Like with the time I had used Sacrifice on the Ritual reward, I felt the buzzing threads of mana burn through me without emerging. Instead, they seemed to settle around my arm, and it almost felt like the muscles within my limb were going to vibrate. For the briefest second, a hint of heat passed through my wrist and elbow.

Then all the cracks in my arm disappeared

[ Sacrifice

You have Sacrificed 1 [Moderate] Threaded Reinforcement. Windfall bonus activated.

Reward: Next reinforcement rate increased by 2x. Threaded Reinforcement is now aided by mana use instead of depleted for 3 days. ]

I read through the notification a couple of times. This was better than I had expected. I had assumed it would simply be like Sacrificing a cast of my Aspects, which rewarded me by doubling up the effect of the next cast.

This not only did that in a different way but also changed how it worked. Instead of the reinforcing cracks of mana disappearing, now just using my Aspects would build it up even further. Hmm, but would that be a detriment to my Aspects? As in, was a part of the mana that would have powered my Aspects go into Threaded Reinforcement instead?

I wasn’t sure I liked that, if that was the case. Something I’d need to test out. Tomorrow. It was getting a little late today, so I went to bed, satisfied with the day’s progress.

###

I was woken up by Enrico shining brightly enough to make up for the lack of a real sun here. After greeting the sprite good morning, I got started with the new day.

There weren’t many cult duties, so I was mostly free to practice. I could deal with Threaded Reinforcement without too much trouble since I had the Sacrifice reward boosting the reinforcement rate.

Instead, I decided to pay more attention to Ritual. That was, after I focused on getting my Fervour Augmentation. Enshrined Growth was going to help me grow when any of my fellow cultists did, and my plan was to ask them to carry out a few Rituals to help with that.

They were already getting stronger. Sreketh was constantly practicing with her Aspect of Painted Power and Aurier was working as a smith to hit Silver soon. Those would no doubt help.

But the key Aspect we all shared was Ritual, so if they improved their Aspect of Ritual, I’d see the biggest benefits there.

Of course, it couldn’t be gamed like that. Ritual didn’t even work unless the process we followed was already established and carried out with genuine intentions and not as a means to an end to raise its rank in the Weave.

The Ritual had to be real.

Which was why I pored over the few notes and letters Escinca had left about the matter. There were all sorts of Rituals I could take advantage of, though not all of those either appealed to me or was something I could see appealing to the others. They wouldn’t be genuine. But I was happy to find a few Rituals that would work.

“Prayer Rituals?” Santoire asked when I explained what I wanted them to do.

Guille scratched his chin. “So instead of just carrying out our daily prayers, we should follow the full Ritual of Prayer? To double up on the benefits, basically?”

I nodded. “Pretty much, yeah. I’m suggesting it in part because you doing Rituals will help me improve mine, but also because I think it’s worth it. We’re doing the prayers already. Might as well make sure we do them the best we can.”

“And maybe,” Guille said, with no small amount of wonder and awe. “We might finally reach him. We might finally reach Arl! Just like you did, Cultist Ross!”

I wasn’t so sure about that, but I didn’t want to ruin Guille’s exuberance so I just smiled, if a bit awkwardly. It reminded me of Path Interactions, which I thankfully wouldn’t have to worry about till I was nearing Gold. But now I recalled I had forgotten to register for Mage Guild classes on Augmentations, which was a prerequisite for the class about Path Interactions, and—

“Are you alright, Cultist Ross?” Santoire asked. Guille was looking at me with concern too.

Oops. Looked like I had spaced out for a second there. “Everything’s fine. I was just suddenly reminded of things I need to keep up with and there’s just a lot, you know.”

They nodded knowingly. Even if they didn’t know, pretending to know was good enough.

Prayer Rituals weren’t the only ones I was recommending. I was fond of the idea of the Ritual of Purification too. It was exactly what it said on the tin. A small, short Ritual to make sure something was pure. This could be the food that was about to be prepared or even one’s own self.

Aurier mentioned that it served as a substitute for the Blessing of Purification, which none of us possessed since we lacked the Aspect of Blessing. It was a strange little procedure. We had to wash it with water, offer it up at an altar like a Sacrifice tribute, then pray to Arl, specifying that the food was to be taken as a Sacrifice in return for a blessing.

