B5 C43: Ritual Room

AN: Two notes! One, I owe an extra chapter from Thursday -- waaay overbooked until the middle of the month, and it's hitting my writing a bi

AN: Two notes! One, I owe an extra chapter from Thursday -- waaay overbooked until the middle of the month, and it's hitting my writing a bit harder than I hoped. Minus a few formatting bits, the next chapter is already written, and I'll post it tomorrow.

Secondly, I'm doing a minor retcon. I felt wishy-washy in saying that all of Cezerra's knowledge came from ancestral memories/her mana, so I'm changing her backstory to say that the dungeon summoned her. I'll be going back and editing chapter 42 to make that consistent, but just noting it so no one gets thrown off here. Happy reading!

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Being carried by my head wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience, all the less so when my various broken bones were taken into account. Each of Cezerra’s steps caused me to wheeze with pain as my shattered ribs jostled around in my chest, and perhaps the only silver lining was the resulting skill level.

Pain Resistance has reached level 19!

It was one of many levels I’d gained in the past few minutes, although somehow I failed to feel too thrilled about the fact. Still, without much else to do, I scanned through my notifications as Cezerra so ignominiously lugged me about.

Mental Spike has reached level 9!

Mental Magic has reached level 24!

Hammers has reached level 23!

Swords has reached level 10!

Congratulations! You have reached the Initiate rank in Swords!

Based on your skill usage, you have been granted a skill augment for achieving a new skill rank.

Augment of Enhancement 

All mana effects and skills channeled through or used with a sword are 10% stronger.

Class Quest Completed: Raise a weapon skill to level 10 (Repeatable)

+2500xp

+1 Class Point

Heavy Armor has reached level 19!

You have learned a new skill: Intrusion Resistance

Increases the stability and impermeability of your mana. Reduces the effects of skills or attacks which attempt to disable, dismantle, or bypass your mana constructs and skills.

Prerequisites:

20 levels in an Internal Mana Manipulation skill

30 Wisdom

A combined Wisdom and Endurance of at least 65

With swords hitting level 10, I’d finished a class quest that was possibly the longest time coming of any of them. Outside hunting squids, I never really had a reason to use a sword, especially as it wasn’t one of the physical weapons I had bound in my Bind Weapon slots. Admittedly, this wasn’t how I thought I’d be reaching the next rank, but I would only complain a little bit.

On top of that, a new resistance was always appreciated, especially if it would keep me from getting my chest caved in next time. Then again, I still wasn’t sure there was going to be a next time, as I hadn’t figured out how to deal with Cezerra yet. At the very least, I wasn’t about to pick another fight with her with my body in this state. 

Already, I was chaining casts of Heal to clear away the worst of my injuries. Sadly, I wasn’t up to Arbor’s level of life magic where I could regrow limbs, and it would take me at least a few days to get back into fighting shape. For now, I had little choice but to go along with whatever the demon wanted from me.

As I wrapped up my musings, the two of us arrived at our presumed destination. Evidently, the stone temple housing the collection crystal was bigger than I’d realized, with another smaller room in the back. If slightly less spacious than the main room, it was considerably more interesting.

Carved into the stone floor were two ritual diagrams, Understanding and Spell Insight perking up from just a single glance. By the time Cezerra spoke, I’d already worked out what she was going to say.

“Summoning rituals.” Each of the rituals had a large gash cutting into them, and Cezerra vaguely gestured to them with her chin. “Defunct, but you should still be able to use them as guides. Ignore the one on the right -- that’s the one that summoned me. The one on the left summons the drudges.”

Moving me over to the two rituals, the boss at last dropped my dangling body, leaving me to crash down to the floor. While the fall normally wouldn’t have hurt in the least bit, I winced as it sent vibrations through my various breaks and fractures. Despite myself, my curiosity got the best of me.

“Why are these even here? Don’t demons just spawn out of thin air whenever there’s enough demonic mana?” That’s what Cal had claimed, at least.

Cezerra grunted. “The mana is too thin. And frankly, it’s of shit quality. Whoever is supplying it probably sealed their rank. Pretty common for any demons that permanently live outside the hells, especially ones who rely on magic instead of just focusing on demonic mana. And the dungeon can’t directly create demons anymore than it could conjure humans or elves. Ensouled races are off limits.”

So what I was hearing was that if we beat Cezerra, no more demons would appear in the region? Still, that didn’t fully explain what I was seeing.

Without prompting, Cezerra answered the unasked question. “Pretty sure the dungeon wanted this region to be a little slice of the hells. Tons of armies of demons, all warring against one another. It wasn’t able to directly create us, so it created some sort of spatial spirit which used these rituals to summon demons by the dozens. Mostly drudges, but a few evolved demons like me. Whenever enough of us died, it just summoned some more.”

Once again, she focused on the large gashes in the rituals. “Got tiring. Towards the end, a few of us ganged up on the spatial spirit. Killed it. Disabled the rituals. Fought. As you can probably tell, I won, except now I’m the only one left, and the dungeon doesn’t seem to want to repair its own rituals. That’s where you come in.” 

