Sacrifice Mage

Khagnio had never believed he’d be standing in the middle of the Roaring Claws’ office, their leader cowering before him. Technically, the weasel-faced human wasn’t afraid of Khagnio. Which was a crying shame because he would have relished the sight and cherished the memory till the end of his days. In fact, it wasn’t even Silan that had the man all but quaking.

It was mageling.

“So,” Silan said. “Do we have a deal?”

“What deal?” the surviving leader of the Claws said. “You’re coercing me!”

“And we’ll coerce you harder if you don’t comply.”

Blackfang was very obviously enjoying the moment. An outsider wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at his grave, canine face, but Khagnio had learned the tells over the course of the years they had known each other. The baring of his signature dark fangs, the glimmer in his golden eyes, the way he was leaning forward just a little… Silan Blackfang was having fun.

That, more than anything, was what impressed Khagnio. He would never call the leader of Riptide a dour, humourless Therioceph, but at the same time, he hadn’t seen this level of excitement from Silan in ages.

Again, all because of mageling, that overachieving bastard.

“You think just because you’ve killed some of us,” the Claw leader said. “That just because you’ve destroyed our hideout, you now get to rule over us? Never!”

Mageling sighed. He stepped out of the room before returning shortly, bringing with him a body that turned the Claw leader’s eyes into saucers.

“Will this convince you?” mageling said, throwing down Shagor’s lifeless, headless corpse in front of the partner that had survived him. “I could have done the same to you, you know. Destroyed you where you stand and everything around you. Everything you’ve done in your miserable, lowly life.” Mageling swiped a harsh hand in front of him. “All obliterated in one day. By me.”

The leader had no answer. His face just grew the colour of stale milk.

“You see,” Silan said, first eyeing Shagor’s dead body with some satisfaction before turning his fangs back to their target. “You still have some use. That’s the only reason you’ve been spared for now. So tell me this, do you value your life, or do you value this meaningless pride for your dead Claws more?”

Yet again, the human had no answer. His face eventually fell, falling into despair. Khagnio almost—almost—felt a tiny bit awful for the fellow.

Then he remembered the years of abuse and the way the Claws were run and…

“Don’t worry,” Khagnio said with the most menacing leer he could summon. “I’ll gut you like the oily fish you are when this is all over.”

“Khagnio,” mageling warned.

With a hissed scoff, Khagnio stepped back. He wasn’t lying. When mageling’s business was over, when this was all beyond them, he would return to find the surviving Claws. He would give them a taste of what exactly they deserved.

But this was mageling’s show for the time being. So for now, Khagnio played the role he was supposed to.

It still baffled him. All this time, mageling had been capable of wiping out the Roaring Claws himself in one day. He still remembered that day mageling had fought tooth and nail against Shagor, barely able to hold his own against the brute.

And now, he had killed most of the entirety of the Roaring Claws—including Shagor himself—in one, fell swoop.

Khagnio had always thought he was kind of keeping up. That even if his rate of growth wasn’t as astonishingly fast as mageling’s was, he would be able to give the mace-wielding mage a run for his money. They were both Gold-ranked, after all. While Khagnio was well-aware that Opal was still months, if not a year, beyond him—unlike for mageling—he was still growing.

How wrong he was. Picking a fight with mageling now put the same kind of fear in Khagnio that picking a fight with Silan did. Maybe even the Councillors.

For people such as that, only one thing really mattered. Rates of growth, apparent ranks, their stations and bearings and appearances, none of that crap was anything worth giving two shits about.

It was simply about what they could achieve—and had achieved.

Silan had forged the legend of Riptide known in every corner of Ring Zero. The Councillors were beasts of their own right. And mageling…

Well, he was in the process of carving out his own legend.

His own ascension.

“I surrender,” the leader of the Claws finally said. “Just please… spare me and the rest of the Claws. We’ll disappear! We’ll stop all our operations. We’ll… we’ll even fold into your organization, if you need us. Just please, let us go.”

His pathetic blubbering continued in that manner. Khagnio was so disgusted, he found himself looking away. It was shameful to remember he had once been a part of this whole mess.

While Silan stepped over to deal with the leader of the Claws, mageling turned to Khagnio.

“You ready for the next step?” he asked. Those gleaming eyes with their faint glow regarded him with an amount of certainty that rooted Khagnio to his spot. He was left wondering if mageling was even aware of the growing sense of power he kept exuding nowadays.

Khagnio raised his blade. “I can go this instant.”

Mageling’s mouth curled, foretelling a laugh that never came. Khagnio would be lying if he wasn’t a tiny bit spooked at seeing his party member this mad. It wasn’t just the rage that had driven his decisive actions. More than that, it was how long he was consistently maintaining that anger. The need for vengeance had wrapped around his very soul.

Considering what had happened to the Claws… it was a little frightening, even to Khagnio.

“Good,” mageling said. “Then let’s pay House Uralivanth a visit.”

