The Apprentice of Ouroboros [Monster Evo LitRPG Adventure]

Searching for cults was not, in fact, as easy as looking it up in a book. Neska would know; currently, she had dozens of discarded academic journals, historical articles, and government records all stacked in neat piles by the desk she’d borrowed at the library.

No mentions of Chained Serpents. Not a single one. Not within any of the religions that had sprouted up in the worship of the Divines, which she thought to check first.

Searches for Ouroboros were easier, however. She found plenty of records dating back centuries, and they all painted the same story: Ouroboros, the world's lifeloop. From life, to death, to rebirth, and repeating indefinitely. Some argued that their very world was laid out on the great serpent’s body.

Neska found that absurd. There were too many inconsistencies in that theory, and it flew in the face of reality. Approximating Ouroboros as a toroid shape wrapped around the sun, put it at millions of miles in diameter. Or more.

Plus, it wasn’t like a toroid could twist, not at such a massive scale, without tearing the world to pieces. The heliocentric configuration of their celestial system had long been pushed by the academics who studied sciences beyond the Classes. This design bore far more evidence, and there were at least three other planets in orbit around their sun.

She doubted a system-sized snake would want competition anyway. I’m getting distracted. Focus. Why do I keep seeing signs of Ouroboros? Are people blind, or am I trying to invent patterns?

She still didn’t know if what she’d seen at the obelisk wasn’t just some brief moment of irrationality, fueled by the clenching ache when she’d seen the absence of one name. She looked around for any artistic depictions of Ouroboros.

She found plenty. But none with chains wrapped around him. Was the chain symbolic, or literal, from that title?

Someone chained the world serpent and now keeps him on a leash. Presumably, the same entity that reared its head when Arivol committed a kingdom-wide ‘oopsie’ and brought doom on the entire world.

She narrowed her eyes. That was absurd. The Divines were absolute. There should be no power higher than them. But what exactly were the divines? There had been sightings of their avatars, massive beasts, through the centuries. Yet none had been seen for a long time, or even rumored.

Were they just…giant monsters, but with intelligence? Or maybe they were the apex of the classes, especially those with deific connections?

She closed the book in front of her and bagged a few more. Finding this chained serpent would take time and possibly more resources.

Juni joined her later, after browsing the ceruli crystal stacks. “Anything on your end?” she asked the lamia a short time later.

“No. Not yet. You?”

“Lots of searching old memories that were dictated by professors older than dirt. It was difficult to listen to,” she added with an annoyed flick of her tail. “Let’s hope that dagger gives us more to go on.”

A short time later, she spotted Brent and Syra standing outside the student dorm by a decorative garden with a bench sitting along the path. Syra was fuming that the flowers hadn't been watered and looked wilted. Brent had to dissuade her from firing full-blast at the plants, and he had a gentler solution.

His proposed solution was poorly received. Syra sprayed water at him, soaking his face while he wore an unapologetic smile. “Just saying, it’s a whole new meaning to spraying the garden.”

“So. Crude,” Syra responded, sticking her tongue out at him. She waved to Neska and Juni once she noticed them, her expression growing cheery. “How are you guys holding up? Any luck?”

“Not yet. We'll have to begin looking long-term. Let’s head inside, shall we?”

“Gladly.” Brent walked up to the double door and opened it, holding it for them. Neska slithered in as quickly as she could.

Getting her tail slammed shut in a door was pain almost as bad as half the fights she’d been involved in against the Varadur. And utterly preventable, too.

They climbed a set of stairs to the second floor. The hallways were mostly empty except for two human students chatting on their way out the door. They pressed against the wall when they saw Neska, their eyes wide.

“Pardon me, sorry. Long body,” she said calmly. They didn’t respond until after she’d passed, and she followed Brent to another connecting hallway.

“That was her?”

“Yep. The lamia leaping over buildings and chasing a killer. She’s got a cute hat!”

“Don’t fawn over a monster just because of a cute hat, Rani.”

“Shut up, you wouldn’t know cute if it hit you in the face.”

