Chapter 829: The Sacrifice And The Vessel (Patreon)

A/N

3k chap, had a lot of fun writing this one which is why it took longer than expected, enjoy!

Chapter 829: The Sacrifice And The Vessel

Around a thousand li east of the Red Sun Academy, there sat a cellar beneath the remnants of a farmhouse.

The farmhouse was one that had been burned down three times and had been the victim of numerous floods over the past century, this caused it to be abandoned for the last few decades, which made it the perfect safe house for a certain elder.

Under a slab of old threshing floor covered in overgrown moss, there was a trapdoor that hid seven stone steps which led to a dark room.

Every safe house required concealment arrays, it was the first thing that any cultivator would do when creating one, and Elder Molric wasn’t any different. If anything, his paranoia demanded that he had multiple concealment arrays piled on top of each other, all of them working together to hide all traces of life within the room.

What was concerning was that while the concealment arrays looked perfect without a sign of blemish on them, the rest of the status of the room painted a different picture, a more worrying picture.

The first clue was that there were carts scattered around, most of which were broken, while a few were intact but upturned. And near the corner of one of the upturned crates was a thick notebook that had fallen to the floor, still open on a particular page explaining the differences between the theory of Skybound Runes and their applications.

On the right side, there was a cart with copper wheels parked up, it was the same one that Yggy had been dragging around a few days ago, however, this time it was empty with no sign of the mischievous vine.

And on the left wall, there were shelves filled with a variety of items ranging from glass jars required for experiments to a wicker cage where Constantine seemed to be fighting with itself. One moment it would stand up, flexing its biceps in what looked to be an intimidating pose, but then the next second, it would curl itself into a tiny ball.

It was obvious what had terrified the body-building cactus.

In the middle of the room, hanging four feet above the floor from invisible constraints was an old man in the air with his hands pulled out from his sides, and his face twisted into an expression of pure pain.

This was Elder Molric.

Every few seconds his entire body went rigid as though a heavy pressure was trying to crush him from all angles.

Yet despite the excruciating pain that he was experiencing, despite the blood running down his chin forming a dark puddle below him, his eyes remained narrowed in defiance at the handsome man standing before him.

The mysterious man’s hands were casually folded behind his back as though this was a sight familiar to him, and knowing who this man was, that was probably the case. After all, this man was possibly the most powerful being born in this world, this man was the Headmaster of the Red Sun Academy.

“Elder Molric,” Hiron broke the silence. “It pains me that it had to come to this. It really does. Before we continue. I want to know one thing. Tell me, why did you need to meddle in matters that are far beyond your ability to grasp?”

Molric didn’t even try to respond, he just continued staring at the man that he had respected for the past hundreds of years.

“I have always been good to you,” Hiron went on. “Ever since you reached the rank of elder, I gave you everything you asked for: your own spire, first pick of initiates, whatever exotic plant you wanted, and all the funding you needed for your absurd experiments. Never once did I get in your way. So, why did you go out into the dark with a stylus and a jar of fungus and sabotage everything I have spent my life working towards?”

Molric had promised himself that he wouldn’t engage the madman, but now that his experiments had been insulted, he didn’t have any choice but to fire back, it was what any respectable scientist would do.

“Do you think I chose this?” he said, and for the first time the carefree tone was gone. The voice that came out was cracked and thin, and yes, he hated the sound of it, but he kept going anyway. “You think I wanted to spend my nights crawling round a hillside in the rain with my knees full of gravel, poisoning bone ash? I had a schedule. I had four cultures at a critical stage and a graft that needed turning every six hours. I was happy.” He pulled in a breath that hurt. “But if you finish that formation, there would be no world left for me to work in. A dead man can’t run an experiment, Hiron, and neither can an experiment be run on a dead world, at least no experiment worth spending my time on."

“It is truly unfortunate how ignorant you are of the reality of the situation.” Hiron shook his head slowly.

“Oh?” Molric said as he spat out a gigantic glob of blood that had been trying to choke him for the past minute. “Enlighten me then, Hiron, what has this old man failed to see?”

“Of course there’ll be a world,” Hiron replied, unfolding his hands and letting them hang at his sides. “A better one. One where there is no academy killing itself for thousands of years in order to force its rival to kneel to the same sun it worships. There will only be peace, true peace. That is all that I have been trying to accomplish, and that is what you are getting in the way of.”

Even though it hurt and came out sounding ugly, Molric laughed out loud.

