Grand Adventures of the Witch King

End of Tambe Village

There was all manner of rituals that Ezekiel remembers from his past life, but they could be categorized into 2 types; Profane and Religious. 

The religious were a bit complex, but it was the one holy and satanic rituals fell under. Or even to any entity one wanted to sacrifice too for whatever one desired, cultists enjoyed performing this type, well the satanic ones mostly and they were always dirty, bloody, and savage beyond compare if he could say something about it. And the human race is one messed up race that loved the occult arts and all things that they didn’t understand. Making them prone to poking ancient eldritch and unsealing demonic entities more times than he could count in his time. 

He did try satanic rituals a few times by using some of the rituals from the tome to summon a demon, that he then killed afterward. Which he repeated a couple of time, well a couple thousand times and they didn’t like it that much and ended up with him being the most hated being among demons as he killed a few demon kings for a charm he wanted.

Now the profane is the opposite, whether the ritual is good or bad, dark or holy, it is done without any sacrifices being directed to or by any entity, be they demon or god. 

What they relied on was the World Laws. 

These are what govern a world, how the water flows, the light shining, and wind blowing. They are what quantum physicists have headaches over trying to understand the fundamentals of the universe. This is what the gods play around with in the form of divinity, or a small percentage of it anyway as each god has certain divinities. 

Ezekiel was no god, but thanks to the tome, he could fool around with laws at will when he was at his peak, but he also knew that it was not the peak the tome offered, not even close to being there at all, which spoke volumes of the power it offered. 

So here he was back to square one with that knowledge and experience, even if he couldn’t juggle laws as he could back then he knew the loopholes to make him touch a bit of their power to aid him into making the best profane ritual the tome had ever had!

Due to him still being young, naive and innocent back then, when he first stumbled across the tome it showed him the first realm of the main technique of cultivation that it offered, but since it had passed down from many hands before, it had acquired many arts as well. So it showed him the paths he could take to begin his journey.

Much like RPG games when one selects their character before beginning their quests, there were three paths to start his journey with.

These were the Holy path, Demonic path, and Normal path. Well they weren’t simply listed like that, but he later simplified them and each had a different beginning.

The Holy, for instance, required him to be clean of all blood, no killing at all from him at the beginning. And so the ritual that he needed to do was to have devotees that had to offer themselves to him, basically create a group of fanatics that would put all their faith in him without killing themselves until they died and he would grow to unimaginable heights once he harvested their souls once they did, be it in old age or other means. This could turn him into a god from being a mortal instantly, the drawback, slow as hell, another part was where would he find people to believe and have all their faith in him like that in this place or even back then when he came from but a humble home? 

That path made him understand how pagan gods were made, or at least a few in the ancient times that had all died anyway as none living would still be holding on to the tome at that time. 

The Demonic path; death, cruelty, barbarism, blood, and despair in excessively massive quantities, something that even the demons in the lowest of hells would blush about and make the most sadistic demonesses fall in love with him at first sight while their nether regions would pour like waterfalls at a mere glance in their eyes. And that was just at the first realm too!

So the young Ezekiel blanched and frightened to no ends, so much so that he wanted to throw away the tome that instant if it was not bonded to his soul, with no choice he checked the third option, the Normal path, that was not its name either, nor were the previous two, it was just their essence. 

This was also divided into two paths; one he would use a limited amount of human blood from victims he killed himself or use animals instead. He chose the animals with no hesitation and it was not even the strong and powerful ones but a few dozens of them to enter his first realm. 

Later he regretted it, but he later discovered that his tome was very versatile and malleable, in other words he could create his own techniques and arts, so what stopped him from taking the best from all three paths to make an ultimate path? 

This was what he did now for this life. 

This ritual was profane, that much can be understood. It had all the parts of the three paths, the demonic; for using live humans, holy; when he tricked them into self-sacrifice and normal; to balance them both, keeping a limited amount of living being and not torturing and slaughtering them, as well as having them offer themselves to him via a loophole. The normal was basically a tether, all these was experimented in his past life many times but never practiced, until now. 

