"Okay, so… doing plagues and stuff is… normal?" Deacon asked, seated behind one of the three desks shoved against the far end of their Party Room that Jass and Esmerelda had reserved for them all at the Golden Horseshoe. In his right hand was a pen as he began writing the final page of a ritual called the Lesser Scourge onto a separate sheet of parchment so the rest of his Party would be able to read its contents, as only those with a connection to Huitzilopochtli could read it directly from the grimoire.
"Well, I wouldn't say it's normal," Sam replied, lowering the parchments he'd been combing through as he sat on the table in the space between Bonehead and Deacon in a cross-legged sitting position with one knee up. "More like… it's just something you're expected to do, or at least see other people doing. The higher we climb the Tower, the larger the Floor Quests and Floors become."
"Going off of the things I've been reading and learned, everything starts getting bigger, uglier, tougher, and a hell of a let more difficult after Floor Ten and gets exponentially more so after every ten Floors… and so going with that if we're dealing with a war between kingdoms now and things get only bigger from here, then well you'll need bigger and stronger attacks that have more a …" He gestured vaguely at the scattered pages like the word was buried somewhere among them. "…longer reaching effect if you want things to be done faster, to move onto the next task of the Floor."
The parchments he laid aside detailed the ritual circle of the Lesser Heart-Fire; specifically, where every ingredient had to be set before and during its activation, and runes that made up the circle.
Having finished reading through them, he stacked those sheets beside the pile Bonehead had been hunched over for the past half hour, his empty sockets flickering faintly as he read line after line.
Beside Bonehead's elbow sat a journal open to a page crammed with his messy notes: the ingredients cataloged one by one, each with side effects and little arrows scribbled to connect them to other combinations. On the far edge of the desk, half-buried under all the paper, were his attempts at rough sketches of how the effects could overlap if layered.
"So, what? You mean like clearing out places?" Deacon asked, scratching his cheek with the end of his quill. "Because while I get it if it's a room filled with enemies or whatever we're supposed to wipe out, it still feels… I dunno… Shittier and slower compared to just throwing a firestorm or lobbing bombs at them instead. At least those are quick. These look like they take forever to set up and spread."
Bonehead didn't even glance up, just snorted and flipped a page.
"Well, I mean…" Sam leaned back slightly, doing that faint so-so tilt with his head he always did when he wasn't sure if he was explaining something right. "Yeah. It's slower, and probably a little… well, a lot more pain and suffering-inducing. But keep in mind—this one's got the word 'Lesser' slapped on the front. Judging by the placement in the grimoire and the prefix, it's meant to be the baby version. Easy, simple, something a novice ritualist could do. Compared to the ones you're thinking of and described to us at the end of the grimoire, this is like a… plague for beginners."
"…A plague for beginners," Deacon muttered the words like they tasted foul, as they only furthered his worsened mood. "… that's just fucking great," he said as he dragged his hand down his face and leaned back in his chair.
His eyes slid back down to the last page of the Lesser Scourge ritual still open in the grimoire. As he stared at the image of a person overlooking a cage of rats that had transformed from being docile and normal to ravenous and covered in growths.
For a moment, a blurry image of a rural town catching flames and people screaming popped into the forefront of his mind, making him snap the book shut with a heavy thump that was loud enough for Jass to glance up from the sheets of parchment describing the start of the Lesser Scourge ritual.
Deacon, in the haze the scene caused him, pushed the grimoire aside and accidentally shoved the stack of parchment he'd just finished copying toward the edge of the desk.
However, before it even had a chance to slip, Esmerelda was quick and quickly snagged the pile of parchments. Leaning over her shoulder, Jass and Esmerelda began skimming through the final pages of the Lesser Scourge ritual.
… I thought I got past that weird dream already, Deacon thought to himself with a grimace as the scene faded back away from his mind.
"Like… I don't know." Deacon sighed once the vision faded and tried to distract himself by letting his fingers to drum restlessly against the wood. "It just feels…" He trailed off.
"Wrong?" Bonehead supplied without looking up, though his voice carried a faint edge of amusement. "Evil?"
"…Yeah." Deacon's jaw tightened as he let out a short breath. "I like the buffs, sure, and some of the effects are actually useful, but the rest of it?... It just feels so fucked up to do. I'd rather just incinerate people or cut off their heads than leave them to suffer through a plague."
"Bruv," Bonehead finally glanced up from his journal, sockets narrowing as he let out a dry chuckle. He shifted in his seat until he was facing Deacon directly. "Then just don't do those rituals. It's simple."
"Yeah," Esmerelda agreed. "If I focus long enough, I can create a bubble that's a vacuum of air and suffocate someone to death. But since I don't exactly like watching people's faces twist while they're clawing their throats and suffocating, I don't kill them that way."