That rumor spread far quicker than I would like. She frowned at the more disturbing notion. Wait, did that girl call me, the snake monster, cute? I don’t know whether to be flattered or embarrassed here.

Juni looked at her, a smirk creasing slowly. “You have fans.”

“I could do with less of those.” Neska chuckled softly while they waited for Brent to unlock a plain wooden door with an ornate lock. "Kasfew is right. I do attract attention. I don't...you know, plan for that."

"You can't plan for everything," Juni reminded her. Brent unlatched the door, then waved them inside.

“Mind the mess, I was still in the middle of cleaning. We have the things for…you know,” he added with a subtle head tilt.

It wasn’t exactly a mess; on the contrary, Brent had a rather tidy room, with a plain hardwood floor, and a small throw rug made of soft white fur. Brent’s bed was made, and he’d stacked the furniture against the corners of the room.

Juni was drawn to the poster by the bed, and hopped up onto the sizeable mattress. “The Syren sisters?” She pointed at two sirens on the poster, drawn with a stylized silhouette, and two names scrawled on the bottom. “My goodness, you got it signed? Who did you have to bribe to get both of them?”

“They visited the academy for a morale tour. When they’re not supporting the efforts on the frontline, they rotate back here to cheer up others.” One of the sisters held a small metallic device with a coiled wire on one end, shouting into it as though it could amplify her voice to even greater proportions. “Got that about three months ago. A friend got it for me.”

“Brent has friends. I continue to be surprised,” Syra sighed, grabbing a chair by a small dining table and a kitchenette on one side. “So where’s this dagger?”

“Here, let me.” He reached up over the top of the ice chest next to her, and pulled out a nondescript bundle of folded wax paper. Within the folds was a small black-handled dagger about six inches long with a blade almost as long as the handle. He motioned Neska to take it and handed it to her pommel first.

“I would be careful with this. Seeing as toxins are this guy's signature, it's likely he poisoned these as well,” he cautioned.

Neska took the dagger in hand, noting it was well-balanced and suitable for throwing. The textured grip felt secure in her hands, with no chance of it slipping from her fingers. The blade itself was plain silver colored, with a slight green sheen to the metal. She ran a finger along the flat of the blade and noted an oily material smeared as she wiped her finger across the surface.

“Touching toxins sounds like a bad idea, Cassia,” Juni stated, clutching her tail.

“Anything strong enough to kill me would have killed Brent the second he picked it up,” she replied. She rubbed the oily substance on her fingertip, brought it to her nostrils, and took a light sniff.

Brent looked uneasy. “Why does this sound like a bad idea?”

Neska let out a hissing trill. "Relax, I don't think there's any toxin he could cook up on his own that could harm me. I have high resistance to toxins. Not all of them, but most of the more potent ones.”

What she smelled surprised her. It smelled slightly earthy, with a bitter undertone. She thought of steeping beans, as you would see with coffee, but that was richer and more earth-like. This was something else. Something with petrichor, too. “Set it aside. We have preparatory work to do.” She carefully removed the substance with a cleaning cloth and washed her hands in the sink, then grabbed one of the supplies she’d asked Brent to get, a strong alchemical neutralizer.

No reaction to the substance as she applied it to her hands. “Not alchemical-based. Possibly something natural. Matches the smell. Plant-based, maybe, something organic.”

Brent placed the dagger on the table and wrapped it back up. “Walk me through this. I cleared the space as you asked. So what does a ritual involve?”

“Our two-point ritual is simple. I sit in the middle, and the salt circle encompasses two focal points on either side of me, forming roughly an ellipse. The focal points are where we trace diagnostic runes, as shown here.”

She opened Kalloway’s manual to an early section of witchcraft, including runic theory. “Witches and summoners and even wizards have powerful secondary magic in rituals. It’s based on structure and order.”

She then withdrew Thistle’s book on rituals, showing the diagnostic ritual, forming the letter ‘T’ with a few extra branching lines at each endpoint line. The schematic showed how to create it using the correct tools and order of operations. “We use our internal mana to etch the rune with the binder. Salt is the base, but others exist. Alchemy solutions are optimal; they can be dripped on with precision, but are harder to make and have a limited shelf life. The tee is formed with these strokes, in this order.”

