Rise of the Devourer

Chapter 7: Blood Behind the Walls

Two exits led further into the cultist hideout leading into a much narrower corridor, with various rooms carved and set up inside the cavernous walls.

Noah followed behind Aurelia, as she went through every room checking for traps, before she searched and tossed anything important towards Noah for storage.

Catching the coin and slipping it into his inventory, Noah glanced at the long corridor. “Just how big is this place?”

“On the shorter end of things, if anything. The corridor is an illusion trap, there’s a pit spike in the ground there,” Aurelia said, as she opened a dusty chest hidden under the floor, before sorting through the contents.

Noah watched the adventurer work, and couldn’t help but feel as if he was desecrating graves of dead people. The graves of some terrible terrible people, but that didn’t change the nature of the act.

Aurelia threw a book towards Noah, and he caught it using his inventory but found the book bouncing off from the hole he’d made in space. Notifications appeared in his vision.

Your inventory is full. Would you like to replace an item?

Yes/No?

“Uh-oh, my inventory is full,” Noah said, opening his inventory as he checked all sixteen slots filled by different objects.

“You still have the storage device you emptied right?” Aurelia asked.

Noah nodded, taking out the storage device from his pocket, before he tossed it to Aurelia. The adventurer inspected the device, before hovering her hand over the gem embedded in the centre of the bracelet. Flames swirled around the device, before being absorbed by the gem, as the colour inside changed from a blackish-purple to a much brighter orange-gold.

“Alright, this should be easier now,” Aurelia said, closing the chest. After a quick glance around the room, she walked out, and Noah followed behind. Silently, he observed the cultist caverns, taking note of the little symbols carved in various locations. There was an unnerving sensation from the single minded devotion represented by the things shown here present in the surroundings.

“I wonder what makes these people so… lost. Single mindedly acting out atrocities. Strange to see how human nature doesn’t really change much even across worlds,” Noah murmured.

“The allure of power, misguided beliefs, led astray by false pretences or sometimes, merely being born to the wrong parents. But all of them were awakened. They made a choice to participate in these acts, and to participate in the crimes. We can’t keep thinking of them as victims,” Aurelia said, glancing back at Noah, her eyes glowing dimly in the dark.

Noah saw a golden glow diffused in her surroundings, like a beacon of light. He realised it was her aura.

“I’m not victimising them,” Noah replied. “At least not the people I fought today. They were people willing to take a life, or allow the act. And they were people willing to die for their twisted cause. What I’m instead thinking over are the people who didn’t have a choice. Even back in my world, the targets of cults are people who are helpless, with nowhere else to go, people on the down and low, with not the best grasp, or in desperate need of something to cling on. What do we do with those people? What if they wish to be free of the path they may have been forced to pick?”

Aurelia continued to walk ahead in silence, continuing her inspection for traps around the corridor as they made their way. The silence grew longer, and Noah wondered if he should move on.

“There are ways,” Aurelia said, her voice tight. “The church of Helion has been fighting the Abyss for millennia. Their priests can cleanse you of the Abyssal paths. But It’s not a kind act. The ritual burns the person being cleansed in Helion’s flames. It is used as punishment to torture cultists, and as a method of public execution. Most who undergo the ritual die, and those who survive are left with terrible scars throughout their bodies that will never heal, no matter the magic used upon them. They can sometimes be seen in Hellion’s temples, serving as helpers.”

Noah paused at Aurelia’s words. “That sounds… incredibly cruel. What if it’s a child who was forced?”

“They are executed as an act of mercy,” Aurelia replied, not looking back at Noah as she replied.

They walked in silence after that.

A few minutes later, the cavern began to turn dimmer. Aurelia gestured to Noah, pointing at a gate further in the chamber.

Noah raised his awareness, following behind Aurelia, as they moved closer. The chamber had a wooden gate, far more ornate and carved than all the rest they’d encountered so far. He spotted brief wisps of mana coming off of the door itself.

“Some kind of lock. Hmm, guess I’ll need to open it,” Aurelia said, before looking at Noah. “Stay behind.” she said and Noah moved away from the door.

