Sacrifice Mage

The pain was gone. The whole world was gone. I… had no idea where I was. Wait, no. This darkness…

If I had a body, which I didn’t just then, I’d probably have shivered and gasped. This was the same space I occupied whenever I evolved my Path. Except, I wasn’t evolving my Path. All I had gotten was a notice that my second core had finally awakened, its property laid out before me.

Ascension Charge. It immediately made me think of Ignition Charge from my first mana core. But I’d need to consider it later. Right now…

Right now, I was starting to realize there were quite a few differences compared to my last visits to this spiritual simulacrum of the cosmos. For one, there were buildings. Strange, ethereal, cosmic structures left vague impressions of impossible scale on my mind.

I saw stars pour themselves like liquid to form glowing columns, walls rising out of asteroid belts, the general darkness of the cosmic abyss forming a floor beneath whatever I had for feet in this weird existence. In the distance, celestial bodies gathered together like I was in the crosshairs of an immeasurably vast citadel.

In my new existence, I felt tiny. And yet… and yet, I was growing. Fast. Strong. Irrepressibly powerful. Not for a moment did I ever feel like I didn’t belong.

Silvery spires were rising before me. Or maybe they had always been there, older than time, stretching beyond the past and the future. It was only now that I could perceive them. Gates. That’s what they felt like to me. Gates I needed to push through.

Distance was meaningless in this vastness. I was at once both a million light-years from everything I saw and close enough to touch them too.

My hand reached out. I knew, in the very fabric of my soul that had transposed itself into this alternate dimension of reality, that I could touch those gates. That I had what it took to push past them and reach past them. That I could be more than I already was.

Just as my hand outstretched to its greatest length, the world snapped.

The splitting headache returned, as did a rush of sensations. Reality—the actual one that I inhabited day to day—crushed into me like I was at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

I gasped, feeling at once like I was both expanding way beyond my normal capacity and also like I was being compressed into a point dense enough to become a black hole. My mouth opened, but no scream came out. It still felt like my head was trying to rip itself into two. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see—

Warm liquid poured down my gullet, the familiar taste soothing me in the maelstrom I had returned to.

My traitorous body still tried to reject the health potion. I shook violently, suddenly able to feel the multiple hands trying to keep hold of me.

“Take it easy, Ross,” Cerea said. Her words swam into my ears like we were all underwater. “It’s okay, we’re all here. You’re alive. You’re alright.”

It was difficult to tell how much time passed till I finally got a measure of control over myself and my senses. Everything seemed like such a haze. Memory turned jumbled, puzzle pieces refusing to fit into the right picture.

“What happened?” I asked groggily. “I remember taking down the Tyrant, and then everything went white…”

I tried looking around. My vision was still blurry. Someone had hung a wet cloth over my face and eyes, and when I pushed it aside, even the blurry visual stimulus I got overwhelmed whatever was wrong with me.

Cerea and the rest of my party members filled me in on what happened.

Apparently, my plan had worked. My efforts had paid off. The huge Steelflame Tyrant had indeed been caught fatally by my Framework, the boosted Entropy’s Ignition Charge making short work of the monster. However, the way it had disintegrated had unleashed a horrific amount and style of energy that nobody seemed to be familiar with, and it had been a chore to get me out of there.

Right. The severe amount of radiation I had unleashed was a large part of why I had blacked out. Even Intake wasn’t able to handle the boosted Entropy empowered by the Ignition Charge that I had cast.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t foreseen something like that happening. But my second mana core had conveniently chosen that moment to finally, properly awaken, thus removing my ability to respond to my circumstances. I was starting to realize, as my senses started reintegrating back with the reality I belonged in, that I probably would have died if I hadn’t had backup.

I tried smiling at them all now that I could finally see them properly. Even Khagnio appeared a little too worried there, which looked really off on him.

“Thanks for saving my ass, guys,” I said.

Ugnash shook his big, scarred head. “Back at you, Ross. If you hadn’t taken care of the Tyrant, we’d still be in heaps of shit.”

I barked out a laugh. And then I was assaulted by the blue screens.

[ Affix Unlocked!

You have acquired a new Affix for your Entropy Aspect.

Affix: Accelerated Decay ]

[ Rank Up!

Your Vitality, Agility, Power, Spirit, and Thauma Attributes have risen by one Rank.

Your Entropy Aspect has risen by two Ranks.

Your Gravity, Sacrifice, Flare, Illumination, Ritual, and Leadership Aspects have risen by one Rank.