She pulled out a pen and paper, writing and numbering each step. “In our case, we will use my blood as the mana source to bind it.”

Brent raised a brow. “This is not sanitary.”

“We will place waxed parchment underneath to keep it sanitary. It’s a common practice. There are also hygienic spells that other classes use, but I don’t have one yet. It is also safer to handle more toxic binders.”

She withdrew a string and a pen and had Brent and Syra unfurl the waxed parchment, overlaying it and taping it. “Because there was a reptiloid owner of the weapon, the hope is that my blood will synergize, and it will make the ritual work more efficiently. Theoretically.”

She motioned for the runic dagger she'd requested. Syra looked a little paler when Neska unsheathed the short blade, pointing to it. “You can drip blood using this, or with a small dropper to control its placement over the salt binder. When combined with the mana, it turns blue or purple and solidifies with the salt. That is your indicator of success. Then, I hold the focal item in the middle of the circle, and channel the mana to weave the history around me. Its exact form is…not always predictable.”

Juni pointed to the ritual book. “It can form visions, night terrors, or even illusions that might manifest. Sometimes, it’s just whispers. Other times, when working with something with writing or other lettering, it’s best to have a letter board to ‘guide’ the interpretation, or a scratchpad to trace the motions in real-time.”

“Have you done this before?” Brent asked. "This is a bit outside my realm of expertise."

“No. I watched my witch perform this. The second to last ritual she performed…Awakened me.” Neska tapped the runic dagger flat against her finger. “She was a good teacher.”

She then pointed to Juni. “I want you and Syra to trace the runes. Up for the task?"

“Of course I can,” Juni asserted, reaching for the guide string and pen, and beginning to trace out what their rune would look like. “Do you always draw out the ritual schematic first?”

“It’s a good practice, but expert witches don’t need to. Or so my teacher said. Kalloway said that a ritual like this is pretty basic, so there’s no telling how much we’ll get out of it.”

She then drew another rune, this one in the form of a square, with chevrons on each side connecting it. “A compass point rune. North, South, East, West. This is combined with the diagnostic rune to give an input for determining direction.”

Then, she drew another one, a circle with lines creating arcs, and then drew small letters at each. “This is a rune of time. It can be used with other operators to either set a countdown, a countup, or to check for a condition in the past or future. It can set a duration for a spell effect, too. Note the connecting lines I drew.”

“You added ‘blood line’ like you need to trace them in that order?” Juni squinted.

“Correct. Think of runes as a list of instructions, and your body and the focal item ‘process’ those instructions. It’s one thing if it’s just a person, place, or thing. It’s another to try to imbue a ritual on something that doesn’t want to be a target. Certain items are warded against what we’re trying to do.”

“But, how would we know if this assassin would ward it?” Brent asked, pointing to the assassin's dagger. “It’s cheap, readily available, you can get items like this from any adventurer store, with little traceability. I doubt it’s magically shrouded, not for this cost. If it were a one-of-a-kind item or more expensive, then maybe.”

Syra continued to help outline the ellipse, connecting points to Neska, who would be sitting in the middle. Brent mixed a small alchemical solution to bind to the blood. “Are there…risks to this?”

“For this? No. It gets trickier if you are attempting to modify an enchantment or affect an area, or a magically resistant target. Some can counter-ward and send feedback to the ritual caster. But few varadur would even be aware of it. Plus, rituals tend to be more effective on a target you have direct contact with, or an area close by.”

With the preparation work underway, Neska drew the dagger, once the solution was finished, and Juni carefully funneled salt in thin, neat lines along the pen traces. “Looking good, Juni.”

“I might be twitchy, but I have steady hands for this,” she replied, her ears folded back in concentration. “Syra, go light the candles?”

“For what? Are they part of the ritual?

“No. they’re there to help set the mood,” Juni laughed. “They aren’t truly necessary, right?”

