Sacrifice Mage

Chapter 254 (B3: 81): Lifegiving

I wasn’t exactly looking forward to yet another trial or city-wide meeting or whatever it was that Zairgon was planning regarding Claderov. That said, I hunting for news about what was going on. So, by the end of the day when I had beaten the Vaunted’s plan and stopped her for good, I had taken the time to accompany Councillor Wargrog for news. “I’ve received word, yes,” he said when I asked if he had heard anything yet. “They’ve recovered the stolen ones and are heading back to Zairgon.”

“And they’re alright?” I asked a little anxiously. It still hurt that I hadn’t gone after Vandre to get him back personally, even though the rational part of me had made the right decision. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have gotten to stop the Vaunted and earn my Path Evolution and Icon.

“Alright… is unfortunately relative,” Wargrog said after some hesitation. “But they are indeed alive.”

That didn’t exactly comfort me. Nor did the fact that they hadn’t decided to go on and continue to attack Claderov. Ill-advised as an all-out war would have been, it was rather infuriating to learn that Claderov administration was simply claiming that they knew nothing of the transgressions of the “rogue” Vaunted and her minions.

“So they’re just washing their hands off the whole mess,” I said. “Just like that? It’s crazy. We’ve got to hold them accountable.”

“It is a delicate matter, Mage Moreland.”

“What’s delicate about it, Councillor? It looks very clear-cut to me. We were attacked. Even if we don’t sink to their level of barbarity, we still to demand recompense for their culpability in allowing such a crime to take place in Zairgon.”

“I agree. Which is why we’ve taken all the perpetrators hostage, demanding that Claderov administration appear in Zairgon and answer for their citizens’ crimes. And if they do not, Councillor Lassikhio has stated that he will personally parade the Vaunted and her minions in other cities to show that Claderov cannot be trusted.”

I blinked at that. “Well… alright, then.”

It seemed I was wrong in assuming Zairgon was capitulating in a way by not being harsh enough with Claderov, no matter what they claimed. But the Councillors taking things severely and holding Claderov accountable.

For now, I’d just need to wait until yet another big trial or whatever. All I was really looking forward to was meeting Vandre.

In the day it took for them to return, I tried playing around with my Icon and my new Aspect. Constellation was still a bit difficult to grasp. I had finally attained an Affix for it now that I had time to focus.

Just as against the Vaunted, the Channel Affix didn’t seem to have any specific limits to what it could achieve. I could create constellations in the shape of the god’s manifestation I had seen, which then just made me feel like I was channelling Aspects without even the need for mana.

It was wild. A wave of my hand had Gravity creating Field Manipulation on every single plane of the temple walls, whether they were made of broken bricks or Nether Vein metal. A thought was enough to have Flare manifesting heat all around me, light joining them in seconds.

Arl was right. When I channelled the powers of a god, I really did go the Weave. It wasn’t just those simple manifestations. As I had discovered against the Vaunted, I could make my Aspects do all sorts of things with merely an expression of will.

Gravity tore off the walls and floor to form Gravity Orbs, Flare injected itself into my body, but I never felt the heat because the energy just reformed into sparks of light shooting in every direction like crossbow bolts. I set my hand ablaze. I gave little balls of heat and light enough weight to crash to the ground. I made everything float and then forced it all back down.

Back then, I hadn’t properly considered the difference between the kind of channelling I was doing now—with Constellation’s new Affix—and what I normally did by going through each Aspect and its respective Affixes.

Now, however, I was able to crystallize how it benefited me. It was all the things I’d have needed to accomplish with the tools I had.

With Channel, all it took was a bit of enforced will.

When heat manifested, it did so in the form of a draconic arm, burning orange-hot with the ends sparking as though one hit would cause an explosion. Light created shapes, changed colour and consistency, re-shaded the entire world around me until I was standing in a negative photograph. Gravity drew even the tiniest things together.

I felt… kind of overpowered. I wasn’t sure if that was an exaggeration or an understatement at this point. Probably the latter, if I compared myself to others at a similar level.

Although, how would I stack up against someone like Revayne?

I also worked on my new Icon. Solar Demiurge. Well, “worked on” as in explored what it was capable of. Just like with my latest Affix, this was also something that seemed to act beyond the Weave. Hamsik was both impressed and surprised at its powers.

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“Try it with this,” he said, manifesting a small blob of blood in front of him.

I swallowed. The implications were kind of… crazy, if I was being honest. But I focused. Of course, the Icon was always there now. I just kept it suppressed most of the time. Now, I let its light—its —flow out.

“This is…”

Hamsik couldn’t find the right words to express himself, and honestly, I didn’t blame him one bit.

The blob of blood was slowly changing. This transformation intensified as I increased the output of my Icon, flooding the whole temple room with daylight. First, it reformed from a blob into a figure that was vaguely humanoid. The blood was slowly solidifying too. When Hamsik let it fall to the ground, it was even able to stand on both legs.

If the transformation had stopped there, I’d have already considered it a fantastic display of my Icon’s power. But it . Instead, I watched with subtly horrified fascination as the little golem I had constructed—or rather, my Icon had constructed—continued evolving.

I leaned down for a closer look, squinting at the tiny action figure. Was it… yes, it growing veins within the blood itself. Tiny bits of untouched white were forming and growing along its limbs, torso, and head. I blinked.