Golden wisps gathered around Aurelia’s fists, as fire swirled around her. With a thrust that almost made her form blur, she struck, the fire exploding outwards as the door was shattered into burning embers that launched into the room in an explosion of fire.

Noah stared at the exploded door, now reduced to embers and burning pieces of timber. “I guess that’s one way to open a lock,” he murmured, following behind Aurelia as she stepped into the room.

Aurelia walked to the table set in the middle of the chamber, flipping open a book. “Probably the chief’s chamber. But I don’t see anything here. It’s oddly empty,” she said, closing the book in her hand, as she looked around.

“Well, if I was the head of a taboo cult, I would be paranoid too. Maybe he hid his loot somewhere else,” Noah said.

“Let’s take a look around, just in case,” Aurelia said, walking around the desk as she began to inspect.

Noah made his way to the shelf instead, picking up one of the books present on it, before blowing the dust off the leather bound tome, and immediately regretting it as the cloud got into his eyes and nose, making him cough.

Stepping away from the pile in a coughing mess, he opened the book, and used identify.

[Ritualist book of Advanced Abyssal Call - (Rare)]

An advanced book on the ritual practices of calling creatures from the endless void.

Would you like to consume [Ritualist book of Advanced Abyssal Call]?

Yes/No?

“Huh,” Noah murmured, dismissing the prompt. Glancing into the contents that he did not understand a word of, he took out one item before he put the book in his inventory instead. One by one, he made his way through the shelf, looking at the many magical books present, shoving and moving every book on the shelf ever so slightly.

“Come on, come on, I know there has to be a secret door here,” Noah whispered, as he made his way to the other end of the shelf. Moments before he was about to give up and move on in disappointment, he heard a click as he tried to pull out a particularly heavy book.

Pulling all the other books nearby out, he felt around the area of the book with his hand, trying to look for the trigger mechanism.

“What are you doing?” Aurelia asked, looking at him in confusion.

“Employing the lessons I’ve learned from every movie to have ever existed,” Noah said, shifting the book back, before his eye was caught by an ornate plate of gold stuck on the leather bound book. Grabbing the section, he pulled it back and found a key shaped hole inside the book.

Taking the key out from his inventory, he inserted it into the keyhole with a beating heart. Stepping away, to run back at a moment’s notice in case of a trap, he turned the key. A slow, quiet click echoed throughout. A moment later, the shelf in front of him began to shudder, dust falling off of the hinges.

“Yes!” Noah exclaimed in excitement, as the shelf began rising ever so slightly from the ground. After the movement had stopped, Noah gently pushed at the book, as the giant shelf turned around like a spinning door.

“How did you find that?” Aurelia asked, baffled.

“You can thank modern media and movies for that,” Noah replied, stepping behind the shelf. The room behind the shelf was dark, and made of polished and carved stone tiles, unlike the natural dirt coloured cavernous walls from before.

“Your world must be a strange one.”

A few moments after, he heard Aurelia’s footsteps behind him as the shelf closed behind him, plunging the chamber into darkness. Even his enhanced vision struggled in the dark of the chamber.

“Firefly,” Aurelia whispered, lifting her palm as little sparkling balls of light rose from her fingertips, lighting up the chamber.

“That felt different from your normal abilities,” Noah commented, watching the floating embers.

“It's a spell. Not a part of my abilities. It was the first spell I learned from my mentor.”

“A pretty spell,” Noah replied, before glancing at the chamber he found himself in. The area looked dark, and oddly like a prison with little cells with metal bars present inside. He could see wisps of blood everywhere inside the chamber. Clinging to the wall, the floors, and permeating the air inside.

With a sudden chime, he saw words appear in his vision.

Hidden Quest found!

Quest: Blood behind the walls

You’ve strayed from your path, wandering into hidden secrets that were never meant to be uncovered. Will you seek them out? Or be wary of the warning that’s whispered by the blood.

Objective: Uncover the mystery hidden in the secret chamber.

