They enjoyed sacrificing lives the most, winning the Mother Goddess's pleasure through the sacrifice of dark lives or the believers of the righteous gods, and ultimately being blessed.
As the most experienced player, An Su was very familiar with the various sacrificial rituals of the Mother Goddess's followers.
After all, in his sixteenth playthrough, he had chosen the path of the Pope of the Mother Goddess's religion and had conducted countless sacrificial rituals.
Upon leaving the cage, he arrived at the altar.
The runes of invocation had already been drawn with mercury and fresh blood.
All around the altar were twisted arms, wildly grown lumps of flesh, and heaps of dry bones.
An Su recognized every material here: [Twisted Flesh Lump], [Corpse Nest], [Bone Cradle]... each one was unobtainable through normal means, not even purchasable with money.
It seems the cultists are taking this sacrifice very seriously... An Su thought to himself.
After all, one was the Child of the Curse, and the other was the Holy Maiden in waiting.
There were twenty figures crawling on the altar with golden masks, they were the believers who were to be blessed by the Mother Goddess this time.
All of them were talented individuals.
According to the procedure, children with dark talents or nuns from the Church were to be brought to the altar in turn, and the bishop would chant the prayers, establish an anchor point, and invoke the name of the Mother Goddess.
The more detailed and clear the prayers, the more the Mother Goddess would hear the call.
The offerings would be taken away by the Mother Goddess, and at last, the blessing would be conferred upon the believers.
In the sacrificial ritual, the more the Mother Goddess revels, the grander the blessing bestowed.
The first to be sacrificed was An Su.
Luojia stood below the altar, her face had turned pale from the surrounding white bones, her lips trembled slightly; despite this, she had not succumbed and her eyes coldly fixed on the cultists, lightly biting her pearl-like teeth.
She then turned her gaze toward An Su on the platform, with a certain expectation, although she knew it was just an illusion.
The young boy on the altar stood barefoot in blood, his cyanotic eyes dull and lackluster, like a timid deer.
How could a pure child possibly defeat the evil cultists?
She wished to save An Su more than herself.
Something seemed to be quivering in her heart.
An Su also looked at Luojia; he knew that this Holy Maiden was just one step away from awakening.
The conventional solution was to cling to the protagonist's coattails.
...But he was a player of the heretical path.
An Su only believed in one principle: it's better to depend on oneself than on others!
The priest beside him had already begun chanting the prayers, his voice low and hoarse, as if a painful roar,
'Mother of Desire, great Mother of Life, your believers call out to you to offer a dark child upon the altar....'
Indeed...
As an experienced player, An Su could spot at least three grammatical errors in that prayer.
After all, this was the opening scene of the game, and by the time An Su reached the seventeenth playthrough, the game had updated to version 3.0, and many fixes had been made to the setting of the Mother Goddess's religion; naturally, the prayers were also upgraded.
For instance, Mother of Life should be changed to Mother of Fertility... and so on.
Though this prayer could evoke the Evil God, it was barely audible.
It required repetitive calling and a lot of time.
And each invocation could only sacrifice one offering.
To conduct the sacrifice of the next one, a new invocation was necessary.
Spending time on meaningless cutscenes without the ability to skip was one of the most criticized aspects by players, so the developers were stormed by player complaints.
The 3.0 prayers unlocked later incorporated more accurate anchoring terms, allowing one to summon the Evil God with a single click and sacrifice multiple offerings at once.
The Priest had finished a section and was preparing to chant again.
At that moment, An Su spoke up.
Under the guise of a fourteen-year-old boy, his pupils kept trembling, his voice quivering, as if he would burst into tears the next moment, he said in a fearful and juvenile voice:
"Uncle, may I... may I leave some last words...?"
His cyanotic eyes reflected a faint hint of tears.
According to the setting, the offering leaving last words could please the Mother Goddess even more.
This was also part of the ritual,
The more heartbreaking and desperate the last words, the more the Mother Goddess delighted in them.
