Wu Zhixin POV
Dear diary,
This is my 6th day working for the Cult of Ice society and I swear these guys are nothing short of a demon!
I am Wu Zhixin and I swear I didn't want to join the Cult of Ice society on my own wish. I'm only a boy of 13 who worked part-time in a tea shop near the Lord's Mansion which only paid me 15 Coppers a week. I'm not even an Qi condensation disciple!! I'm only a simple Mortal yet I was sucked in by such a devilish group of people!!!"
…
"Hey, Wu!Wake up!! Don't sleep on task!" someone called me from behind and startled me.
"Huh!!" I looked back to see that it was my best friend Jia, another Mortal like me who shared my fate. We worked in the same place and he too was abducted along with me and given the task of cleaning a damn frozen cave. Infact, there was a score of children along with us, cleaning the cave of its frozen rubbles, fungi rocks and whatnot.
I nodded my head and fastened my pace of cleaning.
"Damnit!" someone cursed a loud, "Why do we have to clean a cave?!!" he questioned.
Most of the boys here looked young, around the age of 12-15 and all were from my City, the Valshade City. Everyone heard the boy crystal clear but none stopped cleaning or slowed down, only one spoke out, though.
In a timid tone, he said, "I-I'm not sure but I heard that these guys are doing a summoning ritual!"
"And what the hell are these guys?" asked another.
"Magi." He replied.
Gulp!
My heart dropped to the depths of Abyss. I remember what my mother once said. In the world of Audenia, there are hundreds of major professions and a billion minor and secret classes of people but among these millions and hundreds, lies the 3 great professions which rule the world.
Cultivators, Lords and Mages.
Magus or Magi, plural, on the other hand is one of the minor classes of Mages and also the one of the most feared in the world of Audenia. They are a bunch of very secretive, sadist old Mages who terrorize towns and cities all across the world and only think of their own profit before anything else. Damn! I'm the unluckiest of all in this world, all except those who had to clean the main hall.
Anyway, cluttering in the bitter cold, we cleaned the room at fastest pace we could muster. After cleaning for about an hour, a man wearing a pure white hooded robe entered the room with 5 other hooded people and a dozen, armor-clad men carrying chains.
He beaconed his hand and we stopped our job immediately. We looked up and saw him grinning under his hood.
"Boys, good job at cleaning. I'm impressed that all of you've survived in this cold atmosphere for this long considering that all of you haven't even in started cultivation. I'm impressed at your tenacity and glad that I chose the right boys for the right job."
"Does that mean we are going be rewarded?! Will we be inducted in the ways of magic?!" asked one foolishly. The man simply smiled at us. Turning towards the armor-clad men, he ordered in a powerful voice, "Cuff them!"
"Yes, Sir!!" they replied in unison and walked threateningly towards us.
"No!!" the boy cried as he cuffed by the men.
"Please!! no!!"
"I don't want to be rewarded!!"
"Spare me!!"
Various cries escaped the mouth of the boys but many others, like me, kept quiet for we knew that we were doomed and we couldn't do anything against these Magi. Best to save some energy to serve the Lord of Afterlife.
After handcuffing all of us, they arranged us in a single line and pulled us, like prisoners, to the summoning hall.
Entering the summoning hall, we were all surprised yet again. The summoning hall was a large hall made of clear, transparent blocks of blue ice. The hall was decorated majestically, with its own ice chandelier on which candles of various length burnt majestically and with large pictures of various genres. Though, out of all the picture, only one picture stood out. A picture of middle-aged man with thick lips and a crooked face,dressed in a pure blue suit. The room was filled with other antique objects and large, glowing crimson magic symbols and sigils adorning the beautiful walls, all drawn with human blood.
At the center of the room, though, there was a big lump of ice, undecorated and unpolished and as such, it stood out clearly. On top of the lump, there was a large, rectangular coffin, carved out of pure blue ice, which was also strewn with sigils and symbols drawn with blood. Unfortunately, that wasn't all.
The ice coffin, placed on the lump of ice, was inside a circle of blood, the blood being supplied from the bodies of those boys who were 'lucky' enough to get the chance to clean the summoning hall first. The blood glowed magically and occasionally we would catch a glimpse of a sigil glowing on the surface of the blood stream.
