Chapter 65 Arc 2 - Throne

After a couple of days of cleaning the temple, Lucas brought Alena's son, Jacob. He placed the body on the altar and started preparing for a ritual to revive him.

"This should do it." Lucas said, placing his hand on Jacob's forehead and pouring his mana into the air. The temple slowly absorbed it and cleansed it. Then Lucas gestured his hand to make a burning pentagram sigil into the air, with another hand on Jacob. Clean mana within the temple started slowly entering Jacob's body.

Jacob's fingertips twitched, and his eyelids fluttered open, but his skin still had a pallor of death, and his body felt cool. After a moment, his fingers began to curl slowly. He was coming back to life, but the process was far from over.

"Come on..." Lucas muttered as he started giving even larger amounts of mana to Jacob until he noticed Jacob's eyelids twitching.

"Wake up, buddy! You can do this!" Lucas encouraged. He added more energy to him and then held his breath as the boy opened his eyes.

Jacob's expression turned into shock, and he started crying tears of blood. From his nose began pouring black mana liquid and coughing out blood mixed with Lucas's dark mana.

"..." Lucas didn't say anything but continued the process. He knew that this was supposed to happen, as while the temple cleanses the mana, making it more suitable for transferring to the dead, it still doesn't change the mana's nature.

"H-Help... Me..." Jacob wheezed as his voice cracked, his body convulsing in pain. His hands grasped at his chest, his feet kicking and moving aimlessly on the ground. His body was forcefully changing to adapt to angelic mana.

Lucas knelt beside him and looked at his face, "You're going to be okay." He told him gently. "You'll become even better than you were before." he tried to console him. "But don't worry. This is all part of a ritual to cleanse your body."

Jacob kept breathing hard as if trying to catch air, as if he was drowning, then he stopped moving entirely. He closed his eyes and fell asleep peacefully; without any further problems. Soon, wings manifested on his back, showing that Lucas's ritual succeeded. All wounds healed as if he was an actual angel.

"He's still weak," Lucas said as he stood up after scanning Jacob's body.

Jacob was sleeping peacefully, and the angelic immune system lifted the curse of coldness. His body was covered in black tattoos that were made from Lucas's angelic mana.

"If there was a problem, I could remove them." Lucas said as his fingers ran through the black tattoo on Jacob's neck. "If I did it carefully, he wouldn't die; he would simply become a human again." Lucas stood up and looked at himself; his hands and clothes were completely covered in Jacob's blood. "Dammit." he cursed.

He gazed at Jacob one last time and saw that his condition was stable. Lucas smiled at his success and started walking to the temple's exit. He wanted to tell the believer of the Red-eyed god that her son was successfully revived. So when he left the mountain, he flew up into the sky. There he noticed that the temple extends far above the mountain.

"Whoa. It is really visible now." Lucas scratched his head. He assumed that the temple was in the cave, but looking at it from above, you could see that the temple in the cave was just a small part of the temple. "I will have to explore the rest." Lucas said to himself.

Lucas flew to Alena's house and landed right outside the front door. When she saw him fly down with blood all over him, fear gripped her heart, and she assumed that something had gone terribly wrong. She rushed out of her house and jumped toward him. Her eyes filled with tears as she fell to her knees. "What happened, my lord?!" She asked desperately. "Are you hurt?"

"Don't worry. I'm fine," he told her as he held her hand for support. The blood was actually Jacob's, but he wasn't going to tell her that. Instead, he brought out the good news. "I wanted to tell you that Jacob is alive and well."

For a moment, Alena froze in a spot in disbelief. "H-He is alive?" Then suddenly, she began to sob. "Oh! Thank you... How is he? Can I go and meet him?"

Lucas could not hide his smile upon hearing those words. "Yes, yes, of course."

********

After returning to the castle and leaving Alena to watch over Jacob, Lucas decided to explore the rest of the temple. He found the stairs and climbed into the mountain until he reached the main chamber at the top of the temple, where more statues of the Red-eyed god stood in silence. All around were walls that were engraved with magical symbols and other images. A few seconds later, he noticed a throne in the middle of the room.

"T-This... This isn't a temple." Lucas's eyes glittered. "It is a castle!."

He gazed at the portal and got comfortable on the throne. He smiled as he muttered. "I could get used to this." he closed his eyes, and for the moment, he felt like a king or prince sitting on his throne, watching his subjects below. With his eyes still closed, he could feel an unfamiliar presence close to him.

His instincts warned him about the danger before his vision opened again, revealing two girls standing beside him. Blonde wore a white robe, while the other had dark-brown hair tied into twin braids that hung down her back. Her skin looked smooth and pure, like alabaster, and she possessed pale grayish-blue eyes with black pupils. She seemed calm and serene in appearance and completely opposite compared to the first woman, who wore a deep scarlet robe and carried herself with confidence and power.

The dark-haired girl spoke in a firm voice: "Hello there... You seem to be lost."