Your Paths of Starforged Firmament and Auric Hierophant have risen by one Rank.

Vitality: Gold VIII

Agility: Gold VII

Power: Gold VIII

Spirit: Gold X

Thauma: Gold V

Entropy: Silver IV

Gravity: Gold IX

Sacrifice: Gold VIII

Flare: Gold I

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Illumination: Gold II

Ritual: Silver IX

Leadership: Iron IX

Path of Starforged Firmament: Gold VIII

Path of the Auric Hierophant: Gold VIII ]

I hissed and tried to close my eyes. Sadly, that didn’t remove the blue screens. It never did. My reaction had just been instinctive. Thankfully, they went away pretty quickly.

When my friends enquired, I explained to them that no, I wasn’t having a fit. The Weave was just being aggravating.

I did appreciate all the rank ups. With Illumination in Gold now, I had more Affixes to work towards. I could make my new Affix idea a reality.

The rank ups reminded me of my latest Core Aspect. I tried focusing on it.

[ Path-bound Core: Ascension Charge

Ascension rate: 1/breakthrough.

Ascension Charges remaining: 1 ]

I stared at the information. One per… breakthrough? My Ignition Charge came at one per day, which was pretty simple. But this Ascension Charge worked on breakthroughs. That was odd.

My mind went back to how the Unawakened core had affected my latest Fervour Augmentation to gift me Reverence Everlife. Could I do the same here?

I tried to concentrate the singular Ascension Charge I had on another Augmentation. This time, I picked Manifestation. What would it evolve into?

…nothing happened.

“Huh,” I murmured.

It didn’t work on the other Augmentations either. When I tried focusing on my Affixes, that failed too. What was going on?

Wait. The Unawakened property had selected the newest Augmentation to affect instead of any older. Was that the reason it was failing here? Would Ascension Charge only evolve new Affixes and Augmentations?

Swallowing, I tried concentrating on Accelerated Decay.

[ Ascension Charge

Ascension Charge evolves the Affix for Aspect of Entropy: Accelerated Decay. Charges remaining: 0.

New Affix: Atomized Oblivion]

My eyebrows climbed high at the new name. Atomized Oblivion. That was a rather crazy step up from something simply called Accelerated Decay. The problem was that I didn’t have a good frame of reference of how the Ascension Charge had actually improved it since I hadn’t properly tested the base version of my new Affix.

I’d just have to see what Atomized Oblivion did. And I’d probably need to be careful too. Accelerated Decay had already made me very cautious about its potential applications.

Atomized Oblivion sounded like it belonged on Zairgon’s banned powers list.

My friends continued filling me on what had happened and what was going on. After the Tyrant’s fall, Se-Vigilance had apparently cast some kind of protective barrier on me. It was what had really saved me, keeping me alive until someone could come retrieve me.

Especially since she had also dragged me out of the radiation zone too.

Immediately afterwards, she went and joined her fellow Councillor in destroying the smaller, weaker—but still really strong, since they were all Opal-ranked at least—Demons. Together, the Councillors had made short work of the monsters.

It was only minutes later that Se-Vigilance had returned and hauled my unconscious body to the healers.

“And now you’re here, mageling,” Khagnio said. “Giving all your little friends—except me, naturally—terrible heart attacks.”

“Right,” I said. “Except you.”

We stared at him. Then we all chuckled.

I had been out long enough that the expedition was nearly ready to move on. There had been some casualties in the last fight, including a few deaths, but nothing too major. I wasn’t so sure about that. For the loved ones of those who had fallen, it was terribly major.

But objectively speaking, the losses and harm we had suffered were absolutely nothing compared to that final battle against the Bonestrider and its minion horde on the last expedition.

Now, they were once again waiting for the engineers to finish setting up the rail line. Although, by the time I was getting up, the expedition itself was preparing to get going once again.

“The idea was we’d truss you up like the old hunters used to do for the beasts they’d captured,” Khagnio said with a terrible relish. “And then we’d carry you aloft. We also decided we’d keep you that way even if you woke up mid-walk.”

“We?” I glared at the other two, both of whom refused to look me in the eyes. “Khagnio I can excuse, but you two as well…?”

Khagnio cackled in hissing laughter.

It felt extremely odd to just get up and almost immediately start moving with everyone else. Where was my rest period? This world needed to discover the beauty of a sick leave.

A healer came over and looked me over as we walked.

