Chapter 609

Chapter 609: ritual

Today’s blood food was brought into the hall.

Richard stood below the high platform, beside the “Dream-Skull”. He watched as gray?robed congregants pushed two elves forward. Like everyone else, his face stayed calm, but there was a faint hint of expectation in it.

The two elves, one male and one female, wore clothes that were already ragged. Under the torn fabric, their bodies were covered in marks left by many rounds of torment—not only wounds from past sacrificial rites, but also scars from all the “research” and “tests” carried out with the Dream-Skull before.

When they were first brought into the hall, their faces were numb. But when they saw the “saint” and the “Dream-Skull” below the platform, terror still spread from their eyes. They tried to struggle. However, the saint only swayed his eye stalks a little. Under his gaze, the two elves went limp, their whole bodies paralyzed and unable to resist. After that, a gray?robed congregant holding a sharp knife stepped forward.

The ritual dagger had been polished until it shone. Under the cultists’ hidden, devout, eager gazes, the blade cut into the elves’ flesh—the arms, the thighs, the back, all places that would not kill them. It was as if someone had planned to inflict the greatest pain while keeping them alive. The bloodletter cut into the sacrificial victims with skilled, silent strokes.

Yet under the saint’s gaze, the “sacrificial victims” could not even scream or struggle. The man and woman stood stiff as boards as several gray?robed people held them up beside the heavy cart. Only the sudden, twisted contortions on their faces showed the terrible pain they were suffering. Blood poured from their fresh cuts, and as if drawn by an invisible force, it floated up against gravity. Then it all flowed into a series of “blood troughs” built into the upper level of the heavy cart.

The blood flowed along the grooves toward the jet?black Goathead that looked as if it had been carved from wood.

At the moment the blood touched the “Dream-Skull”, a terrible aura and shocking power burst out of Goathead.

The Annihilators closest to it felt the surge at once. Richard felt as if countless layered shrieks and howls drilled straight into his brain. They rushed wildly through his mind as if they meant to tear his soul apart. He saw the jet?black Goathead start to tremble violently and rock from side to side, as if it were about to come to life. A powerful, malicious will, still chaotic and unclear, seemed to wake up inside it. Richard could feel its gaze sweeping across the hall.

The “Dream-Skull” had awakened.

The two elves used as sacrificial victims had already fainted. Gray?robed men acting as “deacons” dragged them aside at once. The gray?robed congregant who held the sharp knife and had carried out the bloodletting himself lifted the ritual dagger high and cried out in wild joy:

“I have been accepted! The Lord will take me in—”

The next second, a terrifying distortion fell on the bloodletter. From beneath his gray robe came the sounds of flesh tearing and bones being ground apart. His clothes bulged as the substance of his entire body was corrupted, twisted, and crushed in an instant. Countless tentacles seemed to sprout from under his robe. His face cracked open in too many places to count, each gap sprouting a writhing tongue. Yet the sharp pain seemed to have nothing to do with him. The fanatic cheered and shouted at the top of his lungs, calling on the holy Lord’s name, until his life finally faded and his warped body crashed heavily to the ground.

The bloodletter’s “martyrdom” meant the ritual had fully succeeded.

“Take those two ‘blood food’ down,” the saint on the platform ordered at once. “Keep them alive and ready for the next bloodletting.

“Gather the blood flowing out of the troughs and distribute it to the gathering sites in the other city?states. It will be used for their dreamwalking rituals.

“Those who have been chosen, step forward and touch the ‘Dream-Skull’. It is time to prove yourselves.”

The saint’s orders were carried out at once. The two weak elves were dragged out of the hall, leaving two glaring trails of blood on the floor. Other congregants came to the eerie “Goathead” and collected the elves’ blood that had touched the Dream-Skull. That blood now held the power to open a dream. It was not as strong as the Dream-Skull itself, but with the help of a ritual it could still guide a user’s mind into the Nameless One’s dream. It would be a key material for their fellow believers hiding in the city?states when they carried out dreamwalking rituals.

But their core explorers still had to be those “elite priests” who touched the Dream-Skull directly.

Richard took a deep breath, stepped forward, and placed his hand on the Dream-Skull’s horn.

The shrieking once again pierced his mind. Terrifying pressure burst out of Goathead as dreadful power swept over him. In that instant, the Annihilator felt his mind tear free of his body. He “saw” his viewpoint rise rapidly while the world around him dimmed. He saw his flesh?and?blood body fall backward and then get caught and dragged away by the believers beside him…

In a daze, he also saw a strange stuffed rabbit doll. The stuffed rabbit doll was tiptoeing behind his body, as if it meant to hide itself in his body’s shadow to avoid the saint’s gaze…

A rabbit? Why is there a rabbit?

