They were performing a large-scale ritual. One that required such a staggering number of deaths that it was almost absurd to conceive. The accumulation of corpses was monstrous. Through magic, the flesh, organs, and blood had been liquefied, transformed into a thick red mass that spread like a viscous lake around the altar, leaving only bleached bones as silent witnesses.
The chants grew faster, more intense. The air vibrated. And yet… this was going to take time.
My real body remained beside Hannah, both to keep her company and to protect her if something went wrong. But at the same time, several of my clones explored the site in silence, analyzing every structure, every inscription, and every current of energy.
However, I had to withdraw them before they reached the top of the zigurat. The upper section not only housed the leaders but was protected by a barrier of overwhelming density: divine power. It was a protection capable of detecting even my best camouflages.
"Interesting..." I smiled, dissecting the flow of energy in my mind.
New cultists were arriving. New sacrifices. More ritual artifacts were being used as catalysts. They argued among themselves. The leaders assured that everything was proceeding as planned, that success was imminent.
I possessed my own mental library of rituals. With every new detail, I narrowed down the possibilities. At first, it was too general, but bit by bit, the pattern emerged.
"It's a ritual of healing, condensation, invocation, and sacrifice…" I murmured, more to myself than to Hannah. "They could be trying to bring something dead back to life… or restore it… No. Not just that. The amount of energy would be enough for that, but… I don't feel it's enough for what they are truly seeking."
Hannah frowned, trying to follow my reasoning, but she could only formulate guesses.
Then came the climax, the moment all the pieces clicked: the sacrifices of the cultists themselves began.
The cultists in the outer circles began to slit their own throats. Their bodies fell onto the mass of fluids, integrating into the feast of death. Something about the scene inevitably reminded me of Lord Voldemort and the ritual he would use in the future to regain his body.
"Flesh of the servant..." I whispered. In my mind, the list of possible rituals shrank to a few. I observed the remaining variables, made one last inference, and understood.
"What?" Hannah asked, tense.
"I know what they're doing… and I have to tell you, Hannah, I don't know if we're very lucky… or very unlucky. We'll have to call Elise and Helena. We might need help to keep this from getting out of hand."
I sent a mental [Message]. A direct summons for Elise and Helena, and another for the rest to stay on standby.
"What is it? Tell me what they're doing!" Hannah demanded, unable to stand the mystery any longer.
"They are bringing back a God."
The sun still reigned in the sky, but the firmament began to take on an intermittent twilight purple, as if the cosmos itself were suffering a hemorrhage. The cultists at the foot of the temple began taking their own lives in a chain of ritual suicides.
"We're going to interrupt them now. If the ritual reaches its final phase, things will get more difficult than I'd like."
I stepped forward, wielding my wands. As I advanced with deliberate pace, I aimed upward and fired bursts of precise magic at the acolytes about to immolate themselves. The projectiles struck with the force of lightning, breaking the chain of sacrifice.
Hannah followed closely. Though she didn't have my range, she prepared her combat tools, ready for the coming carnage.
"Intruders! Heretics!" roared one of the leaders from the top of the zigurat. "Rise against the impious who seek to stop us! The ritual must be completed! Devotion in life and joy in death! The return of our Lord is inevitable!"
The war cries of the surviving cultists thundered through the valley. Without hesitation, a tide of armed men and fanatical mages lunged at us.
"Be careful, Hannah," I said, flexing my legs.
Like a released steel spring, I shot forward, becoming a blur of pure violence against the tide of fanatics.
My wands danced in the air with lethal precision. While one was held suspended by my magic, unleashing blades of wind that severed cultists before they could even scream, the other struck the ground as I landed. In that instant, the earth around me erupted like liquid fire, projecting enemies into the air toward an inevitable and painful death.
In reality, this butchery wasn't entirely efficient. At this point in the ritual, any death fed the energy pool, though the impact was less than if they sacrificed themselves voluntarily. But I didn't care about the cost in blood, as long as I prevented the process from reaching one hundred percent completion.
The truly dangerous part—the core of this madness—was at the top of the zigurat: a series of funerary urns that looked suspiciously like Egyptian canopic jars. The faces represented local animals: jaguars, snakes, jungle birds. The style was different, but the concept… was disturbingly similar.
Mesoamerican architecture in the south of the continent. Egyptian-inspired sarcophagi reinterpreted with American fauna. I had grown used to these historical incongruities within the campaigns. Some fashions, I suppose, are universal.
Those urns contained the essence of the ritual. I knew it not just from my knowledge, but because the world suddenly froze, giving way to an interface floating before my eyes:
-[FINAL BATTLE: SELECT DIFFICULTY]-
[Very Easy]
[Easy]
[Normal (Original Story)]
[Hard]
[Very Hard]
It was a new mechanic, something I had never experienced in my previous campaigns—perhaps a perk of it being a "quick campaign." The choice wasn't just a number; it altered the very architecture of reality. By default, the system marked "Easy," and under that setting, there were only two urns on the altar.
