Chapter 16: The Ritual
A man crawled out of a bed that seemed displaced in the room it was in. It looked straight out of a rich noble's house, covered in fine silk sheets, with golden details forming a pattern along the bed covering. It certainly didn't match the cave it was in. Old decomposing planks along the walls and roof holding packed dirt and stone up. As the man walked to a dresser across the room he glanced into the mirror that was on the wall. A determined and serious look on his face. He had been waiting for this day, for years. Almost a decade of hard work would finally pay off. He had abandoned his family, moved out into the middle of nowhere in some random cave, and spent 2 years brainwashing weak-willed men into helping his cause.
Now he would finally get his reward. Eluparity would embody the eyulf in the chamber and while incredibly weakened, to the point where she wouldn't even resemble the goddess she once was she would retain all of that knowledge she had. He couldn't keep the smile off his face while thinking about it. It was the perfect opportunity. In trade for freedom from that held her, Eluparity would be rendered weak and under his control. She literally couldn't fight back. All the skills, spells, and power she had amassed over god knows how long would be taken away and if she wanted out of her prison she couldn't change that. He wasn't in a death cult nor was he insane. He didn't think he could take on a god, he had seen arrogant morons who think they could and it never ended well.
This wasn't like that, this was an unpassable chance. He could get everything he ever dreamed of. The pathetic excuse of the mage Elliot Landar would be no more. Wasting his life serving every whim of the royal family when he could be so much more. With a goddess by his side, he was going to be unstoppable. He would re-amass his followers, it had been difficult the first time but he was far more experienced now it wouldn't be the challenge it once was. Then with the secrets from the goddess, he would destroy the royal family. From there on, the world was his for the taking.
"So close…just have to get this right", Elliot muttered to himself as he looked at himself in the mirror.
He pulled out the signature robes from his dresser and clothed himself. He had been wearing them for years now so he was all but used to the tattered cloth and the way it dragged behind him. Despite that, they still annoyed him from time to time but they were vital so it simply had to be tolerated. The robes were a requirement for a vast majority of the rituals and spells provided by his Cult Leader sub-class. More than that though the robes were there to instill a delusion into his members. A fantasy that they too would profit from the ritual. He had purposely targeted people without magic abilities in order to make sure they never realized the truth behind any of the rituals. He then spent long amounts of time manipulating and promising them power and riches, as well as making them avid worshippers of the goddess. Of course, all of it was lies, with this final ritual all of the cultist members' lives would be used as sacrifices to fuel Eluparites transmigration into the eyulf and Elliot would be the only to ever actually gain anything from this.
Elliot was a mind mage, a rather taboo class to most of the empire he originated from. It had never been his choice to acquire the class, it was simply the one the system deemed fit for him. He never really knew why. He was young when it was assigned to him and he had never thought of himself as a controlling person back then. But if one looked at him now he supposed that term would fit quite well. He was a cult leader manipulating people to their deaths after all. Normally in the kingdom, he hailed from having such a class would be an issue, and Elliot would have been exiled or had it forcibly removed. But his father had been a very powerful noble before his downfall and had a pretty significant influence on the royals. He had managed to convince them to let Elliot keep the class as long as he operated under some rules. He was forbidden to truly access the full potential of his class, and such spells like memory altercation were prohibited. A waste of his talent and potential but he had no choice but to obey. He was also required to essentially act as the royal family's tool and could never disobey requests from them. For years he had acted as their servant, manipulating other nobles to be more of their liking. It was demeaning.
Around 10 years ago however something extraordinary happened. He felt something tug at his soul. A lesser experienced mage would have never noticed it but even back then he was at the very least capable of that. It was an invitation, something that if he responded to would allow something or someone to communicate with him telepathically. On nothing but a whim, his younger self had accepted. In his wildest dream, he could have never ever guessed the implications of that decision.
It had been Eluparity. A goddess who had been imprisoned for eons in a white void as she had described it. An instrumentally small gap had appeared and she managed to contact the closest person. Elliot. She told him of the possible opportunity and knowledge he could gain if he freed her, and he agreed without hesitation. Elliot wanted nothing more than freedom from his predicament. He was assigned the Follower of Eluparity Sub-Class and provided the first instructions that led him on his path leading up to this moment. He had abandoned his family, sacrificed years of life, and now it was all finally going to pay off.
He quickly fit his skull mask on and equipped his staff retrieving it from its holder on the wall. He activated the Hive Mind spell and felt his mind connect to all of the cultists. Controlling multiple bodies at once he set up several parts of the ritual that still needed to be finished simultaneously. He had no intentions to put this off he wanted it done as soon as possible. There was no need to reflect on the years of work that led to this moment or to remember all his sacrifices there was only the future. As he walked towards the chamber where the eyulf was held he occasionally stopped to deal with some of the tasks that required mana use, as his cultists couldn't help in that matter.
