Deacon cleared out his throat for one last time as a cleaning spell washed over him in a wave of faint blue light, the stench of blood and the coppery sting in his throat finally dissolving into nothing.
"Thanks," he muttered, rolling his jaw as he looked back at the winged man down below and Identified him.
[Angel Lv 9]
"You're welcome," Sam said, shaking out his fingers as the light faded from his palms.
"I helped too," Esmerelda added flatly, still kneeling beside him. She flicked a damp rag off to the side, now stained dark red. "While Sam focused on cleansing your mouth and internals, I focused on cleaning your armor and skin; you reeked just as bad as a zombie."
"Charming."
Deacon now sat cross-legged, his skin finally free of blood, bile, and whatever half-coagulated filth had been floating in that sea of blood he'd apparently landed in, and inhaled.
Glancing at the System Notification that hovered in the corner of his vision, Deacon saw that he'd finally gotten his Race to Lv 10.
*Your Race has reached Lv 10 – Points allocated, +1 Free Point*
How? Deacon wondered to himself. None of the creatures I killed were above level 0, and the twintongued serpents were only level 7s… Was it the ritual?
It must have been, Deacon mused just as he looked inside his Spatial Sling Bag and noticed that two items within it were now available to him. He could now equip both the Chestpiece of the Barbarian and the Belt of the Barbarian as he reached level 10 in his race.
Which also meant he could see what that 2-piece set bonus did beyond the vague flavor text in both items' descriptions.
He reached toward the Spatial Sling Bag at his side, fingers brushing the edge of the buckle, then paused.
"Hey, Sam?" he said without looking. "How did we end up here?"
Sam, who'd been sitting on the edge of the platform with his feet dangling over the blood lake like it was just a swimming pool, while idly staring at the regenerated arm he'd lopped off. "I don't know."
Deacon glanced over at him.
Sam sighed. "The last thing I remember was that I was almost finished chanting whatever was written on that altar. It was all gibberish to me, but for some reason, the words just started flowing into my mind and to my tongue, and I could feel it start to work. Then something pricked my palm that I had on the altar, and it felt just like the needle that gave us this," he said, raising his wrist, the one with the slave binding. "I didn't even notice it right away, until whatever the hell it injected into me started crawling up my arm."
His lip curled. "Felt like I got pumped full of acid spiders that practically set every nerve on fire up my arm on fire. I tried pulling my arm away, screaming inside my own head to shut the hell up and stop chanting, but I couldn't, I couldn't stop chanting, I couldn't move my hand away. It was like the slave brand all over again in which we couldn't move, but worse, it was like… something was controlling my body and rewriting me."
There was a pause as Sam got back up, and Deacon's gaze dropped to Sam's left arm, the one that had scales growing on it, and looked fused to the altar. Now it looked unblemished and clean, with not a patch of skin that looked out of place or a scale.
From below, Bonehead snorted, his voice rising up from the blood like a foghorn. "The fuck is up with these cultist freaks and molestin' our hands all the time? Do these fucks have some sort of hand fetish or somethin'?"
Deacon barked out a dry laugh in spite of himself. "Actual fuckin' facts. It's never the legs like in some horror movies and always the most cliché thing."
"I like my hands," Sam muttered.
Jass arrived a couple of seconds after, having conjured herself her very own pillar beneath her feet that reached ten feet in height, and brought her to the very same platform everyone else was on before the pillar she conjured went back into the temple ground.
To which Bonehead immediately said in a mocking tone, "Guys, guys don't use earth magic or damage or manipulate the temple, we could cave – Aghk!" he yelped as a solid chunk of rock smacked into the front of his skull and knocked his robe's hood back, courtesy of Jass.
She stood there, arms crossed, her face twitching with a mixture of annoyance and embarrassment, while Sam snorted, Deacon, who was now brushing himself off as he stood fully upright, let out a low chuckle, and even Jass smirked a little at the scene, while the angel remained disinterested and as unreadable as ever.
"Serves you right," she muttered under her breath.
"Anyways," Sam said, rolling his shoulder and glancing down at his newly healed arm like he didn't entirely trust it even after getting it cleansed and healed with every spell he knew and every potion Bonehead had on hand, along with the angel's help, "the pain kept growing, and so were the scales, looking like the serpents he and I killed in order to start the ritual. It was… I dunno how to put it into words, but it felt like my hand was now becoming my hand, like whatever the ritual was doing was twisting me from the inside out, and it only stopped when Deacon chopped my damn arm off, and that's when everything went black."
Esmerelda, now standing with arms akimbo and her expression hardened into something more thoughtful, turned her eyes on Deacon. "So what happened after that? And how did you know chopping his arm off would work?"
"I didn't," Deacon said bluntly, opening and closing his own left hand while staring at it. "I barely heard Sam's shouting through the loud noise the ritual was making, along with the screams of the transformed snake people, but I caught just enough to tell that he wasn't chanting in whatever the fuck these Aztecs said, and that he was shouting in agony. When I got to him and saw the scales growing on his left arm, I just thought, fuck it. I refuse to let my friend end up like one of those mindless, animalistic, transformed snake people I was killing just seconds ago. So, I made a call in that moment. Worst-case scenario, if it didn't stop the transformation, I'd use my share of the loot to pay for a full cleanse and rejuvenation potion or hire a Tier 2 healer for Sam once we got out."
He paused, then looked over at Sam. "Figured you'd do the same if it were me."
