“Each of you will take one of the outer points. Your dolls will be placed on the inner point to your right. If the ritual is a success, your impurities will be transferred to the dolls, and you’ll be as healthy as the day you were born,” Madam Trebella explained, pointing toward where they and the dolls would be placed during the ritual. “You’ll feel unnaturally weak for a few days as your body recovers from the ritual, but you’re welcome to stay here in the village until you recover.”

  Following Madam Trebella’s instructions, Vin carefully transferred Shia and Scule to two of the outer points and relayed the instructions to Reginald. Triple checking he was putting the correct doll in the correct spot, he did as ordered, before taking his own spot on the edge of the ritual.

  All this time, Xaril had been distributing seemingly random materials at specific points throughout the array. Other than the various mushrooms Vin had collected that apparently only grew on the back of a rare species of monster beetle deep within the cave-dungeon, he didn’t recognize any of them.

  Remembering what Malzar said about his eyes, Vin tried to focus on the nearest ritual reagent; some sort of puddle of liquid Xaril had poured out only a few feet from him. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t pick up any trace of magic from the liquid.

  Those golden eyes must be special indeed, he thought, glancing over at Shia. I suppose if Shia can taste magic, it’s not that surprising that these people can see it.

  After a few more minutes, preparations were done. Madam Trebella took one last look across the array of runes before ordering Xaril and Malzar to the edge of the room. Carefully placing the two dozen mana stones in a ring-like pattern, she returned to the center of the ritual.

  “Whatever you do, don’t leave your spot,” she ordered Vin. As soon as he relayed the instructions to Reginald, she took a deep breath, and rubbed some sort of liquid on her hands. Muttering something Vin couldn’t make out, she slammed her hands together, her wet clap echoing out across the massive chamber.

  As though someone had thrown a giant switch, the ritual roared to life. The already glowing red runes blazed with power as each of the mana stones rose up into the air; mana literally crackling out of them in small bolts and impacting the different materials placed all throughout the ritual. Vin watched in wonder as magic roared all around him, threatening to tear his very flesh from his bones if he took so much as a single step out of his designated spot.

  As the swirling mana grew even thicker, he realized each of the four dolls had slowly begun to hover as well, turning to face their linked member head on. Vin stared at his doll hovering directly at face level barely a dozen feet away, somehow knowing it was staring back at him despite the lack of eyes or any semblance of a face.

  Without warning, the gemstone around his neck shattered, and Vin gasped as all the nausea and pain that had been stolen from him slammed back into him all at once. Stumbling, he caught himself right before he fell out of the circle, sweating at how close to death he’d just come as the crackling red lightning continued shooting out across the ritual.

  To his surprise, he also received two strange notifications.

  New ritual witnessed! Tier 3 Time Ritual (Ritual of Stillness). 3,000 exp gained.

  New magical affinity discovered! Time affinity. 5,000 exp gained.

  Vin didn’t have time to think about why he was only just now receiving these notifications however, as something more than a little concerning was currently happening to his body.

  Staring down at his chest, he was shocked to find a thin line of darkness connecting him to his hovering doll. As he watched, what looked like a black and green sludge of all things began seeping out of his chest, running along the thread and getting absorbed into the doll just like the blood had been. The smell from the sludge was enough to make Vin gag, and a quick glance around the room confirmed that the same nasty gunk was flowing out of all four of them.

  The trickle of sludge increased first to a consistent drip, and then to a steady stream, and Vin shuddered as he felt the mana pull the radiation from his body. Somehow he intuitively knew it wasn’t just pulling the leftover radiation away, but even curing him of the damage it had caused. Purifying him in every sense of the word.

  The ritual continued on for one very long minute, before it gradually began to slow down. Vin was the first person to have his body fully purified, and Reginald was not far behind. A few seconds later Scule was released from his doll as well. After the thread connecting Shia to her doll finally snapped, the crazy light show finally ended. The four dolls, each one now black as tar, dropped from the air, hitting the ground with sickening splats.

  New ritual witnessed! Tier 5 Life Ritual (Ritual of Purification). 5,000 exp gained.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  As quickly as it had been returned to him, the nausea, pain, and general sense of being unwell had been stripped from him once more, this time for good. Despite how shaky his legs were, Vin wanted nothing more than to rush over to his friends, but he dared not leave his spot without Madam Trebella’s go ahead.

  Finally, the older infernal dropped her hands, wiping the sweat from her brow as she nodded at him.

  “The ritual was a success. You can leave your spot.”

  Before the words had even left her mouth Vin was already moving. Reginald beat him to Scule, so Vin stumbled over to Shia, dropping to his knees and grabbing the elf’s hand. Her eyes were still closed, but the elf was groaning, turning her head this way and that.

  “Shia… how are you feeling?”

