The Scrap Tamer - Chapter 49

Chapter 49: The Cult

The door slammed shut, drowning out the music from the club, as soon as the three cloaked figures entered.

Behind the door lay a long dimly lit corridor with giant pillars, one of which hid both Reid and Elizabeth.

The cloaked figures walked down the corridor in silence.

“Definitely hiding in plain sight” Reid whispered as they kept moving from pillar to pillar.

“Told you” Elizabeth replied.

They followed the three down some stairs which led them to a huge hall.

“What now?” Reid and Elizabeth didn’t follow them into the hall since they weren’t sure if there was adequate cover for them there.

“Give me a minute” she said and with that, she summoned a forged-beast from her inventory.

The forged beast was a small ghostly white fox like creature. Unlike Elizabeth’s dragon, the fox wasn’t emitting any pressure making it hard to determine it’s rank.

“You have another forged-beast?” Reid asked in surprise. Although it wasn’t rare for a tamer to have multiple beasts, since he had only seen her use a dragon, he assumed that was her only forged-beast.

“Of course” she answered before introducing “This is specter, my Gold-tier forged-beast.”

Reid was surprised that the fox was just at gold-tier but he remembered that he was the only one who could evolve forged beasts.

“I see” he nodded and asked”but how is it going to help us.”

“Just watch” She said and smiled as she gave the fox a signal with her hand.

With a low growl, the fox’s body became translucent and so did both Reid and Elizabeth.

“Specter was forged from a ghostly fox primal, retaining its ethereal abilities and this is one of them,” Elizabeth said “It allows us to be like ghosts. Meaning we can pass through walls and more importantly, to be invisible to everyone else.”

“That’s pretty cool” Reid praised looking at his see through hands.

“Let’s go” she said as the walked towards the hall. The fox shrunk down and perched on her shoulders while they moved.

The stairs led them to a huge circular hall and just as they suspected, there was no pillar for them to hide behind.

There were some stone chairs arranged in circular rows and on the floor in the middle of the circle was a carving of a dragon’s eye.

Reid and Elizabeth knew it was a dragon’s eye because of the vertical pupil and its sclera had scales on it.

Although it might’ve been any other reptile like beast but for some reason, they were sure it was a dragon.

Shifting their eyes to the stone chairs and spotted more cloaked figures sitting there, each with a different colored cloak but they all had the same dragon eye symbol on their cloaks.

They watched as the figures sat completely still with their heads bowed towards the eye as if silently worshipping it.

At the center of the circular hall, near the carved dragon’s eye on the floor, stood the three figures they had followed. One of them, who appeared to be the leader since he was the only one there with a red cloak, stepped forward, lowering his hood to reveal a bald man with piercing amber eyes and ritualistic markings .

“Brothers and sisters,” the man began, his voice booming throughout the hall “we, the ones chosen by the master himself to help cleanse this world, are gathered here today to do the master’s bidding.”

Whenever he mentioned, his faced morphed into reverie as if he considered the master his god which was the case.

“Tonight, we bring judgement up on the sinners staying in this city” he continued ” Tonight, we summon the great Malrath to cleanse these sinners.”

The others celebrated in excitement. They only had one goal and that was doing the bidding of their master, THEIR GOD.

“Sadly, before we could gather enough sinners for the sacrifice,” the leader said, his voice tinged with disappointment, “we were interrupted by meddling forces.” His piercing amber eyes scanned the hall, as if he could sense intruders despite their invisibility.

Reid and Elizabeth exchanged uneasy glances. It seemed the leader was aware of their presence, or at least suspicious.

“Still,” the leader continued, his tone hardening, “the great Malrath will rise. The master’s will is absolute.”

Reid and Elizabeth frowned, their unease growing as the leader took on an evil grin.

“The final two sacrifices have delivered themselves right to our doorstep,” the leader declared, his lips curling into a sinister smile as his piercing amber eyes scanned the hall. “How fitting that the master’s will guides even the defiant into his embrace.”

As soon as that was said, the fox disappeared back into Elizabeth’s inventory, cancelling the skill and revealing the two to all the cloaked figures.

“What the hell just happened?” Reid asked in shock since all the fanatic’s eyes were on them.

“I don’t know” she honestly replied, it felt like some invisible power forced her fox back into her inventory “but get ready to fight.”

Reid immediately tried to summon his forged-beasts from his inventory but he realized he couldn’t.

‘what’s happening Evo?’ he asked.

[Some kind of force is preventing yours or any other forged beasts from being present in this hall] Evo explained.

‘can you bypass it?’ he was hopeful, since the fight would become a lot harder without their Forged-beasts.

[Yes but it’ll take a while] she answered.

“Damnit” He cursed before turning to Elizabeth who looked confused since she couldn’t summon her own forged-beast “they’re somehow blocking us from summoning our forged beasts here.”

“A smart one” the leader praised as he walked forward. The other cloaked figures had already stood up and started taking out weird black beads from their cloaks.

“This place is the master’s temple therefore all those filths you call forged-beasts will be automatically repelled” he explained still keeping his grin.

“If you think we’re defenseless without our forged-beasts then you’re in for a surprise” Elizabeth said with a frown as she summoned a sword from her inventory.

Reid also summoned his bat since he realized that unlike their forged beasts, they could summon everything else from their inventories.

“Oh we know you’re not” the leader said still keeping his smirk “that’s why we have these”.

With that, they dropped the beads on the floor in sync, breaking them. A small black vortex appeared where the beads were broken and from within came different primals.

“Well, this just got a lot harder” Reid said, tightly gripping his bat.