A pair of hisses tore through the chamber a moment after the loud echoing boom of Sam, launching a Wind Arrow into the air and Deacon setting it aflame with Ignis, seconds before Sam would then make it implode on itself, and grab the attention of the massive magic-resistant serpents.
Needless to say, their trick to gather all the serpents towards them worked flawlessly, helping them to kill three more serpents, and requiring them to kill just two more.
"Silent predators my ass!" Deacon shouted, just as the first serpent lunged straight for him, emerging from his right-hand side, from in between the corners of the four cages, a couple of feet away from him.
He ducked to the side before rolling beneath the snapping of its jaws as it attempted to twist its head down, onto his form. The serpent's momentum carried it past him, skidding atop the ground before crashing against the side of a cage, making Deacon mentally thank Sam yet again for suggesting that they should drag their attention away from the ritual site.
Deacon licked his dried lips as his eyes darted to his left before going back to focus on the serpent that was picking itself off the cage. He twisted on his heel, coiling the muscles in his legs, then launched himself upward – just as a second serpent came hissing violently from below on his left-hand side.
He shot over it, its massive nostrils and back of the head brushed the soles of his boots, and landed squarely on its back.
Without hesitation, he flipped his grip on his weapon, Echoform Reliquary still in its Broadsword form, and plunged the blade deep into the serpent's back.
The serpent violently hissed as its body stopped mid-lunge to convulse violently beneath him as Deacon dragged the blade forward, slicing up along its side, sending scales and blood flying into the air. Then, sensing the first serpent recovering and lunging again, Deacon pushed off the serpent's back, flipping high into the air once more, watching as a pair of Earth Spears pierced into the sides of the serpents to prevent them from lunging at him while he was midair.
In the air and mid-spin, he angled his body between them, flipping his grip on Echoform Reliquary and angling it to be above his head, Deacon pressed the bottom of his right foot atop the small mana platform Sam had just created for him and launched himself forward towards the serpents.
The sharpened blade of Echoform Reliquary bit through both serpents' necks in a single, fluid motion that, as an effect of the ritual conducted on them, went through them as easily as a hot knife through butter.
Twin fountains of blood sprayed upward as both monsters' heads spiraled off in opposite directions, crashing down onto the stone with dull, wet thuds. Their massive bodies bounce off the ground and writhe in the air for a brief moment before hitting the ground with a thud, lifelessly.
*[Twintongued Serpent Lv 7] has been slain – Partial XP has been given.*
*[Twintongued Serpent Lv 7] has been slain – Partial XP has been given.*
Deacon landed in a crouch, blood spattering across his front. He stood slowly and let out a breath just before he walked towards the heads of both twintongued serpents and tucked them away into his Spatial Sling Bag.
Deacon sprinted through the narrow paths between cages, Echoform Reliquary going back into its dual short sword form to go back into the sheathes that rested on his back, as taking them out from there was much faster than having to take them out of the Spatial Sling Bag while in its broadsword form.
He rounded the bend near yet another destroyed cage with the still-alive impaled human in it, and spotted Sam about a dozen meters ahead, waiting by the edge of the ritual site with his arms folded.
Sam tilted his head as Deacon approached. "Damn, you look like shit, I didn't think snakes could bleed that much all at once."
Without breaking stride, Deacon rolled his eyes and did nothing as Sam muttered a quick incantation under his breath, palm flicking up toward Deacon's chest. A soft blue shimmer rippled over him as he'd cast Cleanse. Instantly, the blood caking his armor, face, and boots evaporated into glowing motes of mana that dissolved into the air.
"We don't wanna take any risks for the ritual," Sam said as he put down his hand. "Last thing we need is it imploding in on itself just because an extra drop of blood gets added into the mix."
"Thanks," Deacon said. "I still don't get how you flex your mana to form that third circle for Cleanse. Every time I get to that point in the spell, I end up fucking up the equations in my head and turning the third circle to either an oval or a triangle."
Reaching into his Sling Bag, Deacon pulled one of the serpent heads free and tossed it underhand toward Sam, who caught it with both hands, grimacing slightly at the weight and texture.
"How the hell did you manage to get the third circle to become a triangle?" Sam scoffed. "I mean, compared to Ignis or Flame Trap, especially Flame Trap, casting a three-circle spell should be easy for you."
"Tell me about it," Deacon said, then pulled his own serpent head out as they neared the ritual site. "Fire magic isn't as hard to control and use compared to other spells… I don't know, it takes so much effort for me to use spells other than fire ones."
The air tingled with residual magic, heavier and much denser compared to when Sam had placed the first serpent head on the rod, as now there were five of them on five metal rods.
Deacon followed Sam, and together they walked to two of the remaining empty metal rods spaced around the ritual site.
Without wanting to waste any more time after angling the serpent's head to face the altar, Deacon drove the serpent's head down onto his chosen rod, the sharpened spike punching through bone and flesh with a wet crack.
Sam did the very same as Deacon, at the very same moment.
The reaction was immediate. The mana within the congealed blood that made up the ritual site began to hum, and all seven rods glowed a deep crimson – the same color as the powered-up ritual markings that linked them to the altar.
The hum of power within the ritual site deepened into a low, resonating thrum that caused Deacon to nervously chuckle as he and Sam stepped closer to the altar.
The air around them shimmered with visibly heavy mana. To Deacon, this was the second time ever seeing such a dense amount of mana being gathered around him, the first being his Tier 1 Class selection.
Sam glanced down at the glowing altar after placing his palm atop it and imbuing it with his mana to have its surface covered with the hundreds of Aztec symbols that translated themselves into Spanish for the oddest of reasons to them.
