I wake up with a kink in my back and a groggy sort of hunger I have never felt before. First Sight, Then Cold, a Chill crawls up my back as I notice that I am naked. I am in a field of blood surrounded by corpses stretched out onto platers. It's sort of grand, in a sense, but there are more important things at hand. For one, where exactly am i? Where is my Blasting Rod? And what exactly happened? Well I dwell on my confusion, I notice a small stone slab with a magical bag on it. I grab it and check what's inside. All of my Sage Helith books are in the bag, but nothing else. The bag is of incredible quality. Honestly something I have never seen before. It has a fairly large amount of space, and can organize and categorize features.

I try to think back on what has happened, as it's a good assumption this isn’t a hangover. The demons invaded.. and I don't remember much else. I was in my bunker, I came out of my bunker, and then something happened. I’m not sure what, but it gives me a burning feeling in the chest. In fact this feeling pushes away the cold and I stop shivering. I look down and observe my body to find that it has changed, or shifted more-so. The script on my skin has been changed and even the script under the skin has been changed. With the most obvious factor a large rash/bloat borrowing out of the flesh pumping and writhing with energy. Masterful work! and another surprise; something I have never seen before. Beautiful runescript attached to an artificial heart, this must be a blessing today? Or maybe not. this may be someone trying to make me do something. My parents warned that a day like this would come, me and william are supposedly things that others covet. Although what task they have for me must wait, I have to at least find something to cover myself with.

Wandering around I notice the ritual, the ritual is as beautiful as the script on my body. Although larger and harder to see the grand picture. The maimed corpses look grueling, but there is a mastery only a master of blood can drag out. And another master only a druid can drag out. Really many disciplines of magic are on full display, a festival of sorts. I notice cloth on one of the corpses and take it for myself. It's caked with blood, but so am I, so it's not much of a transaction.

Really it’s almost enlightening, I have lost a lot, and now i have lost everything. And it hits me far differently from before. It's refreshing like a cold glass of water. Or the time of purity as soon as you're done throwing up may be a better example. The pain of the past does not matter, only the future needs clarity. And speaking of the future, it's time to pursue a course of action. Of course in order to do that I need to understand where I am? A look for the Ridge of the valley and look for markers. These markers are used generally for travel, the north gets little sun and little access to the sky. For one i am not in The Valley Of Death anymore, i actually don’t recognize a lot of the markers. I squint my eyes to look long and hard at the valley ridge and I find the north marker. Trying to think heavily about the direction of the north in relation to everything. I wasn’t the best at geography but I knew how to travel. I’m probably not good enough to figure out where I am based on the markers alone. I can only head south away from hell.

So I do so, positioning myself away from the northern marker, I start wandering toward the forest. I reached the edge of the forest, before I had a sudden shock. I don’t have a weapon, the wastes are dangerous, the demons have invaded! What the hell am I doing?

I stare into the forest, I realize I don't hear anything, no birds, nothing. I look back, I am at a blood ritual site there’s probably something that can rip out of the ground. Metal, wood, blood there might be something, yes? I have a few books right? Carpentry and maybe blood. Blood sounds useful; just generally useful. I remember the Hell Economy book needed blood for a few things.

-

A Guide To Summon a simple hell creature

Reality

Any Form Of Blood, Meat, Bones, Or Organs

NonReality

Trace Elements of Any form of Emotion, This will determine the type of creature summoned.

Create a Circle On the Ground and surround the circle with a magically conductive material. Woods are incredible for such things, making a circular faggot will do if you don’t have access to expensive crystals and metals.

Putting in the Realitys

Blood: Pour Blood Into the Circle

Organs, Meat, Bones: Put it as close to the center of the circle as possible

Putting in the NonReality

Channel your own mana into the circle Or

Use a Dust of a Particular emotion and channel that energy into the circle.

-

In order to do this “simple” procedure it seems I need something called “dust” whatever that is. Looking through the book I can find a method on how to extract dust but, honestly, this is starting to look like a bit too much effort.

You know, i could help

I hear a strange voice inside my head. Immediately my first instinct is to ignore it and hope it goes away. I am not insane, so such a thing should never happen.

You are not insane, an insane person has left me in your care. I am quite annoyed, but it's not the worst thing that could have happened.

Well I guess the blood ritual was some sort of mind breaking ritual. Am I really in a forest, or in reality am I killing things or doing things I shouldn't be doing?

None of that, you have become an apostle.

Like Sage Helith? The same thing that seemingly made her an insane maniac?

Yes, somewhat, it's not that she is insane so to say, it's more that she has seen more than enough for what life has to offer. Which in a way is insane.

Are you saying she is bored? Like bored out of her mind! How did she even get to that point?

She services one of the gods of knowledge, she has the knowledge of just about everything in her tiny little head. She has interesting rituals but not ones of pure madness at least.

But.. If I'm an apostle, who's apostle am i?

Isn’t it obvious you're my apostle.

Yes?

I will explain it later. Don’t you have a ritual to do?

Yes? Well? You said you could help me with this and I am skeptical a voice in my head can help me.

