At the edges of the altar, twenty figures wearing gray masks lay prostrate on the ground. These were the cult's faithful devoted followers raised and groomed for this moment of sacrificial blessing.
According to the ritual's procedure, the arteries of the offering must first be severed. Their blood would then flow into the channels carved into the altar, after which the priest would begin chanting the incantation establishing an anchor to call upon the sub-plane of the Undead.
The more precise and elaborate the chant, the more accurately the sub-plane could be located.
Once the anchoring succeeded, the sub-plane would claim the offering and, in return, bestow its blessing upon the faithful.
In this sacrificial rite, the less time wasted, the greater the blessing's potency.
Roland was the first offering.
A cultist drew a dagger and sliced open the arteries in Roland's limbs. As his thawed blood began to pour forth, it quickly filled the grooves beneath him.
Though the blood kept flowing, Roland's face only turned a shade paler, sustained by the nourishing power of the dark element.
Standing below the altar was Freyana. Raised in comfort and luxury, she was now pale and trembling at the sight of the surrounding flesh and bone. And yet despite her fear she did not yield. She stood upright, her eyes lowered, teeth clenched.
She glanced at Roland from the corner of her eye, a flicker of pity in her gaze.
On the altar, the frail boy stood barefoot in a pool of his own blood. His crimson eyes were dim and vacant, like a lamb isolated from its flock, encircled by wolves small and helpless.
How could a child, innocent and unarmed, possibly resist the cruelty of these cultists?
Perhaps it was sorrow for watching someone so young and beautiful meet their end, but something within Freyana stirred.
Roland met her gaze.
He knew her awakening was close. Even without his help, the moment he died, she would surely awaken.
But Roland had no intention of sacrificing himself for someone else's benefit. He also wasn't interested in being dragged into the sub-plane of the Undead for a harrowing, all-out deathmatch with spirits across the realms.
What he wanted was to be reincarnated into another world and live a peaceful life, not play the lead in Rebirth: Undead sub-plane Battle Royale.
At the front of the altar, the priest had begun to chant. His voice was hoarse and low, filled with pain and resentment.
"Essence of death...
Lord of the dead...
The final destination of all living things...
Your faithful call upon you, offering up this life upon the altar..."
Of course.
This was only the game's opening cinematic. Many of the internal systems and lore hadn't been fully solidified yet. Over time, numerous early plot points were revised or patched out.
For a game that had been live for nearly a decade, retconning old content was to be expected.
According to the lore as of the championship season in his previous life, there were no actual gods in this world. The deity the cultists were invoking here didn't exist at all.
What they were truly sacrificing to was the sub-plane of the Undead, a realm tethered to the material world.
So, given they hadn't correctly identified their target, it was no surprise their chant was riddled with issues.
The sub-plane of the Undead wasn't the "essence of death." It was merely a realm composed primarily of dark elementals, loosely connected to the concept of death due to the presence of undead creatures.
As for the "Lord of the dead," that was nonsense. The sub-plane had no will of its own calling anything its "lord" was just misplaced mysticism.
And "final destination of all living things"? Laughable. The souls of the undead slain within that sub-plane would eventually return to the material world. It was no ultimate resting place.
So this incantation wasn't just inaccurate it was practically useless. Worse yet, the priest hadn't provided precise coordinates in the material world. All he'd managed was the vague marker of "this altar." Even with various supplementary materials, the ritual was bound to be inefficient.
It could, at best, barely establish a link with the sub-plane, and only after repeated calls, draining vast amounts of time and resources. And even then, it could only sacrifice one offering at a time each new ritual required starting the summoning over from scratch.
Not to mention the risk: without accurate coordinates and with a garbled chant, the sub-plane's consciousness might decide to claim everyone within the altar's boundary just to be safe, dumping blessings at random before retreating.
The priest finished the chant's first cycle and prepared to begin again.
It was then that Roland finally moved.
He rose calmly to his feet.
After the first chant, the altar's inner and outer spaces became sealed. No one outside could interfere with what happened next.
Which meant for now Roland was safe.
As the only living sacrifice on the altar, the priest wouldn't dare risk breaking the ritual barrier and facing backlash. The other cultists wouldn't dare approach either; their lives were too valuable to risk in a sacrificial space already primed to consume anything nearby.
The moment Roland stood, black chains slithered and lengthened to maintain the ritual's link with him.
The priest shot him a dismissive glance and looked away, continuing to chant.
He was an experienced ritualist. Struggles from sacrifices were common he'd seen it all. Years ago, one even ran to the edge of the altar and defecated in front of him, splattering his robes. He hadn't even flinched.
This? Just more death throes.
That was the priest's cold assessment.
But this time was different.
Roland truly acted.
Tapping into the meager mana within his body barely on par with a magic apprentice he used his own spilled blood as a medium and began to rewrite the sacrificial ritual.
Fortunately, in his previous life, beyond tournament play, Roland had regularly streamed gameplay: raids, boss challenges, tutorials. He was quite familiar with this low-tier ritual.
He bit open his finger, letting clean blood flow not the blood from his limbs. That had already been marked by the ritual. Who knew what kind of corrupted elements it carried besides the dark element?
For safety, Roland opted to draw fresh blood from a separate wound, bypassing the ritual entirely.
These cultist-passed ceremonies, cobbled together through oral tradition, were absurdly crude. From Roland's perspective, they were riddled with vulnerabilities.
Years of "I think this works" style improvements had turned the ritual into a tangled mess of dirty, malfunctioning script a steaming pile of symbolic refuse. Only a few parts even functioned; the rest were pointless filler.
Looking at the two interwoven energy transfer arrays, dark elements looped endlessly within them. Roland couldn't even begin to guess what they were supposed to accomplish.
Worse still, the ritual lacked even basic identification or anti-tampering functions it was wide open.
He quickly replaced several key runes, stripping away the chains that bound him.