Chapter 78: The Ritual is Ready
The sewers beneath Alkhemia had been utterly transformed.
What was once a labyrinth of tangled passages now looked to have been kneaded and crushed by invisible hands, leaving the passages shattered and fragmented. Walls formed of magical energy carved the sewers into separate zones, while countless illusions guided the monsters below toward predetermined locations.
They were offerings for the Wish ritual. The monsters' flesh and souls, along with their memories and emotions, were dissolved by magic circles and transformed into tens of thousands of black threads.
Those threads flowed through the entire formation like spectral hair, seeking the only living being within it: a solitary figure at its center.
At the heart of the ritual circle, an elderly man floated naked in midair, his body bound tight by those black strands.
His frame was hunched, his long white hair hanging in wild disarray. His emaciated body was no different from that of a corpse.
Though his body had to be wracked with pain, he had an expression of fanatical ecstasy on his face.
The black threads continuously burrowed into his flesh. The monsters' blood, flesh, and souls were converted into pure energy and poured into his body.
Yet his shriveled body was like a bottomless abyss. No matter how much essence he devoured, there was no sign that it was filling him up.