Part 1: The Aftermath and the Mission Ahead

  The battlefield lay in ruins, the remnants of the enemy forces scattered like leaves in the wind. General Makola’s army, bolstered by Wadero’s forces, moved methodically, ensuring that no stragglers remained.

  The scent of iron clung to the air as soldiers trudged through the bloodstained terrain, wary of any surprises that the Beast Invasion might have left behind.

  General Makola stood atop a mound of debris. He was a man of voluminous stature as well as a powerful, noble presence.

  His piercing gaze surveyed the devastation wrought by his own hands as he defended the innocent.

  His second-in-command, Vice General Karisa, approached him with an equally sharp expression.

  “We’ve secured the area, General. The last of the enemies were either slain or fled further north. The survivors of Chyulu’s garrison have regrouped and await your command.”

  Makola nodded, glancing toward Wadero, who was issuing instructions of his own. The two leaders met at the center of the ruined village. In a makeshift tent.

  “You’ve grown a lot since I last saw you, Wadero. Your skill with the spear and command of your men are impressive.”

  “Your words honor me, Lord Makola, but it was your mighty arrows that helped turn the tide towards victory.”

  “A General does not wield their weapon lightly. It was only natural that my actions did so. However, it seems things are more dire than we realized,” Makola said.

  Hearing such a grim declaration, Wadero instinctively inquired on the matter.

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  “As you know, the original reports stated that a demonic beast invasion came in from the Chyulu border.”

  “Yes. We recently confirmed that they were likely being made in a cave somewhere in Northern Chyulu.”

  Wadero added on to the knowledge gathered by the Vice General.

  “There’s no denying that the beasts are being brought into existence somewhere in Northern Chyulu. However, the true origin of this invasion isn't Chyulu.”

  “What?”

  “I recently receiverd a report from Chyulu's main forces implying that the conjurers of these beasts may be part of an invasive force from the Great Rift.”

  Wadero’s face frowned at the mention of this name.

  The Great Rift was a supermassive valley that cut a path in the earth and sea. From the distant Northern Continent and into Vutenia's own Tsuhayi Continent.

  Wadero had heard many legends of its formation.

  Some argued that it was a remnant of a cataclysm from the Primordial Age long before Vutenia and shamans were even a concept.

  This immense valley served as part of the Western Border of Chyulu’s Territories. Both North and South Chyulu were next to it.

  Wadero had once gone on a diplomatic mission to this great valley as a young foot-soldier.

  It was an incredibly vast territory hidden behind a dense fog.

  Beyond which, lay rich lands belonging to many diverse peoples and all manner of deadly beasts.

  He remembers the chaotic battles that waged on in that land. Against man and beast alike. The tenacity and grit of enemy and ally were something to behold.

  Having noted the look in Wadero’s eyes, General Makola continued with his brief.

  “Currently, the armies of Northern Chyulu are busy defending their western borders from a similar attack.”

  “I see…”

  “I also received a report from High King Ranga suggesting that the beasts are part of an invasive force from a newly formed nation, even further beyond the Great Rift itself.”

  “What!? Where!?”

  “Somewhere around the Great Lake Region. They call it the Boroki Empire.”

  “The Great Lake? The Jokka Kingdom held most of the territory in that region. Does that mean it was absorbed into this Boroki Empire?”

  “It would appear so. Contact with the Jokka Kingdom has been difficult with all the recent tribal clashes in the Great Rift.

  Truth be told, the Jokka Kingdom had already been having constant conflicts with their neighbors.

  It was only a matter of time for something to change.”

  “I suppose so but for it to happen under our noses is inconceivable.”

  Makola silently nodded at Wadero’s assertion before continuing.

  “To make matters worse it seems they’ve began a campaign to conquer every nation on the Eastern region of the Continent.”

  That statement shocked all and sundry that were present.

  The scale of power needed to do so was no joke. The Eastern region had some of the most powerful military forces in the Continent.

  Even outside of that, the various territories had all manner of natural and mystic threats unique to the region that would make occupation difficult to sustain.

  Even Vutenia would be hard pressed to realize such a goal.

  Even uniting the Nine tribes took multiple attempts across centuries of conflict before Lord Vuten miraculously did so.

  Having let the notion sit with them, General Makola continued with the current task at hand.

  “We may have vanquished this enemy, but more awaits us. We must track the rest of the beasts to their source and cut them off at the root.”

