Chapter 427

Chapter 427: sacrificial rite

Ssshrip—

A vicious spike pierced through flesh, carving yet another meaningless wound into a body already covered in injuries. The whispers and howls at her ears suddenly grew excited. Those blasphemous creations seemed to crow with pride at the blow, letting out sickening noise.

Agatha raised her hand and struck back with her Gatekeeper’s cane, knocking away the Annihilator whose body bristled with bone spurs and had almost lost all human shape. A sharp, cracking sound rang beside her ear.

The sound stunned her for less than a second before she realized it was her own battle Gatekeeper’s cane breaking.

The weapon that had been with her for many years had snapped. Facing enemies that seemed without end, it had lasted to the very last step.

“You have already done very well, Miss Gatekeeper,” that disgusting, affected voice sounded again. “For a sacrificial victim, a bit of warm-up does help the effect of the sacrificial rite. But too much exercise is not good.”

Agatha held the broken Gatekeeper’s cane and slowly raised her head. Dried blood let her open only one eye. Through a narrow, red-tinged view, she finally saw the scene in the hall clearly.

The eerie shadowy overlay had faded. What now appeared before her was the center of the sewer, already turned completely into a place of sacrifice. On every wall and corridor around her, foul, blasphemous symbols and marks of corruption covered the stone. Things like stone stalagmites or dried branches spread across the ceiling above. On the floor of the hall in front of her lay a huge “pool”—

It had once been solid floor, now corroded into a vast pit. The pit was filled with thick, pitch-black sludge, slowly heaving and making wave after wave of nauseating, squelching sounds.

Countless Annihilators ringed the hall. They and the Abyssal demons that lived with them were like swarms of insects gathered around a stinking cauldron. They whispered blessings and let out crazed growls toward the pool of pitch-black sludge at the center of the hall. Under that noisy prayer, the sludge grew fuller and more active.

This was the site of a sacrificial rite. They were waiting for the final sacrificial victim. And in the eyes of these fanatics, that sacrificial victim was the Gatekeeper of the city-state of Frostholm.

Before this, they had even copied another Gatekeeper. Now that Gatekeeper too was reaching some sacrificial rite site.

“Actions you believe to be free will are in fact just steps toward a stage set long in advance. Don’t you find this arrangement rather… beautiful?”

In the center of the pool of black sludge, a young man with short blond hair spread his arms toward Agatha. His face was still handsome, but his entire lower body had already become a swollen, writhing mass. Now he was clearly some sort of “tip of a tentacle” that the sludge had stretched out and reshaped, mimicking human form in a nauseating way.

“All right, the time is almost here, and you have already adapted to this place. Now step forward. It is time for the sacrificial rite.”

At the edge of the sludge pool, a limb like a tentacle slowly rose. It grew out of the mud, and its tip slowly turned into a hard, dagger-like point.

That life-taking tentacle of the sacrificial rite slowly moved toward Agatha.

But Agatha only watched it quietly, then suddenly murmured: “More or less… this spot…”

She slowly reached toward her chest.

But in the next second, her movement suddenly stopped.

In that instant, she lost control of her own body.

“I know you want to do something—something not in our plan.”

In senses that had suddenly gone dull, she heard the blond young man’s voice coming from the other side. She tried with all her strength to raise her head, but could only see a bit of his figure at the edge of her vision.

“But sadly for you, to prevent the sacrificial victim from entering a runaway state, we prepared ‘safety measures’ from the very start. Did you never notice? All the way here, you wiped out so many replicas. You even destroyed more than ten of my avatar forms. All of that was only to bind you bit by bit to this city of mirror world.

“You felt you could sense the location of this sanctuary more and more clearly? You felt you could ‘smell’ us heretics more and more clearly? Did you ever wonder why that was changing?

“It is very simple. Before you reached this place, you were already one of us, my lady.”

Agatha finally raised her head. Before her, the sharp spike was slowly nearing her heart. Her body still could not move.

Now she finally understood the sense of wrongness she had felt on the way here. She understood why these cultists had wasted so many cannon-fodder lackeys on “war of attrition” tactics against her.

