Sacrifice Mage

Chapter 248 (B3: 75): Divine Incarnation

It was almost delightful hearing the surprise in the Vaunted’s voice. Of course I wasn’t going to keep bashing my head against an obstacle I couldn’t bypass in time. Of course I was going to bypass whatever bullshit she was doing to enhance herself. Starburst exploded out of my hands. Burning, blistering energy rocketed outwards, shooting straight up like the exhaust of a rocket’s engine, a stream of molten heat and burning light, tied together with an avalanche of mass. The blast came out with so much force, compounded by the boost from my Burst Mana Augmentation, that the recoil slammed me backwards.

Targeting the manifestation of a god was going to go even worse than trying to hit the Vaunted herself with Starburst. That was why I hitting the liquid rain of gold, but the eye it came from.

Which wasn’t just an eye any longer anyway. Pure energy was resolving into mass, manifesting into the form of a skull around that enormous, slit-pupiled eyeball, a second one slowly appearing in its other orbit. Not that I really saw any of it when Starburst flared out and turned night into day with how much power it was outputting.

It wasn’t just me shaking. At first, I thought it was from the sheer power that I had unleashed. There had been so much energy compressed into Starburst, of course I should have been quaking and trembling just from releasing it all.

But no, there was a separate fallout from Starburst. was shaking, cracking, breaking apart under the stress of the energy I had unleashed.

“You Pits-screwing ”

The Vaunted’s scream was accompanied by a vicious punch, which only managed to graze my shoulder because she was shaking in mid-air too. That said, even that little graze was too strong. I was sent careening backwards, arms sailing ineffectually as I slowly came to a stop on my own.

Then I saw what had the Vaunted consternated beyond just the fact that I had severed her connection with the god she was trying to call forth.

The Beyond was cracking. This other realm that I had needed a Path Interaction to enter in the first place was more fragile than I had expected. Because whatever I had struck alongside the golden waterfall seemed to have been some sort of anchor for the world itself, which was causing everything around me to fracture.

Rips ran through the cosmic sky, stars dimmed and disappeared, the god that had been struck by Starburst had half burned away.

I could only shake my head. That was impossible. I knew I was strong, that my power level was magnified thanks to the boosts I was able to command, that Starburst was an incredibly powerful blast of energy in and of itself. But still. To think I was melting off the face of a summoned god was unthinkable. It made no sense.

Unless this that the Vaunted was summoning forth wasn’t the real deal. Hadn’t been to begin with, for all I knew.

There was no way for me to know for sure, but I was certain about one thing.

Things were not as they appeared.

“You—you Pits-cursed—” The Vaunted was so mad that she was having trouble speaking. I wasn’t even close enough for her to wring my neck.

“I don’t know what you were planning,” I said. “But you went wrong in many places. I’m actually ashamed I let you get this far in the first place.”

“” she roared. “I care not what meagre accomplishment you’ve managed to eke out, but you die.”

She threw herself at me. Golden, burning, icy, and powerful, the Vaunted from Claderov streaked at me like a comet. I just barely managed to dodge with Reflexive Mana, though I was still struck by her trail. Raging fire and absolute-zero ice lashed me with overwhelming sensory loads, and I had to force myself to concentrate past that.

We collided again and again. Or rather, she attacked me with all the furious power she had accumulated from her mad ritual and summoning.

I wasn’t ashamed of admitting that I was no match for her. My real armour was already broken, Reverence Everlife was taking a beating, my bones were fracturing at every other impact. Every swing of my mace missed widely while I started bleeding from a dozen wounds.

“How does it feel?” she asked when she was suddenly able to grab me. “How does it feel to be so ”

Her hand was clutching the upper arm of the limb that held the mace. Basically, I couldn’t fight back so easily.

Fire and ice. Burning and freezing. That was what I felt. But obviously, I didn’t say that.

“Does it matter?” I said. My voice was chittering, which wasn’t great, but who gave a shit just then. “ failed. This little summoning of the Beyond, this fake god you called up, it’s all crashing down around you. Literally. How does it feel for it to break apart when you’ve been stopped by someone ”

Her icy fire raged brighter. Clearly not the smartest thing to say in my current situation.

“You’re cocky for someone about to die,” she said.