Richard felt a brief flash of confusion, but in the next second he forgot all about it.

The Nameless One’s dream opened its doors to him.

…

The transformation happened.

Duncan could clearly feel a change in the “atmosphere”. The scene in front of him did not seem to change much, but he knew that after the nine o’clock chime, this “reflection of the Vanished” had turned into another kind of… “thing”.

The Chronometer Clock on the opposite wall shifted back from its mirrored state. The hands that had been turning counterclockwise now resumed their normal clockwise motion. Other things in the room that had been reversed by the mirror effect also quietly returned to normal. The gloom that had filled the air thinned a little. Outside the window, the hazy deck and rail became clear again. The sea and sky that had looked like the Spirit Realm vanished, replaced by the familiar endless darkness and fog.

This was no longer a “reflection”. Now it was Goathead’s dream, sailing within Atlantis’s dream—another Vanished.

Yet for the moment, Duncan’s attention was not on the ship.

“…Those cultists actually used the ‘Dream-Skull’ by pouring elves’ blood onto that Goathead,” he said, his face twisted with mixed feelings. “And it actually worked…”

Agatha’s voice came from the mirror beside him—after the transformation, she had gone back into the mirror: “From Rabby’s description, it looks less like the ritual ‘succeeded’ and more like the Dream-Skull got provoked and then executed the person performing the ritual—and they treat that ‘execution’ as an honor.

“For now, the elves used as ‘sacrificial victims’ probably won’t be in danger of dying. The cultists will keep them alive as a steady source of blood. But before this ritual ‘matured’, many elves who served as sacrificial victims may already have died on that ship…”

Duncan did not speak for a moment. He only nodded, his face dark. A few seconds later, he glanced at the mirror not far away.

Agatha’s figure was reflected in it, but the mirror no longer showed the image of the Radiant Star in the Mortal Realm. Lucretia’s figure had vanished as well.

She, who had stayed behind in Lightwind Harbor, should have entered the “dream” by now.

“Lucy, how are things on your side?”

“It looks like the Vanished sailing away from Lightwind Harbor can’t stop the Nameless One’s dream from happening. I’m back in this forest already, and Shirley is with me,” Lucretia’s voice sounded in Duncan’s mind. “I’ve also linked up with Rabby. It’s still parasitizing that cultist and hasn’t been exposed yet.”

Duncan stayed quiet for two or three seconds: “…What do you think of the ritual they’re carrying out?”

“A bunch of crazy idiots using crazy, stupid methods to deal with fragments of the Elder Gods. Their thinking is wrong, their methods are wrong, and the cost is huge—but somehow they still got part of what they wanted. As a scholar, I don’t understand it and I don’t accept it,” Lucretia said. Her face was tense, and her tone carried a kind of grievance. “It’s like a group of halfwits taking sticks to a broken Sorting Engine—banging and kicking it—only to somehow fix the machine. It’s just…”

She struggled for a long time and finally squeezed out: “It’s a disgrace to all intelligent life!”

Duncan said quietly: “But they did succeed—even if their method looks suicidal.”

Lucretia’s expression grew even more tangled than before.

Noticing the bitter look on the young witch’s face, Duncan did not poke at her further. Instead, he changed the topic without making it obvious: “It seems there really is more than one Goathead. But not many of them have a complete, sane mind. It might even be that only my ‘First Mate’ does.”

He paused for a moment, thinking as he went on: “And precisely because the ‘Goathead’ in those cultists’ hands isn’t fully sane, their ridiculous ritual had a chance to work. The Dream-Skull only reacts to outside stimuli by instinct. One of those instinctive responses just happens to help those Annihilators open a door into the Nameless One’s dream.

“We still don’t know whether they stumbled on this ‘operating method’ by themselves or were taught it by those rambling Enders. And even if we figure out how the Annihilators ‘dreamwalk’, the way those ‘Suntists’ get into the Nameless One’s dream is still a mystery…”

“Do those followers of the Black Sun also have a ‘Goathead’?” Lucretia blurted out.

“Anything is possible—but my gut says it isn’t that simple,” Duncan said, frowning and shaking his head. “So far, there have only been two kinds of Sun followers who entered the Nameless One’s dream. One is that ‘spawn of the Sun’ that showed up once at the start. The other is those human?like but not human ‘Sun remnants’. Ordinary human priests and Suntists have never appeared there. And whether it’s the ‘spawn’ or the ‘remnants’, none of them are human.

“They are ‘tumors’ of the Elder Gods, with mental structures very different from humans.

“The way those things enter the Nameless One’s dream may be completely different from the Annihilators’ method.”