Sacrifice Mage

I said my farewells to Linak and Ascelkos before heading out. When I met them again, they both exchanged knowing looks before returning their goodbyes.

“What was that look supposed to mean?” I asked, frowning from one to the other.

“Don’t you worry your featherless head, my friend,” Linak said. “I’ll bring over the latest prototype I’ve managed tomorrow or the day after. Assuming you’ll be at the temple.”

I furrowed my brows a bit more at the obvious change in topic, but I let it pass. “I can visit the Artificer’s Guild, if you prefer.”

“No, that’s fine. You keep coming over to me. I should have brought it with me today, but whatever.” His eyes sparkled. “You’ll love what I’ve got.”

Ascelkos invited me to poke around at the auction the Councillors were still setting up, and I promised I’d drop by if I had the time. He was also pretty interested in what Linak had cooked up for the artifice that was supposed to work with Protostar.

I’d have liked to say farewell to Silhatsa too, and thank her for the whole price-lowering thing. She was the main instigator behind it, after all. She was too busy, though, so I decided I’d thank her some other time.

Before Linak came visiting, I trained up the new Gravity Affix I was going for. The Weave didn’t recognize it just yet, but I felt like I was getting close. I could send out pulses of repulsive force edged with the same void-purple threads that Gravity normally used.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that I had kind of trained myself to use a physical action as a switch of sorts. Like, I’d punch forward with my fist, channelling Gravity to throw out its threads in every direction from the end of my thrusting arm. It would work. That was fine. But it made it harder to do when I wasn’t punching, or kicking, or performing some other explosive motion.

Presumably, it would get easier when I had an actual Affix to help me.

The more important discovery was that it worked against my opponents’ Aspects just as I had envisioned. Didn’t matter how wide of an area Vandre spread his Aetherblood over. I just punched in its general direction and had a little forcefield of repulsive force keeping it all at bay.

That obviously helped Sacrifice reduce it all to nothing with Overclaim far more effectively than before.

Linak dropped by that afternoon. I had been waiting for his arrival. He took in the temple—and most of Ring Four, honestly—with wide eyes.

“I’ll be happy to give you a little tour,” I said with a smile.

Linak squawked happily. “Sure.”

It was nice to see that he was actually interested. There wasn’t a whole lot to show in the temple, but to someone who had never been in one, Linak was able to learn a lot. That was key to him. Learning.

“That’s what’s really interesting,” he said, looking around with a pleased expression. “Everything is new to me. I’m filling up the coffers of my mind with new treasure!”

I smiled. One of these days, I really needed to bless the fact that I had gotten a lot of good friends. Not that all of them were wholesome—Khagnio’s jeering, leering face popped into my head with visceral ferocity—but I appreciated them all the same.

By the time we were done, we had gathered a small crowd of cultists for what Linak wanted to show us. There were Atholaine, Sigrouen, and Vandre, as well as Santoire and Guille, and even some of the newer initiates too.

“You got a little crowd,” I said with a small grin. “Practice for the magic festival, huh?”

Linak looked like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to be embarrassed at the attention or soak it all in before unleashing his inner showman. “Well, I think this is something everybody might find interesting.”

He brought out a little device from his knapsack. My first impression was that of a torch. A long metallic cylinder topped with a sconce-like hole with a little metal flange around it, plus four bits sticking out at the four corners.

“I need you to channel your Protostar inside the nook, Ross,” Linak said, pointing to the hole in the middle of the torchlike device.

“I can do that,” I said, looking around a little warily. I didn’t want to be suspicious of Linak’s hard work, but at the same, it would be silly to not at least consider the safety of it all. “Are you sure this is the best place to test it? I mean, and no offence here, but wouldn’t it be a little safer outside?”

“I assure you, there’s no real issue of danger. The Starlamp only connects to your Compound Aspect to feed it with ambient mana. Nothing about the mana circuits could lead to anything disastrous, especially when I haven’t even engaged its regulation controls.”

Well, if Linak was certain, then I didn’t have a lot of reason to worry. He was the artificer here, not me. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t have risen to his position of authority at the Artificer’s Guild if his judgment about the potential danger of artifices was impaired.

So, putting my faith in my friend, I channelled my Aspects.

Protostar came to life within a minute as Gravity combined with Entropy, Flare, and Illumination. A brilliant, burning star erupted into being in front of us, making everyone gasp. We were all a little too close. Intense heat and light washed over us all, and I knew the others had far lower resistances to all that, as evidenced by the way pretty much everyone retreated farther back.

“I’m going blind,” Guille said in open wonder.

Santoire averted his gaze while also trying to clap his hands over his friend’s eyes. “Stop staring directly at it, you idiot.”

“Well, I’m burning up too! Think you can help with that?”

I tried not to snicker. “Everyone, please stand back a bit. Sorry, I probably should have warned you that it was going to be a bit intense. I was trying to keep the intensity lowered but I guess it wasn’t enough.”

They complied pretty quickly. The Scarthralls especially hid behind the rest of the little congregation. I didn’t blame them one bit.