  “Vin..?” Shia asked, cracking an eye open and looking at him in confusion. She blinked at the tears welling up in his eyes, taking in the massive room she suddenly found herself in. Her eyes widened as she finally spotted the three infernals watching over them from afar, and she turned to give him a concerned look.

  “Please tell me you didn’t sell our souls to the first demon cabal you found as soon as I lost consciousness.”

  -----

  Just as Madam Trebella warned, Vin felt as shaky as a newborn lamb after the ritual had run its course, and his friends didn’t seem to be faring much better. Malzar helped lead them toward one of the surprisingly many empty rooms making up the manor, promising to come check on them in a bit.

  Vin was a bit grateful that they were all so weak, because based on the look of fear and terror on Scule’s face, he was afraid the petian otherwise would have done his best to flee from the infernals the moment he laid eyes on them.

  As soon as Malzar left them alone, Vin quickly dove into an explanation of everything that had happened after Shia and Scule had lost consciousness, trying to reassure Scule that they weren’t in any immediate danger. As he’d expected, once he got to the part in his story about Shia’s master saving his life, the elf had tried to leap to her feet and literally fell off her bed.

  “He was here?! In this fragment?!” She exclaimed, clawing her way back onto the bed and staring at him, her eyes wide. “Did he say how?”

  “He used a lot of big words, but I definitely remember him saying something about astral projection and reflecting his internal mana structure, or something like that,” Vin said, wracking his brain. “Other than that, it sounded like he was only able to find me because of your staff, and because I took it into a dungeon. He never actually used the term ‘dungeon’ itself, but he mentioned communication between worlds was only possible in areas that were on the edge of reality or something… Something about such places having weaker boundaries.”

  “That would explain why I wasn’t able to follow you inside,” Alka pointed out, still brooding over the fact that she hadn’t been allowed to watch the ritual. “If it’s some strangeness in the System that’s keeping me here despite my remains not even being on Edregon, I guess the System’s not willing to let me go too far away.”

  Vin wasn’t sure why, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something big was bothering the ghost. Even after they’d all been cured of the radiation poisoning she still seemed upset about something.

  “Ancient One’s sap, I knew he was a genius, but I still can’t believe he figured out a way to find me in only a couple of months,” Shia laughed, a massive grin on her face. “As soon as we’re recovered, we have to go back into the dungeon. With all of us together, we’ll be able to hold our own against the bugs.”

  “Yeah, about that…” Vin cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his head and wincing at the fresh reminder he desperately needed a haircut. “After we chatted for a few minutes, your master’s spell started failing. It sounded like he could only spend so long within the dungeon before it gave out completely, and then he wouldn’t be able to access that specific dungeon again. The last thing he said to me was to tell you to find a new area on the fringes of reality and go in with your staff.” Vin paused, his face heating up slightly at his final memory of the strange elf. “Well, actually, it was telling me I was an idiot for trying to fight a swarm of insects with only Stone Shot under my belt, but you get the point. Then he gave me a spell to save my life and basically told me I better learn it before the bugs got to me and ate me alive.”

  “That’s definitely my master all right,” Shia giggled. “He’s a bit of a ‘climb or crash’ kind of teacher. I remember one time a fellow Druid came to him for some advice when she had a student struggling to learn Entangle. My master ended up tying the student to a tree with the runic formation floating in front of them and put a wild boar only a dozen feet away, secured with some flimsy grass ropes. Then he released some shredder ants all over the rope and told the student he better learn the spell before the boar got free!”

  Shia and Alka cracked up laughing like this was the funniest thing in the world, while Vin and Scule shared a look of horror. Though now Shia’s master’s method of saving his life made a bit more sense.

  “What spell did he end up giving you anyway?” Shia asked, wiping a tear from her eye at the memory of her master. “Something to do with insects I’d guess?”

  “Yep. Just like he promised, a tier one spell that’s pretty much useless in just about any other situation other than the one I was in earlier,” Vin snorted, shaking his head. “The worst part of it is I can’t exactly unlearn a spell, so I was basically forced to waste one of my very limited nature spell slots.”

  “Is it really a waste if it got you out of there alive?” Shia asked, raising an eyebrow. “My master always said that all spells had their uses and that no magic was ever truly worthless.”

  “Yeah, enough drawing it out! What did the weird old elf teach you?” Scule asked, ignoring the glare from Shia as he looked at him curiously.

  “Behold, the latest and easily most powerful spell in my entire magical arsenal! Those of you with weak constitutions may want to look away, as this will no doubt blow your very minds!” Trying and failing to keep a serious look on his face. Vin raised his hand and waved it lazily over his head as he cast his newest spell.

  “Familiar Pheromones!”

  Sense Stone, Vin has a new strongest spell in his arsenal! I saw a few guesses that the spell would somehow make Vin invisible to insects, and those were pretty much correct! We'll get a little more detail next chapter as to how it works exactly, along with a long awaited explanation from Shia as to how she even knew where these infernals were in the first place...

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