“You seem fine enough,” the older Scalekin lady said. “Too fine. Last time I saw you, you were half cooked and also melting on the inside. How are you already walking?”

“Uh.” I debated trying to explain the wonders of Reverence Everlife. Pretty sure that was what had granted me miraculous recovery. “I’ve got a good constitution?”

The healer stared at me. Then, with a very deliberate motion, she nodded. “Good fibre is hard to come by, but it’s so important.”

I stared right back at her before laughing.

Our trip going forward was pretty smooth. I wanted to talk with Se-Vigilance, since she had wanted updates on anything related to the Nether Vein and my apparent divinity. My second mana core’s Core Aspect probably ticked the box, as did the little vision I had experienced, I was pretty sure. But she was busy at the moment.

Apparently, we were getting close to our destination.

Not that our journey was devoid of obstacles or over in any sense of the word. We were still pushing through the Nether Vein, and that meant dealing with myriad barriers to progress.

There were the monsters that attacked from everywhere. Vampiric, apelike creatures that crashed down from the gloom of the Netherthreads, another flood of liquid murk that actually turned out to be a living being close to a gargantuan slime, and various other obstacles and annoyances, like a chasm that seemed uncrossable and a sandstorm but with tiny metal filings instead of dust.

Not once did I have to step up. Everyone else was fantastic at taking care of anything that stood against us. Sure, there were moments where it felt like my abilities might have helped a great deal, but my party members were always making me take a step back.

I appreciated it, honestly. After the battle against the Tyrant, I still wasn’t fully recovered, so I needed the more laid-back approach I could take to focus on recovery.

If a real threat appeared, like another Tyrant, then I could step up.

It didn’t really feel that different or unique or special in any way when we finally reached our destination. The only real indicator was the slowly lessening intensity of the Nether Vein’s hostility.

“No more weird barriers, either,” I muttered, recalling the one that had taken me and Se-Vigilance to a different plane of existence.

When I had finally gotten around to speaking with Se-Vigilance, she had mentioned the need for discretion about it. Confronting Claderov without substantial evidence wouldn’t work out well for us. Apparently, the effects discovered on the body we recovered from the barrier weren’t enough to suggest that the Claderov administration had a direct hand in trying to impede us for whatever reason.

Nevertheless, they were obviously connected in some manner. And one of Se-Vigilance’s motivations for reaching Claderov was investigating that connection personally.

We were waiting for the engineers to complete one of our last mini-train-station setups. With this one done, we’d only have one or two more, and then the rest of the connection would be up to Claderov.

I was spending some time figuring out my newly evolved Affix for Entropy. Atomized Oblivion did exactly as the name implied. It broke down targets into infinitesimally small particles, and it did so incredibly fast. The problem was that Intake had a harder time protecting me against the radiation now that it happened so quickly.

I was left wondering just how fast Accelerated Decay would have been. But honestly, this was terribly fast already.

Another interesting facet I discovered was that I could apply the destructive effect of Entropy directly on people now. Not that it was surprising, after how it had killed the Tyrant.

But watching its effect on me gave me ideas for all sorts of applications that didn’t have to be as rapid and instantaneous as it had been with the Steelflame Tyrant. I began feeling sick in all sorts of ways when I tried using it on my finger. Not just physiologically, but psychologically too. Watching my little appendage rapidly dissolve was horrific at a very soulful level.

Still, I got what I wanted out of my morbid experimentation. It was a little awestriking to realize I could inflict radiation poisoning on people with just a single interaction, making it slow enough that they’d never even realize something was wrong until it was too late.

In the wrong hands, this thing could be terribly insidious.

My potentially-evil experiments were interrupted by Claderov’s arrival, however.

I wasn’t the only one who was surprised. Lots of people stood gawking and staring as actual people came out from the gloom. Most of us had tensed, preparing to fight off more monsters.

But unless the Nether Vein had become incredibly adept at subterfuge and illusions, that wasn’t going to be necessary.

“Hail, Zairgonites!” a tall Ogre said in slightly accented New Zair as he thumped over, his voice carrying over to us before the party from Claderov was even properly visible. “We are overjoyed to finally meet you after all this time!”

I exchanged a quick look with the rest of my party. Their expressions were no less surprised than mine. Hard to believe, but we had finally reached Claderov, because if their expedition was close, then that meant the city itself had to be not that far off.

How long had it been since we had entered the Nether Vein? A week? Couldn’t be more than ten days.

And yet, we had reached a distant city that took trade caravans nearly a month to reach.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go meet our neighbours.”