Chapter 350: Crestwall’s Hero

The dark red face masks stuck to its body began to rapidly vaporize. They dissolved into a fine, powdery dust as thick plumes of steam hissed off of them. The skulls wrapped around the waist followed suit, crumbling into white ash. Finally, the glowing red hair at the base incinerated into dust as well.

All of the solid matter—the skin, the bone, the hair—settled into a thick pile of multicolored sand at the base of the statue.

Then the Naga statue itself began to break down.

The stone cracked and rapidly turned to dust, mixing directly into the pile of organic ash below. The steam that had been venting from the sacrifices suddenly shot downward, injecting itself forcefully into the pile of dust.

Slowly, the mixture began to move on its own.

It started to rise from the floor, pulling itself together into the vague shape of a human. At first, it looked like a crude, featureless stick figure made of mud and ash. But as the minutes ticked by, real human features began to form. Flesh, muscle, and clothing slowly materialized out of the magic.

Roderick stayed on his knees and watched the agonizingly slow process.

He waited for almost three entire hours.

Finally, the figure standing in the center of the cave looked completely solid. The summoning was finished.

Roderick pulled out a small knife and pricked the tip of his own finger. He didn’t stab his palm this time, just drew a single drop of blood. He stepped forward and pressed his bleeding thumb against the stone base where the statue had originally stood.

He drew a crude symbol of an eye.

The moment the drawing was finished, the painted eye snapped open on the stone and released a blinding flash of crimson light that enveloped the entire cave.

It only lasted for a fraction of a second before fading away.

Roderick blinked the spots out of his vision and looked back at the stone base. The blood-drawn eye was completely gone.

He slowly looked up at the figure standing in front of him.

It wasn’t a clay model or a pile of dust anymore. It was a living, breathing human being.

Roderick stood up from the floor, but as he got a good look at his new weapon, a heavy wave of disappointment washed over him.

The statue he had sacrificed to was supposed to represent a towering, six-foot-tall god of destruction. But the person standing in front of him right now was barely five foot two inches tall. It was just a short, scrawny kid.

Roderick looked down at the boy and forced a polite tone.

"Oh great hero," Roderick said smoothly. "You have been summoned to save our kingdom from upcoming doom. It has not yet happened, but our prophets say that it will happen soon, and you will be the key to helping us survive this ordeal."

The short guy looked around the cave. He didn’t look scared or confused. He actually looked way too excited.

He glanced at the massive pile of rotting human bodies in the corner, looked around the damp stone walls, and finally locked eyes with Roderick.

"So you summoned me, and I am the hero?" the kid asked.

Roderick nodded slowly.

The guy immediately threw his head back and burst into loud, obnoxious laughter.

"Ha ha ha ha ha!" the kid cackled. "My dream has finally come true! Though I really didn’t expect this to happen without the help of truck-kun. I literally just fell asleep while playing my game."

The kid stopped laughing and squinted his eyes at Roderick.

"Wait, I don’t really know who you are," the kid noted. "Usually, you get transmigrated into a world that you already sort of know. Like a game or a novel you read. I thought that was the meta in today’s stories, but I’m surprised I’m in a world where I don’t recognize a single thing."

Roderick’s eyebrow twitched with sheer annoyance. He had zero idea what half of those words even meant.

"Oh great hero," Roderick said through gritted teeth. "Could you please tell us what exactly you are capable of?"

The short kid smirked confidently.

"System, show me my status screen."

Roderick felt an overwhelming urge to just step forward and punch this arrogant brat right in the jaw. Who the hell acted like this immediately after waking up in a room full of corpses?

But Roderick stopped himself when he saw the kid’s expression suddenly shift.

The boy went from looking incredibly pompous to genuinely surprised. His eyes were darting back and forth in the empty air in front of his face.

That could only mean one thing. Whatever command he just said out loud had actually produced a tangible result that Roderick couldn’t see.

The kid stared at the invisible screen for a few seconds.

"So my ability is... Monster Amplification?" the kid muttered to himself. He looked a little confused by the text.

Roderick’s mind immediately went into overdrive. He calculated everything he knew about magic and tried to figure out what a blessing called ’Monster Amplification’ could actually mean.

It sounded pretty straightforward, but he couldn’t be too sure.

He looked back down at the kid.

"Could you explain what this Monster Amplification does?" Roderick asked.

The kid shrugged. "I don’t know. It just says that I have Monster Amplification as my main skill. I don’t really know how it works yet. All I know is that if I push mana into it, it activates. But that’s it. There is literally no other information on the screen."

Roderick let out a quiet breath.

"Okay, this is to be expected," Roderick said calmly. "We can test it out."

He turned around and looked at his attendant who was still nervously waiting near the mouth of the cave tunnel.

"Go and grab me a few live monsters," Roderick ordered. "It doesn’t matter if they’re weak. Just bring me a few. We’ll need to do a little bit of testing before we proceed forward with any real plans."