Chapter 1054 - 869: Divine Sacrifice (2)

On the stone-paved road encircling the square, dozens of tarpaulin-covered wagons were neatly lined up, with fully armed cavalrymen standing beside them.

The Duke and the Earl sat side by side in an open ceremonial carriage, slowly rolling out of the city gate at the rear of the procession.

Lloyd rode his warhorse, shadowing the carriage at arm’s length.

The believers at the front of the column were still murmuring their prayers, yet the Duke noticed that the silver pendants around each of their necks emitted a faint glow in the mist, the light pulsing slowly in time with the rhythm of the prayer, like hundreds of synchronized breathing lamps.

Meanwhile, in the eye sockets of that giant statue on the square, the glow of the two blue Gemstones had, at some unknown moment, brightened by a few degrees.

The procession set out at dawn; the Duke and the Earl sat side by side in the open ceremonial carriage, heading all the way into the depths of the mountain range.

The morning fog gradually dispersed after sunrise; sunlight spilled over the desolate hills on both sides, illuminating the exposed gray‑white strata and sparse scrub.

Behind the ceremonial carriage trailed a long marching column: fully armed infantry formed into files four men wide, their spears swaying in unison upon their shoulders; cavalry trotted along both flanks, the sound of hooves intertwining with the heavy footfalls of the soldiers into a dull, ceaseless roar.

The Duke made a rough estimate; the number of people in this force was at least over fifty thousand.

For a border Earl, this scale of troops already far exceeded the norm.

On the Wizard Plane, the private army of an ordinary Duke of the Empire would be no more than this, yet Count Cadwell was merely a Lord of the northwestern border of the Osseron Kingdom, and still he could muster such a host. Either he had carried out extreme mobilization within his territory, or there was some other power supporting him from behind.

By dusk, the column finally entered the deep heart of the mountains.

The setting sun stained the steep gray Rock Walls on both sides a dark red; the procession wound forward along an extremely narrow mountain path, sheer cliff like a knife’s edge on one side, a bottomless gorge on the other.

Hooves kept slipping on the loose stones; the riders had already all dismounted, leading their horses by the reins and edging forward, pressed close to the wall.

After nearly another two hours’ march, the column turned downward into a concealed side path, whose end opened onto a vast natural fissure in the rock.

The interior of the rift had been widened by human hands; along both sides of the tunnel wall, torches were set at intervals of a few paces, their flickering light casting the murals on the stone into wavering brightness and shadow.

The style of those murals was identical to that of the statue on the square of Stone Crown City: a giant lifting the Earth, all the people kneeling in worship, with some kind of luminous Gemstone set into the giant’s eye sockets.

As the column pushed deeper in, the content of the murals gradually grew sinister.

The giant no longer lifted the Earth, but thrust both hands into it; what gushed up from the rift was not spring water but countless twisted human silhouettes, painted in a semi‑transparent state, as though they were drifting upward—or being devoured by the giant.

The stone steps began to spiral downward, the air growing ever more humid, laden with a thick mingled stench of minerals and old blood.

The torchlight leapt across the Rock Walls, stretching everyone’s shadow long and distorted.

At the end of the steps stood a massive Stone Gate, already pushed open; beyond it lay a cavernous space vast enough to crush the breath from one’s chest.

The dome rose nearly a hundred meters high, stalactites hanging from it like reversed fangs in the torchlight.

Facing the Stone Gate at the center of the cavern stood a statue of the God identical to the one on the square, only many times larger, its bulk almost reaching the vault.

At the statue’s feet spread an exceedingly wide circular plaza, the floor paved with slabs of black stone, each slab carved densely with runes. The strokes of those runes were utterly different from the Magic runes of the Wizard Plane—more ancient, more brutal, every groove as thick as a forearm, shedding a dark reddish gleam in the torchlight.

A faint tang of blood permeated the air. Though slight, in this relatively enclosed underground space it pooled without dispersing, tightening the passages of one’s nose.

Hundreds of believers, under the forcible escort of soldiers, were driven to the entrance of the plaza.

Their white robes were painfully bright in the dim cavern; many had already begun to look about in unease, whispers spreading through the ranks of the faithful.

