Chapter 75: Chapter 74: Takeshi and the High Priest.

The corridor at the back ended at a staircase leading down.

Takeshi followed it to an underground level with uncoated stone walls and torches mounted in metal brackets every four meters. The air was cold and dry. His footsteps echoed across the stone floor.

He passed two closed doors without stopping.

The third door was open.

Takeshi stopped in the doorway.

It was a rectangular room with a cell at the far end. The bars were made of dark metal engraved with symbols he recognized as magical containment seals. Inside the cell, lying on the floor, was a figure with light-colored hair spread across the stone.

Ophélia.

She was unconscious. Her chest rose and fell steadily, which meant she was breathing. There was no visible blood, and her clothes were intact.

Takeshi crossed the room toward the cell.

"Don’t do that."

He stopped.

The voice came from the right. A man was standing beside the wall, in a spot hidden by the angle of the doorway when he had entered. Takeshi estimated his age at around sixty. He wore ceremonial robes embroidered with golden thread over dark blue fabric. His posture was perfectly straight, with no visible tension.

[new person]

[ceremonial robes?]

["don’t do that" without moving. He’s confident]

[takeshi assessing the situation as always]

"Who are you?"

Takeshi asked.

The man looked at him with an appraising expression.

"I am the high priest of this temple."

He paused briefly.

"And you entered without an invitation."

"I came for Ophélia."

"I know."

The high priest clasped his hands behind his back.

"That’s why I’m telling you not to wake her. The containment seals surrounding the cell are keeping her sedated. If you break them without the proper procedure, the backlash could cause permanent neurological damage."

Takeshi did not move.

"Why are you keeping her here?"

"Because we need her."

The high priest looked toward the cell for a moment.

"Our god of fortune requires a specific sacrifice every certain number of years to maintain the pact that sustains this temple. Ophélia meets every requirement."

"I’m not going to allow that."

The high priest looked at him with the same appraising expression as before.

"That isn’t up to you."

[SACRIFICE]

[neurological damage if he breaks the seals incorrectly. takeshi can’t just open the cell]

["that isn’t up to you" this guy isn’t nervous at all]

[a god of fortune. another divine player in this story]

[takeshi has to win the fight and open the cell correctly. that makes two problems]

The high priest extended one hand to the side.

The water in the room’s air, scarce though it was in the form of humidity, solidified into ice crystals around Takeshi in less than a second. Not as projectiles, but as walls. A solid cylinder of ice half a meter thick enclosed his entire position.

Takeshi immediately invoked magic and applied concentrated heat inward against the walls. The ice gave way at the point of contact, but regenerated from the outside at the same time. It took him four seconds to create an opening large enough to escape.

When he stepped out, the high priest had not changed position.

"You used elemental magic to counter my attack..."

The high priest said in a neutral tone.

"Impressive for someone your age, but inefficient."

Takeshi checked his own stats while regaining his balance.

[Life: 89%]

[Sanity: 78%]

The ice had caused real damage despite the lack of direct contact. The temperature inside the cylinder had dropped enough to affect his circulation during the seconds it took him to get out.

He tried to summon Eclipse, but there was no response.

[eclipse didn’t appear]

[why didn’t it appear?]

’No Eclipse and no Aoi bonus.’

Takeshi processed that quickly. His trust with Aoi was not at maximum. What had happened with Sable at the entrance, what Aoi had overheard, had affected the value even though Aoi had not expressed it directly yet.

That meant he would not have Nyx’s bonus either.

He checked what he still had available and found something he had not expected.

Ophélia’s ten percent bonus was active. Which meant Ophélia’s trust in him was at maximum, even while she was unconscious inside the cell.

There was no time to process the implications of that. The high priest was already moving his hands again.

The next attack was earth. The room’s floor fractured in several places simultaneously, and fist-sized chunks of stone shot toward Takeshi from different angles.

Takeshi generated a compressed air shield. It stopped three fragments. The other four hit him before the shield was complete.

[Life: 71%]

He repositioned himself toward the center of the room to gain more distance from the walls and reduce the number of attack angles available to the high priest.

The man was an elemental mage with access to at least two different elements. Water and earth confirmed. His level of control surpassed anything Takeshi had faced directly. It was not speed or brute force. It was precision and volume at the same time. Every attack came from multiple points simultaneously, which meant any partial defense left openings elsewhere.

Takeshi attacked.

He launched concentrated fire magic at a single point toward the high priest.

The high priest did not move. He instantly generated a wall of compact earth that absorbed the entire attack without giving way.