“Never did I expect the greatest headmaster the academy had ever seen to be swindled by the promise of a peaceful world from an outsider.” His head lolled forward. “Hiron, I’ve heard better promises from my plants. I thought better of you, but clearly I was wrong.”

“You do not know what I know.” For the first time, a look of fear flashed across the Rank 8’s face as his eyes looked past the stone ceiling at the heavens beyond it. “You have never stood before one of them. This world has been destined for destruction simply because we are not strong enough to protect ourselves.”

“So, you decided to sacrifice the lives of thousands of mortals?”

“It is a small price to pay,” Hiron nodded. “Is that not a price you have paid in the past to satisfy your experiments?”

At that, the elder drew quiet, and his gaze fell to the floor because the truth was the headmaster was correct.

Molric’s curiosity at times had been insatiable, driving him past the point of sanity and making him do things that he still regretted to this day, but it wasn’t something he could get past, especially since he still struggled with it.

“The one circling out there wants to open the door into this world and drink everything it has to offer,” Hiron continued. “That is not something I can allow, so I must act.”

Molric’s head snapped back up, and his words came out sounding frantic.

“Hiron, if that’s what you’re worried about, then you can stop here. We’ve already found a solution. We can stop that thing without giving ourselves to a different one.”

“How naïve,” the headmaster sighed. “Molric, do you truly believe there is only that being with its sights set on our world? There are many, and soon there will be many more. Even if we can stop one plan, we cannot stop them all. It is because we do not have anyone who has broken through Rank 9. And we never will.”

“So, you’re going to just surrender? Take the coward's way out?”

“Think whatever you please about me,” he said. “But when you climb high enough, you stop being able to pretend. You find out what you weigh against the number of worlds out there, and the answer is that you weigh nothing at all.”

“That is the most convenient philosophy I have ever heard, tell me the truth, Hiron. What did it offer you? I hope it was worth betraying your own world for it.”

“A deal: this world’s cultivation source in exchange for protection and the safety of our people.”

For a few moments, there was just silence.

When Molric had first learned that Hiron was working for one of the two Otherworldly Beings, he had brainstormed multiple reasons why the headmaster would do something like that and what he sought to gain from it. What he had never expected was that the headmaster was happy to give away the world’s cultivation. This was unthinkable for a cultivator. Most would prefer death to something like that.

“Do not be surprised, Molric,” Hiron smiled; it was a sad smile. “From what I have learned in all of my years, is that the root of evil is cultivation. Yes, mortals will lie, cheat, and kill, but nothing can be compared to the destruction and chaos beings like ourselves can bring. I will give this world the chance to obtain peace, and that to do that, I must rid it of cultivation forever.”

Before Molric could argue with that, Hiron gestured with his right hand and space ripped open before them.

Three people came out of the gap and dropped to the ground.

The first one to land was Elder Sabeth, she fell on her side and stayed there. Elder Ruven was the second one, and he came down beside her on his knees, his head drooping over his own body. And the last one landed on her hands; it was a pretty woman who would have looked middle-aged had it not been for the fact that her hair had gone completely white.

“Avery,” Molric whispered.

The female elder lifted her head and opened her mouth, and even though her lips moved, no sound exited, the best she could do was look at him with wide eyes, begging him for help. It was a look that he had never seen in those eyes, and it caused Molric’s gut to tighten.

Sure, he had disliked the woman since the first day he had met her. Through the years working together, they had never failed to insult each other. This was usually done by her turning her nose up at his choice of experiments, experiments that she believed had no benefit in forwarding the Order’s cause. And he would return the favor by criticising her lack of adherence to the scientific method, which was something that actually got a genuine laugh from her since they both knew Molric was the last person that could make such an accusation.

Although he had even put a modified beetle from the experiments that she looked down on so much, he had never wanted something like this to happen to her.

“Hiron, you don’t need to do this to them,” Molric said. “I was the one who plotted against you. They didn’t do anything. They don’t deserve this. Punish me instead.”

“This has nothing to do with what anyone deserves, and this has nothing to do with punishment,” Hiron sighed. “I have gone beyond simple right and wrong, I went beyond it the moment you disrupted the ritual. You see, the rite requires mortal souls, souls that are untouched by either sun. Thanks to you, I no longer have access to that. So, I can only work with what I have.”

He then looked at the three fallen figures and whispered: “I am sorry for this. I really am.”

With that, he closed his eyes and began chanting.

“By sacrifice offered and essence laid bare,

by the bones of the world and the weight of the air.