Flesh.

It was growing under the auspices of my Icon.

“Ross…” Hamsik’s words held a note of alarmed warning. “It might be best to stop it now.”

“Look at it, Hamsik.” I couldn’t help but be horrifically fascinated. “This is insane. It’s still growing.”

It was. My little construct was manifesting the tiniest organs and appendages too, I was pretty sure. I could recognize fingers, feet, even a face. How long was this going to continue? How much “life” was Solar Demiurge going to imbue into Hamsik’s blood blob?

“Can you control it?” I asked. “Why don’t you try, Hamsik?”

“I will not.”

The clipped edge in his voice made me look up with a frown. “What’s wrong? Why are you—?”

“Don’t you get it? What you’re doing is close to .”

Ah. So that was it. I knew there were banned Paths and Aspects, powers that would land people in hot water if it was ever revealed they possessed them. The only one among those I remembered was Singularity, and I was still probably a bit far off from learning something like that.

But, going by Hamsik’s reaction, I might have strayed onto a different illegal power. At least, according to Hamsik’s limited understanding.

“That’s not it at all,” I said. “And is necromancy always awful?”

“ Why do you think turning people into Scarthralls is bad, Ross?”

“But that’s my point. You’re trying to tell me why necromancy is bad when it’s just that certain are terrible. Isn’t it just a tool?”

“Some things are weapons, Ross, not tools. Necromancy requires disturbing the fundamental balance of life and death, much the way Thralldom does. Neither is acceptable.” He looked down at the little flesh-and-blood puppet my Icon was slowly and gently defining stronger and stronger. “In the same way, violating the fundamental ideas of personhood and life will not be seen favourably by most.”

I decided against replying immediately and just let what he was saying settle in my brain. “I get what you’re saying, Hamsik, but I have literally done nothing other than watch the effects of my Icon.”

“I know, Ross. I know . I know you wouldn’t misuse the powers you’re rapidly learning. But… just don’t lose perspective of things, is what I’m trying to say. Mothers gestate children for months before birthing them. There is a certain sanctity in the idea of a person. When I was a young Scarseeker, it was drilled into my head, over and over again.”

It made sense when I thought about it. Scarseekers were long-lived, vampiric races who subsisted off the blood of others. But they existed within civilization, not monstrous beings living out in dungeons and wastelands.

No doubt, they had to temper their carnivorous impulses as they grew up. It sure sounded like it, from how Hamsik had talked about it.

“I’ll remember that, Hamsik,” I said. I didn’t stop using my Icon just then, but I decided on being mindful about it.

I didn’t really limit my Icon’s work. It turned out that bringing the puppet closer to the Icon increased the rate at which it grew and vice versa. Interestingly, it never really gained full sentience. Lifegiving though Solar Demiurge might be, even my overpowered Icon lacked the ability to grant a proper soul to the thing.

Other than the sliver of my own that slipped into it, that was. The sensation was strange, and somewhat reminiscent of when I created my own little sprite using Ignition Charge.

A bit of my being seemed to emerge from me with invisible sparks, sinking into the little figurine of flesh and hardened blood. It stirred. I watched, mouth gaping a little in fascination, as it got to its feet and turned its head to preternaturally look at me despite lacking any eyes.

“What… are you going to do with that?” Hamsik asked.

“I have no idea,” I said genuinely. “But I’m sure I can find uses.”

Just like with my artificial sprite, there was a link between me and my creation. I didn’t note any specific sign of sapience. It was like a robot at best. An automaton of meat waiting for my command. So I experimented and found that it could carry out pretty much any order so long as it was physically possible.

Hmm, could I make the physically impossible orders possible? Turned out I could! Whatever strange link existed between us allowed me to apportion a sliver of my Aspects to the little being too. It began floating with Gravity and manifesting tiny balls of heat and light with Flare and Illumination.

Until I apparently put in too much heat with Flare, making it go up in flames.

“Ah, shit!”

I quickly drained the heat away with Concentration, but by that point, the damage was done. The little puppet was so badly burned, bits of it were falling off, even the blood congealed and contained within it turning to ash.

“Sorry,” I said.

I was hoping I hadn’t hurt the thing, or that I had caused it pain. Had my Icon also granted it nerves and pain receptors? I couldn’t recall seeing any real muscle or skeletal structure, so a nervous system didn’t seem likely either. Still. I felt kind of awful about it.

Hamsik seemed relieved, though. Maybe he was happy that my flesh puppetry experiment was over. “Cheer up, Ross. I didn’t feel a single instance of bloodlust towards that golem of yours, so I don’t think it was ever really alive, no matter what fancy name your Icon calls itself.”

I took a few seconds to realize the implications of that. “Hey, wait a second. What do you mean ”

“Come on,” he said, walking off and waving at me to follow. “We’ve taken up enough time with your experimenting.”

I grumbled but went after him. Much as my mind continued to whirl at everything my Icon had shown itself to be capable of, and what it implied, I was able to successfully redirect my thoughts towards the arrival of everyone who had gone after the Claderovians and the missing Zairgonites.

Most of all, I just really, really wanted to see Vandre. Wargrog’s words had suggested he wasn’t exactly alright. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I saw that he had suffered, and I suspected that he .

Considering I had torn up House Uralivanth, surely Claderov was even less off limits than that. Especially with how they had attacked Zairgon too.