Difficulty: Unknown

Reward: None.

“I got a new quest,” Noah said, glancing back at Aurelia.

“Quest… the thing you get from your Astral script that gives you rewards right?” she asked, and Noah nodded an affirmative.

“It’s called the blood behind the walls. It’s telling me to uncover the mystery hidden in this chamber. Oddly, there’s no reward and difficulty is unknown.”

“Ominous,” Aurelia said.

“Tell me about it,” Noah replied, looking further into the dark chamber. The firefly spell was providing enough light that he could clearly see through the dark chamber. Till the end, he saw six prison cells inside, each empty on the inside.

Noah was ready to step ahead, when Aurelia grabbed his shoulder. “Hold on,” she said, looking past him at the prison cells with a frown. “I think it might be best if you stop here.”

“Huh? Why?” Noah asked, confused by her sudden change in demeanor.

“I had not expected anything terribly dangerous to be present here after we’d already taken care of the cultists, but this is starting to feel dangerous. You’ve barely awakened. An F ranker would not be doing anything but simple monster extermination tasks at first. I know your abilities are quite powerful, but I’d think over it before just barging in,” Aurelia said.

Noah considered her words for a moment. The unknown difficulty alongside the ominous note was creepy. “Why not go back out with me? Go to the nearby town, and then return later with more people.”

“I can’t. The team who betrayed me would likely be around, and I risk encountering them in the guild itself. It’ll be a mess if I return and… I was blindfolded when they kept me in one of these cells. But I know there were others around, I heard them. And I know they had all been killed before me. If I don’t find their bodies, they’ll rise as undead sooner than later, especially in a place like this. I can’t let that happen,” Aurelia said, her eyes steeled, and flashing with an fiery glimmer.

“In that case, I’ll follow you. I definitely don’t want to be alone out here, and I don’t want you to die either,” Noah said.

Aurelia snorted. “It’s cute that you think you can even dent anything that could kill me.”

“I helped with Viktral and freed you from the cultists didn’t I?” Noah said, raising an eyebrow with a smirk.

“Fair. Although, you’re certainly taking well to magic for someone whose world supposedly has none.”

“What can I say, I’m just that good. Definitely not because I’ve sunk thousands of hours in games,” Noah said, shrugging.

Aurelia shook her head. “I’m starting to feel like your weirdness has more to do with who you are, and not just the fact you’re not from this world.”

“Thanks. I take pride in being one of the weirdest people I know,” Noah replied.

Together they made their way further, reaching up towards the first pair of cells facing each other, with metal bars to keep the prisoners inside. The creepy prison section quieted down the banter that’d begun, made all the more grim by the realisation that it’d held innocent people prisoners here before they’d been murdered helplessly.

Noah walked quietly, following silently behind Aurelia as they made their way through the prison area. The blood wisps kept getting thicker, the further he walked, before the section ended into a corridor that extended in two separate directions. Aurelia turned left, motioning for Noah to follow and he did.

The path curved around, turning narrower and narrower, till Noah could barely fit inside. He walked partially sideways, ducking under the low stone roof that pressed against his forehead.

“Why the hell is this corridor so cramped," he said out loud, feeling more and more claustrophobic at the increasingly cramped space someone his size was absolutely not meant to be in.

“Defensive architecture. Won’t stop an Awakened, but it’s an annoyance. The walls are all mana forged. Tough to break,” Aurelia said, striking her fist against the wall. A shudder pulsed through the area, a small crack forming where she’d struck.

“A normal wall would’ve had a hole in it from that,” she said, continuing forward. After a particularly narrow and small gate that Noah once again had to duck through, they found themselves in a small study. A single shelf, and table and chair were the only furniture in the chamber, with notes lying scattered all over the table and the floor.

“What is this place?” Noah asked.

“Viktral’s secret study,” Aurelia said, a book in her hand that she glanced through. “He was trying to make some kind of a chimera from his familiar. A perfect creature capable of forming the optimal conduit to the destructive nature of the void.”

“Can I have a look?” Noah asked.