Sam drew in a slow breath before he began to chant the words, beginning with the words that forked off to the right of his left hand's middle finger.
The language was guttural, alien, as even though both Sam and Deacon knew that what Sam was speaking was Spanish, everything about it screamed that it was anything other than Spanish; he was speaking Nahuatl – a language neither of them had ever heard before.
Each word he spoke caused a ripple across the ritual site, mana veins flaring brighter with every syllable spoken. The rods surrounding them pulsed in unison, blood bubbling slightly around the impaled serpent heads.
As Sam pressed on, his voice growing stronger with each phrase, the very air thickened. Mana pressed against them like they were standing in the beginning of a storm.
Then came the screams.
The people in the cages, the twisted cultists that had still drawn breath, began to thrash violently. Their eyes rolled back as veins bulged beneath their skin.
One smashed his face against the bars so hard the sides of his face ballooned, turning purple from the strain, before every orifice on their face, visible to Deacon, began oozing out blood.
Their limbs contorted, bending at unnatural angles, and thick, fleshy tendrils began to emerge from their spines and mouths.
Growths erupted from their flesh; horn-like bone protrusions, scaled patches, forked tongues, and even the beginnings of secondary jaws splitting their faces apart.
"Holy shit…" Deacon muttered, instinctively taking a step forward, but he stopped when Sam glanced back at him mid-chant, his face pale and tight with alarm.
Deacon met his eyes and gave a firm nod.
"Keep going."
Sam swallowed his hesitation and returned to the chant, raising his voice as the altar surged brighter, mana circles now spinning slowly across its surface.
The transformation was nearly complete, and in real time, Deacon saw their race begin to change.
[Huma…t Lv 0]
With a chorus of wet, meaty tears, the iron bars of the cages gave way as the creatures formerly known as humans, now fully twisted into some perverse combination of a serpent and a humanoid, burst free with unnatural speed, their bodies lithe and contorted, their fingers sharpened into talons, and their eyes glowing with maddened hunger.
[Newt Lv 0]
"Sam! Don't stop!" Deacon barked, already moving towards the nearest newt charging at them.
Leaping over the metal rod that impaled a twintongued serpent head, his hands wrapped around the hilts of Echoform Reliquary's dual short swords and brought them free from their sheaths. With a surge of mana, he whispered the incantation:
"Flame Armament."
Flames erupted along the edges of both blades, coating them in red and gold that stood out like twin beacons in the dim prison-torture chamber.
Deacon hit the ground in a run, twisting between two charging newts as he slashed low, cleaving both in half in a single spinning motion. A gout of yellowish-red sprayed across the ground, sizzling as it hit the stone.
The hell, Deacon muttered as another newt lunged from above, mouth unhinging unnaturally wide, fangs glistening. He stepped into it, blades crossing midair to decapitate the beast before it landed. The body crashed behind him, flailing limply, as it released the scent of roasted flesh into the air.
… These newts have both shitty magic and physical resistance, Deacon realized as he beheaded three more newts that extended their necks to bite off different parts of his body.
Sam continued the chant, now yelling the words to be heard over the rising storm of screams and hissing and the rhythmic clashing of Deacon's burning blades against the tide of abominations.
The ritual platform remained untouched, protected by Deacon constantly sprinting around the perimeter of the ritual site and killing every newt that tried to rush at it.
Deacon ducked under a swiping claw, drove a flame-lit blade into a newt's chest, and let the second one trail behind him in a spinning arc, catching another creature mid-lunge and slicing it clean across the jaw.
More surged from the cages, twisted, slavering, lost to anything resembling humanity.
But Deacon didn't flinch at the sight of hundreds of them charging at him.
Instead, he forced himself to become a blur of flame and blades.
"Sam! Finish it!" he shouted between breaths, just as a particularly massive newt tried to pounce from the top of a fallen cage. Deacon rolled forward, slid between its legs, and drove both blades up through its back, igniting the creature from the inside out, Blistering Flames easily tearing through its insides.
All around them, the glow of the altar reached a blinding peak. The mana-etched words flared in finality, nearly white with raw power, and the pulse of the ritual site accelerated into a deafening crescendo.
But within the white glow and deafening crescendo, Deacon could hear Sam's screams, causing him to immediately pivot on his heel, uncaring of the newts that took advantage of his unguarded form and clawed at his back.
Deacon ignored the searing pain that erupted from his back as their claws easily tore through his leather back armor and instead charged straight into the bright white light that shrouded the ritual sight, where he heard Sam's screams.
Squinting through the bright white light, Deacon found Sam on his knees, continuing to chant-scream the final words to complete the ritual, his face damp with tears as his left hand, placed on the altar, was writhing in place as red veins and scales were beginning to grow on them.
Deacon's gut dropped as he saw the pain that was tearing through his closest friend – to the point where it brought him to his very knees.
His concentration on maintaining the mana flow into Flame Armament broke the moment he realized what was about to happen to his friend.
This could not happen. He wouldn't allow it to.
Echoform Reliquary transformed back into its broadsword form blurred in his right hand and tore through his friend's forearm, sending an arc of blood that flew into the air, and a moment later as Echoform Reliquary landed on Sam's lap, Deacon slammed his left hand atop Sam's bisected one, finishing where Sam had stopped.
"… Ika nopa ueyi tlitl tlen Huitzilopochtli, xinechmaka chikaualistli pampa nikita tonati!"
Which in Deacon's mind translated to: By the great flames of Huitzilopochtli, grant me the strength to see the sun!
And that was all Deacon remembered before pain erupted from his left hand, and the bright white light that shrouded the ritual site turned brilliant gold, sending both Sam and Deacon into unconsciousness.