He worked for three months to first trying to communicating with the world laws, which was hectic as these laws were very different from his original world’s ones but he could recognize a mere glimpse of familiarity from them and that was enough. To being able to slightly manipulate and order them just enough to get this done, and it took a lot of power.

So in his 3 months it was like him building a large metallic cauldron, with each pounding he would sort of ‘speak’ to the laws and manipulate them into listening and understand so as to respond to a few key words he would use to activate the ritual with. As if he was creating a contract that the people had unknowingly signed,

The World Laws, it didn’t see the trap Ezekiel placed for the people of Tambe village, all it was conditioned to do was respond to the key words Ezekiel placed on this ‘contract’.

So it was like, “Are you people willing to sacrifice yourself for me?” And the villagers’ response to that was, “Yes, with all our hearts.” 

And so the power of the laws locked them down and started the ritual. And what is funny is that it took everyone other than Ezekiel into consideration, even if they were not at the platform, they were all included and it didn’t care what they thought afterwards, for the ‘contract’ has been signed already.

So with that all in place, the ritual activated.

A harsh hot wind kicked up the dust, Ezekiel then looked up and saw dark green clouds starting to form above the skies of the village and ignored the people that seem to have started to sweat.

Whoom!

The green clouds separated into large numerous tendrils that swooped down and hit the ground outside the walls, directly at the dents Ezekiel had been working on for months with such force that the ground cracked and trembled greatly as each green cloud penetrated the ground!

Soon there was nothing but silence for a moment. 

But then!

Boom!

With that, thin long pillars of green flames sprouted out of these spots! Each as wide as a meter and they numbered in the hundreds, it was a spectacular scene, the ethereal light and dazzling way they all weaved and waved in the air was breathtaking!

To the villages who were nothing but mere statues now all they knew was that the ground trembled and a hellish scene of green fire rising from the ground was enough to let them know one thing. 

This was not Ullo! 

They had killed an innocent boy and instead brought upon them a being that was a pure devil!

The flame pillars reached high up into the sky, each about 500m in the air from the ground up.

There they started to change, the ends of each pillar became a hand that shifted and stretched towards the empty center that is the clear sky above the village where they all converged and became a large green flaming hand big enough to cover the entire village. 

It stood still for a moment as the environment in the village was pure hell, everything was just unbearably hot and deathly quiet!

And then!

Whoom!

Boom!

It fell. 

Breaking the air as if a colossal being suddenly reached down from the heaven to flatten this pathetic little village as punishment for what they brought upon themselves.

For Ezekiel, his mind was calm at this very moment with eyes closed as he ready and most importantly waiting for something. 

Soon the hand was halfway down and still descending with tremendous force everyone was to fall flat on the ground while still in the same postures and positions.

Chirp!

‘There it is’ A serene smile graced Ezekiel’s lips as if he was expecting interference when a loud bird cry broke the deathly silent air suddenly.

A pressure almost equal to the one made by the falling flaming hand arrived above the heads of the villagers, they immediately canceled out each other! 

This helped remove the weight from the villagers, but they still couldn't move!

"Human! Cancel this evil ritual from my people! Now!" A sweet and soothing feminine voice filled the air with rage!

Swoosh!

A large orange cloud that seemed to be filled with small shiny lights soon showed itself in the air just above the villagers where the two pressures met.

"Ah! You must be the remnant power sealed within that claw. A pleasure to meet you, of course, we have met before. Well, not really in person. My I have the pleasure of knowing your name my fair lady?" Ezekiel greeted calmly with an eloquent bow as if he wasn't even concerned about the halted hand midair or the hellish scene unleashed by him.

"Enough with your nonsense human! Release them at once!" It demanded fiercely.

"Hmm? Or what?" Ezekiel asked calmly while tilting his head to show his genuine curiosity, not a hint of fear nor panic could be seen or heard from him.