I will provide the NonReality for the ritual. Just make a wooden circle around one of the corpse pires and I will send you an angel, or demon if you prefer. I personally like to call them servants or assistants as that's all I use them for.

Questionably, I begin to collect fresh and flexible sticks around the perimeter of the ritual site to turn into a proper ritual circle. I use basic alchemy to connect the sticks together in a bond after bending the sticks in a somewhat curved shape. I get about 6 mismatched wooden curves and try to put them around one of the many corpse pires of the ritual site. I try to fix gaps by applying more sticks to the bond. And try to mold the wood into proper shape to make the circle not completely terrible. I discovered that wood is harder to manipulate than metal, kind of like trying to use water to plug a hole. I have to be extremely careful or I will warp the wood too heavily. Honestly it's difficult but the sheer freedom of it is enriching. Metal is probably the better material but there is a lot you can do with such a moldable material. I stand back and look at my work, Its almost completely circular. Because of excess magic usage it did not take that much time and it looks half decent. I am hungry however and I don't really have much food. Unless… No, I'm not going to do that.

You can Corpses used in rituals are disinfected and are ready to eat. Mostly because some cultures eat the flesh as a special rite. Demons especially like to do so and season specific corpses with spice.

If they like to do so, Wouldn't they have eaten the spiced corpses already?

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

They didn’t, they left them for you to eat actually. This is an interesting ritual made from the stigmatization of demonic gods. Even demons don’t trust their gods and do this to please an apostle and their god so they themselves don’t get eaten.

Have you.. Ever eaten actually anybody? Because if that's the case I might have a problem.

No, but this also led to another interesting ritual where the demon will just assume that's what the god wants. So they will go out of their way to do it anyway. Almost all Apostles of demonic gods start a bloody rampage as they ascend. Other than edge cases where you are disconnected from demon culture. Such as you.

I mean why exactly do you let this sort of thing happen? Won’t it lead to you getting less followers or whatever you use to retain power?

It doesn’t happen nearly enough to have any real effect on anything really. It’s simply not important. And really I don't think you know demons well enough if you think that would affect their faith, or really any attachment to me at all. To you, you probably think of them as anarchistic, insane, or even absurdly prideful. It also does not help that a fairly insane demon put my heart inside of you.

Your heart is inside of me? A God's Heart is inside of me! Why aren't I dead? isn’t this a lot more important than you are letting on!

It's not that you can’t support it. Really if it could get more blood that would be nice. That artifact is something I made after it became a trend for a bit.

A Trend?

The goddess of Light Ithune made a stupid sword that could cut down armys. Called the Hero's sword. Everyone in the world knows of it.

I mean yeah i know of it, but really? Can this heart be compared to such an artifact?

No, not at all, the heart produces blood and mana on its own, getting stronger the more blood gets into it. It withers into a sort of gem-like object once the user dies so it's easy to put into someone else or even insert into yourself. It's most often used with demons that have no mana and wish to create a grand ritual. In your hands and with your talent the artifact is only somewhat useful. Really becoming my servant and having to do my bidding is a really big downside compared to the benefits of the darn thing. Most consider it cursed and the rituals produced by trying to keep the heart safe and contained are incredibly interesting.

What are these rituals?

I would like to tell you but you have just been standing here talking to a voice in your head for about 17 minutes. That's not much time but it's still quite a bit.

But really I want to know more about these rituals. The heart is in my body and I think it would be a good thing to know. If it’s really dangerous don’t I need to do something about it?

The heart is safe, the rituals are only secondary, finish the ritual already.

How?

Use the heart.

How?

I'm not your mother, just use it.

I look at the ritual and then a look at my new artificial heart. Then I look at the ritual again. So I will guess? just channeling mana like normal? Attempting such. I notice that there is a distinct feeling of the heart's energy and my own. Such a distinction that I get why the voice in my head is somewhat miffed. The energy is a tad bit worse than my own, lending credence to the voice's statement about it being a “bad deal”. More magical energy is always half decent, and well the voice also said the thing can be improved so i don’t think much on that.

Channeling the Heart's energy into the ritual, the corpse slowly starts to get eaten away by some sort of invisible entity. Bits, gashes, and wounds start to appear all over the corpse. It began to reach a point where the corpse collapsed in on itself. Then it fell into a pool of blood strangely pooling up in the ritual circle. The corpse melts into the ritual until the only thing that remains is blood. Blood started flooding into the center of the ritual and began to slowly form into a creature. Organs I have never seen before and strange bone structure began to take shape. Ending in skin, the remaining blood flowed into the creature until the ritual became bare.

The creature that stood before me was an unexpectedly large one, the same size as a human although a tad bit taller. It had no face and a strange Keg-like bone structure attached to its back. Its hands had 5 fingers and had strange nimble looking arms. Its bone structure is extremely pronounced on its body Mainly top heavy although its legs look fairly strong with large claw like feet. I can’t help but be surprised by such a.. creature? I have seen monsters but usually they look a lot more natural.

You haven’t been to many places if you think most monsters look natural. Although that's mostly because the natural looking ones are the first to be put into a dungeon. Easy things to kill are killed easily, almost surprising.