I saw, horrified, how the armor-clad men pulled these boys by their hairs, amidst their screaming and wailing. They extended their necks above the circle and – slit!
Gulp!
Blood fell like water from a waterfall on the circle and I noticed the blood sigils across the room glow brighter. As for the boy, he had a horrible death for he didn't die right when his throat was slit. He had to experience it all as his blood was sucked out. By gravity. Poor soul…
"No! Please! Spare me!!"
"Please, don't do this!!"
Cries rung out from out file but the men didn't even flinch their eyes. We advanced, as they pulled our file and strangely though, instead of slicing our throats, they simply attached the top end of the chains to a ring which was further attached to the lump of ice. After that, they left us like that and left the room. I sighed a relief, like many others.
We waited for a long time, nearly 5 hours and in this interval, we saw many things. These men brought boys, like us, all chained and always 24 in a line and attached them to the 6 rings in the lump of ice. There were 6 lines of 24 boys each tied in metallic chains.
After gathering all of us, they stopped and redid their sigils. After doing some this and that, they stopped. They were finally ready.
The leader of the men, a white-haired old man with a crooked face, stepped forwards and announced in a majestic, prideful and excited tone, "Your Highness, I'm honored to present myself, Aurelian Lefort, a grand Rank-2 Magus in your humble presence. I will resurrect you from your eternal sleep and with you by our side, we, the Cult of Ice, shall rule the Western Continent again! All hail Prince Velsdadt! All hail Prince Velsdadt!!"
"All hail Prince Velsdadt! All hail Prince Velsdadt!!"
"All hail Prince Velsdadt! All hail Prince Velsdadt!!"
The white-haired old man cupped his hands and bowed down in servitude for a split second before extending his right arm and slicing open a small cut and dropping a few pints of his own blood into the blood circle. After that, he spread both his arm wide open and started chanting in a strange and weird language.
"Celstitudinemtuamexcitare! VocatisPrincipem Velsdadt impero vobis ab aeternosomnoexcitaresurgit! Surgit! Surgit!"
Sssiiiiiiii!!!!
"W-what is happening!! What is happening! Aaaahhhhhhh!!!!!"
As soon as the old man finished chanting, a blood-curdling scream rung out and we saw that the boysat the forefront of all the lines fidgeting like they were possessed. Their faces turned red and veins bulged out like worms under their skins. A few seconds later, all of them, involuntarily opened their mouths and a large puff of pale blue light escaped their mouth and headed straight through towards the coffin.
The next moment, crimson mist escaped their ears and orifices and headed towards the lump of ice through the chains.
Plop! Plop! Plop!
Plop! Plop! Plop!
All of a sudden, the 6 boys at the start of the line dropped and to our horror, we saw that they were completed drained! They were like 1000 years old mummies, everything dried up!
"Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!"
The screaming passed onto the second row and continued. I looked, terrified to even cry, as more and more of my brothers were sucked dry. Slowly and slowly, the color of the lump of icechanged from white to blood red and the coffin to pale blue. And then, finally came my turn.
Plop!
The moment the boy infront of me dropped dead, mummified, I knew that it was my turn.
Sssiiiiiii!!!
A sucking sound rung out inside my ears and almost immediately a sharp pain fluttered inside me, a pain so terrible that it shook even my soul.
"AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!" I cried as loudly I could but nothing happened, only the pain increased. I felt a bulge in my chest as something, incorporeal yet heavy, tried to escape my body. Blood rushed to my mouth and I felt like puking blood but for some reason I could not. It felt like I was being compressed and expanded simultaneously. But then it stopped all of a sudden!
"YAAAAAA!!!!!!"
BOOM!!!
A loud, unworldly scream rang out from inside the coffin followed by a large punching sound! I looked up, amidst the great pain which was wrecking my insides and was baffled by the next few incidents.
"RRAAARRGHHH!!!!"
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! BOOOM!!
A yell exploded from the coffin and a flurry of punches followed it. The punches wrecked the insides of the coffin and then with a final, big punch, the entire lid of the ice coffin came off!
Fwwwaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!
A bout of cold air and a dense white mist spread across the room, decreasing my visibility by a lot. My eyes were nearly blinded but it was only for a short while. The mist cleared as quickly as it came and there, in between the mist, I saw a silhouette of a boy, like me, maybe 16 years old, standing erect like a statue.