“No. But certain scents and materials can be used to protect from intrusion. Cursed areas or those affected by hexes can…push back,” she said, feeling a shiver down her tail.

Neska knew cursed areas like Arivol were inherently dangerous. They could slowly sap people or burden them with various maladies or bad luck, or whittle their vitality to nothing. Risha had theorized the varadur might be capable of their own rituals within certain monster species, especially the intelligent ones.

The prep work was almost done. She drew the dagger, and Brent held the beaker out expectantly, along with a cloth soaked in a clotting agent. “How much are you going to need to give for this?”

“Not much. We’re talking less than a few fluid ounces.” She rested the back of her hand against the blade, feeling that instinctive urge to avoid self-harm.

It had not stopped Risha from putting a dagger in her heart. A small cut to offer her power to enable the ritual was a small price to pay.

She drew the blade across along the seam of scales, keeping the cut narrow, and felt a stinging sensation as her blood slowly wept out. Brent moved the beaker under her and slowly collected it as it dripped free, an anticoagulant on the sides of the beaker intended to keep it liquid for the duration of this.

The motion also triggered something else. A small pulse of power running through her hand, a trickle of warmth that defied logic. It ran along the length of her arm and up along her spine, to stop at the base of her neck.

It was time to get answers. “Add the alchemical mix.”

He added it with a dropper, and the blood slowly turned a light purple. He narrowed his eyes and squeezed the dropper one more time into the beaker. “Good?”

“Perfect hue. Next step.” She tied off the cloth to her hand, her blood already clotting and slowly healing. Better to not dribble extra blood where it didn’t belong in a ritual circle.

She took the mixture and began dripping it over the salt. The purplish material slowly turned a deep shade of indigo, and then glowed slightly, with little more intensity than the firebugs that graced the summer forests and fields in the evenings. She traced her hand steadily, feeling that trickle of power creeping along her spine now.

Her witch talents were coming out of latency. This ritual beckoned to her now, ready to begin the work.

She slowly lifted her coils over the salt, then traced the last of the runic letters, taking a few minutes to do each. Everyone remained relatively silent, except for occasional soft comments between one another to ease the tension.

There was nothing that was going to make this less tense. If all went well, she’d divine where their assassin had been, or where he’d gone. She put two ‘timer’ runes into check for each state, and set it to six segments, or three hours each way.

Then, she wrapped her body into a coil and rested her hand against the salt, feeling a trickle of power emanate as she traced the lead lines to her, completing the circuit. She reached for the dagger set next to her side and held it gently in both hands.

Ability Proficiency Increased

Ritual Tracing 1 > Ritual Tracing 3

No time to celebrate yet. There would be more increases to that. Her Ritual power had three separate skill increases: Tracings, involving the binder material, Power Control, or the amount of exertion that could be powered in a ritual, and Fidelity, the level of micro she had on the ritual effects, targeting, and the precision of the information she might obtain or the nuanced effect she could cast.

She closed her eyes, holding the dagger with both hands. The blade dug into the scales on one finger, as if daring her to press harder. She sank into her coil, taking a measured breath, and hearing the slight hum of mana activation from the runes.

No, she couldn’t focus on them visibly. That would distract her. She dove deep into the mental darkness, looking for a light, listening for a sound.

The world faded like a ripple of water across a pond. When she opened her eyes, she was in a dark area, dirt and grass cool from the night beneath her. Crickets chirped nearby, and summer bugs let out soft buzzing sounds.

Above her, black silhouettes showed tiny points of light, leafy trees blocking part of the heavens. But not all of them. As her eyes adjusted, she saw a faint band of light stretching across the sky, an otherworldly blue and green that everyone on Galwein knew.

The Umbral Shoal. The focal point of all dreams and ritual spaces like this.

Her ritual was working. Now she needed a sign. Something to follow in this mental construct. She wrapped her mind around making it a finite space, focusing on this small clearing, finding something small. Try to spread too thin, and the space would dissipate like smoke in the wind.

Then she heard a whisper, as though someone were inches from her ear canal.

“The false idol has arrived. We must act, and soon.”