These Hell demons look quite strange, really, i don’t think this is on the upper end of looking natural. This thing looks straight out of a druid's laboratory yet you suggest it's the norm?

The Assistant does not look strange, it's actually quite pleasing to the eye. I could have made something far more ugly, but I didn't. And not noticing such wonderful effort is quite depressing. The Assistant is called a Blood Mule, It produces blood and has a similar effect to my heart, the more meat it feasts upon the more and higher quality blood it produces. Basically with one of these you can manage a small number of other demons. And no, I'm not going to give you another one until you can “pay” for the next.

Pay eh, what exactly do you want?

I will be blunt. I need two things, Blood and Mana, the more you get me the better. Also the better my relationship with you will go.

Time to explain the contract. As my apostle you will have access to the myriad of things I can provide. But I need things done and I fundamentally as a god require Mana. Blood can be shifted into mana and mana can be shifted into blood, how nifty. So of course things i need done, Things I Need Done is what i need you to do. I will ask you politely to do them and you're guaranteed to do so. What a nifty ritual. I give you things then you do things, what a wonderful, maybe even profitable ritual.

Profitable you say?

Yes Profitable, “mutually beneficial” one might also say, you rub my back i rub yours. Although what a strong back to rub, the back of a god? You need to do a lot to match my expertise and cunning. So I expect you to start working, yes?

What if I don't work? I just go somewhere to build a cabin in the woods and not bother anyone.

I'm stuck in your head bud, do you want real insanity?

I don’t think i want real insanity, or at least a strong maybe.

Ah? Stange lad? Good Lad. Good Lad. A cabin in the woods is not the worst place to do what I want you to do, you know. Quiet out of the way, not in the middle of the current war that's going on right now. Sounds pretty nice, yes?

I guess this place isn’t that nice, so maybe I should go somewhere else?

This place is fine but do note that you're not a demon in the middle of demonic territory. The strong monsters of this land could be put to some use, yes. But you need to start moving. The army is here and you don’t want to be here when the ritual starts.

What Ritual?

Nothing, Nothing, Just a little surprise a few ambitious people are cooking up. Nothing for you to concern yourself over, Unless you wait here too long.

Hmm, Nothing, as a term it doesn’t make me feel any better. I really need to prepare or im going to get murdered by demons. The demons think I'm in some sort of blood rage right now so they aren’t anywhere near here so I have a bit of time. I do just generally need more things, a weapon for one, the “Blood Mule” as it's called looks strong but will probably get popped by the demons blasting rods. And well, it's large enough that it probably can’t get behind a demon and stab its throat or anything like that without difficulty. I do remember that I am hungry. Can I ask Mr. Demon god to tell me where those corpses were?

I will gladly uphold such a wonderful ritual.

In my vision the corpses that were prepared were highlighted with a strange red glow. They were close to the stone slab in the center platform and looked spiced. Honestly i don’t really know why i asked the god for where they were when i could have just looked. There are two corpses and I know I can't eat all of them in one sitting. To be productive I tell the Blood Mule to eat all the corpses currently not in use other than the future food rations. The Mule that was mostly just confused and meandering suddenly became fairly excited at the prospect of having “all” of these corpses. The creature walked up to the nearest corpse and its faceless head detached and unhinged into a large jaw. Well it's strange arms unfurled? Into two large blade-like claws. It started to efficiently eat and tear apart the corpse starting with the exterior limbs like the arms and legs then going in for the meaty chest.

Taking some example from the supposed expert, I cut off an arm of the spiced corpse. The corpse was a corpse of a demon which gave me a slight bit of clarity I guess. Taking a bite out of the arm I was honestly surprised as it was a lot better than I thought it would be. It tasted like beef but of an extremely high quality, almost divine. I honestly didn’t think that beef this good even existed.

I was going to tell you later that this is a delicacy in many upper-class areas of human territory. It would have been funny if you decided to never partake because of morality or some nonsense. Honestly my rather insane demon follower seems to have found a good one this time.

I ignored the statements made by the god and just kept eating the arm until I ate about half it. By then I was quite full and I was told by the god this meat will keep so i trust that. The mule is still eating. He has eaten 3 corpses already but this area has a fairly large amount. Taking a fair amount of time to count we have about 460 corpses arranged in this ritual.

Do note that you could have just asked me for that information.

Why didn’t you tell me as I started counting?

Does not matter.

Well.. Then? Are there any rare metals in this ritual?

Yes there is Orichalcum in the center of the ritual. I suggest taking a bit and the rest is just a steel alloy.

Ah, going to the center of the ritual and paying close attention to the ritual bindings I find that at a point the metals shift into a strange looking orange metal. I feel the metal is quite familiar but I do know I have never seen such a metal at markets. Mithril is usually the rare metal I expect but it's strange to know there are multiple. I use alchemy to slowly detach and take the metal from the ground. I then put the metal in my newish magic bag. Thinking a bit, I should just do this with as much metal as I can. As really, it's not like I will be going back to civilization soon. And it's not like I will run into anywhere I can find metal.

It should take a long time but I assume it will be worth it.