Chapter 167: Grand Ritual Hall.

I looked around at the devastation I’d left behind after that battle. Smoke rose into the air from purple trees still on fire. The grass was rotten, and the ground was churned. My run had left incredibly hoofsteps behind.That was because of my earth-enchanted horseshoes. The way the magic worked was that earth magic was injected into the ground below me, and then further spread out with every passing instant. What this meant was that the ground directly underneath my hoof was hardened faster and stronger, while the ground further out and below didn’t get to receive as much enhancement. This created a weird and very distinctive crater that was mine and mine alone.

I didn’t hate that. A signature step. Everyone would know that I’d been here. It would be obvious to all that it was I who destroyed the wonderzone!

…Well, I could already somewhat very vaguely feel the ambient mana working to contain and eventually snuff out the hellflames. It would have a lot of work ahead of it, but the wonderzone would survive. It would thrive. What was lost would be regrown before anyone even knew what happened. This was so far deep, and in such a dangerous wonderzone at that, that I didn’t think people would be eager to come investigating. I hadn’t come across another adventurer patrol for a while now.

I felt something weird buried nearby. I walked towards it, and sure enough, something suddenly shot out like a landmine triggered. The alien-looking worm with slick fish-scale-like skin jumped out of its burrow with its jaws wide open to devour my right leg.

I kicked the inside of the creature’s mouth, and it reeled back after leaving only some scratches on my armor. I stabbed it a few times, hopefully without killing the creature, because I was happy to have found a souvenir for my return. And it would be nice to end this adventure on a good note, rather than that… draw of earlier. Really, I was ready to keep on fighting, so it was more my win than that monster’s!

The worm I’d caught slowed down in its thrashing, and I used this opportunity to soften its flesh with curse magic so that I may grab on with my fingers into the handholds made. I pulled the entire thing out of its hole in one big heave, and it turned out to be thrice as long as I was tall.

I hugged what I identified to be an ankilada along with my bags, and the creature absolutely despite all its existing injuries. It bit into my shoulder, but my armor only dented against some fangs, while others slipped into the gaps created by my previous invisible enemy. My curse of vengeance lashed out against the mouth of my adversary, but it did not let go, and so too did I endure even as its sharp teeth drew blood. I didn’t want to risk killing the creature any more than I already had.

The process of teleportation continued. It took much longer this time as the space warped further, but the… spell(?) went through eventually, and I and my luggage popped back into Pandemonium.

I laughed when I saw that the teleportation room was still decorated for my birthday.

Blood and guts spilled around me as the ankilada had lost a third of its mass. It might have lost only a fourth, if only it hadn’t thrashed like a fucking idiot.

“Thank you,” Moonwash said as I handed her my latest haul. I took a moment to look around her workshop near my own rooms, and see what else she had going on. My girlfriend had turned a space much larger than my mother’s basement had once been, into a full-blown laboratory of its own. There were charts and diagrams, ideas for rituals, unfinished and finished weapons and armor, but most prominent of all were the countless live specimens she kept. Pandemonium had created just the best cages for them, made from its cursed stone and bone, and now my addition of the ankilada joined the rest. Arches of metal shot out of the ground where I had dumped it, and soon the heavily weakened monster was trapped.

“What have you been up to?” I asked as I touched the monster from between the bars, and healed it just enough so it didn’t die.

“A lot of different things, but my focus recently has been on trying to make prosthetics with curse magic. Ones that can move exactly like your old limbs.” She stared at my sword. “I’ve been meaning to finally test out the grand ritual hall too. And I believe your greatsword should be ripe enough for that. Can you help me?”

I took out the greatsword in question, observing the aura of curse it gave off without me having to do anything. “Of course.”

In truth, we had already tried to do a variety of tests with Pandemonium’s last untested room, but the results had been unpredictable. A dagger became bent into weird shapes, a live restrained goat exploded, and we had to hastily flee the building when we tried to make an offensive attack ritual. The resulting explosion was strong enough to threaten even me. The entire hall was destroyed, and had to be rebuilt by Pandemonium, which was certainly possible but would take a few days for all the functions to be right.

The problem, we believed, had been the eyes and mouths and many other things growing out of the walls and ceiling. Even Moonwash needed some time to learn the intricacies of that new element added to her art. But I knew she had been making strides as I made my own. And now I would love nothing more than to finally see the product of those efforts.

A part of me felt that I should have been more involved throughout the entire ordeal, but I simply had to do so starting

I held my girlfriend’s hand as we walked towards the grand ritual hall.

A few weeks of research and practice later. Within the Grand Ritual Hall.

We found ourselves surrounded by walls filled with bladed bone, stone, and metal. The eyes on the ceiling closed, to morph instead into the dying visage of so many creatures. Their bodies were recklessly slashed apart, at first by one blade, and then a thousand more, like branches growing off the main tree. Every wound oozed of rot and blood, yet somehow not a single drop fell to disturb the great working happening below.

On the floor, Moonwash labored, and I could only watch. She touched the flat gray ground, and it gave way to her hand. Like clay, or even flowing water frozen in time behind her. She made the necessary divots. She carved deep, in what first looked like random squiggles. But slowly, the ritual took shape. Its true form, only visible to me as I flew and saw it from above.

First came the pure explosive force in the center. Next were the death and detritus that radiated outward. And then, in between that and the boundary marked by the circle were the dead and the many identical demons, all staring towards the center with expressions of grief and rage. Their eyes were wide open, no matter if they were alive or dead.

, in the small space surrounded by the two circular borders of the ritual, were the carved forms of a thousand tiny demons, all relentlessly practicing with one unadorned blade.