“That’s… powerful,” Linak said. He had brought what looked like a weird mix of sunglasses and goggles. Maybe it was another artifice. I was honestly kind of jealous. “I remember seeing it at the vineyards, but it’s even more impressive up close. I feel like I’ll vaporize if I take a single step closer.”

Well, I wanted to point out that it was a star. A rather simple simulacrum of one, but still. What I focused on, though, was what Linak had asked me to do.

With some care, I gently lowered the Protostar into the Starlamp, as Linak had called it. I had been making it float with Siphon too. As soon as my artificial glowing orb settled into the sconce in middle of the strange metal torch, runes glowed to life all around the top rim. Lines of mana edged along the device, a gentle hum emanating from its end.

I blinked at it. A strange sensation was creeping over me from the moment Linak’s artifice had connected with my Compound Aspect. Well, no. It was more like a strange lack of sensation.

There was a tether between myself and my Compound Aspect that I hadn’t fully realized was there yet. It was only now, when the tether disappeared, that I fully felt it. Intellectually, I had known it existed, of course. To keep up the Protostar when I added a bit of Permanence to it, a link between my mana core and the instance of the Compound Aspect came into being.

But now, as the Protostar connected with Linak’s strange device, that link completely disappeared. The drag on my mana core—the little permanent “dent” that signified a solid chunk of my capability for channelling mana was being constantly used up—was gone.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Is… the device supplying mana to Protostar?” I asked, a little amazed. I had asked my question after a whole minute of observing how my artificial star hadn’t diminished one bit.

“Correct!” Linak gave us all a beaky grin. “The Starlamp connects any Aspect put inside it with ambient mana. This means the Aspect, or Compound Aspect in this case, is being driven entirely by the mana in the environment around us.”

For all that I had learned about mana and magic and Aspects and all that, I had never properly considered the intricacies and implications of external mana in the atmosphere. Obviously, it existed. Things like mana stones found within dungeons were good proof of that. But I had never thought about where and how much and in what form they generally existed.

Linak seemed to know enough to run his artifice, though.

I looked at the Starlamp with my Protostar in it with a little bit of wonder. “So, with this artifice, I can basically run Protostar perpetually?”

Linak hesitated for the first time. “Well, there are limits. Nothing can run forever. Especially when it’s something this… intense.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…”

Before he could explain, the light started to grow dimmer. Not just from my Protostar, but also from the torch itself. One by one, the runes were slowly winking out, turning fully dark.

“There’s only so much natural mana the Starlamp can pull in,” Linak said. “Um, you may have been right, Ross. We should best move in case there’s a blowback.”

A few people looked up in concern at that, but I wasn’t alarmed. I just stepped forward and directed Sacrifice at Protostar, letting the threads of white mana latch onto it and burn my little star away into motes of alabaster energy.

[ Sacrifice

You have Sacrificed 1 [Moderate] Cast of 1 Compound Aspect. Windfall bonus activated.

Reward: Aspected mana from Compound Aspect now suffuses your body. Next Compound Aspect cast costs no mana. ]

If anyone thought that was going to simply remove the overly bright and extremely hot source of energy inside the temple, they were sorely disabused. Now, I was an incandescent inferno.

But at least I wasn’t going to explode when Linak’s artifice ran out of gas.

“Well,” Linak said, looking at me head on. His shades-goggles-thing was protecting him, even though everyone else was still having to look away. “I think that was a successful first demonstration. Not necessarily a trial run, more of a prototype. But it works. We just need to solve the next problem of the energy source.”

“Yeah…” I scratched my head. Honestly, I was surprised the motion didn’t send volatile sparks flying like arc welding. “I’m not sure how we can solve the problem of a lack of mana in the atmosphere.”

Linak was suddenly confused. “Lack of mana? Oh, I see what you mean, and I see where the confusion arose. My bad, I should have clarified what I meant.”

“Wait, did I misinterpret? Lack of mana in the atmosphere isn’t the problem?”

“Well, no. Because there’s no such thing as the environment around us ever lacking mana. Rather, it’s the inherent capacity of the Enchanted runes that we’ve exhausted. It’s like… like our own ability to channel mana, Ross.”

“Oh.” I laughed. “Alright, I think I get it now. You’re saying that running Protostar needs so much mana in such a short time that it’s frying the runes on your Starlamp.”

“Essentially, yes. I wouldn’t call them fried because they’re still usable after a bit of rest. Just not perpetually for something like your Protostar.” Linak shook his head incredulously. “It’s frankly ridiculous how much mana you can pump out, Ross. Ridiculously amazing.”

“Cultist Ross is amazing,” Atholaine said. “Although, he’d be more amazing if he stops glowing bright enough to kill me.”

I laughed shortly. “You guys should go take a break. Fun’s mostly over, right Linak? We just need to talk about things going forward.”

As the others left, several of them murmuring about all they had just seen, Linak and I discussed our next steps. I mentioned one of the treasures I had spotted in the Nether Vein that could help. The auction would be the direction I intended to pursue.

