Sacrifice Mage

Chapter 256 (B3: 83): Escapees

I had to return to Ring One the next day. Not because there was still some outstanding business regarding Claderov that I needed to take care of. Rather, it was because they were honouring me.“That’s… me?” I asked, staring at the statue made of white abalone standing tall in the middle of the square lined with the likenesses of heroes and champions and people who had influenced Zairgon greatly, one way or another.

“I think that’s very much you,” Aqrea said. “Cultist Ross.”

The others—which included pretty much everybody I cared about, from Hamsik and Thefris, to Revayne, to all the cultists from Ring Four, to Khagnio, Cerea, and Ugnash, to even Linak and several Anymphea led by Ascelkos and Kyris—all agreed vociferously. Not a single one of them disagreed, or even had looks of doubt.

“Come on, nobody?” I asked, looking from face to face. “Not a single one of you?”

“Face it, Ross,” Cerea said. “That. Is. .”

I stared back at the figure standing proud in a warlike pose, looking for all the world like he was ready to conquer the world before him. One of his arms held a mace high, except the mace’s spiky hammer head had been replaced with the image of an orb with shining rays, reminiscent of my Icon.

Especially, because it was painted and glowing just like my Icon too. A burning golden sphere surrounded by curling, silver spikes. There was obviously some magic in there because it was literally emitting shining light, shading the rest of the twenty-foot statue with lifelike colours. Every fold of the cultist robes—the expensive version I had first worn to Ring One—every bit of my hair and my eyes, had been rendered with vibrant colours.

Well, not bit. The sculptor had made it… arty. The colours were bright and vivid higher up the statue, decreasing in intensity and presence until the lower end of my robes and my legs were entirely colourless.

Apparently, that was supposed to signify my evolutions.

It was also weird to learn that I turned into an actual blond when I had my Icon too close. Like somehow the light from my Icon turned my hair into literal gold. I really wasn’t sure how I felt about that. But then again, golden hair was just one of the myriad changes I needed to reckon with.

I decided against obsessing about it and just enjoyed the little party the Councillors had thrown me for anointing me as their version of the Person of the Year. There wasn’t a lot of fanfare. Just some refreshments provided for any one I invited to come witness the unveiling of this year’s statue.

Honestly, until I had received the summons, I had totally forgotten about Hamsik revealing the nice little commemorative tribute the Councillors did every year. It made me feel both proud and really humbled to find they had picked me.

“Councillor Varimann did a nice job in my opinion,” Se-Vigilance said.

Now was surprising. “A Councillor made that?” I asked. “Guess that explains why it’s so impressive.”

“He did indeed. He’s a… shy one, so we don’t get to see much of him. But our only Therioceph has done well to handle all the art within Zairgon.”

“I appreciate it, though.” I cleared my throat. “I haven’t thanked you guys so I’m doing it now. Thank you. This is… pretty incredible.”

“Really? You’ve learned so much, met so many people, earned so many miraculous powers, yet a little old statue is still incredible?”

“It is. For sure.” I laughed. “I can’t even remember the last time I received an actual award, and this really feels like one. Trust me, it… it means a lot.”

Slowly, Se-Vigilance’s smile widened. “For all the things you’ve gone through, Ross Moreland, I am glad that you’re still you.”

I grinned back at her.

It was nice the Councillors hadn’t made a big deal out of it. This felt more like a nice get-together, which was infinitely more preferable. Naturally, I had only invited close friends, though that didn’t mean anyone else was barred from entry. As such, it wasn’t surprising to see Gushal Uralivanth come to visit, with the formerly kidnapped Uralivanth coming along as well.

They were actually here for Revayne, which made sense. She’d be going back home with her husband.

But the woman I didn’t even know the name of came up to me with a grateful bow of her head. It made me blink. For one, this was a noble. I had never had anyone from Ring Two at me before. For another… I had practically run through her House with a rusty knife. I was pretty sure there were very legitimate reasons for her to chew off my face instead of bowing at me.