The entire space tembled as it moved. I did not expect this, but neither I nor Moonwash panicked as the walls completely restructured themselves around the ritual circle. We were left in a circular chamber. The mockery of dead monsters and sapients on the ceiling had become further distorted, but the brutal way they died was still clear. The blades on the wall all slanted upwards, as if in worship of the decaying bodies far above. The door had disappeared, and the two of us had to stay here.

Blood bubbled. I could feel something powerful and ancient building. The red liquid seeped forth, as if the very planet was dying. It filled the many crevices Moonwash had dug, until the ritual finally glared upon the world with an angry red. Not a drop of cursed blood spilled from the carvings, despite how it looked like a single breeze should send the red flowing through the rest of the untouched floor.

Moonwash raised her one hand. I took it and pulled her up, at the same time that I planted my massive greatsword at the center of the ritual. I could feel the ambient mana now, incomparable to the meager powers of a wonderzone. It slammed into Moonwash and not me with one singular demand, and still, I felt the world’s overwhelming power. The walls shook, as the blades of bone and metal and stone embedded within bent down and switched targets. At first I tensed when I thought they wanted my head, but I soon realized that the corpse mockeries on the ceiling had ceased to hold their attention, because they were now far more focused on the single greatsword upon the very center of the space.

She who created this ritual recited the words.

“The Great Cursing of The Great Demon’s Greatsword.”

I cheered in my head, but didn’t dare ruin the moment.

The ritual began from the center. The blood closest to the sword into pure cursed energy, thereby destroying the short walls of the carvings that made up the artwork. The next layer, however, was nearly untouched. The blood did not spill into the newly created gaps. It shook from the force of the explosion right beside it, but not a single drop trickled away. The virulent cursed mist took only an instant before it ravaged the carvings right beside it. The destructive force met its consequence, and the dead and decaying monsters and sapients were reduced to rubble, where there had once been morbidly beautiful murals of their final moments.

Another section gone, another mass of blood depleted. The energy-mist of curse grew stronger from the sacrifice, and it didn’t immediately rush to destroy the next section outwards. Instead it roiled more patiently as it hovered until it floated just above the next section, which was nearly the entirety of what remained.

Below, were the uncanny depictions of people, monsters, and They all stared at the center of the ritual where my herokane greatsword resided, and for all that, they were almost serene. The blood that filled their walls and gave them color was as still as a windless ocean day. And naturally, just like before, it did not care to follow gravity and flood the rubble-strewn landscape just beside it.

The diabolical fog descended and enveloped the blood, but even then it did not lose its peace. It only sank, and sank, and sank, until there was nothing left.

The utterly cursed working of magic remained, only it had now gathered far far more power than before. The formless smoke paused for just moment, before suddenly reversing direction and rushing towards where the now-bloodless carvings still stared.

The very center of the ritual.

It all crashed into my greatsword!

The blade shook from the force. It tore itself free from the ground. It trembled, not in pain nor ecstasy, for a sword didn’t have those emotions. But it still the power rushing into it. The nameless greatsword floated arrogantly, higher and higher, as it absorbed it all.

Its aura grew stronger, and its dark surface molted again and again to reveal a darker black each and every time.

Finally, all the curses in the air had been used up, but the ritual wasn’t yet over. There was one more section of the circle left, the strips that marked its borders. Nestled within this final frontier, was the gift of a single demon swinging the sword a thousand times in practice in order to hone her skills. The blood that remained, which filled the straight and narrow crevices, began to move, until it all flowed like a river, the paths and the pace it followed giving greater life to every bit of hard work the demon had put into the forging of both herself and the greatsword into a proper weapon.

A wind that could not be felt picked up. It was as if a whirlwind was forming inside this Grand Ritual Hall. The swords of very different makes on the walls shook, as if desparate to free themselves. The last remaining rivers of blood too began to evaporate into ritualistic cursed magic, which then twisted around the entire space, before being imbued into the sword on the walls.

They tore themselves out. Like my greatsword, these blades floated through the air. They did not stop to dally, but instead immediately rushed against my evolving weapon. The cursed greatsword swung itself through the air fended off these other blades. With every clash, a that seeped deeply into the soul echoed out, and the greatsword was further reforged anew in the trials of battle.

One by one, the flying blades that came from walls fell. They clattered noisily against the remains of the grand ritual that had taken place, broken and robbed of all essence, until only the black and smoking greatsword remained. It radiated such an aura of bloodlust, that I thought for a moment that it could even rival my own. But it wasn’t done yet.

The greatsword flew higher until it reached the ceiling, whereupon it carved into the facsimiles of broken bodies. Flesh parted easily before it, almost like it wished to run away before the sharp edge could even arrive. Bones were crunched and bisected, as cracks almost like fireworks rung out. No longer did the blood they possessed remain stagnant, but now they rained down upon us all, along with all the meat and skeletons of the vessels that once held them.

“Give it a name,” Moonwash suddenly commanded from beside me. Her voice sounded a little weaker than normal. She too got tired.

I looked at her. I stared. Even if she said that so suddenly, I couldn’t just think of one so easily! This was definitely too important to just make up some random joke!

But I had to do it anyway. The yet unnamed greatsword would finish the first feast of its rebirth soon, and I better have something ready for it once it did. It would be too embarrassing otherwise. Moonwash could have warned me ahead of time!!

I borrowed the first name that came to mind. That would be my favorite sword of mythology. It just sounded too cool. But I didn’t actually know much about King Arthur. I only knew about his feminine reincarnation.

No… the sword wasn’t about fire. It didn’t fit.

It didn’t sound cool enough.

I already decided on no jokes!

I opened my eyes, and saw that the greatsword was in front of me now. I could feel it in the air, the greater magic that guided all of this into being, as the two of us were being urged closer together. This was the moment, this was the time, and I would not dare ruin it.

I touched the blade and let it cut into my palm.

“Devilcalibur.”