Sacrifice Mage

I wasn’t about to stand there and read through a list in the middle of a radioactive field. Sure, I had Intake and Absorption to count on. But I still wasn’t about to take chances. I liked my hair. Going bald through chemo sessions was not on my bingo list.

[ Augmentation Unlocked!

You have acquired a new Augmentation for your Spirit Attribute.

Affix: Mana Conversion ]

[ Rank Up!

Your Agility and Spirit Attributes have risen by one Rank.

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

Your Path of the Auric Hierophant has risen by one Rank.

Spirit: Opal I

Agility: Gold IX

Entropy: Silver V

Leadership: Silver II

Sacrifice: Gold X

Ritual: Silver X

Path of the Auric Hierophant: Gold X ]

A wild blast of emotions was trying to vie for space in my mind. Opal. I finally had an Attribute in Opal. This was incredible.

I was Opal-ranked now.

The heady feeling was accompanied by the world itself seeming to snap into a greater sense of being. My mana core thrummed like it was on hyperdrive. What a strange sensation.

How many months of effort had it taken to go from Iron, the lowest of the metal rank-tiers, to Opal, the first of the gem rank-tiers? A whole year of effort at the very least, right? Days turning into weeks turning into months of training and practice and experimentation, all to push myself farther and farther along the Weave.

And now, I’d finally broken through to a rank-tier that few in Zairgon possessed. The euphoria at that realization tried to smother every other feeling I had.

Broken through… breakthrough! That meant—yes. I checked and confirmed that I indeed had another Ascension Charge. So it was like every time I acquired a new Affix or Augmentation, I’d be able to evolve the new one. But then, I had received two new things. A new Affix and a new Augmentation.

Hmm, had I attained both through one “breakthrough”, so I was just receiving a single Ascension Charge instead of two? This meant I’d need to decide which to evolve…

Thoughts I’d need to entertain later as my current circumstance crashed in around me. I had just cold-bloodedly killed a man. It wasn’t me who had been attacked here. I was the one who had invaded his home with the specific purpose of ruining his family.

A part of me had been hoping to meet a bastard like him just so I could make a living, breathing person pay. I had gotten my wish.

Shagor and the Claws hadn’t been enough. Nowhere near enough.

“Cultist!” Vandre said.

He was forcing himself to remain rooted significantly farther away. Right. The radiation zone was wider than I was giving it credit for. Intake was significantly reducing what I felt of it, so my estimation of its range was flawed.

When I let go of Intake—and Absorption too—I was relieved to note I didn’t feel any of the radiation reaching out this far.

It had probably helped that Framework had dissipated too, since I wasn’t holding it up with Permanence.

I quickly joined Vandre.

The other Scarthralls who had gone off with Khagnio were back. Both Jalais and Sigrouen were unharmed, thank the Banished Gods. The lack of tears or other blemishes on their dark clothes and gear was proof enough of that. Khagnio must have had them in full stealth mode, and I wondered if the Scarthralls had actually picked anything up from him.

“He’ll be here soon,” Jalais said urgently.

“Good,” Atholaine said. “Because if this didn’t draw the rest of Uralivanth House’s attention, then I don’t know what will.”

Surely Kaham wasn’t the only scion present, because it was surprising that we hadn’t already been swarmed with more guards and the like. Well, a few more apparently had, going by the fresh corpses lying at Lujean and Atholaine’s feet. They were all sporting electric burns from Vandre’s Aetherblood.

But the point was that drawing all the attention of Uralivanth to myself wasn’t the right move. I had no intention of taking on the entire might of House Uralivanth at once just to go down in a blaze of glory. That would be stupid.

Especially since Khagnio was returning and we were nearly done here. So, I started off another distraction before any more of them came over.

[ Ignition Charge

Ignition Charge empowers Aspect of Illumination. Charges remaining: 30

Illumination: Sprite]

“Go,” I said.

The tiny artificial spirit of light zipped away from me as soon as it had formed. It shot across the Uralivanth grounds. I couldn’t see or sense anything through it, but it had enough capabilities of its own to navigate to a much farther location from where I stood.

It wasn’t that I could sense it touching the ground and the walls of the nearby buildings. Like sight, tactility wasn’t something that could be transferred through the link we shared. What could be shared, though, was a relay of information.

Basically, it told me it had finished carrying out my order.

I channelled Gravity, then Sacrifice, then Gravity and Sacrifice one after the other several times in quick succession. My vision was filled with blue screen after blue screen saying the same thing over and over.

[ Sacrifice

You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Cast of 1 Gold-ranked Aspect. Windfall bonus activated.

Reward: Effect of next cast is raised by 4x ]

And then, when I stopped casting Sacrifice after Gravity, I destroyed an enormous chunk of Uralivanth estate.

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Even from this distance, I could see my empowered Aspect shading the whole area with deep purple light. Everything began shaking as Field Manipulation took effect, Infusion and Siphon creating a warped field of heavy gravitational and powerful repulsive forces. It was no surprise to see rocks and debris big enough to crush our temple take to the air in the distance.