"And I would've," Sam said without hesitation, nodding in agreement. "Whatever the hell happened to those people in that ritual room… I'd rather be dead than turn into that."
A heavy silence followed. Not awkward, just… grim. The kind that came with shared trauma, a mutual understanding of lines neither of them was willing to cross.
"After I took off his arm," Deacon finally continued, "I figured I might as well finish what he started. The ritual was almost done anyway, and if it was gonna kill us all, I figured better me than Sam. I yelled out the last few words… Everything turned white… and next thing I know, I'm waking up here with a mouth full of copper."
"Did scales start growing on you?" Jass asked, a hint of tension in her voice as she stepped a bit closer.
Before Deacon could answer, the angel, who had thus far been utterly silent, finally spoke.
"I detected nothing abnormal within his body," the angel said, his voice calm. "I used Healer's Sight, and after your collective insistence, I cast every restorative spell I knew. He is in perfect health."
Deacon turned to him, sticking out a hand. "Ah. I'm Deacon Hayes. Thanks for healing me, uh…"
The angel stared at his hand for an awkward beat too long, then cautiously extended his own and clasped Deacon's in a firm shake.
"Cabel Azazel Saelan," he said. "After I had finished my second trial, I was trapped in some sort of holding chamber for several days. When I awoke from my rest, I found Bonehead attempting to sneakily try and pluck one of my feathers."
"That's not how it actually happened," Bonehead shouted from below, rubbing his head with exaggerated offense. "I was examining them for alchemical purposes!"
"Without my permission," Cabel said flatly.
Sam wheezed with laughter while Deacon smirked as Esmerelda groaned, and Jass just sighed, rubbing her temples, at Bonehead's actions.
"Anyway," Cabel said, unfazed, "I was stuck with him through two more trials. Then, after the fourth trial, the two of us ended up here, on this platform in the middle of a sea of blood, alongside the four of you, with Esmerelda and Jass watching over your unconscious bodies," he added, shooting a pointed glance at Sam and Deacon.
Deacon nodded, then glanced around at the others.
"I honestly do feel fine. Nothing feels wrong on my end," Deacon said, giving his arms a stretch and testing his joints like he was waiting for some hidden pain or scale to suddenly erupt.
When nothing happened, he looked at the others. "So, uh… what do we do now? Do we just keep going through trials until we find the tree?"
"Nope," Bonehead said, way too smug for someone with a fresh bruise on his forehead. He raised one bony finger with a theatrical flourish and pointed off toward the far left side of the chamber like he was unveiling a magic trick.
Deacon followed the gesture… and frowned. All he saw was more of the blood lake, gently rippling in unnatural patterns and reflecting the faint red light from the chamber's torches. "...What am I supposed to be seeing here?"
Bonehead stared at him, deadpan. "Bruh, you seriously gotta up your Perception stat if you can't see that. Look closer."
Well, Bonehead wasn't wrong; his Perception stat was 14, the lowest stat he had, followed by Intelligence at 15.
Deacon squinted, leaned forward, and furrowed his brow as he tried to focus on the spot Bonehead was indicating. For a few seconds, nothing changed… until he saw it. Barely two feet high, nearly drowned in the blood tide, was a thin, sickly-looking sapling, its bark a dark crimson that blended in almost perfectly with its surroundings, the leaves small and glossy like wet bone chips.
Huitzilopochtli Ceiba Tree – Growing
That's all the Identification told him.
"Oh," Deacon muttered, blinking. "That's… okay, I'll give it to you, I definitely missed that."
"How long do we gotta wait 'til it grows?" Sam asked, stepping closer and peering over Deacon's shoulder.
"About thirty minutes or so," Bonehead replied, casually flopping onto his back at the edge of the platform like he was settling in for a nap. "I planted it like six-ish minutes ago, right after Cabel and I decided to go and hunt around the area for stuff after we did all we could for both you and Sam, using the instructions I found in the same chest the seed was in. Judging by the rate it's been growing, we've got maybe twenty-four minutes left till it's fully grown, and we can extract its sap. Give or take a couple minutes."
Deacon glanced back toward the tree, its thin trunk almost pulsing with slow, unnatural life as the blood lapped at its roots. "So, what now?"
"We wait," Sam shrugged before getting an idea and reaching inside his own Spatial Satchel and taking out a worn-looking brown book and tossing it to him.
"What's this?" Deacon asked as he caught the book and gave it a once over, noticing how plain it was and how there was a clasp of some sort keeping the book closed.
"Open it," Sam said, getting everyone else's attention.
"…Okay…" Deacon said, raising a brow at getting everyone's attention.
Bringing his fingers to the clasp and clicking it open, Deacon raised his other brow at the words he was greeted with.
Item Name: Grimoire of the Ritualist of Huitzilopochtli
Type: Grimoire
Rarity: Unique
Description:
A thick, sun-cracked tome bound in dark hide and sealed with obsidian clasps. This grimoire is entrusted only to those who are members of the clergy of Huitzilopochtli. Contained within are rites of blood, binding, and various other spells and rituals that would grant one the knowledge to become a Ritualist of Huitzilopochtli. The pages turn only for those recognized by the temple, and attempting to open it without the proper rites scorches the hands of the offender.
Effects: Grants access to sacred rituals, hexes, and divine communion spells of Huitzilopochtli. If used during your Tier 2 evolution, you will be offered the Ritualist Class as either your main Class or your second Class if you so wish. Cannot be opened by non-initiates.
Requirements: A connection with Huitzilopochtli.