Sacrifice and the supernatural

After repeating the exact same motion an unknown number of times-

Click!

There was a crisp, pleasing snap! The bolt had actually sprung open!

Vanessa swallowed.

What an indescribable power...

With the brass lock successfully opened, Vanessa lifted the lid of the case and looked inside expectantly, then froze for a moment.

"Why is it still books?"

The case was stuffed with books of varying thicknesses. Vanessa casually picked up the topmost one. On its worn cover, a line of gold-stamped lettering stood out glaringly in the dim light:

"The Sins and Punishments of Sacrifice-The Pitiful Extraordinary Ones"

Vanessa's fingers trembled slightly as they brushed over the spine.

"Sacrifice... pitiful..."

An indescribable, cold sense of foreboding seized her heart in an instant.

Wasn't the supernatural supposed to be synonymous with power? Why describe it as "pitiful"? And it mentioned sacrifice, too.

"Do gods really exist?"

There was a general consensus on whether gods existed.

There was a church of the Pale Lady just two streets away. Anyone willing could chat with a nun for a while and listen to the teachings.

But anyone asking whether gods existed would receive only ambiguous answers, such as "God exists in your heart" or "The Lord cannot be found with a telescope."

The books at the academy, however, clearly stated that gods did not exist in the world known to humanity.

Even adding the word "known" was merely for the sake of rigor. Almost every aspect of society suggested that there were no gods in the world, and that the supernatural existed only in the imagination.

Vanessa suddenly remembered how, during her university days, professors would often take students out on archaeological expeditions, or follow some historical lead to investigate.

These leads often sounded mystical, but the eventual findings were precisely the opposite.

She had read quite a few reports herself. There had been no traces of the supernatural in them, only rumors and misunderstandings.

Only occasionally would a participating student suffer a mental breakdown, which was ultimately attributed to academic pressure.

She had never thought anything was wrong at the time.

Then she thought of Old Razi. The old man was always worried that Vanessa would go mad, but... why?

Vanessa had indeed encountered some danger, but that had nothing whatsoever to do with "madness," did it?

She felt as though she had stepped into a spiderweb. Everything had traces she could follow, each strand interlocking, yet when she looked down, she could see nothing at all.

Could it be... that the supernatural had always existed in this world, only hidden beneath the surface, where ordinary people could not see it at all?

Holding the book, Vanessa felt for the first time like a blind person opening her eyes. All manner of bright, vivid colors danced before her, leaving her somewhat unnerved.

She opened the book with trembling hands. The flyleaf was blank, but someone had scrawled a line on it with a fountain pen:

"All supernatural power in this world comes from sacrifice."

"All supernatural power in this world comes from sacrifice," Elliot read aloud from the words spelled out on the dialogue board.

He rubbed his chin and began to think.

"Sounds like the supernatural in this world doesn't come from cultivation or anything like that... It's a fairly common setup, though. Take Paladins in DND, for example. Their power comes from the gods, and if they anger those gods, their power gets taken away."

"But..."

Elliot's gaze fell on the word [Sacrifice].

"Not a gift, but a sacrifice? That doesn't sound very safe, and something about it feels strange..."

He remembered the joke about the cultist: during a sacrificial ritual, the offering shouted, "I want to sacrifice these cultists!" And it worked.

It would certainly be very interesting if he could recreate that in this world.

"But thinking about it, it still seems a little unreasonable. Can this alone really sustain a whole supernatural system?"

Elliot pondered for a while, then suddenly laughed at himself. "Why am I getting hung up on this? It's just a game."

He was actually trying to find reality in a game.

The girl's card had already slid automatically into the [Reading] slot, and the split-flap display was showing the book's specific contents. As he read those descriptions of the supernatural, Elliot still could not help feeling an itch of anticipation.

"The supernatural, the supernatural... even if it's only in a game..."

He was an Otherworlder, so naturally he was unwilling to spend his entire life in such an ordinary way.

Being a noble was nice, but this world did not even have phones or computers. It was rather dull.

Staring fixedly at the Difference Engine, Elliot suddenly had a thought.

"This Difference Engine can read news from real-world newspapers and incorporate it into the card characters' dialogue. That means it has some ability to make deductions. Then... could this supernatural knowledge it deduces also be usable in reality?"

Elliot longed so desperately to encounter the supernatural that he was unwilling to let even the slightest lead slip by. So, even though this reasoning was somewhat far-fetched, he hungrily read the words spelled out on the split-flap display.

"The three essential elements of sacrifice..."

Vanessa's fingers moved across the lines of text, and she unconsciously read them aloud.

"Sacrifice is the cornerstone of obtaining power. However, reckless sacrifice will bring only unknown results. Those great beings seem unable to truly understand our words, or perhaps they harbor malice to begin with. Even when the prayers are already quite precise, things can easily go wrong..."

"Most sacrifices bring only terrible results."

"The Second Era was destroyed because of humanity's blind sacrifices."

"After that, the Extraordinary Ones strictly controlled unrestricted sacrifice and began searching instead for safer methods."

"Through extensive experimentation and sacrifice, they finally worked out stable methods of sacrifice, known as [Paths]."

"Most sacrifices outside the [Paths] will only cause wishes to be fulfilled in twisted ways."

"Therefore, [Paths]-the safe methods of sacrifice that have been established-are always of the utmost importance. The Seven Kinds of Path also point to the Seven True Gods."

"There are also some [Paths] involving sacrifices to beings other than the True Gods, but these [Paths] have never been recognized by the mainstream churches."

"Sacrificing to the Evil God is extremely dangerous and must never be attempted..."

"Hm? What's this?" Vanessa's finger suddenly stopped.

The term "True Gods" in the book had been circled, with a scrawled handwritten annotation underneath:

"There are no True Gods."

She blinked in confusion and flipped back and forth through a few pages, confirming that there were no more handwritten annotations.

"No True Gods? But... the Seven True God Churches really do exist, don't they?"

Vanessa was somewhat puzzled.

It was universally acknowledged that there were Seven True God Churches in the world. Although religion was not particularly influential in this world, no one had stepped forward to deny this concept.

The annotation offered neither context nor explanation.

And even setting the annotation aside, the book itself was very strange. Hadn't the Second Era ended because of the invention of the steam engine? What did sacrifice have to do with it? In fact, academia had already largely abandoned the term "Second Era."

It was generally called the "Second Industrial Revolution."