“Holy Banished Gods,” Vandre muttered.

“Are you destroying their estate without even needing to see?” Lujean asked.

“Not the manor itself,” I said. Well, not too much of it, at least. I had tried to contain it a bit. Wide-scale destruction was all well and good, but at the same, I didn’t want someone like a child to get caught up in this. I wasn’t Uralivanth. “Mostly the grounds.”

I wished I could have seen through the sprite or even just listened through it. It would have been great to reassure myself that the display of incredible power was indeed drawing whoever Uralivanth sent next over there instead of over here. The rocks started plummeting to strike the ground with terrific crashes as I let go of my Aspect.

Good thing Khagnio arrived shortly.

“Great timing, mageling,” he said. His sudden appearance startled the Scarthralls. “I’ve got everything we need. Let’s get going.”

I had a bit of difficulty believing that we had just strolled up to a Great House and attacked it while holding nothing back. It wasn’t like we hadn’t faced any opposition at all. Just that we had strolled through the opposition too conveniently, more or less. This felt too easy.

Or maybe, the real “strength” of Uralivanth had always been the soft power they were capable of wielding. A veneer of greatness, when compared to true magical prowess.

Maybe I had grown strong enough to rival whatever they were really capable of.

Deciding against entertaining that rather egomaniacal line of thought, I gathered up the Scarthralls and followed Khagnio out of the estate. I thought I heard panicked shouts and screams farther off in the distance. Good. Now they had a small taste of what I had felt when I had seen Sreketh.

The mess wasn’t over just yet. We might have struck a blow to Uralivanth pretty directly and I had completely blown any notions of a cover I might have had. Who else was supposed to wield Gravity in Zairgon to the extent I had against House Uralivanth?

Of course, we had contingencies. Our overall plan took into account the fact that I most likely wouldn’t have been able to hold myself back.

Not if I ended up facing someone like the scion I had killed.

That was where our good old Claw leader—the surviving one—came into play. It was wonderful to have a fall guy who one-hundred-and-ten percent deserved the fall.

“You can’t pin everything on me!” he protested hotly in the bowels of the undercity where we had him trapped. Half his arm was bandaged up where we had taken away a hefty amount of his blood. “Just because I’m a human too doesn’t mean they’re going to immediately think it was me! And I—I don’t even have Gravity.”

Silan cuffed him on the back of his head to shut him up. “Don’t you worry about meaningless trite like that. We’re painting a target on your back, and you best believe they’re going to be hounding after you, if nothing else only to show they do have a scapegoat to take the heat of their fall.”

Right. Because going after a lowly crook in the undercity was a lot easier than going after someone like me, someone who had substantial soft power just like House Uralivanth. Silan was right. Uralivanth would likely tear apart Ring Zero just to unearth this jerk and show they were doing something to respond to the brazen attack on their House.

Otherwise, they’d look weak. They already did, after the losses I had inflicted on them. Now, they’d be desperately scrambling to find any and all ways they could redress the situation and put things aright.

“But what about—”

“Don’t you worry.” I stepped up, channelling my Ignition Charge with Illumination, while also infusing Gravity onto the man’s clothes. “There, now you’re basically me.”

“What?”

“See that artificial sprite there? It’s going to accompany you forever. I permanentized both the sprite and the Gravity I just used on your clothes. They’re both going to stick around, no matter how far you run or where you go. In other words, if you do anything that’s going to harm the plan, then I’ll weigh you down until Uralivanth can catch and eviscerate you.”

“There’s no way,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “You can’t know what’s happening once I’m gone.”

“Believe me, I will. The sprite will let me know the instant you do anything stupid. Take a long, hard look at me and tell me you don’t believe me.”

He did just that, then quaked where he stood.

Silan nodded at me respectfully, like he was done being impressed and was just taking my actions and decisions and powers as par for the course. “I think we’re just about done here. Allow me to handle this rat bastard, Moreland. You’ve done far more than enough already.”

“Alright,” I said. “I’ll leave the rest in your hands.”

“Not all the rest, I hope.” His glimmering golden eyes were on Khagnio, not me.

“Nope,” I said. “Didn’t mean to imply all of everything. Just all of the Roaring Claws.”

Khagnio scoffed with a hiss. “What’s left of them, that is.”

Silan Blackfang was right. We might have ended our chapter of dealing with the Roaring Claws, but not with Uralivanth in general.

But I was taking care of that too, in a sense.

“These records…” Revayne mused as she turned over all the ledgers Khagnio had stolen from the Uralivanth estate. “They hold all the exchanges and expenses House Uralivanth maintained for the illegal animals they were trading.” She looked up at me and Khagnio. “How did you know where exactly to find them within their manor?”

Khagnio and I exchanged quick looks.

“We learned about the ledger from the Roaring Claws crook we spared,” I said. “You wouldn’t expect that sort of detail from such a source, but it looked like the same veterinarians that Uralivanth hired for the monsters at their estate were also hired by the Roaring Claws if any of the creatures got sick before they could be transferred over to Uralivanth.”