  Wadero nodded in agreement. “The conjurers continue to raise more abominations. If we do not find them and defeat them, this war will never end.”

  “War, eh?” Makola smiled as he uttered those words. He could not help but agree.

  This invasion was shaping up to be a full-on war.

  Makola turned to the map that had been unfurled on a broken cart.

  “Our best bet is to move North-West, into the heart of Chyulu’s ravaged lands. If we sever the supply of corpses and put an end to the conjurers, we might finally turn the tide.”

  “Leaving us free to join the rest of Chyulu’s armies.”

  “Exactly. We beat back these invaders from the Great Rift and keep the peace.”

  Orders were swiftly issued, and the armies began their march further into Northern Chyulu, determined to end the horrors once and for all.

  Part 2: The First Trial

  Oraki exhaled sharply, stepping deeper into the eerie shade of Jeneza Cave. The air felt thick with a strange energy.

  No. This was more of a feeling that Oraki couldn’t quite describe.

  At least, not yet. It seemed to grow stronger the deeper he went.

  The whole situation was foreign to Oraki. None but the shamans of Vuli have ventured this far into Jeneza Cave.

  Most burial rituals end with the families entrusting relics to be enshrined in the cave by whichever shaman of Vuli was assigned to them.

  Even back when Oraki had made the pilgrimage to enshrine a relic of his father, he never saw the secrets of Jeneza Cave.

  Today, he walked through the dimly lit cavern with no knowledge of what lay ahead. His only guides were unyielding hope and the reassuring power of Lord Gesa, the primordial divine spirit that was always with him.

  For now, his primordial presence remained silent but ever watchful.

  Oraki soon came across a large expanse that opened into a cavern wall with two giant stone statues facing each other and standing on a 3-metre-tall stone base that was 10 metres wide.

  On the left-most end was a statue of a woman with a serpent’s head. On the right-most end was a statue of a man with what looked like a bat’s head.

  “A rather ominous form of decoration.” Oraki thought.

  Made even more ominous by what stood in front of him.

  A silent, hooded figure stood in front of the pathway. He wore the same blend of purple and black garments common for shamans of Vuli.

  Likely to be Lianna’s subordinate.

  He silently raised his hand as if gesturing to Oraki to give him something.

  The first thing Oraki thought of was the item that Lianna had given him, and so he went for that.

  His guess proved truthful as the strange, hooded man took the item and inserted it into a slot at the base of the snake-woman’s statue.

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  Suddenly, a voice, like that of a young girl, echoed through the cavern.

  “Welcome!! Welcome!! One who is strong!! One who is brave!!”

  Oraki was a little confused by the sudden outburst.

  “Did you just say something?”

  He asked the hooded man. A quiet shaking of their head promptly denied the absurd assumption by the High Priest of Gesa.

  This left only one option.

  “Over here, you dense young shaman.”

  The statue’s eyes flashed with a green hue of immense spiritual aura.

  “You?”

  “I am your guide through the Serpent’s trial, son of Gesa.”

  Oraki was dumbfounded by the whole situation. For such an ominous statue to sound so delightfully innocent…

  The voice continued, ignoring the stupid expression on Oraki’s face.

  “To descend, you must first gather that which was lost. A relic, fragmented and scattered, must be made whole once more. Seek the nine fragments in the dominions of the Divine-Beast Guardians and emerge unscathed. Thus, the first challenge begins!!!!”

  As the voice faded, a great quaking shook the cavern as the statue’s base gave rise to a secret opening with stairs descending into who knows what.

  The hooded guardian had turned the relic to reveal the passage before taking it out and giving it back to Oraki.

  The fragment was pulsating with an eerie green light that was characteristic of vessels of the Chief God of Death.

  He tightened his grip. This fragment would guide him to the others.

  He would have to face multiple Divine Beasts, each guarding a portion of the relic, all while avoiding critical injuries.

  Without further delay, Oraki descended as he bid farewell to the silent hooded guardian.

  He descended the flights and rushed forward into a deep expanse that opened up to an overwhelming view.

  A large sunroof in the cavern ceiling allowed for the morning sunlight to be reflected off a towering, giant white crystal that seemed to sprout out of the earth itself to meet it.

  This radiant light revealed the surrounding, vast, complicated network of stairs leading into a myriad of catacombs carved into the cave walls.

  He was in a Catacomb Maze.

  Thus, he began his search while being guided by the resonant vibration and light emanating from the fragment in his hand.