Aurelia handed him the book, and Noah began to flip the contents, before stopping at a page with highlighted notes.

“The first prototype is a failure. A powerful creature with impressive regeneration, yet the creature lacks in intelligence and potential. It had been a mistake to put so many spirits into a single creature.

The second prototype… I still regret its loss. It had potential. So much potential. It had retained nearly all its human intelligence. But the process was too scarring, making the creature unstable. I need a stronger base. An E rank Awakened at least.

I’ve put a request out. Hopefully with this, I will finally achieve our goal.”

Noah paused as a realisation occurred to him. “A chimera? Do you think Viktral didn't sacrifice every prisoner he gathered, but instead…?”

His suspicions were confirmed further when words appeared in his vision.

Quest: Blood behind the walls, complete.

Objective:Uncover the mystery hidden in the secret chamber, complete.

Reward: None.

Before he could tell Aurelia about the quest, Noah heard a man’s scream echo throughout the cavern. The shout was followed soon after by a high pitched shriek that shook Noah’s body to his core.

Glancing towards Aurelia in horror, he dashed forward, quickly overtaken by the much faster adventurer who made her way through the narrow corridor, and out into the other section. Panting, and running as fast as he could, Noah followed behind, rushing into the right side corridor.

The closer he moved the better he could sense the shudders and shivers pulsing through the ground, like the steps of something giant moving around.

Noticing Aurelia’s golden aura, Noah stumbled out from the small entrance, finding her kneeling next to a bleeding cultist, with half his body torn to shreds. Catching a glance at the man’s injured side, he froze in place, as he saw the man’s organs spilling out of his gut. A pool of blood covered the ground, dragged over from underneath the metal gate carved with glowing magic runes, from where the shudders came from.

“It… grieves…the Master…” the cultist whispered with the last of his strength, before his eyes turned blank.

“He’s gone,” Aurelia said, standing up, before her eyes turned towards the locked chamber. Noah followed Aurelia’s sight, peering inside, and the sight made his skin crawl.

A giant… something, walked inside. Faces, joints, fingers, bones, sinew and flesh were all stitched together with dark inhuman flesh and threads as if without any regard to form the creature that roamed the inside of the chamber. Words appeared in front of him as he used identify on the creature.

[Flesh Grafted Horror - ??]

Noah could hear the various voices screaming from inside, and he felt a chill run down his spine when he realised they were coming from the faces that’d been sewed onto the abomination.

“This is…” Noah tried to speak, but words failed him as he stood in silence. He felt his body freeze in place, as the creature paused, noticing their presence. Slowly, it moved through its many mishmash of limbs up to the door, before bringing its central eye near the slit in the metallic door, as it looked at the two of them.

Time slowed down, as Noah stood with his breath held in place. The creature's eyes inspected him, glancing him up and down, as the screams echoing from the many faces stitched onto it continued to fill his mind.

A moment later, it moved on, eyes going towards Aurelia instead. Moving its central face closer, the abomination sniffed once, and then twice, before moving back, as if satisfied. The giant spider-like monster turned around, losing interest.

Noah almost collapsed at having the threat pass, when suddenly one of the stitched on faces pointed a finger at him, as its singular bloated eye went to the Abyssal ring resting on his finger.

A moment of silence passed, as Noah’s heart dropped in horrific realisation.

The creature erupted with a loud shriek, leaping towards the two of them.

“Run!” Aurelia screamed, flames shooting from her fists.

Noah dashed backwards, narrowly dodging the shroud of debris from the collapsing wall and door. With a chime, a new prompt appeared in front of him.

New Quest obtained!

Quest: A Familiar’s Vengeance

You peeked behind the curtain, and caught a glimpse of the atrocity hidden within. And it glimpsed you. Now it hungers for you, who slew its master.

Objective: Escape Viktral’s familiar.

Secondary Objective: Don’t let Aurelia Fauster die.

Difficulty: Very Hard

Reward: An Epic grade Ability tome.

“Now’s not the fucking time!” Noah screamed at the system, running for his life.

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