02 – First encounter

The few scant items lying on the ground at the vertices of the magic circle disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke, and a familiar message told Ishrin that the Ritual worked as intended.

Ritual successful: Body of Turquoise. All attributes increased by 100%

“To think that in my old life this Ritual took me more than 70 years to research, understand, and to find the ingredients.” Ishrin laughed. “This is definitely a great start! Well, onto the next. Body of Turquoise unlocks Body of Beryl for even more attributes, or I could go with Radiant Sentry so I can defend myself.” He thought about it. “Yeah, let’s do the Sentry first.”

Radiant Sentry was a ritual he found while exploring the abandoned tombs of Elaria, in the southern continent of Eternia. The tombs were said to be the burial site of a well renowned Light mage, although it was quite interesting that even though the tombs were famous, nobody even knew if the mage’s name was indeed Elaria or not. Not much was known about him, or her for that regard, beyond the fact that the tombs were so riddled with traps that exploring them had proven to be impossible. Well, at least until Ishrin decided that he was his turn to try and challenge them. He told everybody that he did it for his own pride, but in truth he did it mostly because his wife wanted a pet, and who was he to deny her that? In hindsight he could have been honest about it to the others, but at that time he was not powerful enough to be that cocky. He was still scared of Cultivators and, knowing their pride, if he said that he was doing it for his wife they would have surely tried to kill him on the spot. Such toxic males, the bunch of them. Anyway, exploring the tombs was a trivial thing for him, and a great gift for her. He remembered her face when he gave her the ritual, and her smile was so big that the only time it was bigger was when they actually performed the ritual, and she got her own personal light pixie.

Right now, the ritual was right at the cusp of what he could perform with his weak body and his meager supply of magic, but it was still quite powerful. He thanked his photographic memory for allowing him to remember it even after so many centuries and got to work. As he placed down the first ingredient, salt for the magic circle, he thought he heard a sound nearby. His body tensed up, but then a small lizard fell from the tree above and into a stack of leaves. He was worried for nothing. He chuckled, reaching into his inventory to fetch the ingredients for the Radiant Sentry ritual.

Ritual successful: Radiant Sentry. A young Light Pixie will now protect you.