Horace Loux walked expressionlessly among the "growths."
His gaze swept over the twisted traces of fusion-some had the limbs of two or even more shamans forcibly stitched together; others had beast organs or fragments of Hornsent limbs embedded in them; some were nothing more than writhing masses of flesh.
Bonny Village's "craftsmanship" really was the stuff of nightmares.
He wasted no time on pointless sympathy.
Walking up to the first growth that could still barely be recognized as a human torso, he reached out and laid his hand over its faintly pulsing surface.
He concentrated his will and constructed a vow:
[You will trust me]-in exchange, the recipient of the vow would be "completely separated from all foreign parts that did not belong to them."
This was a very weak vow, so imposing it cost very little.
Even so, applying it to them one by one remained tedious and draining, but he did it meticulously.
The power of the Great Runes was like an invisible engraving knife, branding the shamans' chaotic soul fragments.
Whenever he finished one, he signaled to the nearby tribespeople to carry that shaman to the designated spot in the center.
After imposing over a thousand Great Runes, even Horace Loux, with his willpower and capacity, felt an intense wave of exhaustion and depletion at the level of his soul.
In fact, he had already rested several times along the way.
But he knew this was only the beginning.
Once all the shamans had been carried in, Horace Loux walked to the space left clear in the center.
He took a deep breath, his gaze sweeping over the distant high ground-there, Marika, Hoarah Loux, and many anxious tribespeople watched from afar.
Marika clasped her hands tightly before her chest, her lips moving silently as though in prayer.
Hoarah Loux frowned. Although he supported his younger brother, he clearly had little fondness for this sort of "slimy" ritual.
It was time.
Horace Loux closed his eyes and sank his consciousness into the core of the ritual array.
"Pain, blood..." he murmured a chant he had made up himself, utterly meaningless but impressive-sounding, while the real work unfolded at the level of the soul.
He abruptly triggered every [Separation] vow imposed on the shamans!
"Aaaaargh!"
It was not one person screaming, but the inhuman shrieks of over a thousand twisted souls erupting at the same instant!
The tribespeople watching from afar all clapped their hands over their ears, pain showing on their faces. Some of the more timid ones even collapsed to the ground as their legs gave out.
Within the ritual array, the scene was even more horrifying.
The barely maintained tumorous forms of all the shamans swelled violently the instant the vows took effect!
It was as though countless invisible hands were tearing and peeling them apart from within!
Thick blood gushed and streamed wildly from every crevice and opening in their bodies, as though from sponges being squeezed!
The air instantly filled with a suffocatingly thick stench of blood, mingled with the sharp sounds of organs rupturing and bones being forcibly torn apart.
The blood did not flow at random. Like rivers running into the sea, it rapidly converged at Horace Loux's feet in the center.
The ground soon became a sea of blood.
Horace Loux stood at its center.
Come... Formless Mother... have a look at this "sincerity"... Horace Loux silently recited, even pulling the corner of his mouth into a cold curve.
He knew that a feast of pain and blood on such a scale, so "pure," was nothing short of an unexpected grand banquet for that deity.
She did not keep him waiting long.
Almost within a few breaths of the sea of blood forming, something "descended."
Horace Loux felt an indescribable "gaze" fall upon the bloodstained clearing.
That gaze was cloying and filled with inhuman pleasure.
Horace Loux glimpsed her within the shadows.
The crimson surface beneath his feet no longer reflected the sky or his own image.
It was a "shadow" that could not be described by any known shape.
It consisted of deeper dark red and pitch black, as though it were the inside of every wound, the final destination where all blood converged.
The Formless Mother manifested within the blood.
She "gazed" at Horace Loux and the "painting" drawn in blood beneath his feet.
An immense energy descended along that "gaze."
It was the Formless Mother's "blessing."
Dark red mist, seeming almost alive, spread from the blood and seeped into every bleeding shaman.
In an instant, the shamans' screams grew even shriller, and the foreign parts peeled away from their bodies at a suddenly accelerated pace!
"Now!" Forcing himself to endure the intense discomfort of an outer god's power directly scouring his soul, along with the whispers within the blessing that lured him toward frenzied slaughter and self-mutilation, Horace Loux signaled the tribespeople standing by.
The tribespeople, already stupefied by this hellish sight, snapped out of their daze. Though their legs were weak, under Hoarah Loux's stern gaze they still summoned their courage and shoved the bound Hornsent captives forward, or simply drove them with spears, throwing them into the area shrouded in dark red mist.
The moment the Hornsent entered the mist, they let out howls of utter terror.
The "Crucible" traits on their bodies seemed to have become the most conspicuous targets.
The Hornsent fell to the ground and rolled in agony. Their vitality, along with the "Crucible" power contained within them, was forcibly extracted by the Formless Mother's blessing and poured into the nearby shamans whose foreign parts were being peeled away!
This was a crucial part of Horace Loux's plan: using the Hornsent captives as "living batteries."
The Formless Mother's blessing essentially operated by creating wounds and drawing out vitality.
Applied directly to the dying shamans, it could very well drain them dry before the healing was complete.
But now, with the Hornsent serving as additional "blood bags," while the blessing's power harmed the Hornsent, the "vitality replenishment" it contained was diverted toward the shamans through Horace Loux's subtle guidance with the Great Runes.
The effect was immediate.
After receiving the infusion of Hornsent vitality, the shamans who had barely been kept alive underwent a sudden acceleration of the separation process, while the vitality of their own remaining parts began to recover noticeably.
Amid flying flesh and dark red light, the outlines of the shamans' own bodies actually began to "emerge" again, little by little!
Though the process was accompanied by heartrending screams and seemingly endless bleeding, their "human forms" were indeed returning.
After exhausting the vitality of several Hornsent captives each, more and more shamans gradually stopped their inhuman wailing and collapsed into pools of blood.
They were naked, covered in horrific wounds both old and new, and many had incomplete or missing limbs, but... they were no longer indistinct masses of flesh.
They had human heads, torsos, and limbs. Though their eyes remained vacant and filled with pain, at least they now had the appearance of "people."
The scene was bloody and cruel, yet carried a bizarre sense of "salvation."
Watching from afar as her kin's forms were barely restored, Marika still found tears mingled with grief and hope welling in her eyes, despite how horrifying the process was.
Meanwhile, Horace Loux, at the core of the ritual, was experiencing an even more perilous "exchange."
As the Formless Mother's blessing descended on a massive scale, her "gaze" also focused entirely on Horace Loux, the ritual's initiator and director.
The shadow grew clearer, even conveying a distinct "intent" to him-not language, but sensations that acted directly upon his soul: pleasure, appreciation, a desire for more wounds, and the intention of offering a "gift."
A surge of dark red energy abruptly poured into Horace Loux's body through the channel of that gaze!
"Cursed-Blood"...
The external deities in the game, or outer gods, actually refer to gods outside the Golden Order.
It does not mean gods from outside the world. At the very least, Scarlet Rot is native to the Lands Between, and the gods worshipped by the Dragon God and the Deathbirds may also be native.
There are also the Numen. As outsiders, they seem to be entirely female. But Numen is an option in character creation, which means they actually have males?
Then why are they all female in the game? Even those jar contents have distinctly female silhouettes. (While observing them, the author got startled by little Gao's wailing. I recommend giving it a listen, and remember to turn the volume all the way up. Sanity loss.)
Before you continue