As I scrolled through the options, the environment mutated: on Very Easy there were no urns; on Normal, four appeared; on Hard, eight; and on Very Hard, twelve. The number of corpses and the intensity of the temple's aura also fluctuated drastically. The descriptions were brief but revealing:
Very Easy: Enemy (Common Mortal – Legendary). Ally (Lesser God – already present).
Easy: Enemy (Legendary – Demigod). Ally (Lesser God – 30 minutes away).
Normal: Enemy (Demigod – Lesser God). Ally (Lesser God – 1 hour away).
Hard: Enemy (Demigod – Greater God). Ally (Demigod – 1 day away).
Very Hard: Enemy (Lesser God – Greater God / True God). Ally (Legendary – dead).
I understood then that each level presented a different version of history. More urns meant a more complete ritual. More anchors. More stability for the summoned entity. At the highest difficulty, there was even a particular corpse that didn't appear in the others.
An Occamy... but not just any. It had two small, vestigial front legs. A trait suggesting an older lineage, closer to primordial dragons than modern variants like the pink Occamy of the present. I assumed that in lower difficulties, that specimen was the ally that arrived as reinforcement, but on Very Hard, it was already part of the initial sacrifice.
I didn't dare challenge a True God just yet, but I didn't plan on taking the easy path either; the difficulty would define the magnitude of the rewards. In these quick campaigns, the prizes are modest, but a greater challenge would allow me to bring something more from this era back to the present. Perhaps Hannah would want a tangible souvenir of our time here. Besides that whole jaguar village, otherwise it would cost a lot.
With a firm thought, I selected Normal Difficulty.
Time resumed its natural flow. I didn't intend to let the ritual reach its zenith; my plan was to sabotage it enough to face only an avatar with the power of a demigod—something I knew I could subjugate. I cut through the mob of sectarians with the efficiency of a scythe. Though they were mages with resources, before me they were nothing more than ripe wheat waiting for the harvest.
Hannah advanced behind me, keeping her distance. I moved too fast for her to keep the same pace, and I wasn't slowing down. Soon she found herself surrounded, but she didn't waver. She had developed her own combat style during this adventure—under my tutelage, of course—and it was time to put it to the test.
Hannah had several small pouches hanging from her belt, each with different equipment. She reached into one and pulled out a handful of seeds. She aimed her wand… first at the seeds, then at the approaching sectarians.
The seeds bloomed with grotesquely accelerated speed. Thorny vines exploded forward, trapping the cultists and piercing them with thorns the size of wedges. It all happened in seconds. Then, the entire plant withered and turned to dust.
But that wasn't the end. Her bag was full of seeds, and Hannah was full of adrenaline.
Groups of vines surged one after another, sprouting from her hand in different directions, stopping, trapping, and tearing enemies apart before disappearing. She looked like a wild forest queen casting living roots.
At least… until the cultists began to find ways to counter her. But she didn't stop. We had practiced a lot in the Fief (when we weren't busy fucking non-stop). From her other bags, she pulled a lethal repertoire: explosive fruits that detonated on impact, carnivorous plants that sprouted from the ground to sever legs, blood-sucking seeds, and hallucinogenic pollen flowers.
A complete botanical arsenal.
This was the last big event of the campaign… and she was giving it her all. Before leaving, she had harvested everything possible from our garden. And now, every resource was being used.
Even so, it wasn't easy. She was stronger than the average mages of this era, but the numbers were against her. She killed many. She harvested human lives for the first time with a cold efficiency that only adrenaline allowed her to maintain… but it wasn't enough.
When the last resisters surrounded her, I didn't intervene. Not because I was busy—which I was, carving a path to the zigurat—but because I knew she could do it.
Hannah reached into her smallest pocket and pulled out a fine powder that refracted light like crushed crystal. She pointed her wand at her own throat and, with a powerful blow, sent the powder toward the last concentration of sectarians.
A gust of wind carried the powder, tinting the air with impossible colors. Multicolored. Hypnotic. Inevitable.
Her special attack. The one I dubbed: Pixie Dust.
It was a compound I had helped perfect: a toxic mixture of rare plants, failed potions, and alchemical resources. Each batch was more toxic and lethal than the last… making its production minimal.
A multicolored cloud fell inevitably over the cultists, who tensed as the dust settled on them. But since nothing happened immediately… the sectarians laughed, casting spells that Hannah dodged with agility. But the laughter choked in their throats in a matter of heartbeats.
Then it began.
Blindness, deafness, muteness, asphyxiation, spontaneous combustion, partial invisibility, madness, hallucinations, random transformations, petrification, wood-ification, vomiting, diarrhea, amnesia, coma, instant death, massive allergic reactions, multiple poisonings, fulminant cancer...
Yes.
It looked like the most brutal medical warning in history. But all of it was happening randomly to the sectarians in front of Hannah.
Hannah stood there, surrounded by men dissolving in chaotic agony, proving that she was no longer the shy girl from Hogwarts, but the consort of the "Red God."