"I can brew potions that rot someone from the inside out, or acids that'll eat through a breastplate like it's wax," Bonehead said, waving his quill in a loose circle for emphasis. "And I can brew the good stuff too – salves, restoratives, things that patch people back together when they're hanging by a thread–"
"And potions that give you a real dick," Sam cut in, deadpan.
"…fuck you," Bonehead snapped, dropping his quill and taking a swing at Sam's shoulder. His fist cut through empty air as Sam hopped lightly off the table and took two quick steps back, spinning on his heel with a smug grin.
"Gonna have to be quicker than that," Sam mocked, sticking his tongue out.
Bonehead gave him a middle finger without missing a beat, muttering something about brewing a potion that would do the opposite. Then, ignoring Sam entirely, he turned back to Deacon.
"Anyway. Back to what I was actually saying before I was rudely interrupted," he continued, jabbing a finger in Sam's general direction. "Point is, I can do a lot of shit; painful shit, healing shit, all sorts of shit—it's all just tools. And looking at these rituals, the instructions, the way they're written? This Ritualist class you've got your eye on doesn't feel all that evil. Honestly, it reads pretty normal if you ask me."
He tapped the parchment stack with his knuckles, leaning back slightly.
"Besides, if you want to take it, then just… take it. Ignore the plague crap, skip over the nastier shit. By the time you bring it up to Level 49, if you choose it as your Second Class Unlock and tier it up, you'll probably get offered an evolutionary path that homes in on the parts you actually want. Same as any other class. Doesn't have to be about disease and spreading plagues unless you let it be."
"I mean, yeah… when you say it like that… yeah," Deacon said as Bonehead's words dug into his mind and dragged his gaze back down onto his desk and onto the Grimoire of the Ritualist of Huitzilopochtli. "I don't know why I'm acting so… so–"
"Dumb?" Sam cut in, eyebrow raised.
"Stupid," Bonehead offered flatly without looking up.
"Foolish?" Esmerelda added, tone a little too sweet to be genuine.
"Like a pansy?" Jass tossed in from her bed without missing a beat.
Deacon's head lifted, and for a moment, he just stared at the four of them with a growing smirk that tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah," he said with a short chuckle. "All of the above."
He let out a sharp exhale before he pushed himself up from his chair and scooped the closed grimoire from off the desk in one smooth motion. Its weight felt much lighter than before, though maybe that was just him. Slinging it under his arm, he stepped away from the desk and towards his bed. Snagging his Spatial Sling Bag and Status Sheet off his mattress and tucking in both the grimoire and Status Sheet inside the bag, Deacon decided that he needed to get some fresh air.
"Ugh," he muttered under his breath as he adjusted the bag on his shoulder. "I'm gonna take a shower. Get rid of whatever the fuck I'm feeling crawling all over me. I'll be back in a couple hours – call me if you need something."
He was halfway to the door when Jass piped up, not even glancing up from the parchment in her lap. "Bring some ice cream on your way back."
Deacon raised a thumbs up as he yanked the door open and stepped out into the hall with the door shutting behind him.
As the automatic latch clicked shut behind him, the rest of the party fell into silence for all of two seconds.
"Ice cream, huh?" Sam said, lifting a brow at Jass.
"What? I'm serious." Jass leaned back, hands behind her head like she owned the place. "We've been living off stew, bread, and rations for so long – we only got to eat decent food a couple of hours ago. As such, I want mint chocolate."
"That's not food," Bonehead scoffed without looking up from his journal. "That's dessert toothpaste. Only psychopaths eat that."
"It's not bad," Esmerelda didn't even bother lifting her head and muttered, "You don't have taste buds, so your opinion doesn't count."
Bonehead jabbed his pen toward her. "Not always, but even then, I know it's vile. Which makes me the authority here."
As Sam groaned and dragged a hand down his face, Jass, Esmerelda, and Bonehead began bickering over the best-tasting ice cream and other dairy product flavors, their voices became fainter and fainter the further Deacon made his way across the halls.
His boots thudded against the wooden floorboards of the Golden Horseshoe's staircase and the muffled chatter of other adventurers came in full as he passed through the silencing barrier that divided the restaurant section of separating the tavern's restaurant from its resting area.
By the time he reached the open-air courtyard leading to the bathhouse, his eyes caught the movement of a large group across the paved walkway and behind the fence of the tavern.
Nearly 150 meters away from the fence and nearby one of the many fountains that littered the town of Berkhamsted were no fewer than fourteen nobles gather in a circle and all leaning towards a figure in the middle of the group; a tall, brown-haired man with a bow slung across his leather armor-clad back along with a quiver full of dark grey shafted arrows with similarly colored feathers.
Even from this distance, Deacon didn't need to squint to know who that person was.
Liam, Liam Ross.
Upon recognizing who the person was in the center of the group, Deacon's steps slowed to a halt as his gaze locked on Liam.
And as though he was able to sense Deacon's gaze through the crowd that surrounded him, Liam's gaze found Deacon's.