Settling down his thoughts on the Tower's history, Deacon closed the book and placed it back onto the shelf before reaching into his Spatial Sling Bag to pull out something that had been on his mind ever since he got it: the Grimoire of the Ritualist of Huitzilopochtli.
The cover alone unsettled him. The blackened hide that it was made out of was still warm to the touch, even though it had been in his Spatial Storage for over a day and a half, and his Spatial Storage did not have any time dilation properties.
As he brushed aside as much dust on both the chair and table in front of him, he placed down the grimoire on the table and flipped it open.
Deacon leaned forward, eyes narrowing at the script that crawled across the first page. The words bent and reformed until they settled into something he could understand.
"Man… Why me man…" Deacon groaned as he read the short blurb on the first page that praised Huitzilopochtli as the greatest ritualist and god and skipped to the next page.
Why was he the only one who could open this damned thing when Sam had gone through the exact same ritual? Was it just because he finished it while Sam hadn't? Was that what forged some thread of connection between him and Huitzilopochtli? And if so, what the hell did that even mean beyond being able to crack open a grimoire that practically screamed "bad idea"?
The thought dug into his ribs like a blade, but he shoved it down and forced himself to focus on the text, trying to see what he got himself into.
The very next page after the short blurb immediately went to the first ritual, and from what he read, it sounded pretty simple, or as simple as blood, bone dust, and fire ever got.
The Lesser Heart-Fire ritual is a ritual meant to boost his Vitality and Endurance temporarily with no side effects if done properly.
Deacon's mouth pressed thin as he read line by line, his thumb absently tracing the edge of the page. "The hell are these instructions…"
"Nothing I can do about worrying about it now when shits been done and dug," he muttered under his breath, leaning back in his chair and dragging both hands over his face. "I'll figure it out later. Tier 2 healer, curse breaker, priest – whatever the hell's available to see if they could remove this connection I have with Huitzilopochtli. Worst case, I'll ask Uncle Bjorn when I see him on Floor Ten if he knows someone who could help."
He sat in silence for a moment as he listened to the library creak faintly around him due to a brush of wind coming from a slightly ajar window that overlooked the courtyard below.
Maybe he knows something about Dad I don't… he thought to himself with a grimace.
The thought came quieter than the rest, almost as if he were to even voice it aloud, he'd never be able to take it back. The only one who had truly helped him back onto his feet after getting captured by the Academy Enforcers and forced to attend the academy was his Uncle Bjorn, the one who got him settled at the academy and stayed on as a teacher for two more years just for him before setting out again to climb the Tower. Even after leaving, Bjorn would check in from time to time to see how he was doing.
"Fuck me… to think I'm even considering the idea of Uncle Bjorn hiding this from me is… fuck me, man," Deacon muttered to himself.
Focusing back onto the Grimoire of the Ritualist of Huitzilopochtli, Deacon forced himself to set his thoughts aside and put his attention where it needed to be. He didn't have the luxury of spacing out, not with the Floor's timer still ticking down and him having less time to figure out what this grimoire contained and if it could be helpful to him, potentially even make him consider using it as a catalyst for his secondary class.
Deacon's eyes roamed over the materials required for the Lesser Heart-Fire ritual; a brazier of burning charcoal, a sharp silver blade, a shard of obsidian, and the heart of a beast he personally killed, one equal to his own level at the time of the ritual, and it must be in perfect condition.
From there, he would be required to carve a shallow circle over his sternum with the blade, bleed onto the shard of obsidian, set it into the brazier after inserting the bloodied obsidian shard into the heart, then chant an incantation, and after the heart turned purple, he would have to consume it.
His eyes lingered on the last part longer than he wanted.
Still, the end result wasn't something he could just brush off, as it would grant him +5 Endurance and +4 Vitality for an entire month. With zero side effects, he reminded himself.
"While this all sounds like some bullshit," Deacon muttered under his breath, leaning back against the creaking chair, "getting that big of a boost to both Endurance and Vitality for an entire month does sound good… especially considering the competition in a week's time."
He drummed his fingers along the table, eyeing the pages as if the text might shift again. A month of added durability wasn't something to ignore. One extra second of standing his ground in a fight could mean the difference between victory and bleeding out on the floor.
Turning the next couple of pages, Deacon's eyes skimmed over a large catalogue of ritual circles and designs that were scrawled across the parchment. He only half-traced their patterns with a finger before reaching into his Spatial Sling Bag again and pulling out one of his old Status Pages and staring at the stats displayed below his three resource pools.
Vitality was the stat that represented his overall health and toughness. It also determined how much punishment his body could take before he would croak and worked in tandem with Endurance for resisting disease and poisons.
Strength was the stat that measured his physical might and how hard he could hit – it was a pretty straightforward stat.