  The act took a great amount of time and patience. He ran into dozens of dead-end paths, but he did not tire.

  He couldn’t be tired. Tili lay helpless on a bed in Tana.

  He would see her stand proud in the sun once more.

  Two hours later, the fragment showed promise in front of a large doorway.

  He promptly entered the first catacomb that the fragment was guided to.

  It was deceptively larger on the inside than outside. Big enough for a whole village to hold a ceremony.

  It was filled with innumerable relics. Most prominent of all are the Vigango talismans.

  On the farthest wall from the entrance was an impressive headdress belonging to the Royal Family.

  He suspected that all the treasures in that room were relics of the many citizens who died in that king’s reign.

  This was the custom of the land.

  Suddenly, a rattling sound alerted him to his first opponent.

  From the shadows, a serpentine beast slithered forward, its massive form covered in metallic, scale-like armour.

  Its eyes burned with an intelligent malice, and the moment their gazes met, it lunged.

  Oraki swiftly dodged it, rolling to the side and drawing his Rungu staff.

  He had already shifted to Active State as Gesa’s divine aura empowered him.

  The beast struck again, but this time he was ready. With precise movements, he manoeuvred around it, searching for an opening.

  When he finally found one, he delivered a powerful blow to its underbelly as his Rungu staff extended in size and length to propel the beast into the catacomb walls.

  The beast recoiled, completely knocked out, and Oraki seized the opportunity to snatch a fragment of the relic from its lair.

  The resonant fragments called to one another, and Oraki soon found his quarry.

  As he placed it in his pouch, he could hear the beast clawing at the ground in a rabid frenzy to reach him.

  “It’s already recovered?”

  “Nothing short of a lethal blow will put them down, and even then, it won’t be permanent. It may not look like it, but in essence, we’re already in the Underworld. Things ironically never stay dead in this place.”

  Being shocked by Gesa’s words would have to wait.

  Oraki fully understood that his power in Active State would not be sufficient.

  For a brief moment, he raised his output to the same level of Final State that he used against the Demonic Beasts he fought on the journey to Tana.

  With a single tap to the ground, the beast was pierced by several earthen spears and stopped in its tracks.

  Oraki quickly made his way out of the beast’s lair.

  It was already beginning to revive itself.

  If he was out of its domain then surely it would not pursue. Still…

  That was just one relic that had taken this long. And according to the voice, there were nine more to go.

  Oraki could only imagine how long this would take.

  Especially since he no longer had any real territory advantage.

  Part 3: The Toll of the Trial and the relic’s truth

  It felt like twelve hours had passed.

  Oraki was beginning to understand just how grueling his trial was.

  He looked upon the impaled form of the giant bat-like creature in front of him.

  Its hairy, sharp, claw-like hands were still twitching in defiance.

  Despite having a stone spike running straight through its mouth and head.

  Anything else suffering such treatment would have lost all light of life from its eyes.

  This beast's eyes burned in defiance of such a natural law.

  He was surprised by how much they had pushed him, but he had what he wanted.

  The fourth fragment.

  Only four fragments had been recovered.

  He observed the broken relic. The fragments fit so perfectly that they reminded him of pieces in a puzzle game he once played as a child.

  That may very well have been what this trial was to the ones who set it. A simple game for entertainment.

  He was hardly amused by the thought of it.

  He wiped the blood dripping from his ears due to the damage they had sustained.

  He could feel his body aching from the tedious searching and battles.

  He drank one of Mwana's elixirs to boost his natural healing but while his body recovered, his composure and patience was slowly waning.

  The hidden challenge of this trial may very well have been a test of just that.

  Each Divine Beast tested his strength in different ways and was more challenging than the last. Some challenged his speed, others his endurance, and some demanded a myriad of wit and strategy to overcome them.

  One thing was certain. Each of them demanded something crucial.

  “I’m wasting time,” Oraki muttered, frustrated.

  “If the first challenge is taking this long, then just how long will the others take? Tili might become a relic by the time I finish…”

  He could hear Gesa’s voice as if he were right beside him.

  “Then adjust your approach. Use what this realm offers you. Speak not of such grim fates, my young shaman. You have me with you.”

  Oraki exhaled sharply, considering his words.

  “What this realm offers me…”

  Jeneza was not like the surface world. The primordial chaos of this place responded to mystic power more easily. He had already noticed that his usual techniques consumed less mental energy here.

  Naturally, if the responsive rate of primordial chaos is high, then the amount of Gesa’s aura that Oraki needs to channel to fight is also lower.

