Chapter 92

The ritual itself was kind of boring, at least from Luke’s perspective. Zea did all the work, which included walking around the circle repeatedly, chanting something that sounded ominous at first but which quickly became kind of boring and then a bit annoying as she droned on over and over, and messing around with the ingredients at specific times.

Luke’s part was to sit in the square and not touch anything, for an hour. He was extremely bored by the time the ritual was over, but he was trying not to show it. It seemed rude, considering how much effort Zea was putting into it. Her face was covered in a sheen of sweat and her voice had started to get hoarse about halfway through, but she’d powered on, and he thought she was almost done.

The pace of her chanting picked up, and her movements became more rapid. One by one, the ingredients started to crumble, or evaporate, or in the case of the incense, burn down. That was when things got interesting for him. All of the sudden, so unexpectedly that he damn near flinched and broke the chalk square around him, he could feel something tugging at him.

At the same time, something else was pushing him. Calling it an uncomfortable sensation would be a gross understatement. It felt like a fish hook had caught on his heart and was trying to pull it up through his throat. Meanwhile, his stomach was bearing down on his intestines and trying to push them out through his asshole.

Luke’s throat closed up and he grabbed at it as he gasped for breath. It wouldn’t open, and he was about to break the square to make the magic stop, but he forced himself to calm down. His stamina was high enough that he could hold his breath for at least half an hour. It wasn’t going to kill him if he couldn’t breathe right now, and Zea was almost done.

After settling back into place, he did his best to endure the rest of the ritual. Things popped, or were squished, or pulled on. Muscles cramped, all at once, and it was everything he could do to hold still. Luke grit his teeth against the pain and gasped out, “Hurry up,” to Zea, who was now looking at him with alarm while she chanted out what he hoped were the final lines of the ritual.

And then it was done. The ivory turned to dust, and the incense burned out in the bowl. The rock was nothing but sand now, the herbs ash. The animal heart somehow looked fresher, and wet. Even as Luke glanced at it though, the ritual ended and a fountain of blood gushed out, far more than the little organ could have possessed. A wave of dizziness passed through Luke at the exact same moment, and he collapsed backwards onto the ground.

“Luke!”

He heard the voice, but it was far away, unfamiliar. “Come on, wake up!” the voice said.

It was so hard to keep his eyes open, to even think straight. He just wanted to sleep. But something kept grabbing at him and shaking him, wouldn’t stop yammering in his ear. Begrudgingly, Luke cracked an eye open and saw a blur of strawberry-blonde hair framing an olive-colored face.

“Use the skill, damn it. Do it!”

Oh, right. He was supposed to do something at the end. It was… something about healing He had a healing skill. Blearily, Luke triggered [Life Surge] and his eyes snapped open. “Holy crap!” he yelped. “What happened?”

“I think the ritual pulled out a big chunk of your blood and you damn near died from it,” Zea said. “And that’s from me doing it right. Here, come over here and start eating. You’re going to need it in a minute.”

Even with [Life Surge] singing in his veins, Luke still felt woozy. He did what Zea told him to, but he’d barely gotten his first mouthful of food before the skill gave out and he promptly toppled backwards.

Zea said something, but Luke had no idea what. His skill had healed a lot of his lost blood and internal injuries, but not all, and now the hunger spike was kicking his ass. Luke managed to chew and swallow, and then he passed out.

* * *

Luke was laid out, flat on his back, with a half-eaten apple still clutched in his hand. Despite Zea’s best efforts, there was no waking him up. Thankfully, she’d at least gotten him to activate his regeneration skill before he went down, but she’d been hoping to get a bit more food in him. He was going to be starving when he did finally wake up, and they were both vulnerable until then.

The door on their little cave home was nothing but a visual screen that blocked out the worst of the wind. If something came charging in, it would be on her to stop it, and Zea had very little confidence in her abilities in a fight. That wasn’t where her skills were. If she’d realized quite how much the ritual would fuck Luke up, she would have insisted they do it under difference circumstances.

The best she could do for now was keep his mace nearby and hope it would make for up the lack of strength in her arms. It was light enough at least, surprisingly so considering how heavy it looked. Between that, the ever-sharp knife he’d given her, and her stupid crossbow, she was as prepared as she could get. Her poking stick would probably just break if she tried it on a monster, so she didn’t even bother to fish that out of her backpack.

While she waited, she busied herself making lunch, triple portions. Part of her worried that even that much wouldn’t be enough, but she also had to consider the state of their food supply. Gods knew at the rate she was going through the flask of honey wine she’d had buried in her own stash, it was going to be empty by the time Luke opened his eyes.