Endurance was the stat that represented his overall stamina pool, and it covered everything from physical durability to resistance against exhaustion, environmental hazards, and, like Vitality, his ability to shake off sickness or toxins. It also worked in tandem with Willpower to represent his magical resistance.
Agility was the stat that represented his speed, reflexes, and overall nimbleness. It wasn't the same as Dexterity, and that difference had mattered back when he'd chosen Warrior over Rogue. Dexterity was Agility with a finer edge, but it emphasized finesse, accuracy with weapons, lockpicking, and the kind of skillset rogues and other finesse-oriented classes built their whole style around.
Dexterity was effectively Agility+, but it came with a caveat; once you picked it up, you were practically locked into an Evolutionary Class Path where, when the time came to Tier Up, you would need to select a Class that had Dexterity as a stat.
The Intelligence stat represented his magical power, aka the potency of his spells. It had nothing to do with actual brains, which is why Sam, who probably had triple Deacon's Intelligence stat, was still dumb as bricks.
Wisdom, just like Strength, was pretty straightforward in that it represented his total mana pool.
Willpower represented his resistance against mental magics and affected the rate at which his mana pool would regenerate. It also worked in tandem with Endurance to represent his magical resistance.
And finally, Perception measured his awareness of his surroundings, the sharpness of his senses, and how quickly he could recognize danger.
He stared at the spread of stats, thumb pressed against the paper. All of them had their value, but seeing them lined up next to the descriptions he knew by heart made the ritual's offer feel heavier – a month-long boost of +5 Endurance and +4 Vitality that could be stackable with other buffs and pills.
He knew exactly where those points would push him. Exactly how much farther he could run, how much harder he could fight, how much longer he could last with a blade buried in his side before his body gave up.
"It's a really good buff, better than the Lesser Beastblood Tonic I found on Floor One and way better than some of the ones I saw when passing by a Tier 1's Alchemy shop without any of the side effects," he said as he let out a slow breath, his eyes flicking back toward the grimoire.
Putting away his Status Page back into his Spatial Sling Bag and turning the grimoire to the next page, Deacon's brow furrowed as he read through another ritual.
The Lesser Rite of the Sun's Maw.
The fucking what? He thought to himself as he subconsciously scooted forward and leaned in closer to the grimoire.
The procedure wasn't anything like the Lesser Heart-Fire ritual in the simplicity of its procedure.
The Lesser Rite of the Sun's Maw required him to draw a ritual circle called the Circle of the Devouring Sun, set up a brazier filled with copal resin, have a silver knife, and a sacrifice of someone equal to his own level.
Human? Beast? Elf? Humanoid? Creature? Monster?... Jötunn? He didn't know, but going off from a cartoonish image of the ritual, the sacrifice in the middle of the circle looked like some sort of humanoid being.
His grip tightened against the edge of the table as he forced himself to keep reading the ritual's procedure.
The sacrifice was to be placed in the circle, while he stood behind them, facing east at sunrise. He would need to drive the silver blade through their chest, cut free their heart while the sun crested the horizon, raise it high to the light, and cast it into the brazier. Then, after smearing the sacrifice's blood onto his body and chanting an incantation would the ashes of the heart rise from the brazier and merge with the blood smeared onto his body, turning the color of the smeared blood blue and forming into a spiral-like temporary tattoo over his heart – which would mark the ritual as being completed and successful.
This was exactly the type of thing he envisioned seeing when he read the word ritualist on the grimoire's description and why he'd been hesitant to even think about reading it in any public capacity – it just sounded evil, like really evil.
"Bro…" Deacon muttered, voice caught somewhere between disbelief and disgust. He dragged a hand down his face, thumb and forefinger pinching his eyes shut. "What the actual fuck did I just read?"
He flicked his eyes down toward the end of the chapter, where the effect of the ritual was listed as if it were displayed in a convenience store.
Successfully completing the ritual would offer a bonus of +5 Vitality, +4 Strength, and +2 Endurance for a duration of seven days, and only a minor effect of -1 Perception for as long as the boons did.
Deacon stared at the effects of the ritual in shock as the value of the bonuses did not go over his head. It was offering a serious boost to the point where even the -1 to Perception felt small compared to the raw combat edge it offered.
But the ritual to get there…
He blew out a sharp breath, leaning back in the chair as the old wood creaked under his weight. His jaw worked silently for a moment, words refusing to come. Finally, all he could manage was a low mutter, "I mean, the stat bonuses alone sound amazing, even with the Perception hit, but this whole thing sounds…"
His eyes narrowed on the cartoonish image of the humanoid that was bound up and crouched in the middle of the ritual circle.
"…so fucking evil."
The words dropped heavy in the silence of the library. Do I even hate or despise anyone enough to even use them in a ritual like this?... Jeremiah, maybe?... but even then…
He didn't even know what unsettled him more; the brutality of the ritual or the fact that a part of him, the part already measuring his chances against the competition, had actually paused to weigh the numbers before his brain slammed the brakes.