Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic

The deeper he walked inside, the more he felt the entire space filled with malice. The sensation of facing a deity became clearer and clearer, with whispers, murmurs, and even incomprehensible sounds of agony appearing as if the empty temple was actually filled with invisible figures.

He felt the briny wind, sharp as a blade, blowing from the direction of the Holy Emblem. Cracks appeared on Shard's face, but soon a golden glimmer seeped through.

He felt the surging fire, rising like a behemoth from beneath his feet. The touch of pain on his soul was momentary, soon suppressed by a more potent force.

He felt the destructive thunder, like a hammer in the hands of a deity, falling from above his head. Power resisted and buffeted him, but this familiar higher-dimensional force excited Shard even more.

He felt the lingering water, like the hands of the gentlest lover enfolding him. His steps became slow, but they were firm. Desire couldn't stop him, and neither could these illusions.

The power behind the Holy Emblem resisted, resisting this mortal who carried the Divinity of a Foreign God, but this only made Shard all the more thrilled.

Looking up at the Holy Emblem, the strange spiral pattern caused Shard's dizziness to intensify. Around the path leading to the high platform with the Holy Emblem and the Altar, the phantoms of the grotesque fishermen emerged one by one.

They stretched out their hands trying to grasp Shard but recoiled from the divine radiance. The white bones piled beneath the Altar seemed to come alive, and the Undead shrieked as they lunged towards Shard, yet they couldn't make him stop.

Just as Desire had said, when one desire becomes so intense, all other emotions are suppressed.

All the statues in the temple seemed to tremble at this moment; when Shard laboriously reached the first step below the high platform, the immense pressure turned his skin into a terrible crimson.

Stepping onto the stair, his body's golden scars became intensely vibrant. Blood flowed from Shard's eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, but the power that drew him forward left him with no thought of stopping.

Finally, having reached the top of the platform with difficulty, the pressure made Shard stumble forward, but he steadied himself against the rough stone Altar to prevent falling.

The base of the Altar was formed by four kneeling fishermen, who with outstretched hands together supported the large stone basin above.

The blood in the basin was all that dripped from the Holy Emblem. Since the High Priest of the Crimson Cult was dead, now no one knew what the eerie liquid was, but a bottle of it, rich with the Desecration Element and potent in Spirit, could—if sold—fetch at least...

"What am I thinking?"

He supported himself on the edge of the Altar to stand upright, the Holy Emblem within arm's reach. But Desire had said, if you don't wish to be watched after becoming a thief, you must desecrate the Sea Return ritual before taking the object.

Shard knew how to commit Desecration; Mr. Edmund, the caretaker of the old lighthouse, had proposed a bold method, which was engraving an emblem of a hostile deity onto the Holy Emblem of the "Lord of the Crimson Spiral."

But Shard feared he would be struck dead by a bolt of lightning on the spot, so he planned to use another method that wouldn't provoke trouble.

"This is an important investment."

He took out a small bottle containing fish scales and, needing one hand to support himself on the Altar to stay upright, Shard could only crush the glass bottle with his bare hands. Ignoring the injury to his right hand, he tossed the "Scales of the Drowned Fisherman" into the basin of blood.

Plop–

The Altar clearly resisted the Relic, but the object still pierced the surface of the liquid and sank in, the splashing drops of blood staining Shard's sleeve.

After a brief eerie silence, the Altar began to shake violently; the blood tinged with a faint Glimmer reflecting red against Shard's face. Under his gaze, the pool of blood began to bubble as if boiling, the bright red blood quickly decomposed and stank, and the revolting odor finally made Shard truly vomit.

He vomited the remnants of his food along with the blood from his stomach onto the altar, an act that was probably even more desecrating than before.

A thunderous boom echoed above the temple as if lightning had struck directly overhead. Accompanied by violent trembling of the ground, fissures actually appeared on the ancient temple floor.

The walls began to peel, and dust and stones kept falling from above. Even the Holy Emblem ceased bleeding, its golden hue gradually fading, as if the Deity had abandoned this place.

The pressure gradually lifted, and Shard looked up at the White Bone Holy Emblem covered in blood.

He removed his mask, and from his mouth came a strange sound. It was the ancient Spell Words of the merman, passed down from the oldest of times. This language could not be easily written down, but when the mermen sealed away 'Desire' half a century ago, 'Desire' memorized it perfectly.

For a level 0 artifact, this marvelous language might be much younger than it is.

And, as Shard chanted, the collapse of the temple sped up. The small statues of mermen and mermaids cracked one after another, and the giant stones and beams from the ceiling fell toward the sea below, along with countless bones hidden in the skies above.

Shard did not run away. He mouthed the Spell Words, his eyes fixated on that Holy Emblem.

The Holy Emblem trembled with the collapse of the temple, and then, it cracked.

The debris of the Holy Emblem fell with the dust, and on the wall behind, a huge rift appeared. From within it, a thudding heartbeat could be heard, and an extreme glimmer of gold illuminated Shard's face before the altar.

Apart from the high platform at his feet, a third of the temple floor had already fallen into the waves. The shaking grew stronger, and dust mixed with red rain descended from the sky.

The crack in the wall widened until through it, Shard could see the decayed vessels and flesh within the mermaid's ribcage, and within its black heart, a fist-sized Golden Pearl.

The golden glow resonated with the cracks on Shard's body. He widened his eyes, seemingly unconsciously reaching up with his finger:

"This truly is... my treasure..."

"Outlander, make sure not to be beguiled by Desire."

Shard couldn't even tell whether this was his own thought or if she was actually voicing a warning.

Ash mixed with blood rain fell, behind him the nearly completely collapsed temple, and dozens of small statues about to be submerged by the seawater, inserted at angles on the floor. Golden light illuminated the Outlander before the altar, his hand, and the peculiar cracks on his body.

As Shard reached out his hand, the Golden Pearl in the giant mermaid corpse's ribcage, in response to the call of the Spell Words, detached from the heart and flew out.

A strange impulse made Shard reach out to grab it, but as soon as his fingertips touched it, he screamed in pain as if bitten by a cat and withdrew his hand.

The Golden Pearl fell into the altar filled with boiling blood, and Shard watched as a patch of blackness appeared on the tip of his finger, only to quickly return to normal.

"Why... is it the Divinity of the Evil God that resists me?"

Last time, when he gained the Divinity of the 'Creator of Innocence,' there hadn't been any problems because that drop of Divinity was a gift from a Bygone Days' Deity who had crossed a millennium to give to Shard, a power that was friendly to him.

But this drop of Divinity belonged to the 'Lord of the Crimson Spiral,' an Evil God's power; it would not submit to Shard or allow him to touch it. In fact, had Shard not possessed a considerable adaptability to Divinity, he would have died from that brief touch.