  This leads to less strain in using more advanced techniques.

  Even his extreme healing had become far quicker and with less of a mental toll.

  A plan formed in his mind. This may have been an opportunity to polish some rusty tricks.

  He knelt, pressing his palms to the cold cavern floor. Channeling divine aura, he shaped the earth, summoning multiple earthen clones of himself.

  Their general shape and clothing were strikingly similar. It would take a keen eye to differentiate them.

  Making them this well detailed required a significant amount of Gesa's spiritual aura. Normally, he could only make three effective clones. Now, he had 5 of them.

  They stood silently, awaiting his command.

  “Now to find the fragments,” he thought as he began splitting Gesa's power among them.

  “I'll need the relic's resonance. Lord Gesa, if I trace its properties and make copies, then could the resonance effect transfer over?”

  Despite their spiritual location, the relic was still made from the land itself. That was still Gesa's domain of power.

  “It's not impossible, but you may end up taking in the history and secrets behind it. If an anti-clairvoyant curse has been placed, then you'll be exhausting yourself even further by trying to channel more of my power.”

  “It's a risk I'll have to take. Besides, those beasts aren't the only tenacious thing in here.”

  Oraki tightly gripped the relic in his hand as he flowed Gesa's aura into it. Consciously performing this ritual was no easy feat even for Gesa's most proficient shaman.

  The older the relic, the greater the history and mystic properties tied to its form. Incorporating that truth into himself was a heavy task.

  He opened his hand and looked upon it with his golden glowing eyes while using Gesa's Revelation.

  In an instant, his consciousness shifted to the Inner Sea. The inner world in all things.

  A vast expanse with translucent, jellyfish-like, glowing spheres and the sensation of floating in water had become commonplace to him.

  Except this relic's Inner Sea was filled with the green glow of Vuli's divine aura.

  He begins the ritual as he connects with the glowing translucent spheres reminiscent of jellyfish heads.

  Gaining knowledge of its physical attributes was simple enough. It was gaining knowledge of its history that would be difficult.

  To make a perfect replica, the object's experiences needed to be passed on to the duplicate.

  For Gesa to mimic the resonance effect, they had to be as conceptually identical as possible. Down to the fundamental roots of their being.

  His subconscious ingested most of the benign physical history, like the geological information of the rock it was carved from.

  It was the mystic history that he had to carefully watch for. A curse's origin or a divine blessing granted.

  Such a history of power was where the core of the mystic resonance would lie. That part of the process was slower and methodical, but far more crucial.

  His mind shifted through fragments of memories.

  He sees a child with white hair and pale skin.

  “A child of Abyd.”

  He sees someone give the child the relic fragments in a box.

  They eagerly work on it. As expected, it was a children's toy.

  He sees visions of the child playing with it, and next to the child, he noticed…

  “A white serpent!?”

  An unexpected discovery, but before he could go further, his mind was repelled by a sudden flash of green flames.

  An anti-clairvoyant curse…

  Oraki defended himself with Gesa’s aura and prepared to break through, but...

  “It seems you've been summoned…”

  Lord Gesa’s words perplexed Oraki, but he soon understood their meaning as the scenery around him rapidly shifted in a blinding green flash.

  Once it cleared, he was met with a sight that would shake most men to their core in rabid fear.

  Even he felt himself reel back at the overwhelming presence of the being in front of him.

  He was a giant that sat upon a throne carved from forgotten stone, cloaked in a cascade of elegant, black and purple fabric with golden patterns.

  Emerald green light pulsed from the crystal atop his staff, mirrored in the eerie glow of his eyes—twin embers burning within a bat-like skull etched with sacred glyphs.

  Silent crows with glowing feathers flanked him like sentinels, their stillness broken by the whisper of hidden shadows in the mystic forests down at the base of the great, stone mound that his throne stood on.

  Yet even these shadows could not stifle the terrifying, menacing stillness of the monstrous, divine shadow on the distant horizon that boasted similar features to the great being sitting on the throne.

  He was no king, yet kings bowed to him.

  He was no shaman, for shamans prayed to him.

  He was the Chief God of Shadowy Death.

  “Lord...Vuli…”

  The giant responded to the shaman of Gesa with a voice as pleasant as the evening dusk and as deep as the black abyss.

  “Welcome. Child of Gesa. Welcome. Blood of Mekari.”

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  (Important Author’s Note Below)

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  Thank You.