So they couldn't possibly refuse.
The Priest nodded disdainfully.
What could a pampered noble child possibly do.
At most, he'd just whine a few sentences.
Below the altar.
Seeing the fear in the young boy, Luojia's heart sank to the bottom.
An Su stood in the center of the altar, perhaps because of fear, he could not stand firmly and crawled on the ground, facing the twenty believers who were also crawling.
"Desire and the Moon's Mother Goddess, the great matron of fertility..."
"The eternal motherhood above the spirit realm,"
The High Priest realized something was amiss; the boy's tone had become increasingly strange, as if he were straining his throat, and his last words were even more peculiar.
Your last words are clearly mine.
No, weirder than the priest's blessings.
"Hey."
The boy laughed strangely, looking up with eyes that showed no fear, but only tranquility, an expression not befitting a fourteen-year-old child.
"This is the hymn of the sincere, this is the feast of spirit and soul,"
An Su said, smiling clean and sunny, "This is the delicacy of blood and flesh!"
"Your devout believer An Su Moningsta presents a gift,"
"Offering the twenty-one dark heretics on the altar to You—"
"Inviting You to dine with me!"
As soon as these words were spoken, the whole place burst into turmoil.
Luojia's eyes widened in shock.
Only at this moment did she finally understand what 'do not report' meant.
What in the world.
The Priest stared wide-eyed.
What is this maneuver?
It's like turning the heavens upside down.
For the first time in over thirty years of conducting rituals, he had been offered as a sacrifice himself, and on the altar he had meticulously set up?
It was as if, after being a chef for thirty years, today he was cooked by the food itself, using their own cutting board!
He was so furious he wanted to laugh out loud.
This little devil thought he could summon the Mother Goddess by reciting the chant once?
It took at least four hours,
And he got the anchor phrase wrong, too.
In the end, who can sacrifice twenty-one people at once?
Summoning the Evil God with the wrong anchor phrase was an act of provocation, inviting divine punishment.
But the next second, he could no longer laugh.
Great terror descended.
He saw the believers prostrating on the ground beginning to twist and convulse, their greasy fat swelling like water until it exploded at its limit, blood and limbs splattering, some even landing on An Su's sunny smile.
This guy's ritual was even more extreme than his own!
The Priest's body also began to change, emitting screams.
For the first time, he questioned his own faith.
Here he was, dancing and playing music, calling the goddess ten or twenty times before she would respond with an 'oh', and this rich second-generation kid just had to call out once, and the goddess came running?
Outplayed!
In An Su's former life, this situation had a professional term: clown.
"You can't do this..." he wailed in pain, "you can't..."
"You are the heretic of the Esoteric Religion, the more you oppose me," An Su said, gazing at him seriously, "the more it proves I am doing the right thing."
"In the end, who really is the Cultist..." were the High Priest's last thoughts, "you're not even of age yet!"
He was devoured by flesh and blood, his skin burst open, and his organs and bones scattered ripples through the air.
According to the rules of the Mother Goddess religion, the blessed believers and living sacrifices were to stand on the altar together, so theoretically, whoever completed the ritual first would be sacrificed first!
The Mother Goddess is an Evil God, and She doesn't care who summons whom; even if the sacrifice is Her own believer, She would happily devour them.
As long as the life has elements of darkness or sanctity, She would accept them all and then grant her blessings.
So, who else could have a higher level of dark elements in their body than a Cultist?
None.
"Indeed, there is this bug,"
An Su nodded, his face showing a smile of bountiful harvest, looking towards Luojia, who was too shocked to speak, and thought to himself,
"Sacrificing twenty-one Cultists at once, what a windfall."
Befriend the main character?
Take the risk of possibly being killed, be a stepping stone for the protagonist, fanatically licking their boots, and ending up with nothing for yourself?
No.
— A heretic gamer always has ways to speed through the game.