“That’s why I can cocky,” I spat back. “Because I know I’ve done enough. Because I know that even if you manage to kill me—which you haven’t yet, by the way—then you’re just going to face more opposition outside that you definitely won’t be able to just kill your way through. This I know for a fact. You’re alone. .”

“Alone?” She laughed. Her fire was burning with a mad light in her eyes now, even as a good chunk of it climbed up my body, encasing my flesh and armour and clothes in ice. I was starting to lose feeling in half my body. “You really think you’ve stopped this ritual? That you’ve stopped the birth of a god?”

“That’s no real god. You think the Ascendants would be so stupid as to let just anyone come in and create a ritual to free the beings they to banish?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” She shook me hard to emphasize the point. “This is years of research, an endless amount of effort, all culminating to this very moment. Do you have any idea how much energy this has taken?”

“I know. I know perfectly well.”

She and whoever else was behind this had raised up a Scarseeker from their downtrodden slums just to serve their ultimate goal. They had bribed and bullied Great Houses of an opposing city to sow chaos and take over the Sun Cult’s temple. They had started a fucking just to draw away most of the opposition so they’d have a clearer opportunity to carry out their madness.

The Vaunted slammed my body back onto the ground. I hardly felt the pain, thanks in part because of my Augmentations but more so because of just how numb my body had gone.

“You’ve stopped nothing,” she said. “.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” I managed to grind out despite the pain and the shaking. “It’s not going to make you feel any better in the end.”

“Then—”

A new crack tore through the Beyond like lightning. We both froze. I wasn’t even struggling since I had practically been overpowered without a great deal of effort from the Vaunted, but seeing her freeze like that drove home the seriousness of the new development.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Especially when I followed her gaze and looked to my left, only to see space itself tearing apart. There was a literal tear in the Beyond, through which a horror emerged onto the scene.

A familiar horror.

“Ugh, again,” the Paragon said. What the Pits was his name? Shell seeker or something? “I knew I shouldn’t have spared you back then. Here you are, causing all this trouble for me again.”

He was looking at me. I was sure of it. Even from this distance, from where he looked like nothing more than a blue-tinged speck, I was a hundred percent certain that he was completely ignoring the Vaunted just to stare at me disdainfully.

Thankfully, his sudden appearance had the benefit of making the Vaunted forget about me too. She pulled her hands off me, now completely ignoring my body lying on the remainder of the rocky, icy spar she had been standing on to receive those golden tears of the now-molten golden eye.

“What business does a Paragon have here?” the Vaunted asked.

“Really?” The Paragon—Shik’shikan, that was his name—turned his derisive expression to the Vaunted. “You can’t think of reason why a Paragon would appear in this crackpot ritual of yours that’s supposed to summon some forgotten god or something along those lines?”

The Vaunted sneered. “You’re awfully worked up for something that’s so .”

Wrong thing to say. A blue tendril appeared out of nowhere, slamming into the Vaunted and sending her flying backwards.

“Of course I am!” he said with a heavy scowl. “Because I have to come over here and fix up the messes you’ve been causing, only to find out it’s nothing more than a fake showing. A bunch of smoke coming from nothing more than tiny embers. Hardly worth the attention of a Paragon like myself.”

With the pesky Vaunted taken care of, I could focus on setting myself aflame with Immolation. At this point, I couldn’t even begin to identify all the pain rocking my body. There was just too much. Biting down on my tongue to Sacrifice the sting for Pain Sense Control was all that let me keep focusing on the important parts of my current situation.

“And as for you…”

The Paragon’s blue tendrils surrounded me, though they didn’t strike just yet. How blessed was I.

“Our goal is the same here, Paragon,” I said as I got to my feet. Maybe I should have added an honorific or something. Did they call them Honoured Paragons just like it was Honoured Councillor? Wait, no. Hadn’t Master Kostis called them Great Paragon? “You want to stop this ritual. I want to stop this ritual. We’re on the same side.”

Slowly, the Paragon smiled. The blue tattoos on his half-naked torso seemed to writhe in amusement. “I like how you’re so fast to make sure I don’t obliterate you like I did the other—”

“Obliterate who, now?”

Both the Paragon and I turned our raised eyebrows to where the Vaunted was rising into the air again, wings of icy gold frosting at her back.