The whole experience had been boring for him, right up until the end. She had watched him fidget for close to an hour while she fought desperately to hold the mana in the shape she needed it and keep the cadence of the ritual going. Messing up a word here or there wasn’t a big deal; it was really more the rhythm of the thing. But there had been a few points where she’d honestly just about lost the entire thing.

There had to be a few more supporting skills she’d missed, or perhaps she just needed to rank up the ones she did have to at least rank 3. That was generally considered an acceptable level of proficiency to ply a trade. Perhaps if they’d been less impatient, she could have smoothed the process out instead of knocking Luke on his ass at the end.

What was done was done, but she’d keep it in mind if they ended up needing to invest in rank 2 of [Bloodline Purification Ritual]. She hoped that wasn’t the case, since it cost a staggering 200 AP to upgrade it. If her math was right, she’d need to get up to level 27 without spending any AP on anything else in order to afford it. No doubt the support skills would tack on a few more levels after that.

There were going to be more levels in their future, either way. Luke never said it, but she could tell that he chafed at how slow they were moving. He kept a relaxed pace for her benefit, but she’d seen him move during combat. He was blindingly fast, and he didn’t get tired. If he’d wanted to, he could probably run the thousand miles they needed to go inside of two days, maybe less if he pushed himself.

Zea knew her own limits, and even with the recent bumps to her agility and stamina, it was going to be the journey of a month at minimum for her. There were no roads once they got into the deep wilderness, and that meant slow going for her, not even considering monster attacks. They would be living off the land, depending on their ability to fight and gather supplies to survive. If he had any AP left over, she was going to recommend a few ranks in [Survivalist]as his next point expenditure.

It still felt crazy to not take lessons, or practice, or do any of the normal things people did when they were working to achieve a higher rank in a skill. Hell, most rank ups came about as part of the natural process of getting better at something, and there were more than a few people who cursed the system for giving them unwanted XP.

Zea just shook her head. Luke had better be right about his ability to manipulate other people’s stats and skills. She didn’t feel like dying in ten years because she’d leveled up into the 40s.

* * *

The smell was what finally reached through to Luke. Zea was a… well, he wasn’t going to say she was a fantastic cook, but certainly much better than him. Plus he wasn’t all that picky. Anything and everything she cooked tasted just fine to him.

He cracked his eyes open and found her sitting next to him, her back to the wall and his mace firmly clasped in both hands. “What are you doing?” he asked, sitting up and grabbing at his head.

“Oh thank the gods you’re awake. It’s been three hours and there is something that keeps trying to get in. I’ve smacked it six times now, but it just keeps coming back.”

“Huh? I don’t… whoa… dizzy. Just, give me a second.”

He took the offered water skin from her and chugged it down, then looked over towards the delicious smelling food she had sitting in a pan on a rock. “Is that for me?”

“After you take care of our pest problem,” she snapped. “Here, take your damn mace and go whack that fucking thing.”

“Someone’s in a mood,” he muttered.

“I didn’t get a nap like you did,” she snapped.

Luke’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t say anything. Performing the ritual must have been rougher on her than he thought. He’d have to find a way to make it up to her later. Gently, he took the mace out of her hands, kissed her hair, and rose to his feet.

Whatever had been trying to get in had made a mess out of his door and left a bit of blood on the stone, presumably from where Zea had smacked it. Luke pulled the whole slab of wood aside and walked out into the sunlight, where he quickly spotted tracks roaming back and forth.

There was something in the trees that he might have classified as a weasel if it wasn’t the size of a great dane and covered in scales instead of fur. Luke slowly scanned the area, looking for more. Leaving Zea undefended in the cave to chase it down wasn’t the play he wanted to make, not if it left her vulnerable to the rest of the pack.

[Peripheral Awareness] dragged his attention to something above him, and he found another one clinging to the rock about ten feet over his head. It leaped down at him with a hiss, but he caught it by the throat with one hand, spun in place, and hurled it down into the stone so hard that it bounced. Before it could recover, his mace smacked down and splattered it across the ground.

A ding sounded in his head, but he ignored it to watch the other weasel-looking thing retreat back into the forest. Shaking his head, Luke went back in and asked, “How many were there? I only spotted two.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t go out to check.”

“Okay, well one of them is dead now, and the other ran off. They were, uh… hrmm, that’s odd.”

“What’s odd?” Zea asked.

[You have slain Slitherscale Stoat (lvl 14). 201 XP awarded.]
[This creature has slain 278 other creatures.]
[Total kills for this type of creature: 1.]
[Highest level kill: 14.]