Without channelling the actual Aspect of Sacrifice, that was. There wasn’t any visible change to the food itself, but the Weave confirmed it had worked.

[ Ritual

You have performed 1 [Minor] Ritual of Purification on 1 [Minor] Meal. Windfall bonus activated.

Reward: All impurities and harmful pathogens removed from Meal. Meal is immune from any further infection by impurities and harmful pathogens. ]

About what I had expected. It was honestly a pretty efficient way of getting food purified, though from what Aurier said, the Blessing of Purification was even simpler. No wonder it was a more difficult Aspect to acquire.

The others confirmed that they hadn’t received the second reward. As in, their meal was free of bacteria and other impurities. For now. Not forever, like mine was.

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Hmm, maybe instead of Sacrificing prepared meals, I could Sacrifice a bit of Brillwyrm meat after just purifying it with the Ritual without cooking it. I wondered what I would receive.

Purification wasn’t just for food. We could conduct it ourselves, and it followed a very similar procedure. The reward was basically the same too, except instead of on food, it happened to my body directly. Neat, but that wasn’t going to substitute a proper shower. No way. There was just something different about running cool water over my body that was irreplaceable.

I also tried timing Sacrifice properly. Last time, at the Fire Cult temple, I had tried Sacrificing the reward the Wave gave me. That hadn’t worked.

This time, just as I finished up my Ritual of Purification, I channelled my Sacrifice Aspect on the effort I had gone through to purify myself, and on the experience of feeling clean and pure.

[ Ritual

You have performed 1 [Minor] Ritual of Purification on yourself. Windfall bonus activated.

Reward: All impurities and harmful pathogens removed from the caster. Effect extended to safeguard against negative mana-based influences, debuffs, and statuses, lasting for 3 hours. ]

Nope. Well, the Ritual had worked, but that clearly wasn’t Sacrifice. Strange. This was an experience, so why wasn’t I able to offer it up as a tribute?

At least there was still the strange clicking, snapping sensation over hollowness as there had been last time. I wondered what else Sacrifice was trying to reach out to.

I decided to take it as progress of a sort. More importantly, the little Rituals were things others could pick up without a great deal of difficulty. I promised myself I would find more Rituals that were actually beneficial things that would help us all, and by the end of the day, my efforts manifested in the rewards I was looking for.

[ Augmentation Unlocked!

You have acquired a new Augmentation for your Fervour Attribute.

Augmentation: Enshrined Growth ]

[ Rank Up!

Your Fervour Attribute has risen by one Rank.

Your Ritual Aspect has risen by one Rank.

Your Path of the Archon Apostle has risen by one Rank.

Fervour: Silver III

Ritual: Iron IV

Path of the Archon Apostle: Silver III ]

Great as that was, I wasn’t about to stop there. I was sure there had to be more beneficial Rituals we could all perform, and I needed to find them. Sadly, the few more that Escinca mentioned were a lot more ritualistic and very targeted.

For instance, there was the Ritual of Winternight, which was supposed to be a slightly elaborate celebration for the first night of winter to enact a cult-wide blessing. Things like that.

I was going to need a new reference for Rituals. Sure, there was the Liturgize Aspect I needed to acquire at one point, but I was also certain there had to be more practically applicable Rituals along the lines of Ritual of Purification. I just had to dig up the information from somewhere.

Maybe from the other cults…

The next day, I focused on Flare. Even as I started on it, I was reminded of other kinds of practical Rituals that might help. What if there was a Ritual that boosted learning or growth or experience gain or something along those lines? Surely there was a Ritual that buffed people too.

I pored over Escinca’s letters one last time to see if I had missed something. There wasn’t anything of the sort. The Elder didn’t seem to value those.

One thing I had missed, however, was a letter from Master Kostis that had asked the exact questions rumbling through my mind about practically applicable Rituals.

Which meant I now knew where I could find answers.

I had Aqrea draft another letter to Master Kostis to request a meeting sooner. It wasn’t that I was intent on delegating every little task that came before me. It was just that, while Aqrea took care of the letter, I needed to take care of another little matter.

Pausing my focus on Flare, I went to the temple’s main hall where Santoire and Guille were dragging in old furniture with the help of some newer, part-time members of the cult.

