Chereads / The Cursed Trickster / Chapter 35 - The Dark Shaman

Chapter 35 - The Dark Shaman

The party kept inspecting the dead bodies while Morgana explained to them what the "ascension ritual" meant.

"So, what's the point of stacking all these dead bodies here? Couldn't they just offer their souls to Zaudan the moment they were killed?" asked Conrad.

"Right, that's what doesn't make sense to me either…" said the trickster as she held her chin with wonder.

"Sis. Is it possible for you to bring these people back to life? Like you did with our party…" asked Angie, the only one from the Freebird party that witnessed Morgana reviving the teenagers.

However, the trickster looked down and shook her head before explaining to them how resuscitation spells worked.

Different classes could learn different versions of a "revive" skill, but they all had the same limitations.

The most common skill was called "Resuscitation" and was a skill that high-level priests could learn. However, it only worked if the person had died two minutes before the spell was cast on them.

Resuscitation spells also had a long cast time, so they weren't reliable to use in the middle of a fight unless everyone defended the caster.

All of the bodies in that shack had been dead for days, so the usual skills for reviving wouldn't work even if she tried.

"But, weren't we dead for over two minutes?" Conrad asked.

"That was different. I used my 'Zaudan's Gate' skill, not a normal resuscitation skill…" Morgana elaborated.

Her skill, called "Zaudan's Gate," which she used to bring the teenagers back to life, was a skill that could only be gained after completing a long and challenging quest line for the God of Death.

While it could revive someone that had been dead for hours, it also asked for something in return.

When Morgana arrived due to the summoning, she used the souls of the cultists to exchange them for the souls of the teenagers. A deal that was advantageous for Zaudan as he received much more than what he gave away.

The people taken through the gate were not killed. Instead, they were sent to The Underworld, where they would receive punishment from Zaudan himself.

"Do you see anyone here we can exchange for all of these people?" Morgana asked the teenagers, who listened closely to her explanation.

At that moment, they heard the faint sound of cackling chains coming from somewhere inside the building.

"Did you hear that?" asked Conrad, who was promptly silenced by the rest of the party as they perked up their ears to look for the sound's source.

"It's coming from below…" Morgana said, moving the pile of dead bodies to the side and finding a trap door to a basement.

"They were using the dead bodies to cover this door?" said Angie as she covered her nose from the wake of smell that rose after moving the dead.

Once they opened the trap door and descended underground, they found themselves in a pitch-black room, prompting Morgana to summon her firefly pet to illuminate the place.

At the back, they saw a woman bound to the wall with a chain on her neck.

Her legs were both broken, her body malnourished, her face beaten, and half of her hair had been ripped out.

The teenagers stayed in their positions, shocked at the scene, while Morgana slowly stepped toward the woman and used her appraisal skill.

[ Name: (Lily) Zarina ]

[ Age: 21 ]

[ Class: Dark Shaman ]

[ Level: 110 ]

[ Race: Islander ]

The trickster's eyes widened. 'Is she a player!?' she thought, as she could see a name between parentheses that only players had, showing their real names from their past lives.

"I see. So, this is the dark shaman we've been looking for…" Morgana said after seeing the woman's information.

"What? How is that possible? Didn't Selene say it was a man?" Conrad asked, confused at the situation.

Morgana, getting closer to the bounded shaman, realized that her tongue had been cut out and one of her eyes plucked out.

While healing the woman and freeing her from her chains, the trickster deduced that someone had been using her to make the black straw dolls, and the pile of dead bodies outside were the materials they used.

While the shadows of Morgana mended the shaman, she weakly grasped onto the trickster's cloak and nodded slightly, her eye brimming with emotions, trying to confirm her deduction before falling unconscious.

"You see, one of the materials required to create those cursed shaman dolls is a person's corpse…" Morgana explained to the teenagers while she lifted the woman from the ground.

"If the corpse is destroyed, then the cursed items will lose power," she said.

Carrying the shaman in her arms, Morgana and the party left the building, but not before burning the entire place down with the bodies.

__________

As the group explored the building, Ray and Selene waited by a nearby street, not knowing that a man was watching them.

Moments later, the two of them were playing with some rocks when the mysterious man tried to sneakily attack Ray, exclaiming he would take the neonite child with him.

However, Ray saw the man coming and easily dodged his attack, using his armored elbow to hit him in the face and knock him down.

'Thanks to all those levels we got, my reflexes and fighting sense are much keener…' Ray thought as he stood on top of the defeated bandit.

"Brother Ray is so strong!" exclaimed Selene as she jumped into his arms while he kept the bandit down with one foot.

A few minutes later, Morgana and the rest of the group came out of the burning building carrying the dark-haired shaman and saw Ray asking the bandit questions as he kept stepping on him.

"What happened here?" Morgana asked carefreely, passing the unconscious shaman to Conrad and taking Selene from Ray's arms.

"Bad man tried to attack brother Ray and boom! Brother Ray beat him!" Selene said as she waved her tiny fists in the air adorably.

"He wanted to kidnap Selene. Sis, what do we do with him?" Ray asked, his sword pointed at the man on the ground.

"Do as you wish." The trickster responded.

'If sis Morgana were in my position, she would have killed this guy instantly…' he thought, pondering his options.

Determined, Ray grabbed the man by the collar and placed his sword on his neck.

"You are going to tell us where your base is with all the people you kidnapped," he muttered with a menacing tone as his eyes pierced through the man. Something he had learned from his big sister.

Morgana smiled, believing that the teenager had made the best choice, and followed the bandit and the rest of the group to another building a few minutes away.