Chapter 52: Ascension

Etheline had never anticipated this outcome. She whirled around, her face contorted with a fury that transformed her incomparable beauty into the mask of a hideous demon. She glared at Hume.

Syllable by syllable, she spoke through gritted teeth, her laughter cold and venomous. “Lord Hume… tell me… just how much ‘sincerity’ did the Dream Sanctum have when you proposed this collaboration?”

Everyone waking up at once was no accident.

Even if a hitch in the Dream Sanctum’s ritual prevented the guests from falling into a state of total Slumber, most of these people were so paralyzed by alcohol that they should have slept like slaughtered pigs.

A few stragglers waking up wouldn’t be strange, but for them to regain consciousness at the exact same moment…

It only proved one thing: the Dream Sanctum never intended to let these people sleep, nor did they plan to use them to fuel the ritual!

That entire series of rites performed moments ago was designed solely to wake these guests up!

Despite her meticulous planning, even Etheline hadn’t seen this coming. Who could have imagined that the Dream Sanctum would seek out the Crimson Troupe for a partnership, spend days laboriously setting the stage, only to provide a massive wake-up call?

They’re absolute lunatics!

“Huh?”

For a moment, Hume was equally stunned. He couldn’t quite process the situation. However, since his own ritual had already failed, seeing Etheline’s ritual collapse alongside it wasn’t a terrible consolation.

Hume let out a cold snort. “I was just about to ask how much sincerity your Crimson Troupe had! You’ve caused one mess after another, even insulting my Lord’s Great Ritual with the stench of your filthy blood—the failure of this ritual is entirely your fault!”

Their gazes locked, the air between them sparking like flint on steel. They were at each other’s throats.

Well, that was certainly an unexpected turn…

Standing unnoticed to the side, the true culprit, Luo Wei, couldn’t help but sigh with internal relief. Her altered ritual had only just taken effect, yet it had immediately crippled the majority of the Crimson Troupe’s fighting force. This was a complete bonus.

If the Crimson Order had patiently waited for the ritual to fully stabilize before acting, they wouldn’t have ended up in this wretched state.

As the old saying goes, ‘Haste makes waste,’ Luo Wei mused.

She hummed a few notes in her mind before refocusing her attention on the massive, looming eye flickering in the heavens. Her expression turned solemn. Her work was far from over.

“I’m beginning to strongly suspect that you are ‘The Omniscient Being,'” Etheline said, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous register.

“My Lord is the Omniscient Being,” Hume replied coldly, though he was entirely baffled by the term she kept using.

Etheline stared deep into Hume’s eyes. Suddenly, she burst into laughter. Her body trembled with such intensity that her curves danced, her mirth bordering on hysteria.

“I never expected that even now, you’d be kept in the dark… What a bunch of fools.” Her gaze turned ice-cold in an instant. “But regardless, today’s ritual must succeed.”

Etheline waved her hand. Two men dressed in noble attire immediately stepped forward to receive their orders. They drew exquisite daggers from their sleeves and approached the “Severed Fingers” standing nearby.

The Severed Fingers seemed to have already anticipated their fate. A flash of irrepressible fear flickered in their eyes, but it was quickly consumed by a wave of total fanaticism. They raised their arms in unison, howling toward the sky.

“Great is Venus! Great is the Imperfection!”

Down below, the guests seemed to have heard the commotion outside or were perhaps stirred by the overwhelming, nauseating stench permeating the air. A cacophony of chatter and confused shouting broke out. However, the noise was cut short.

The two noblemen plunged their daggers into the Severed Fingers, bestowing upon them “Sacred Pain.” Using the ritual lines that hadn’t yet fully dissipated, the Severed Fingers projected their consciousness into the bodies of the two thousand guests.

And then… “Pain Eruption.”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!”

The agony of eight thousand six hundred strokes of “Death by a Thousand Cuts”—even when divided among two thousand people through ten conduits—surpassed the limit of human endurance. Furthermore, spurred by the agony, the Severed Fingers fell into a deep resonance with their master, intensifying the horrific sensations.

In an instant, the entire manor was filled with waves of tortured screams. Their minds were being shredded as if by a thousand blades. One by one, the guests began to collapse into unconsciousness.

“Etheline… my Etheline…”

At that moment, an aristocrat pushed open the balcony doors with trembling hands. If anyone from Kolun County were present, they would have recognized him as Sir Spengler, the prominent capitalist who had been the talk of the town in recent years. But now, his usual arrogance was gone; even his prized handlebar mustache was a disheveled mess.

He caught sight of the moonlit phantom outside. Even the heights of localized agony couldn’t suppress the surge of his lust. Such devotion to his vices was almost impressive.

However, the moment he pushed the door open and saw the bloody scene on the balcony, Sir Spengler’s soul nearly fled his body in terror.

“Oh, darling, why did you come out here?” Etheline smiled faintly. She swayed her hips as she walked toward Sir Spengler, gently hooking her finger under his chin. “Didn’t we say you should get some rest tonight? We… have business to attend to tomorrow morning.”

As she stroked him, Spengler’s pain seemed to ebb away.

“My… my dear, what is…” Spengler’s eyes kept darting toward the two noblemen performing the executions, yet he couldn’t help but fall back under the spell of Etheline’s intoxicating charm. He was a man possessed by desire.

“Just dealing with a little trouble,” Etheline whispered, planting a light kiss on his forehead. She smiled with sultry grace, her voice carrying a hypnotic, silken magic. “Everything will be better when you wake up tomorrow.”

“You… all of you… will be mine.”

“Hehe… Etheline…” Spengler giggled inanely. As pain and euphoria intertwined within his mind, he finally blacked out completely.

“Are you preparing for an ascension to Sequence 6?” Hume finally realized the truth, his voice sinking. Even though he knew little of the Crimson Troupe or the Path of Imperfection, a ritual of this scale that wasn’t intended as a mass sacrifice could only mean one thing.

Sacrificial rites usually required the collective participation of sect members to strengthen the link between the cult and the object of sacrifice; that was why Hume had brought two other priests to serve as performers. By Etheline casually discarding the lives of her Severed Fingers, it proved they were never meant to be “Performers” in this ritual. From the start, they were the “Price.”

“I have waited for this day for a long time. It is all for my Lord, and I cannot accept failure, Lord Hume,” Etheline sighed softly. “To ensure the ritual’s absolute success… I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to go and meet your Lord in person.”