“Are these all the old things from the orphanage?” I asked. I was making sure because there were a lot more than I was expecting.

“That’s right,” Santoire said, huffing a little as he and his group finished dragging in and dropping a rotting bedframe. They took a small break to recover. “We’re almost done bringing them in.”

It didn’t take long afterwards for them to finish. I thanked them all for their efforts and asked them to get something to eat before any of them left. Guille flashed a wide smile and led everybody towards the dining hall, leaving me to consider what was essentially a small mound of trash in front of me.

“Do you really think Sacrificing old furniture is going to give you anything good?” Santoire asked. He looked like he really wanted to go and grab some food too, but he was a little too polite and too much of a good cultist to do so.

I wouldn’t have said yes normally, but I did have the Windfall Affix. “Well, we’re about to find out.”

Channelling my Aspect, I sent out tendrils of buzzing white mana to the large pile of old, often-broken furniture in front of me. Furniture that was the cult’s now. Technically, mine now.

“Let’s see what we get here,” I murmured as Sacrifice activated.

[ Sacrifice

You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Broken Furniture. Windfall bonus activated.

Reward: Sensation of Comfort and Belonging for 30 minutes. ]

I blinked at the reward as a strange feeling blanketed me. The Weave was right. It was an odd sensation of exactly what the Weave had said. Comfort and belonging. I breathed easier. My chest felt lighter. I was so calm and sated, my lips stretched in a smile of their own.

Which I promptly drew back into a frown. It was extremely weird to have my feelings messed with like that. I couldn’t push it away, and resisting it only felt even weirder, so I just let it run through me. It wasn’t exactly a bad feeling after—I shook my head, trying to clear my mind. Thinking along those lines was dangerous.

“Are you alright, Cultist Ross?” Santoire asked. “Should I get you something?”

“I’m fine. The Sacrifice reward was just… unexpected.”

On Santoire’s subsequent question, I explained what the Weave said and what I was feeling.

“That… doesn’t sound so bad?” he said.

I laughed shortly. That helped dispel some of the strange feeling of relaxation. “It’s not bad per se. It just… reminds me of doing drugs. Using substances to gain artificial feelings that feel good. It’s not real, so I don’t like it.”

Santoire accepted that explanation. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t going to Sacrifice the rest of the furniture anytime soon. But talking with Santoire—who had gone on to ask questions about Sacrifice, such as what element of something being Sacrificed determined what rewards I got—made me think in a slightly different path.

When I Sacrificed things like daggers and maces, I got a reward that was suitably weaponlike. Slashing effect for the former, bludgeoning for the latter. Those were intrinsic properties of daggers and maces, respectively.

It made me realize that I hadn’t gotten any reward based on the material of what I Sacrificed. But could I do that with a certain Affix for Sacrifice? I needed to find out.

We left the furniture as it was, for now. It was worth mentioning that it wasn’t real wood. In this world, wood was pricier than gold, and the facsimile people used were only somewhat like the real thing at a passing glance. When I touched the furniture, it felt chalky, almost like coal.

I remembered the leafless black “trees” I had seen on Zairgon volcano, and those definitely hadn’t been real wood. At least, not the kind I was familiar with.

“I think I’m going to leave the rest of the furniture alone for the time being,” I said. “I might have plans to take care of them later. For now, just make there aren’t any parasites or anything in there.”

“Parasites?” Santoire asked.

I wondered if the Weave had just failed to translate what parasites were or if Santoire’s education was rather lacking. Something told me it was the latter. “Uh, like bugs.”

“Bugs? Free ones?”

I laughed shortly. “No, not those kinds of bugs. Harmful ones. Just do a Ritual of Purification on them, please. Maybe do it periodically too.”

With that done, I reviewed the letter Aqrea had prepared before sending it out to Master Kostis via the Pipe Missive. Then I was going to finally focus on Flare and try to get a new Affix for it, but I received a message from Hamsik that he was coming and wanted to talk.

“News about your brother?” I asked when he visited later that day. I felt a smidge of guilt that I hadn’t found out anything on my own yet, but hey, it hadn’t even been a week since Hamsik had told me.

He nodded, his face grave. “I know where he is. And I think I might need your help to get him out.”