I gawked at him, not because he was a monster or something, but because he was too handsome. The boy, 16, had pale white skin as if made from snow itself with light green veins fluttering through his body like snakes. He had a face carved out like a Divine statue with short, pure white, flowing hair. The boy had pale blue eyes, large eye lashes, two, pinkish ears, a small, petite mouth and a long, straight nose and was handsome to max. But there was only one flaw. A deep, bloody scar ran right across his face which distorted his beauty to a great extent.
He had small hands and he was a little skinny and … he was naked. Ugh….
But apparently, the boy didn't mind it at all. He looked amazed the first second but then his amazement hid behind a pallor of coldness.
The old man kneeled down in one leg, spread his arms wide open and cried in an excited tone, "Your Highness, Prince Velsdadt! Welcome back to Audenia!"
"Ughh…." The boy cried uninterestedly. He ignored the man completely and was instead looking at his own palms but then he frowned, deeply. He looked up, shocked and said in a chilly voice, pointing at him, "You …. branded my Soul!"
"!!" the man sprung up in shock and stuttered in terror, "H-how did you—gugh!!!!!!"
The man was suddenly stopped in speech. I looked at him and saw him clutching his throat and huffing up and down like a drowning man. The boy looked disgusted the first second but the next, he was smiling devilishly. "Funny, how an ant tries to chain an elephant. Haha! Seems like things haven't still changed in Audenia! Fools keep on being fools."
"Keh! Gaggh!!!" the face of the man flushed red and he tried to flay his arms but it seems like an invisible force was crushing him.
"Come!" muttered the boy and the man stumbled forward, pulled by an invisible force right into the blood circle and on the way, he mistakenly broke the blood circle and let the blood spill out.
"Please…. P-please …" the man pleaded with terrified eyes at the boy but the boy kept on smiling innocently.
"Awww! Don't be like, man! I'm grateful to you, you know. You resurrected me! And you know, I might … just keep a man like you alive… but—"
"Really!!" the man interrupted and nodded his head repeatedly, "Absolutely! Absolutely! I will do anything for you, Your Highness!! Anything! I will never dare to do anything against you, so please… please …"
The boy smiled broadly.
"I like the sound of that …" he said slowly, extending the man's torture, "but … there is only one problem."
"You see, I really want you as my partner but … a Magus like me can't have an idiot like you as a partner. I'm really sorry!!" the boy made a fake, crying face and opened his small mouth a little.
"No! Please no! Noooo!!!!" the man pleaded but nothing. He felt his life being wrench out of him, piece by piece, as if he was nothing but a toy infront of the boy. Pale blue mist escaped out of the various pores in his body and headed towards the boy's open mouth.
His mouth opened up involuntarily and a small, dense pale blue sphere along with a large, dense blue mist escaped out and headed directly into the boy's mouth.
"Yum!" the boy cried as he closed his mouth and the man slumped down, dead.
He dropped the lifeless body of the man on the ground and looked up, smiling maliciously.
"I'm free." He muttered, deviously and started walking forward. The blood circle sizzled a little but it was nowhere near able to stop the advance of the boy.
"Stop! Stop, right now, monster!!" yelled one of the remaining Magi as he brandished his magic staff and pointed at the boy, threateningly."
"Or what?!" the boy said, uninterested. He stood majestically infront of all the Magi and mercenaries with his hands akimbo.
Smiling, he announced delightfully, "All I see is Dinner!"
"Die, you demon!!! Fireball!!!"
"Ice Spike!!"
"Thunder Blast!!"
"Scram!" a loud bout of cold air blasted throughout the space and disrupted all other magic spells. Even I and Jia and all the other boys were blasted away but the metal chains held us back.
"Idiots!" muttered the boy as he extended his arms forward and did a grabbing motion.
"Devour!!" he cried. The Magi and mercenaries immediately collapsed under an invisible gravitational force and started to huff like mad, just like we once did. The boy shook but only for a while, after which it ceased and pale blue spheres of light along with the same bluish mist escaped the mouths and orifices of the people around him and darted towards his own open mouth.
Plop! Plop! Plop! …
One by one, all of the Magi and mercenaries plopped on the ground, dead.
…