“Ah, you survived.” The Paragon frowned at his tendrils, drawing them closer with a critical eye on them like he was trying to find a fault. “I was sure I hit you hard enough to collapse your diaphragm at the very least, perhaps break a few ribs for added measure. But maybe I was wrong to hold back. I should have just consumed you.”

I shuddered, recalling how he had acted when I had first met him. Back then, he had attacked and “eaten” everything and everyone indiscriminately. I recalled just how he had consumed Se-Vigilance too.

Which brought the question of he was acting with so much more restraint here? I looked around. Could it be there was something about the Beyond that had him acting more carefully? Was there some integral truth or power to this god-summoning ritual that I didn’t know about that had the Paragon acting with a bit more care?

Although, Shik’shikan himself had stated that this was fake. The Paragon had acted a lot more decisively against the Blight Swarm but wasn’t doing so here. That meant the threat was far less severe, right?

I looked behind me, trying to look past the temple walls and the Beyond. It was hard to make anything out. It was only then that I realized I hadn’t spotted anything about the wraiths outside once I had entered this otherworldly realm. I hadn’t seen any of those monstrous souls contorting and twisting their bodies.

So what in the world was going on outside?

“Reconsider, Paragon,” the Vaunted said. “I know that you and your kind prefer to keep the old order. To keep the world stagnant and ensure true power remains beyond most. But this ritual… this can change the world. After all this time, don’t you think the world deserves more than the meagre hollowness you’ve kept it caged in for so long?”

“Shut your silly little mouth, .” Shik’shikan scoffed. “The only thing about you is the way you are all glowing and icy and everything. You certainly know how to show off.”

She remained undeterred, floating closer despite the fact that she had been flung away not that long ago. “I am deadly serious, Paragon. Regardless of what you think of me and my station, my is one worth fighting for. My hopes and wishes are ones I’d give my life to bring to fruition.” She thumped her chest. “I already have! I’ve set my old life afire for all this.”

“For all this .” The Paragon shook his head. “I am going to kill you now, and that will be the end of it all.” He shot me a glare before he got down to his business. “You. Destroy the rest of the Beyond and this sham of a god this hopeless fool thought to bring. .”

There was a strong part of me that wanted to spit at his feet and just say no out of sheer, stupid rebelliousness. But our goals aligned here. Letting his petty need to be the one in charge shouldn’t detract from it.

I didn’t hear one bit of what sort of protests or fightback that the Vaunted was presenting to the Paragon. Well, I did, but it was merely a peripheral thing.

My focus was on the remnant of the god and its power burning through this realm.

Regardless of what the Paragon said or did, I had to stop it before it broke through and affected Ring Four. So I quickly got up to the deformed, half-molten, half-formed piece of a god.

“I wonder what you felt about all this,” I murmured as I reached out my hand, white tendrils of Sacrifice emerging from my palm and fingers to latch onto the misshapen skull with one of its eyes turned to goop and other one simply staring listlessly. “Or were you never here to begin with, just as I thought, and this is merely a bastardization?”

That couldn’t be fully right, because the Paragon was clearly intent on stopping this.

Which meant it had power.

It didn’t matter. Threads of Sacrifice latched onto the golden, tank-sized amalgamation. I was focusing on Overclaim. The Weave might not fully recognize the carcass of this half-formed god’s head as mine, technically, but Overclaim had to be enough to counter that. It seemed to be working too. The whole mass was turning white, readying to dissolve.

Then time froze. froze. Colours leached out to a monochrome hue, every mote of energy and swirl of air petrified, and the world became utterly still.

So did I. Apart from my consciousness, I had turned into a statue. No blinking, no breathing, no feeling my heart thump in panic inside my chest. Nothing. I was a part of the world too, after all.

My body was, at least. My awareness—my soul—seemed to have been spared… whatever this was.

The voice came in from everywhere and nowhere. It slithered in from every corner of my surroundings while also burgeoning out of me like was talking, even though I obviously couldn’t even begin to move my mouth.

And yet, just as the voice was doing, I could project my thoughts. I could communicate.

I asked. Since I couldn’t move, my eyes were stuck focusing on the malformation in front of me. …

, replied the voice. I couldn’t place its gender or age or anything really identifiable about it. It was just smooth, powerful, sure of itself in a way that nothing else could ever emulate. .…, , …