“I came to thank you personally,” the Uralivanth woman said. “For stopping Claderov. If you hadn’t…”

Despite her bow, her voice was clipped. Maybe she didn’t feel that grateful to me after all. Maybe she still remembered I was one of the primary reasons her family was in disarray. Pits, maybe I had even killed someone who she cared about. I wasn’t exactly seeing her husband accompanying her.

“Don’t mention it, please,” I said. “I was doing what was right.”

“Regardless. I feel as though I owe you.”

“You really don’t.”

“No. You need to know this, Ross Moreland.”

I blinked. She was being weirdly insistent. I decided against being negative and suspicious just then. This was a nice occasion. I didn’t want to ruin my nice mood myself. “Alright, I’ll humour you. What is it?”

“Well, you seemed to be a very… man,” she said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. She was making it hard not to frown.

“It merely means that I expected you to be much harsher on Claderov. Considering your previous response when my own House hurt you and yours.”

Did you know this story is from NovelFire? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Claderov definitely committed crimes, and I should have gone after Vandre to get him back myself, but unlike House Uralivanth, they didn’t really hurt my friends.”

Her eyes widened. “Ah, so he didn’t tell you…”

I was starting to feel cold. “Tell me what?”

“The Claderovians that Scarthrall. You might think I’m lying, and maybe I have reason to do so, but I’m not.” Her eyes were hollow. There was no tension, almost no emotion at all, nothing at all that would suggest lies. “You heard how they spoke of the Scarseekers and Scarthralls. They much worse. That poor Scarthrall… we had to watch his hair being ripped off, his limbs chopped, his guts punctured, his…”

I wasn’t sure if I heard the rest of the gory, gruesome details she spilled in a rush, like she was hurrying to get them out before they made her sick. My ears were ringing a little, my spine rigid, my fists clenched hard enough for my nails to dig into my palms.

“I’m sorry to be the one to reveal all this to you,” she said. “But I suspected you had been kept in the dark, for whatever reason, and you to know.” Her voice hardened as she began to leave. “I don’t want to see you becoming a hypocrite in the end.”

That made a vein in my temple throb. She was gone the next second, though. I didn’t even say farewell to Revayne properly when she left with the Uralivanths. She frowned at my expression, but I just barely managed to send her off with an awkward, forced smile.

Vandre had kept his experiences a secret. I had known he was hiding something, keeping a part of what he had gone through to himself, but I hadn’t expected it would be something like .

Torture.

I wasn’t sure what to do about it at first. Confronting Vandre about it was out of the question. I had no intention of making him relive his trauma, and if he judged it best that I shouldn’t know about it, I didn’t want to go against his judgment directly.

The worst bit was that it felt like it was all done. Like it was a chapter I could have closed after the meeting on Ring One.

Instead, a clawing need for retribution was poking into my brain. I didn’t to be consumed by some strange need for revenge or anything of the sort. I didn’t want to become some sort of vengeful vigilante and assault the captured Claderovians while they were locked up in Zairgon.

Nevertheless, simply letting Claderov go about its merry way after what they had pulled left me feeling a little sick.

Of course, there was the possibility that the Uralivanth woman might have been lying through her teeth. Yet none of it had felt like a lie. I didn’t even feel like I needed to corroborate it with someone because something about the way she had said it made it ring undeniably true.

I tried not to let it show to the others. It helped that there were a lot of distractions to keep me busy. I needed to help reconstruct any of the destroyed sections of Ring Four after the last debacle, though there weren’t a lot of those. I had to talk with all sorts of people to reassure everyone that the giant metal constructs all over Ring Four weren’t a cause for concern,

And then there were the flood of new inductees into the Sun Cult who were mesmerized by the burning star I had manifested and was now permanently hauling along behind me.

“It’s beautiful, Cultist,” one of them professed. “I have no idea how you created such a thing, but it’s a pure work of art.”

“Yes,” said another. “It’s not just a burning ball of fire and light. This is .”

It was a little eerie seeing their worshipful gazes entranced by my Icon. They stopped short of actually worshipping it, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if at some point, someone suggested my Icon was an act of the divine, of the sun god I had spoken with, and then they all would start praying to it.