When the front row of believers stepped onto the Rune Stone Slabs at the edge of the plaza, a few young women suddenly screamed.

Crude grooves on the slabs still held dark, brownish traces; even in the jaundiced torchlight one could recognize at a glance that they were dried bloodstains.

Panic erupted among the believers like a plague.

Some began desperately shoving backward, trying to retreat toward the steps; some fell to their knees, praying loudly to the statue of the God, begging the God to stop this deception.

A sturdily built male believer seized upon the chaos, violently shoved aside the soldier behind him, and bolted toward the direction of the steps.

He was fast—clearly a farmer accustomed to laboring long in the fields; his thick legs hammered against the slabs with sharp smacking sounds. In the blink of an eye he had covered dozens of meters and was about to round the bend in the Rock Wall.

A cavalryman, expressionless, took a short bow from beside his saddle, nocked an arrow, drew and loosed; the entire sequence was so smooth there was not the slightest pause.

The arrow cut a brief arc through the gloom and drove with perfect accuracy into the fleeing believer’s back, straight through his heart.

He staggered forward two steps, his hands clawing uselessly at the empty air, then pitched face‑first, heavily, onto the stone slabs.

The cavalryman waved a hand behind him, and two soldiers stepped forward; one seized an ankle and dragged him back to the edge of the plaza, then flung him into the midst of the shivering believers like tossing a sack of grain.

Dark‑red blood kept welling from the wound around the arrow shaft, smearing a long, crooked trail across the stone.

The cavern fell silent for a heartbeat, then cries, prayers, and pleas all erupted at once.

A middle‑aged woman threw herself down on the Rune Stone Slabs at the edge of the plaza and kowtowed frantically toward the Earl seated not far away on horseback; her forehead struck the stone with a dull thud, blood running from her brow to smear half her face.

Her child was wedged in the midst of the crowd, crushed so tightly he could barely breathe, only a small hand thrust out among the bobbing heads, waving frantically.

The Earl looked down upon it all from his saddle, his aged face devoid of expression in the torchlight.

He spoke slowly, his rasping voice echoing through the cavern: "Complete the Divine Sacrifice, and you shall return to the God’s embrace; your families will also receive the Lord’s protection. Refuse the sacrifice—" He lifted a hand, pointing at the blood trail on the steps that was still lengthening. "—and it is apostasy. By the Empire’s law, your whole family will be punished with you."

The soldiers began using spear‑shafts and shields to force the believers toward the center of the plaza; anyone who tried to resist or flee was struck down on the spot, then dragged to the edge of the plaza and piled together.

When the last believer had been driven into the center, the soldiers rapidly withdrew to the outskirts of the plaza, forming a tight, impenetrable wall of bodies along the edge of the rune‑carved zone.

The Duke stood at the rim of the plaza, sweeping his gaze over the believers whom the soldiers had herded with spear‑shafts onto the Rune Stone Slabs at the center, then turned to the mounted Count Cadwell beside him and asked:

"Your Lordship, you intend to use the lives and blood of these hundreds of people to open this ritual?"

The Earl did not evade his gaze; the deeply wrinkled face still bore that enigmatic smile, only under the dim torchlight of the cavern it looked especially ghastly.

His voice was hoarse yet unflinching, without the slightest attempt at concealment: "Indeed. These believers have been taught since childhood to devote themselves to the God; their lives belong to Osseron. With their blood and souls as offerings, the God will grant me a longer span of years. This is a rule that has endured on these lands for hundreds of years: I protect them, and when the need arises, they give themselves. It is very fair."

He paused, his clouded old eyes turning to the Duke, a trace of undisguised expectation within them: "But of late, this ritual has met with some problems. The God’s response grows ever weaker; the efficacy of the sacrifice ever poorer. I have tried adjusting the number of offerings and the timing of the rite, but nothing has helped. You are a Wizard—what you Wizards study is precisely such things, is it not? When this Divine Sacrifice is over, what I wish to consult you about is this matter. Tonight you need only stand aside and witness; when the ritual is complete, we shall speak at length."