It was dark when I woke up. The stars are still twinkling, and the two moons are still in the sky.

I looked at the clock and saw it was half an hour to dawn.

Today is the day of opening. Thinking about it, a big smile appeared on my face.

I looked at Valentina, sleeping on the sofa, and couldn’t help but shake my head. I had asked her many times to sleep on the bed and I will take the sofa, but she didn’t listen.

I looked at her for a moment, before slowly getting up and walking to the bathroom, trying not to make any sound.

I came out of the bathroom and changed into the suit, before stepping out of the room.

Fifteen minutes later, the carriages stopped in front of the establishment which was bereft of any mist.

In the faint light of dawn, I could see the beautiful pink and cream pastel color building and the one that made it even more beautiful was the golden and silver carvings on it.

It is so beautiful.

In front of the mansion is an enormous fountain of lustrous black stone. In the center of the fountain were three beautiful women, looking in three directions with longing eyes.

This is Valentina’s gift, and it’s beautiful, better than the one I selected.

It makes the establishment look complete.

Unlike yesterday, there is no hub-hub around the establishment. Everything had been set up yesterday; the only thing we need to do is welcome patrons.

There are also no people inside the establishment. There is no requirement for not having people inside for what I am planning to do next, but it is better that no one is present there.

I am planning on doing something. I have barely had any knowledge and don’t know what will happen during it, but it was something, I felt would help me a lot.

I walked into the establishment and saw it completely changed from a month ago. It looked amazing in pastel walls and huge dwarf crafted chandeliers, that will light up in a beautiful light.

They had cost me a lot, but they are worth every penny.

I didn’t look around for more than a few seconds before walking underground, where I saw Caena waiting for me.

“Is everything ready?” I asked, feeling nervous about what I was planning to do.

“Yes,” she replied solemnly and began to walk.

I am doing the sacrifice ritual. I have found out a few things about it, which helped me make the decision about it. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t have reservations; I have a lot of them.

The magic of witches isn’t as simple as mages; it is complex, and a few could do it.

It is a magic that is older than the system that governs the world. Something, even the monsters of incursions fear, and most countries of the kingdom keep a tight lid on it.

Click!

She opened the door, and we walked inside the room.

In the room, there is a big circle made of symbols or script I didn’t recognize using herbs, flowers, roots, crystals, and other things.

In the center of the circle, there is a small triangle made of the same things, with unfamiliar symbols, and the center of the triangle is a small familiar thing.

It is the core of the abomination I had faced in the dungeon of Navr.

“Please sit here, Master Silver,” he said, pointing toward the tip of the triangle.

I nodded and carefully entered the circle before sitting in front of the tip of the circle while she sat on the other side.

“I have a question; I would be grateful if you would answer it?” I asked her. “If I know the answer, I will do it,” she replied.

“Why sacrifice ritual? What not use the merging ritual?” I asked, and a smile appeared on her face.

“A good question, Master Silver.” “The reason we are not using it is because of the core we are using,” she said and looked at the core.

“This core is produced in place, which had the influence of a powerful incursion race. Every speck of it contains their mark and while purification had removed 99.999% of them, a trace has remained,”

“If we use the merging ritual and if it succeeds; the establishment will inherit those traces,”

“The sacrifice is much safer; we are sacrificing through the world as the catalyst. It will wipe every trace of foreign influence, leaving only pure magic to amalgamate with the establishment, which is what we want.” She explained.

I nodded a minute after a few seconds of silence, feeling much more relieved than I was a few minutes ago.

Traces of incursion are bad. I have read enough in my research to know the things it could do. It is why anything that came out of an incursion dungeon is purified.

It is said that as long as anything is 90% purified; it is harmless, but Caena, unwilling to have even 0.001 trace of it.

“So, what do I have to do?” I asked.

“You have brought the needle, right?” she asked back, and I had brought out the needle as she had asked me a few days ago; it was the only thing she had asked me to bring for this ritual.

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“Pierce it on your finger and drop the blood on the black crystal,” she instructed.

I nodded and pierced my finger with the needle. After a slight pain, a drop of blood came out, and I dropped it on the tip of the triangle, where the black crystal was.

Nothing happened as the drop of blood fell on the crystal.

I looked at Caena and saw her looking at me with a smile. I opened my mouth, but closed a moment later and decided to wait.

I didn’t have to wait for long before I noticed the signs of something happening.

The core, which was lying in the center, moved, and it started to melt rapidly until it completely turned into a liquid.

That liquid moved toward the small triangle, seeping into every herb, flower, crystal, and everything else, till no sign of it had remained.

It surprised me, but I didn’t do anything and just watched, but unfortunately, nothing happened for several minutes.

Once again, I was about to ask her what would happen when I saw the smoke coming out of the triangle and this smoke, instead of spreading into the whole room, moved toward the circle and began to enter inside it.

Hun!

I was watching it when I noticed another thing.

The small triangle is turning to ashes. It is not just flowers and roots, but crystals and gems, too. The more smoke came out of them, the things would turn into ashes.

A surprising thing about all is that there is no heat, not even the slightest. I took my hand closer to it but felt nothing.

A little more than ten minutes later, the whole triangle had turned into ashes and all the smoke had been absorbed into the circle.

Dhub!

I looked at the circle and wondered what would happen with it when I got the scare of life when the whole circle burst into flame.

It is not a normal fire, but a blazing fire.

I turned to Caena, only to see her looking at me calmly, with a small smile on her face.

I opened my mouth to ask her what was happening because the fire was dangerous and since we were underground; it was even more dangerous.

“Wh,”

I had barely let out a word when I felt my vision blacking; the darkness appeared in front of my eyes.

I felt the panic seeping in, but before it could fully manifest; I saw something mesmerizing appear in front of me.

A globe, no, a sun?

It looked like a sun and seemed to contain all the colors in the world.

It had just materialized when I saw thin faint strings coming out of it. There are twenty-four of them and they felt like long, with knots twinkling on them.

I had barely taken a look at these twenty-four strings when I saw more strings appearing one after another, at a fast speed. These strings are much smaller than twenty-four strings, but they have far more twinkling knots in them.

For several seconds, countless strings materialized before finally stopping.

I don’t know what it is I am seeing. Whether it is a hallucination or reality or something that I couldn’t understand.

However, one thing is clear.

I am feeling a genuine connection to it at my deepest level. I could feel the changing color and I felt like I would be able to feel it, even if I closed my eyes.

I was looking at the marvel in front of me when a thick black and white smoke materialized out of nowhere and began to seep into the sun.

There was a huge amount of smoke, and it rapidly went into the sun and a couple of minutes later, it had completely gone inside.

There is no change to the sun or strings with twinkling knots, but I felt my connection to it seemed to have gotten a lot stronger.

Hun!

I was feeling this stronger connection when I felt everything in front of me disappearing.

‘No!’ I screamed, willing it to stop, but it didn’t, and everything turned dark before the light appeared in front of my eyes.

I have returned to the real world from wherever I had gone and instead of sitting. I found myself lying on the ground, with a circle surrounding me in ashes.

I looked around before getting up and saw Caena sitting in the same position as she had been earlier.

“Has it succeeded?” I asked, to which she smiled. “You know the answer to that question better than me,” she replied.

Hun!

“It succeeded,” I said and immediately noticed something.

The feeling I get from the establishment becomes much clearer. I could sense it, more clearly, and could even feel the facets of it, which I couldn’t before.

Like the sun, I felt it is made of different things, and maybe those ever-changing colors of the sun represented this.

I wanted to tell Caena about what I saw but felt like it was not time. I had to understand this thing first before I could talk about it with her.