Through the eye that has watched from inside the red flame,

through the years of the waiting, through loss without name.

Let the cage come undone and the sleeper arise,

let the hidden made manifest open its eyes.

What was owed has been paid. What was given is given.

What was buried in darkness has flowered and risen.”

As he continued to murmur, the life slowly drained from the three figures until what was left of them was bones and torn clothing. Molric whispered a soft apology as Avery eyes fixated on him until they stopped working forever.

When it was done, he closed his own eyes, and his life flashed through his mind’s eye.

He saw himself as a small mortal child that didn’t know anything more than what was within his small village, he saw the first time he channeled the power of the Red Sun, when he discovered his love for science, and the heinous crimes that he committed for that love.

The memories continued until they reached the present time, and it was then that he realised that he was still here, he was still breathing, he was still bleeding, and that he was still in pain.

“Why…why am I alive?” he asked, his eyes opening slowly.

“Like I told you before, the ritual required thousands of mortal souls,” Hiron explained. “Without that, I had to resort to the only payment that qualifies: the soul of a Rank 8 being.” He looked at the ceiling again, this time in the direction of the Red Sun Academy. “Unfortunately, the Head Monk who runs that little mountain house has partnered with Monroe, and even though I do have some confidence in facing them, I do not have time to waste on petty battles.”

“It’s you…,” Molric’s eyes widened in realisation. “You’re the sacrifice.”

“Yes, I am.” Hiron nodded, the hint of a true smile tugging at his lips. “Like I said before, I am done. My final gift to this world will be to leave it with everlasting peace, but for that to be possible, my master will need to borrow your body.”

With those final words, Hiron stepped forward and lifted his right hand towards Molric’s forehead.

However, before it could make contact, something came out of the front of the elder’s robe.

It was fast, but clearly not fast enough because Hiron caught it with one hand without looking.

He turned it over in his fingers and held it up close to his face while it thrashed, and for the first time in a hundred years, his curiosity was piqued as he examined the green vine that had crimson and golden threads running through it.

“This,” he whispered. “This is remarkable. I never thought you would actually accomplish this, old friend. I must congratulate you. You were able to merge the red and blue together, you were finally able to recreate the legendary power of the Golden Sun.”

“Let go of it!” Molric roared, fighting the hold with everything he had, even though doing so caused his body to tear apart. “Take your hand off my plant! It’s mine! Mine!”

“I think not,” Hiron smiled. “This will make a great addition to the ritual.”

Just as Hiron was about to tighten his fingers, the vine screeched.

The sound was inhumane. Even though it didn’t cause any damage, it did make Hiron hesitate, and that hesitation was all the vine needed as it disappeared with a small ‘plop’.

Seeing this, Molric stopped resisting, in fact, he stopped moving completely.

“I…I will never forgive you,” he whispered.

Hiron opened his empty fingers and studied them with a frown.

“I did not do anything,” he said, sounding puzzled.

Not understanding what was going on, but also not having the time to dwell on it, the headmaster shook it out of his head and reached up to put his palm flat against Elder Molric's forehead.

The ritual continued.

"I am the offering. Mine is the throat and the blood.

Take the vessel. Take the breath. Take the flesh whole.

Hear me. Wake now. Wake now. The road has been made.

Hear me. Rise now. Rise now. The world has been betrayed.

Come. Come. Come."

The three bodies on the floor collapsed inward and were gone, but they weren’t the only ones who disappeared, Hiron went with them.

The hand that had been on Molric's forehead lost its shape as it travelled up through the roof of the cellar in a single column of dark red that took the hill, the burned farmhouse, and the trapdoor with it.

It went up through the sky without slowing.

The red sun cracked. The bars that had been holding something inside it for longer than any record on that world went to pieces, the pieces peeled outward, and behind them an eye opened and looked down.

The answering column came back the other direction and hit the open ground.

When the dust settled and the wind pulled the rest of it sideways, there was a crater in the hillside with melted stone at the edges, and in the middle of it stood a body. It was Elder Molric’s, or at least, it had been.

The robe was recognisable. Half the face was still his, lined and stubborn, and the other half had gone grey and drawn tight over the bone, with the flesh of the neck and one hand shrunk down to almost nothing. Energy came off it in surges that rose and cut out and rose again, sputtering, dragging the dust up and dropping it.

The thing inside lifted one hand, turned it over, and frowned.

"So weak," it said. "What a pathetic vessel."

A/N

Comment below what you think happened to Elder Molric and if he is still with us

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