I probably needed to keep an eye out to prevent something like that from happening. It was a little too close to worshipping , and that wasn’t a line I intended to cross.

On the other side of things, Linak was happy to report that my Starlamp business was taking off. Apparently, the Councillors had been kind enough to hang a few off that statue of me on Ring One, which was a more powerful form of advertising than anything Linak or I could have ever managed on our own.

Lots of people had come to see the year’s statue, just as they did every year. And all those people had now seen the power of our Starlamps.

Needless to say, we were getting a lot of sales and making a decent chunk of money.

Another unintended assist from Claderov? I was still too pissed at them to think of it that way. Especially after what they had done with Vandre…

“You appear troubled, Model Moreland,” Se-Vigilance was saying a day later when we had met on Ring One. I had decided to “gift” a few more Starlamps to Ring One as thanks for the advertising.

“ Moreland?” I asked.

“Well, your statue did turn out very nice.”

“I don’t recall for it, though.”

“Perhaps. But one could be forgiven for thinking that we had a live model during the sculpting. As such, you have been granted the title of Model Moreland.”

“Another great addition to my long list of titles.”

“Indeed.” Se-Vigilance’s eyes sharpened. “But yes, let us return to the important matter at hand. What ails you so?”

I considered forgetting about it all, but Se-Vigilance had never not been anything but helpful and trustworthy. Dependable.

Except for one thing.

“I learned what happened to Vandre,” I said. “And I learned it from the captured Uralivanth woman.”

“Ah, I see. I myself was unaware until recently. Unfortunately, I only learned of it after our meeting, so I couldn’t bring it up where it would have been most effective.”

I didn’t have a proper reply to that because anything I would have said would just end up making me sound bratty. Which in and of itself felt like a terrible thing to consider. Vandre had been tortured. Claderov needed to answer for that. It was on me to find the right response without letting everything I said and did get infected by my growing hatred for that city.

“So that’s it then?” I said.

Se-Vigilance considered for a while. The last of the Starlamps were being taken away by the Ring One Rakshasa officer assigned to the task. “It does not have to be.”

“How so?”

The Councillor looked at me after another moment of consideration. “You possess a great deal of power, Mage Moreland. Power that I think might just extend beyond even Zairgon’s borders now. And beyond Zairgon’s borders, none of it need be restricted by decisions made for and within Zairgon.”

I blinked a few times at her implication. She was more or less telling me to take care of matters by myself extrajudicially.

And I had to figure out how to do it best by myself.

“Let me offer you one piece of advice,” Se-Vigilance said. “We have strong reason to believe that the envoys that Claderov sent, the ones who were involved in the meeting, are all part of the same plot. They are all in on it together. It is a crying shame they haven’t received a single bit of the justice their compatriots are facing…”

I swallowed, then nodded. She was laying things on a silver platter. It wasn’t that she was asking me to deal with the people Zairgon hadn’t officially.

She was just offering me an outlet that Zairgon wouldn’t be fussed over.

I nodded again, this time more resolutely. “Thanks, Councillor. I’ll… keep that in mind.”

“Fair fortune, Ross Moreland.”

Just because Se-Vigilance had given me a go-ahead didn’t mean I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Not at first. But after taking some preparations and investigating what exactly was up with the Claderovians who had come to Zairgon, I now knew what I had to do.

So, I stood at one of the most secluded corners of Ring Four, where I wasn’t going to be disturbed. Where I could interact with the protrusions of the Nether Vein without anyone bothering me or without bothering anyone else as well. At least, that was the hope. So, taking a deep breath, I touched the metal of the Nether Vein.

The weird formations came alive under my touch. They sparked and heated, the metal gleaming as though it was starting to melt beneath my fingertips, but the heat never got to me. It was like I was immune to whatever strange energy was possessing the Nether Vein metal.

Almost like I was a of the Nether Vein somehow now.

My Icon reacted as well. The sun burned hot and bright, its overheated rays sinking into the metal, connecting with the melting energy already flowing through it.

I closed my eyes for a moment. Everything disappeared. All but my touch on the molten metal.

When I opened my eyes, I was inside the Nether Vein.