Chapter 79: The Heresy Of Spirits

Chapter 79: Chapter 79: The Heresy Of Spirits

Morning came slowly.

Victor and the others stirred one by one, groaning. Their bodies ached in places they didn’t know could ache. The ground around them was a mess, and almost everyone had vomited through the night.

Plenty of eyes were already turning on Victor with something close to venom, like he’d cursed them.

Then again, he did just poison the entire tribe. But it was difficult to blame him, simply because he warned them before he did it.

Secondly, he also poisoned himself.

Still, that experience was a different version of hell.

Slowly, they pushed themselves up. Victor did too, wiping his face.

Kiki got to him first. "What was that?" Her voice was hoarse. "That was... poison. If we weren’t Barbarians, we would have..." She stopped. Her eyes narrowed, and she took half a step back, suddenly studying her own hands. "No. Not even then."

Victor gave her a small, knowing smile.

Before she could say more, other voices rose behind her.

"Chief, something’s wrong with my body."

"Mine too. It feels like something’s moving inside me."

"Same here."

Victor turned to them, and his smile widened. "Tell me how you feel."

"Like there’s a strange power in me," one of them said, flexing his fingers. "I don’t understand it."

Victor knew exactly what it was.

"Congratulations," he said. "You’ve unlocked mana."

Not everyone had though. He could see that plainly. Some still looked sick and of course, angry. While his own status chimed.

[MP: 11 → 12]

One point. He’d gotten just one point for an entire night of hell?

Magic Points sponsored certain skills and all Blessings.

The more magic points one had, the more blessings that could be used.

If MP runs out, the Blessing would become useless.

Looking back at Kiki, he could help but smack his tongue against the roof of his mouth in jealousy.

With Amplification skill, she must have gotten five times the mana with just that night of torture.

That was why she had been speechless.

Victor did not mind at all. It was a good thing his own people were getting stronger.

But not all the Barbarians had unlocked Mana. Also, there was that thing he was after.

That thing that would make his Barbarian tribe nearly invincible in this unsettling world.

He needed to prepare all of them.

And so Victor turned. "Tonight," Victor told them, "we feast on the Lizard again."

Groans rolled across the crowd. Those who had unlocked mana felt their bodies stronger, lighter, and they were rejoicing. Those who hadn’t looked on in confusion, asking what had happened to the others and if it was really the same hell they went through that changed them.

Of Course what they had unlocked was mana in its purest form. It did not have an elemental affiliation like Kiki’s flames, or a channel focus like Jaja’s bones.

But mana powering their bodies would be good in a fight. Mana had other advantages within the body than just doing unnaturally things.

It would also make their growth much faster.

What they needed now was Skill books. There was only so many places he knew that had hidden skill books. But Victor already had plans for them.

Unless he could somehow manage to get to that damn library.

He shook his head. That’s thought for another time.

If he could not get Skills, then he would have to settle for blessings from them.

(Author’s note: For those wondering, Blessings only come from Beast Anima and have a time limit for usage. This time cannot be exceeded, while skills do not generally have a time limit on usage unless it is going to essentially hurt the person if used beyond that time limit, e.g Berserker. Regardless, both are very important as we shall see)

Many people complained, but the chief’s word was law.

That night they ate again, and they writhed in agony again. And again the night after, for four more nights, until by the fifth day came.

By now, the whole tribe was chewing strips of Basalt Dragonic Lizard meat like jerky, snacking as they worked. There was no more rolling on the ground and screaming in pain. Their bodies had stopped fighting it and accepted it.

Victor opened his status.

[Immunity Unlocked: Encroaching Darkness (Resistance)]

He smiled at the alert. And not only for himself, but for the whole tribe too.

Normally, it shouldn’t have been possible. But the Lizard had been dead a long while, and Victor had let the sun bleed much of the mana out of the cut meat. Barbarians already carried natural resistance to poison. All he’d needed to do was feed it to them in small doses until their bodies built their own immunity.

He looked around at them. So many had mana now. All they needed was a way to channel it. He suspected a skill book at this stage would do wonders for them.

Again, if only he had them.

"Fuck!" He cussed internally.

Then something caught his eye at the edge of the camp.

One person seemed to have unlocked something... different from the rest.

Coco?

She stood with a faraway look, her eyes drifting over empty air, tracking something nobody else could see, like a child chasing butterflies.

"Coco," Victor said. "You alright?"

"Yes." She smiled dreamily. "It’s just that there are so many of them."

"Many of what?"

She turned to him, puzzled. "Can’t you see them? The shinning butterflies."

"Butterflies?" Her words clicked, "you mean...spirits?"

She nodded, "Chief they’re so... happy." Her voice softened. "...so comforting."

Victor raised a brow.

He glanced at the rest of the tribe, then back at her, and a slow smile spread across his face.

"Looks like one of us unlocked something far greater than the rest," he murmured.

But suddenly... Kiki’s blade was already coming down.

She had crossed the camp without a sound, with her broadsword out, aimed straight at Coco’s neck. Coco didn’t even turn. She was still smiling at the empty air.

Victor’s body moved before his mind did.

CLANG.

His axe blurred out of his inventory and caught the broadsword a hand’s width from Coco’s throat. The shock of the block rattled up his arms. He stared at Kiki, wide-eyed, then shoved her blade back and stepped in front of Coco.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Kiki’s grip stayed tight on the hilt, her eyes hard. "Didn’t you hear her?... Spirits."

"Yeah, I heard. So? What’s wrong with that?"

She frowned at him, as if he were the one saying something insane, or as if he ought to have known better.

"Spirits, Milkshake22! We’re Barbarians. We worship our ancestors." Her voice dropped, cold and certain. "Spirits are what the elves worship. It’s heresy."

Behind Victor, Coco finally blinked out of her daze. She looked at the broadsword, and the at Kiki’s face, and the color drained from her cheeks.

Around them, the tribe had gone dead silent...