Huh. So she wasn’t born in the dungeon? In that case, she must have arrived under level 25. I could only imagine how much fighting there’d been if she was now all the way at level 32, unless most of those levels had been from skill training or class quests since then. 

Kind of glad they were short-sighted enough to wreck the rituals though. I could only imagine how hopeless the situation would be if this region had actually been filled with dozens of demons around Cezerra’s strength, all leading armies of whatever these “drudges” were. Not that the current circumstances were that great, but it could always get worse, I supposed.

It was here that I expected Cezerra to start some grand lecture, revealing the hidden secrets of demonic summoning to me. I’m pretty sure she considered it, too, gazing down at the rituals with a discerning look.

Then, scratching at her chest, the hulking demoness merely shrugged.

“Eh. I know some of the basics, but you’re the magic one. Figure it out and summon me some drudges. I’ll grace you with my knowledge if you get stuck. Feel free to run if you want me to break a few more ribs.” Thus said, she swiveled about and left the way she came.

Well, okay? For a moment, I did consider planning an escape, but my protesting body agreed with her. Now was not the time to run.

Not that I was 100% certain that I wanted to help her with her whole dungeon domination plan, but taking a look at the rituals couldn’t hurt. And with any luck, studying the diagrams would give me some time to heal, too.

And so, with a heaving sigh, I ambled over to the closest of the rituals.

How exactly do we summon a demon, then?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  

Spell Insight has reached level 18!

In a weird way, I was actually disappointed with how easy it was to summon a demon. I’d gone in thinking it would take me days or weeks to make serious progress by myself, cross-referencing between the two rituals and my memories from Ephesis. In reality, the spell diagrams were strangely simple, almost to a suspicious extent.

Part of it was me, of course. Understanding and Spell Insight latched onto my single level of Demonic Summoning, all three of them helping me decipher the meaning of the two rituals. Any context I lacked was usually granted by sifting through my memories of watching High Priest Ephesis summon his own demons. Even so, I thought there was more at play here, and with a start, I realized what I was seeing.

The system is doing all the work, isn’t it?

I already knew from my scattered teachings with the archmage that the system wasn’t fully necessary to cast magic. I still needed the system to cast even the simplest of spells, but theoretically, if I had the mana and my mana manipulation was good enough, I could travel to the deadlands or even Earth and cast most of the spells I knew. A spellform interfaced with the surrounding world, directly subverting natural laws to create magic.

On the flipside, a lot of skills, pretty much everything to do with classes, and a rare few spells relied on the system. You asked the system to do something for you, and it handled the rest.

With the demonic summoning rituals in front of me, I was pretty sure this was an instance of the latter. None of the so-called “runes” I was seeing thrummed with genuine power. Instead, it felt like a very basic language to interact with the system. I hadn’t gotten that feeling when looking at the ritual surrounding Sett, so I was confident there was genuine ritual magic out there, but this felt like the Ritual Magic for Dummies version.

Each ritual consisted of five concentric circles, all of which seemed to have a distinct purpose.

The center had no runes at all, just a simple wagon-wheel spokes pattern. I thought this might be to help the mana flow more evenly across the ritual, but I wasn’t entirely sure.

The second ring seemed to specify a location. Had this been real magic, that probably would have been some horribly complex inter-realm coordinate-based spatial magic. With the system simplifying things, the only rune needed here was one that Understanding translated to just “the hells.” From my memories with Ephesis, I was pretty sure you could narrow things down further and specify one of the specific 99 of them, but it seemed the dungeon had no reason to, and neither did I. The rune simply repeated around the entirety of the second ring.

The third ring specified the target. Once again, I could recall Ephesis completing more complicated rituals, summoning specific demonic evolutions. I got the vague sense I could target sub-characteristics, like the demon’s level, too, but I wasn’t entirely sure how.

Here, the rituals differed. The first contained a rune that translated to Drudge while the second said Peasant. If I’d understood Cezerra’s ramblings while beating me up, this corresponded to the rank of the summoned demon.

The fourth was meant to entice a demon to accept the summons. It wasn’t anything binding like a contract, but it laid out in the most broad terms what a demon might hope to gain by coming and what was expected of them. For drudges, this was entirely blank, presumably because the soulless creatures couldn’t resist the summoning at all. For the peasants, it looked like there was a spot to place an object that might serve as a bribe to accept the summons.

From my memories of Ephesis, I knew the fifth was supposed to be the most important of the five, containing and binding the demon in question. Properly done, it would prevent a demon from escaping the circle until they came to an understanding with their summoner. It also determined some of the details of summoning, like whether or not the summons was permanent or temporary.

Once again, this ring was almost entirely blank on both rituals. Neither had any containment runes, and all that was written was “permanent summons.” Even my level one Demonic Summoning cried out in alarm at that, but then again, if I was summoning un-evolved drudges, I doubted I would need much protection.