"I will spare your life after this and let go free for releasing them.” It urged him swiftly.

"Beg." He said suddenly.

"What!?" If it had a facial expression, Ezekiel was sure that it would have opened its eye and mouth wide.

Ezekiel looked at it and spoke slowly, "I said, beg me to release them."

"You will die for your insolence!" It declared loudly clearly not going to beg, not one single bit.

"Then why bother asking if you refuse, honestly I wasn't going to remove it even after you begged. I just wanted to mess with you and see if you would, clearly you don’t love this people at all. Hahaha!" With a boisterous mocking laughter, Ezekiel watched it tremble in the air at his words as for whether it was due to anger or the pressure the hand was exerting on it he couldn't tell, but he was sure it was somewhat both.

Hearing his mocking laughter, the cloud morphed into a pure solid large bird, half the size of the massive hand, with orange shiny feathers that seemed as they were from a real bird, pupil-less red eyes with a sharp gold spear-like beak, and sharp black metallic claws.

“You will Die!"

After reforming it released a loud cry that created such pressure that the hand was lifted up a bit higher than before!

Making Ezekiel squint at this slightly but had no change in expression, but was bleeding from him mouth.

After that it looked down on Ezekiel, its eyes full of incredible hatred, it then dove down.

Its beak tore through the air breaking the sound barrier, ready to impale this wicked human! 

Wiping his mouth, just before it came down he saw it filled with dense killing intent, his eyes calm and steady he chanted before it dove down at him. 

"Ancestral Form." 

Pop! Crack!

Instantly within his cloak about 60 finger-sized bones all lit up with the usual green flame and broke out of their cartilage confines, however, they immediately turned gold and drilled into Ezekiel's body!

Boom!

But then orange bird hit Ezekiel and with a tremendous boom, they cracked the ground and a large dust cloud kicked up, covering everything, including the bird and the possibly dead Ezekiel.

But was he?

"Good, an extra ingredient. Time to end this nonsense, for out there is my path, and the destiny of this world to be nothing but a resource for my ascension." A deep ancient, perhaps archaic voice will with power and majesty rung from deep within the dust cloud and shook the air around it.

A gust of wind cleared the dust and revealed what was now a stalemate between a transformed Ezekiel and the bird, well more like Ezekiel pinching the bird's beak with one hand!

Ezekiel had a new body, clothes, and aura! For the body, he stood a straight 7ft tall and sculpted like a god, long golden hair, pupil-less golden eyes. His clothes consisted of a long sleeveless white and gold robe, two long gold and white ribbons floated aimlessly behind, and lastly was a phantasmal crown that kept floating 4 inches above his head, it too was glowing gold.

His power was extreme that the air solidified around him, he was floating mid-air, just 3 inches off the ground

Crunch!

He broke the beak with a slight clench of his hand, the broken bits didn't fall to the ground but floated in the air next to him held by his power. He didn't stop there as he reached for its head that he proceeded to do the same as well as its entire body. 

The bird as if frozen didn't even utter a sound as it was crushed like corn chips.

Ezekiel looked at the still frozen hand in the air and soon as if on command the bit and pieces of the bird flew into it.

He uttered the word, "Maqlu."

But this time they were filled with greater power as the golden flames emerged from him flew towards the green hand at blinding speed. They merged, allowing the flaming hand to gain a golden color on the outer edges as it started to fall even faster than before!

He, on the other hand, dropped to the ground, his body began to shrink at great and visible speed! He didn't return to his former self, no he was degrading even further! 

His breath was becoming even fainter and fainter and his body was getting thinner and thinner, just as he was becoming more bone than skin even worse than he first arrived.

But he didn’t panic, he didn’t fear as he knew all was in place, soon enough his vision was soon covered by a green and gold light.

And everything went silent as he gave a few last thoughts before drifting into dark and silent slumber.

‘Power and this is just the beginning.’