The next trip in the boxes was even more obnoxious than my first one. Even worse, it wasn’t just me being hauled along like last time. We were a proper party now. There was me, Khagnio, and all the Scarthrall cultists determined to accompany me.

Honestly, it had been a bit touching how they were willing to dive into this mess. Loyalty didn’t even begin to describe how devoted the Scarthralls seemed to be.

Something I needed to be wary of so that I didn’t end up taking advantage of them, even through unknowing callousness.

There were the typical murmurs, the pointless chatter of guards and labourers moving the boxes where they needed to be. Since this was supposed to be a covert operation, we weren’t having to suffer through too much scrutiny. The trading of monsters and other creatures was still an illegal pursuit that House Uralivanth didn’t want to get caught with.

Stolen from NovelFire, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

For now, I just hoped they wouldn’t catch on that their cargo wasn’t the usual variety. Silan had orchestrated the same trick that had allowed me to infiltrate into the Roaring Claws’ base.

It was a really simple thing of having the people organizing the delivery—in this case, the last of the Roaring Claws we had co-opted into serving our needs—and handling our entry.

Just this time, we had a whole gang of people in boxes, not just me alone. More points of failure to get me more anxious.

Thankfully, nothing went wrong. Khagnio was seasoned, if not quite in this exact line of subterfuge, then at least in a wide variety of adventuring and stealthing scenarios through his work for both Riptide and the Roaring Claws. And the Scarthralls didn’t really need to breathe so they wouldn’t be struggling against suffocation like I was.

Eventually, after what felt like the longest hour I had ever experienced, we were finally put down. The boxes hit solid ground, the handlers outside talking about finally being done. I had even noted when we had entered House Uralivanth by the change in footfall.

One second. Two. Then I slowly began using the tools Silan had supplied to get myself free from the box.

Unfortunately, that made some noise. It wasn’t as smooth a process as Atomized Oblivion, which would have alerted the nearby guards, handlers, and crooks even faster as the Uralivanth grounds were Warded against Aspect use.

There was a different reason I hadn’t channelled my Aspects just yet, though.

“Wha—what?”

The first guard to see me emerge from the box, rising tall like a spectre here to claim his life, gawked and spluttered. He was too shocked to even cry out or raise the alarm.

A blessing I took advantage of by channelling Flare. I set the point of Concentration right in the centre of his skull, Manifestation drawing up heat through the mana sent out by my churning mana core.

The energy I was controlling gathered in the blink of an eye. After all, I hadn’t been idle. Just tiny casts of my Aspects, including Sacrifice, had raised the next cast of everything I was channelling just then. Because Flare wasn’t alone. Manifestation had also brought out a Gravity Orb, and Entropy was incredibly fast now thanks to Atomized Oblivion.

Before he could even think about raising the alarm, Flare gathered enough energy in a flash right inside his cranium. It was horrifying in a car-crash way to watch the man’s eyes turn red before a stream of steaming crimson liquid oozed out of his ears, spurted out of his nostrils, and ran down like horror tears from his eyes.

He fell, dead before he could scream.

His companions, a woman and a man, barely turned around at the thud his body made before they fell dead too.

Gravity Orb struck the woman, immediately detonating and making the top half of her body collapse in and on itself before exploding out in a snap of blood and gore. The man just fell, eyes turning traumatically terrified as he clutched his neck and gagged. He coughed out blood for a few seconds, then vomited out gore for another heartbeat, before finally stilling.

“Holy mother of puss-breathing Pits-lovers,” Khagnio muttered as he emerged from his box, blades drawn at the ready. “You ever heard of taking it easy, mageling?”

The Scarthralls had come out too. They were silent. Each and every one of them were staring at what I’d done to the Uralivanth retainers with unreadable expressions.

“We’ve got our opening,” I said. “My team will start the distraction. The rest is on you, Khagnio.”

He nodded, first at me, then at Sigrouen and Jalais, who would be accompanying him deeper into Uralivanth estate to gather up everything we needed. My duty, meanwhile, aided by Vandre, Lujean, and Atholaine, would be to cause a commotion the likes of which House Uralivanth had probably never seen within the bounds of their estate.

We parted with quick exchanges of fair fortunes. I could trust Khagnio with not only the job, but with also making sure nothing bad happened to the cultists I was lending him.

The breathing room we got was fantastic. Really, the only reason we weren’t being swarmed with more Uralivanth bastards was because we were off the beaten path, so to speak. The monsters were supposed to be covert operations after all. This meant I could take some time to pick out where I had to act.

“Three people up ahead,” Vandre said, unrecognizable in the black garb that Silan had provided us to remain incognito. Whatever happened, whoever got caught, at least we wouldn’t be associated with the Sun Cult directly at just a single glance. “A man, two women.”

That was all the information he was able to give us. I was thankful for it, though. That was still better than what I could have gleaned. I’d need to praise Vandre for training up his Perception Attribute and his Aspect of Bloodsense.