Everything had only been for slow, subtle corruption.

In the next second, the sharp spike went straight into her heart without any pause.

In the mud pool, the blond cultist suddenly raised his hands. The instant the Gatekeeper’s heart was pierced, he cried out in ecstatic prayer: “The sacrificial victim has been offered! The Saint’s life will be the first step in our lord’s kingdom descending! Call out the holy master’s name and welcome the promised day!”

In an instant, all the cultists in the hall shouted. Those misshapen figures who had symbiotic pacts with demons sank into frenzy, crying out the name of the Abyssal Deep lord in their madness. Some swung their own daggers and slashed open their flesh, pouring their blood into the black sludge surging in the center of the hall. Even the demons beside them fell into a fever, howling in all kinds of wild, broken voices!

Yet amid all the mad, twisted howling, the black matter in the sludge pool only churned violently for a few seconds before slowly growing calm again.

Standing in the center of the “pool”, the blond cultist finally sensed that something was wrong. He jerked out of his joy and stared in shock at the pool growing calm again. Then his gaze went to the spike that had pierced the Saint’s heart and to the Gatekeeper standing at the edge of the sacrificial rite grounds.

The Gatekeeper, covered in wounds and pale-faced.

“…You have no life?!” The madman finally lost his arrogance and poise. He pointed at Agatha in utter shock. “You… why are you a corpse?!”

Agatha looked at him calmly. At last, a small smile appeared at the corner of her mouth.

“Even though I hadn’t figured out your final goal before, how could I, as the Gatekeeper, fail to notice something was wrong with my own body…”

As she spoke, she slowly raised her arm. Now that the sacrificial rite had failed, she felt this body slowly coming back under her control.

“When I realized you wanted to lure me to the gathering place, realized this was likely some kind of sacrificial rite that demanded life, I did one thing…”

She slowly grasped the spike piercing her heart. Her fingers tightened bit by bit, and thin threads of emerald flame flowed between them, seeping into the spike.

She lifted her eyes and fixed her gaze on the cultist in the sludge pool.

“Every heretic sacrificial rite is based on fresh blood—I drained my own blood.”

“You… do you know what you’ve done?!” The madman’s eyes bulged with rage, his finger shaking as he pointed at Agatha. “You… you…”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s a small thing,” Agatha only smiled and shook her head. More and more flame leaked from her fingers. “As long as I can send the Fire Seed where it needs to go…”

“You said wh—”

The cultist in the sludge pool spoke without thinking, but before he could finish, another deafening boom suddenly came from the far side of the gathering hall. The earthshaking blast shattered the last strands holding this sacrificial rite together.

A large door deep in the hall, along with a wide stretch of wall beside it, was blown away by a load of high explosive!

Boom!!

Stone and concrete shattered and flew. Fragments of the door and countless bits of strange black matter mixed within swept into the hall like shrapnel. Several cultists closest to the door were blown away on the spot, and the rest cried out in shock—

“They broke through the door!”

“Impossible! They couldn’t break through for decades… How could a bunch of phantoms break their own loop?!”

In the center of the sludge pool, the blond cultist leader turned in shock toward the blast. But before he could see clearly the shapes charging in from beyond the thorned door, a pillar of green fire surged up at the edge of his sight.

He turned his gaze and saw that the sacrificial victim who should have been offered to the Abyssal Deep lord was now wrapped in flames, burning fiercely in a terrifying spirit form blaze!

The moment the door at the far end of the hall was blown open, Agatha finally broke fully free of the sacrificial rite’s control. In that brief instant, she ignited the Fire Seed.

The fuel was herself.

spirit flame surged up!

In a view suddenly filled with eerie green fire, Agatha saw that the wall opposite the “pool” had collapsed into a large hole. A group of people who looked like sailors, their bodies burning with the same green flames as hers, charged into the hall.

The flames on them resonated strongly with the Fire Seed burning on her.

Agatha smiled.

Knowledge flowed into her mind. She understood.

In the flames, she slowly spread her arms and lifted them as if in welcome.

“The fire is lit.”