“Ah, that indeed makes sense. There is certainly a dearth of healers who specialize in monster treatment and are willing to work in the undercity.”

“Exactly.”

With that extremely solid lead established, Revayne could basically start the process of prosecuting House Uralivanth almost immediately. Something she had been angling towards all this time. Except…

“It’s a big step,” I acknowledged. “I’m sorry I moved in so fast and upended whatever careful trap you were planning, but I couldn’t let it take too long. Not after…” I paused, then sighed. “Anyway, I won’t blame you if you decide to not go through with it.”

“Don’t get sentimental now, mageling,” Khagnio said. “If the guardswoman won’t go after Uralivanth immediately, then you and your temple are going to be besieged in the blink of an eye. A Great House isn’t going to take what you did lying down.”

“Everything I’ve been doing since I met Silan with you, Khagnio, has been driven by sentiment. Every single thing. Since the moment I saw what they did to Sreketh.”

He had no answer to that.

“No,” Revayne said. “No, I cannot work from sentiment, because sentiment would have me staying my hand, which would be wrong in this instance. House Uralivanth has committed crimes. This I’ve known for a long while. But it’s only now that I have enough evidence to even attempt to make them answer for flouting the laws of Zairgon.”

Khagnio sneered. “Laws Zairgon allowed them to flout, tacitly or otherwise.”

Revayne wasn’t stymied. “Regardless. It’s my duty as Captain of the Guards to stop any crimes I see being committed.”

“Mageling here has committed multiple crimes now! And not just this last incident with Uralivanth, mind you. I can name several over the months he’s been here—and I would know all about crimes.”

“You are not helping.”

I glared at him. “Khagnio never helps when it doesn’t involve fighting and killing.”

“Hey!” he said. “That’s rude.”

“But not untrue.”

His grumbling conceded the point.

For now, all three of us parted. I had just blown up the biggest powder keg that Zairgon had seen in decades, if not a century at least. Neither Revayne nor Khagnio was able to come up with examples of an incident as brazenly wild as a Ring Four cultist assaulting a Great House.

Which meant the real fallout was still yet to happen. Something we—mostly, I—would need to keep an eye out for.

Now that I had a little bit of breathing room, I could finally think about my Ascension Charge.

A few more tests had revealed that, yes, Photonic Compression did indeed create terrific beams of light. They were so bright that my eyes could barely stand their presence even with Reflection shading them.

“Hmm,” I murmured, staring at the smoking crater in the temple wall. “I should probably stop abusing my own temple…”

The problem with Photonic Compression was that it needed a ton of energy. I had needed to run Immolation and use Manifestation to create more sources of heat and radiating light I could absorb with Absorption and Intake for what felt like at least ten minutes before I was able to create just one, single blast of Photonic Compression.

It was incredibly potent, of course, which made it feel worth it. But at the same time, I had an Ascension Charge ready to go.

If that could make Photonic Compression better, if it could address the limitation that I’d basically be limited to just one or two casts of it per battle, then I was all for seeing what I could get.

On the other hand, Mana Conversion was an interesting contrast to my Multicast Augmentation. Where the latter created multiple of my Aspects at the same time, the former could switch between Aspect manifestations in no time at all. There was the question on why I’d need the former when the latter could just bring up multiple Aspects together, but I’d find uses.

For instance, my primary use was converting all the foreign energy—essentially, all the foreign mana—I captured using things like Absorption and Intake into more useful forms to empower abilities like Photonic Compression.

I had a feeling that, if I thought about it some more, I’d discover even more neat use cases.

But I only had one Ascension Charge.

The problem with picking was that I didn’t know what the evolution would result in. I had baseline knowledge of what each of my newest toys were capable of. Photonic Compression could create lasers, provided I had gathered sufficient energy. Mana Conversion allowed that to happen pretty quickly, while also allowing other types of conversion where needed.

Curious as I was on what I’d get after making Mana Conversion ascend, my choice went to Photonic Compression because of one thing. If there was one thing that could remove the massive energy requirement for Photonic Compression, then it was a straight-up evolution.

Sadly, I couldn’t exactly influence how Ascension Charge affected whatever I targeted. It seemed even less controllable than my Ignition Charges. Not exactly something that inspired a great deal of confidence. Then again, it wasn’t like the Weave had ever granted me anything that was a total, useless dud, so I let myself have some faith in it.

I was a damn cultist, after all. Faith was supposed to be my strongest weapon.

[ Ascension Charge

Ascension Charge evolves the Affix for Aspect of Illumination: Photonic Compression. Charges remaining: 0.

New Affix: Stellar Lance]

Well, at least the name felt more upgraded. I channelled it experimentally, and a tiny starlike blob of light materialized at the end of my hand. It was odd. I tried, but I couldn’t shoot it anywhere or fire a beam or anything of the sort.

Looked like I had some testing ahead of me.