They were up ahead. On the face of it, it was honestly kind of crazy that we were literally attacking a Great House of Zairgon. Even Khagnio had no idea when the last time was that something as brazen as a direct assault had occurred on Ring Two. I was, potentially, making history. Just in a very infamous way.

But those thoughts were minor compared to the needs we had to deal with just then. A distraction for Khagnio. An operation we needed to carry out with as much haste as possible.

Evidently, the Uralivanth leaders had gotten wind that something was off. Either that, or they were suspicious about why it was taking too long for one or more of the crooks I had killed to report in. That would explain why the trio Vandre had sensed were all armed and easily categorized as dangerous.

Good thing Vandre’s warning had allowed us to prepare an ambush.

At any other point in time, it would have been inordinately funny that we were literally inside bushes, waiting to pounce on mostly unsuspecting passers-by. Which was exactly what we did.

Sadly, these ones were far better prepared than the first few I had taken out. I had cast another Gravity Orb, sending it shooting straight at the nearest Uralivanth retainer with Field Manipulation. He reacted just quickly enough to make sure the orb wasn’t fatal, though he did go down as the left side of his body imploded just as that woman’s had.

His scream pierced through the air, which was the worse issue, honestly. I couldn’t focus on shutting him up for good because his companions had already rounded on me.

Right. This was a Great House I was dealing with. They’d obviously have some competent guards and such on their payroll. I wouldn’t be able to mow through them all so easily. A crying shame that the boxes hadn’t been taken to some cellar or some such within the manor itself. Then I could have caused actual mayhem with Gravity, just like with the Roaring Claws’ base.

Although, Uralivanth would no doubt have far stronger protections than the Roaring Claws. As was evident in how the duo were charging at me, fast.

Hmph. They were Silver-ranked, I was pretty sure. They didn’t get anywhere close to me before Field Manipulation had them both trapped.

Then the surviving man disappeared in a burst of orange smoke.

The woman sneered ferociously.

Ah.

My head jerked at the exact same time that the twang rang across the field. The crossbow bolt scratched across the back of my head, leaving a tiny crack on the flare of Reverence Everlife’s golden armour. Way better than getting my head perforated, though.

I had gotten distracted just enough for my concentration on Field Manipulation to falter. This allowed the woman to surge straight at me now that she was free.

She didn’t get to me. A blob of blood crashed in from the side, sparking with dark lightning. A strange armouring Aspect fired up the second it hit her, creating a transparent, sparking armour over her body. Vandre’s Aspect managed to leave the Aspect scorched and melting, but the woman herself wasn’t hurt.

But she had been stopped. I was already leaping at her, my arm pulling back before swinging in as hard as my Power could muster the force.

Her shielding aura was still active. It refused to break, refused to allow my mace to reach her skin. I was genuinely surprised she was merely Silver-ranked. Maybe I had misjudged her, but it also seemed hard to believe that Uralivanth could hire so many Gold-ranked guards.

Not that any of it mattered. The impact failed to break through her armour, but the sheer force behind my blow forced her neck to bend. To snap.

She fell, lifeless, her barrier fading in seconds.

I didn’t need to worry about the first man whom I had injured. While it hadn’t been directly fatal, Lujean and Atholaine had hacked and stabbed away at him with an axe and a spear respectively. He was now lying dead in a pool of his own blood.

Of course, that had been enough time for the crossbowman to reload his armament. Another twang, another bolt shooting straight for my head. This time, I didn’t even bother dodging. The quarrel flew in and rammed right against my skull, just barely pricking my translucent golden armour before stopping completely as all its momentum just disappeared.

As did the Gravity Orb I had called up beside me with Manifestation. Vital Mana really was a delight.

“What?”

The man’s scream was audible even from this distance. A vinelike Aspect was writhing around his hand, but we weren’t about to give him the chance to cast freely any longer. Or well, the Scarthralls weren’t giving him any further openings.

Lujean and Atholaine had rushed forward, covering the distance with incredible speed. Last I recalled, they were still Silver-ranked, though I obviously needed to remember the buffs my runes and Rituals had—

“Wait!” Vandre shouted all of a sudden. “Someone else is here!”

I felt it an instant after Vandre’s warning shout. A shimmering wall appeared before the crossbowman. The Scarthralls barely managed to halt themselves before they could collide with the mirrorlike barrier.

“What’s this?” a man floating in the air drawled as he came over. “Insurgents? Or just rats?”

Before I could reply, the mirror-wall broke, shattering and sending out a flood of water that soon had the Scarthralls trapped. It had solidified as soon as it had come into contact with Atholaine and Lujean, freezing and forcing them to remain locked in position.

At the mercy of the man now approaching them.

“Doesn’t matter what you are,” the man said as his feet finally touched down. “You decided to piss off a scion of House Uralivanth. I’m going to show you why that’s the last thing you should ever do.”