And that was it. It would remain to be seen if I could power the rituals properly, and I wasn’t sure how the dungeon’s spatial barrier would thwart my efforts, but all in all, I felt I knew what I was doing. I’d been hoping to use the following days to iron out my plans, but my speedy understanding had me at a loss for what to do next. Before I started to blindly try summoning an army for Cezerra, I figured it was time to sit down and work things out.

Okay. Fight, flee, comply, or stall?

In the short term, fighting was out. My new Intrusion Resistance offered a possible path to victory if I trained it, but I doubted it would be enough by itself. More than that, my body was a mess right now. I wasn’t so outclassed that I had no chance of winning, but I’d at least want a few more class points and some time to heal first.

Running away was even less of an option. In addition to my sorry state, I was fairly sure Cezerra would catch me. Given that she knew when we’d originally entered the region, she had some way of sensing our presence from afar. Worse yet, I’d start taking damage from the region’s demonic mana if I left the area surrounding the collection crystal, and even if I did escape, there was no guarantee she wouldn’t come find me and drag me back. I still didn’t know how long she could leave the region for.

Complying was… possible, but also not something I was thrilled with. However hard it was to kill her now, it would be considerably harder once she had an army of obedient demons at her beck and call. Maybe it would help to drop her guard, but for now, I wasn’t willing to actually consider taking her up on her offer. At the moment, I would rather go out fighting than spend the next two hundred years trapped here.

I guess we’re stalling, then. Hopefully an opportunity would present itself with time, and if it didn’t, I’d just have to make one for myself. 

Do we think I could trick her into letting me leave? She didn’t know about my storage space or my Satiated Stomach skill. Maybe I could convince her to let me out of the region to hunt for food? Or would she be interested in learning about Sett? I was fairly certain the grand magus could kill her with a snap of his fingers if we managed to lure her over to him.

Regardless, that level of scheming could wait. For now, it was time to twiddle my thumbs and heal.

It was good I’d taken the time to plan things out, as Cezerra chose that moment to barge back into the ritual chamber, her heavy, plodding steps giving me plenty of warning. Voice echoing off the surrounding stone, she called out.

“So? You figure it all out? Should I be expecting an army by tomorrow?” There was a jovial lilt to her voice that suggested the words were mostly a joke, but an undercurrent of poorly disguised greed came through, making me scared not to meet her expectations.

Shamelessly and without reservation, I lied without lying. “It’s complicated. And I’ve never summoned a demon before. I don’t think I’ll be able to repair the broken drudge ritual, so I’d have to recreate it from scratch. It might take me a while.”

Though she didn’t even attempt to hide the disappointment from her eyes, Cezerra merely shrugged. “Eh. Been here for a long time. Plan to be here for a lot longer. Couple weeks won’t kill me as long as you’re not yanking my chain. And if you are, you’ll give up eventually. Here, let your teacher help…”

At last, I received the lesson I’d expected to get originally, but Cezerra didn’t have much to say that I hadn’t already figured out with my skills and memories. As an interesting side note, apparently the system-facilitated rituals wouldn’t work if a demon activated them, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. I imagined it was less an actual limit of the magic and more a system failsafe mechanism to prevent demons from summoning their own armies.

Other than that, her explanations were often vague and unhelpful, and it was clear the boss was no natural born teacher. If anything, that was actually helpful, as it let me feign confusion, selling the illusion that I’d need weeks before I had any hope of completing her request.

Visibly frustrated, Cezerra practically stormed out of the chamber afterwards, and I could only be glad that I was in no condition to fight, or otherwise she likely would have picked one.

With her off my back, I continued to idly study the rituals, all the while devising further plans to survive.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For a few days, things continued in much the same way.

I sat in the ritual chamber. I healed. I pretended to make slow progress on recreating the ritual.

A few surreptitious activations of Satiated Stomach and Aqua Lung took care of my hunger and thirst. I didn’t want her to know I had actual food in my storage space in case I went through with my plan of asking her to let me go hunt in a different region, but I had little desire to make the attempt until I was healed.

I thought there was a very small chance I could simply repair the rituals with Move Earth or even some melted metal, healing the slices taken out of them, but I didn’t tell Cezerra that. Instead, I moved to an empty section of the floor and summoned a hammer and chisel with my mana, carving out the start of a replica. 

It was enough to satisfy the demon’s need for visible progress, and if I needed to stall further, I’d just make some “accidental” mistakes, that would make the ritual fail, forcing me to start over. Without Cezerra knowing my exact stats, memory abilities, and Stoneworking skills, she had no way of calling me out on any intentional failures.

Still, as much as my plan right now mostly boiled down to “stall and wait until something changes,” I was caught off guard when that change actually occurred. Mostly, I’d been expecting to handle everything myself once my bones fully healed.

It thus came as no small shock when I was working one day and a black-clad figure appeared out of nowhere.

On instinct, I lashed out with a dagger of mana, quickly aborting my strike once my mind caught up with what I was seeing. At the tip of my blade, a shit-eating grin merrily greeted me.

There, none the worse for wear, the holy princess of Ftheran reveled in her dramatic entrance.

“Hey Tess. Miss me?”