Meanwhile, Linak himself would start working on runes that could better handle high mana-channelling stress. The ones he had used so far had been basic ones just to prove the preliminary concept was solid enough to work. Some advanced ones could possibly remedy our problem. He said he’d get back to me within a couple of weeks.

I also enquired after his son. Linak was happy to inform me that his boy had made a full recovery from his fever and was now running around and being a feathery menace like normal. Fantastic.

With my business for the artifice now settled for the time being, I focused again on training in between the other things I needed to attend. The new Gravity Affix still hadn’t materialized in the Weave, but I was getting better and better at summoning what I was starting to refer to as repulsive shields. They were kind of fun to just chuck out instantly.

The more important thing I trained up for the next few days was my new Fervour Augmentation.

I had kind of ignored it in favour of dealing with everything else I had going on, and I probably shouldn’t have. There was just so much going on. The more I kept working on things, the more I understood why everyone said it took even longer to rank up in Gold.

Honestly, it made me a little bit worried about how much longer Opal was going to take when I hit that. After all, I was already boosting myself so much, especially when compared to most people I knew. There was the Ritual of Growth I tried to keep for most training and experimenting sessions. Then there was Enshrined Growth helping me as I helped others.

And then I had the holy grail of Sacrifice pushing me in myriad ways. The way I had more time and energy because I could Sacrifice food and sleep, the way I could Sacrifice casts, Sacrifice effort, even Sacrifice my Ritual rewards. It all added up.

All that was what had made me grow faster than anyone I knew in Zairgon.

I reminded myself of what Gutran had said about not obsessing over my growth to the exclusion of other things that mattered. Still, I couldn’t help but think I needed to spend a bit more effort in the areas I kept neglecting.

That was why I was trying for another Augmentation for Fervour similar to Enshrined Growth. Something to help push myself forward even faster.

“Auction coming up well, then?” I said when I was meeting Ascelkos a few days later.

He and his mother, Kyris, were visiting the big auction hall that the Councillors were preparing on Ring One. I wasn’t sure I’d have been allowed there on my own, but as participating residents of Ring Two, the Anymphea had access. So, they had pulled me along too.

I wondered if I could have used the fact that I was essentially the overseer of the Kalnislaw lands for a similar effect.

“Yes!” Ascelkos said. “It’s very pretty. The Councillors are sparing no effort.”

“We certainly appreciate it,” Kyris said with a bit more reservation than her son.

I nodded. It was definitely opulent. The walls were lined with expensive wood, paintings and tapestries adorning them all. Soft golden light suffused the air. Floor-to-ceiling windows gave us a perfect view of the rest of Zairgon far beneath us.

“You know,” Ascelkos said with a sharp look. “You don’t have to stay here if you’re busy.”

Oops. He had apparently spotted the jitteriness I was trying to hide.

“No, no, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m just expecting a new Augmentation for my Fervour Attribute soon.”

“Oh!” Ascelkos’s eyes glimmered. He was always excitable about Weave stuff. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure what it’s called because I don’t have it,” I said. “It’s the Weave that names stuff like this. But essentially, I’m trying to get an Augmentation that empowers me based on how many people are in my cult actively working and participating in things to do with the Weave too. Kind of like an Augmentation, except that one is more related to growth in power.”

“Ah, I see.” Ascelkos laughed a bit. “Yet another buff. You are something of a connoisseur in them at this point, aren’t you?”

“I’m not sure I’d call that just a buff, per se.”

“I’m not trying to insult you. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with any of it in the slightest. But the truth is that a good portion of your power comes from the myriad ways you can raise your power, whether temporarily or permanently, as would be in this latter case you speak of, from what I understand.”

Huh. I hadn’t considered it from that perspective. He was right, of course. It was an interesting outlook on my capabilities, undoubtedly.

The day after was when I finally got it. Training it up was hard, just as getting Enshrined Growth had been. I had just spent a significant amount of time with the cult, trained with them, and tried to use all my Aspects when doing so.

It was probably why it took a decent chunk of time, but I managed it. With some assistance from Rituals of Growth and the subsequent Sacrifice, I finally got it.

[ Augmentation Unlocked!

You have acquired a new Augmentation for your Fervour Attribute.

Augmentation: Consecrated Synergy ]

[ Rank Up!

Your Fervour Attribute has risen by one Rank.

Your Ritual, Entropy, and Illumination Aspects have risen by one Rank.

Your Path of Auric Hierophant has risen by one Rank

Fervour: Gold VII

Ritual: Silver VIII

Entropy: Iron IX

Illumination: Silver IX

Path of Auric Hierophant: Gold V]

Happy as I was with the rank-ups, I was a lot more interested in the wording of the new Augmentation. Consecrated Synergy had a certain implication that—

The Weave wasn’t done with me yet.

[ Beyond

The Beyond has Evolved your new Augmentation.

New Evolved Augmentation: Reverence Everlife ]

I read through the whole thing and just gawked.