As he finally entered the room he glanced around checking everything despite the fact that he was already seeing this room from several different sets of eyes. He smiled behind the mask as the last candle was placed down in the proper place. The ritual circles were in the perfect place and drawn up with the perfect material. The stones, the most important part of the ritual aside from Elliot himself were also in their perfect respective places. He ordered his cultist into their proper places as he moved outside the circle but still centered with it. This would the hard part. This was a costly ritual. It would leave all of his cultists dead and Elliot incapacitated for a few years unable to use mana. He was well aware of this fact of course and had been preparing for it for years. The ritual itself isn't that difficult to cast the problem lies in the extreme durability the subject, in this case the eyulf, had to have. When they were attempting this with the hobgoblin 3 years ago it managed to break out of chains because of its increased strength. It dispatched a cultist and escaped back out into the forest. He was lucky they hadn't increased its endurance yet, because that could have caused a lot of problems. This eyulf actually managed to kill it and after discovering it wasn't really that strong, he and the other cultists captured it. They didn't make the mistake of implanting the crystal into the creature far too early like they had with the hobgoblin and actually waited until last night to do the deed. It needed to accustom to the crystal just a little before the ritual could begin.
The creature was visibly under the effects of crystal, snarling at the dozen or so cultists surrounding it with bloodshot eyes but they had reinforced the chains holding it down just in case, so there wouldn't be an issue. Elliot lifted his staff into the air. It all came down to this.
But before he could begin chanting a single word, everything went up in flames.
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Elliot his vision still blurry stood up almost losing his balance and falling twice in the process. As his head cleared a little he started to take in the chaos and realize what was happening in front of him. Several of his cultists, at least 7, we're burning alive in front of him. It made sense, the cultist had been standing right above the crystals as part of the ritual. They were supposed to absorb their mana and then lifeforce until they died though, not explode and light them on fire. The luckier ones had seemingly been launched away from the crystals they were on top of before they could be caught by the flames.
As his mind caught up to the situation his first thought was to wonder what had gone wrong. One of the crystals had obviously blown up and set off a train reaction but why? Elliot himself had made sure to check all the crystals for cracks so they didn't have another faulty one explode on them. He was positive they were in all top condition. He thought the ritual over before a sudden image came back to him. One that had taken place moments before everything went to shit.
There had been a mana bolt. It had appeared abruptly and without warning before shooting in a straight shot right towards a crystal. The one Elliot had been closest to. The force from the resulting boom caused him to be flung out of the room right through the door and into the hallway wall. He quickly tilted his head left and downwards to his shoulder to see it dislocated, it had taken the brunt of the impact. Who the fuck had shot that crystal. The only person even capable of doing such a thing should be Elliot as he was the only person with mana sense or mana manipulation.
He sat there analyzing the moment over and over as more and more details came back to him before it hit him. It was the eyulf. It had to be the eyulf. That previous explosion he had shrugged off as a faulty crystal was the work of that thing too he knew it. He had thoroughly checked his cultists there was no way it could have been one of them. That thing had been giving him a bad feeling for months, the way it constantly watched them, the way despite all the abuse it never seemed to truly become obedient and docile. It had to be the eyulf despite how impossible it was. The eyulf wasn't a Mana Beast, so it shouldn't have been able to use magic much less a spell like mana bolt, but here he was. It didn't make any goddamn sense but it had to be the eyulf he just knew it.
Elliot rose from the ground holding himself steady with his good arm against the wall as he eyed the greenish flames. All the cultists had been under his hivemind spell but that explosion had shattered his concentration and by that the spell. Many of the cultists were regaining consciousness while literally being burned alive. They had started screaming horrendously, their vocal cords being scorched. With a single glance into the room, Elliot realized he wouldn't be able to stop the fire, it had spread all over the floor and walls. Pretty soon the fire would burn its way out into the hallway and probably take them all with it. Including the eyulf if it hadn't already been killed by the impact from being surrounded by a dozen exploding crystals. Elliot watched hopelessly as years of his life's work and sacrifices were being proved pointlessly and for a brief moment, he thought about surrendering himself to the flames. But he quickly grabbed that mentality and killed it. The flames hadn't yet spread into the rest of the cave he could get out, start again as crushing as it might be as long as he was alive Elliot could try again.
He turned and took his first step towards the exit before he saw something out of the corner of his eye. A figure rise amongst the flames. It wasn't human. Elliot watched in disbelief as the eyulf started to walk towards him with a limp. Its cuffs had broken off, probably shattered from the blast. Well, it wasn't impossible if the wolf was anything it was durable, he had dedicated years to make it so after all. But this was pushing it, a blast like that? Elliot had been hit by one and had his shoulder dislocated, the eyulf was surrounded by a dozen of the blast, not to mention the resulting flames. It had somehow survived the blast but the flames would do it in, there was no escape from them once you were caught. Elliot looked closer and realized there was still an opening in the flames to exit the room, if the thing had been lucky and not caught by the flames then it could still get out.
He turned around, if there was a chance he was going to go for it, he had seen four maybe five cultists alive in the room if he hurried he could use Hivemind and recapture the eyulf. He would have to be careful if one of them was set on fire while using the spell he would feel every hint of the pain. But something like that wasn't going to stop him from taking this chance, no matter how dangerous it might be. He wouldn't let years of hard work go in vain, he simply wouldn't. Elliot raised his staff and activated Hivemind connecting to the few unharmed remaining cultists. There was no turning back.