Takeshi tried to circle around the wall with a second attack from the side.

The high priest had already generated earth at that angle as well.

He had not managed to reduce the distance because he had never reached the high priest even once. But he had not been able to get closer either. Every time he closed the gap, the high priest generated obstacles that forced Takeshi to retreat or go around them, and while going around them, the next attack arrived from the flank.

Earth from below, which Takeshi jumped over.

Ice from above while he was in the air. With no ground to push off from, the impact knocked him sideways, and he landed badly, his right shoulder absorbing the blow.

[Life: 58%]

He stood up.

The high priest was watching him from the same spot in the room. He still had not moved from the place he had occupied since the beginning. He did not need to move. His range of control covered the entire room.

"You have energy."

The high priest said.

"And some skill, but the difference in experience is too great."

He paused.

"Leave the temple and let me finish what I started. Once the sacrifice is complete, the temple will have no interest in you or the people who came with you."

Takeshi did not answer.

The high priest waited two seconds and then attacked again.

Earth from three angles at once. Takeshi blocked one with an air shield, another with a wall of fire that melted the fragments before they arrived, and the third struck him in the left side.

[Life: 44%]

Half his health gone in a fight that had lasted less than two minutes.

Takeshi thought about the bridge, about Ophélia in a prayer pose, about Sable panicking before being eliminated in seconds, and about what Ophélia had said afterward.

"I asked Tot for help."

’Can I do the same?’

He did not know. There was no way to find out without trying.

The high priest generated water from the ceiling, freezing it in the air at multiple points to create guided projectiles.

Takeshi did not block them. He took two hits and used the time he gained to close his eyes for a second and do the only thing he could try.

He did not know the exact words Ophélia had used on the bridge, but the system did not work through words. It worked through accumulated trust and the access that trust granted.

He extended a hand.

[Life: 31%]

And something answered.

It was not gradual. It was immediate.

The angel appeared in the center of the room.

The same body of white fibers. The same disproportionate limbs that did not follow normal human proportions. The multiple arms. The single eye embedded in its torso, open and lidless, facing the high priest.

The high priest looked at the creature.

For the first time since the fight had begun, something in his posture changed.

"That should not be possible."

His voice had lost the neutral tone it had carried for the last two minutes.

He generated a massive amount of earth from the floor. More than he had used at any point until then, a solid wall one meter thick that positioned itself between him and the angel.

The angel extended one of its arms toward the wall.

The wall disappeared.

The high priest took a step back. He generated ice from the ceiling at maximum volume, enough to cover the upper half of the room in overlapping solid crystals.

The angel passed through all of it without stopping.

The high priest tried to move toward the door, but the angel arrived first.

What happened next lasted less than four seconds. Takeshi did not look directly. He heard the impact, then silence, and nothing more.

When he looked up, the high priest was lying motionless on the floor.

The angel remained in the center of the room for a moment, the eye in its torso directed toward Takeshi. Then it disappeared with the same suddenness with which it had arrived.

Takeshi remained still for a second, confirming there was no more movement in the room. Then he walked toward the cell.

The metal bars with the containment seals. The high priest had said breaking them without the proper procedure caused neurological damage, but the high priest was dead, and there was no one else in the room who could explain the proper procedure.

He examined the seals closely. They were deep engravings in the metal filled with ink of a color that was not ordinary paint, but some kind of hardened magical material. There was a pattern in the arrangement of the engravings.

Takeshi studied the pattern for thirty seconds.

The seals were not a locking system. They were a flow system. The containment energy entered through the engravings on the upper frame and circulated into those on the side bars before ending in those on the floor of the cell. If he interrupted the flow at the entry point, the other seals would lose their source.

He applied concentrated heat to the engraving on the upper frame where the pattern began.

The seal vanished.

The engravings on the bars deactivated in sequence, from top to bottom, in less than three seconds.

The cell door opened when Takeshi pushed it.

He stepped inside and knelt beside Ophélia. He placed two fingers against her neck. Her pulse was steady.

"Ophélia."

No response.

He called her again, louder this time, but nothing happened.

He held her by the shoulders and carefully moved her into a more upright position. Her eyes did not open.

Takeshi watched her in silence.

The containment seals were deactivated. The cell was open. There was no visible source of active magic in the immediate area.

But Ophélia was not waking up.

He checked her stats.

[Life: 82%]

[Sanity: 100%]

[Trust: 100%]

Normal health and intact sanity.

’Then why isn’t she responding?’

He heard footsteps in the corridor and looked up toward the doorway.