Chapter Seventy-Three - The Plans of the Cultists

Locke's eyes glowed in a gold light, his black mana began to surge through his entire body and the air turned heavy with his murderous intent, two spears made of shadows began to form in the air, their sharp points pointed towards the heads of the two passed out women, the shadow spears whirled violently and trembled in the air as if they were eager to accomplish their goal, and Locke was ready for it.

But in the end he gave up, he undid the shadow spears and turned to walk away, even though both women deserved punishment, he didn't want to do it, at least not at that moment, he just don't felt right to finish off an opponent who was passed out and couldn't defend themselves, but he wouldn't have the slightest pity if they did figth again.

'Well, that's more like you... After all, my Locke is not the type to attack in cowardice... Tia commented.

Locke didn't respond, as he continued to wander through the secondary dimensions he analyzed the information he had acquired about the cultists plans.

The three women were full of conflicting information, Locke realized the only thing totally usual among them all was that they had all gone through some degree of indoctrination, it seems that the cultists were focused on creating certain 'loyalty guarantees' in their members, either by Hypnosis, mind control, indoctrination or disguised brainwashing, messing with people mind's seemed to be their custom behavior, the worst of it being that the control was so well ingrained that its members could not even notice when their thoughts had changed.

Putting together all the information he had acquired, Locke realized all the cultists' power came from the single point where they differed from other organizations, somehow the cultists developed a method to open dimensional portals bypassing the seal made by Locke father, this method allowed them to go beyond the rifts at the edges of dimensions, they were able to connect directly to other dimensions and they were getting power through them.

Fortunately, these portals were short-lived and not stable enough for anything big to pass through, just simple little creatures and that stinking dirty mana that permeated the place with its repulsive odor.

Locke also finally understood the origin of the strange apparitions that populated that building, they were attempts by cultists to create threats powerful enough to force governments to make magic public knowledge, these apparitions were created by injecting that stinking alien mana, coming from that parallel dimensions, in human souls, forcing them to absorb other souls while encouraging them to mutate more and more in monstrous things.

One of the memories he took from Guerda was a particular experiment, where they trapped a large number of souls in an artifact, bombarded it with that damn mana, the souls started to freak out and turn into monstrous apparitions, and then they started to attack and devour each other violently, devouring each other caused more and more mutations and in the end the cultists ended up with an absurd monstrous and powerful creature, the same creature with a single eye that he had killed before. The ritual looked like a jar of Gu.

The method the cultists used to open the portals was a mystery even to the witch, but what she knew about the method filled Locke with fury.

She knew that the method used required a lot of sacrifices, human sacrifices, and not just normal sacrifices, the sacrifices had to be frightened, so the cultists captured children and tortured them, causing them to suffer so much fear and despair that they become crazy.

To collect negative mana the cultists spread what they called negative mana factories. The negative mana factories were a series of traps made for normal humans, created to lure them to their death, they were all kinds of things, but with the sole purpose of attracting someone to an unchanging fate of death, things like an offer of job with a salary higher than the market standard, usually to work in some wilderness and seclude area, or a certain library where you could find a certain and magic book, as long as you followed certain steps, a hunting place in the forest where it should be taking certain steps or, as was the case with Locke, a home being sold for a price very well below the market standard.

When the person took the job, looked for that book, went to that place in the forest or moved to that house, they would always find either a note with certain rules, or someone in particular, a mysterious person, an obscure neighbor or even a complete stranger would stop them one day and make them aware of such rules, at that moment they would be under a curse, the more they followed the rules the more power they would be sending to the creature chained to that place, and the moment they a rule was broken, the person's destiny would be to be killed and devoured, their stories would then be shared around the world through forums and web pages, where people would read about them thinking they were nothing more than a curious horror story, unbeknownst to them that that healthy little fear they felt and sought was fueling the likely end of the world.

Of course, the Cultists weren't the only group to do acts like this, as Locke understood this was the easiest way that the various underground organizations involved with the supernatural around the world used to absorb the mana wasted by the common people.

Normal humans couldn't control or manifest mana in the material world, but everything that exist contained mana inside of it, even the dead things had mana, and that mana was still a powerful commodity. When people had faith, when they prayed to their gods or believed with all their might in the will of the universe, or any other nonsense of that kind, they were sending their unused mana to these beings, even if it often didn't work. not at all, sometimes this offering of mana can causes a reaction.

The church had specialized in treating people who had a great capacity in this regard, people with the gift of thaumaturgy, who were able to offer their own mana in exchange for miracles.

Fear was no different from faith, when someone was frightened by a legend about a demon, believed that such a place was a haunted or a cursed place, believed in a certain urban legend or something like that, they were sending their mana in that and, as a result, many monsters took these legends for themselves, feeding on this wasted mana and even mutating due to it, 'adapting' to fulfill their role in the legend.

Sometimes, even if no monster takes this role for itself, as a result of so much mana accumulated in a common legend, the mana itself gave birth to an existence, a tulpa formed by the image of people's fears, concretized and made in flesh for those very fears.

The cultists' plan was exactly that, create more and more monsters and collect negative mana, for years they accumulated this negative mana and now, with the attack on the city, they managed to scare people enough to fill the quota needed to open the big portal, imprisoning the humans was nothing more than a way to use them as battery and sacrifices, the cultists wanted to keep the portal long enough for something big to get through.

This gave Locke a odd uncomfortable feeling, he didn't know which world they were opening a portal to, but this stinky vicious mana gave him a bad and uncomfortable feeling, he couldn't even imagine what kind of creature that he could live in a place full of mana like that, but he was sure it would be something terrible.

Locke needed to hurry.

Unfortunately the information of where the cultists were trying to open this portal was still a mystery to him, none of the three women had any idea about it and his only choice was to continue following the direction where the stinky mana originated, unfortunately for him, how much the deeper he went, the more monsters came his way.

Most of them were just cannon fodder, humanoid apparitions with the appearance of a human with their twisted limbs, gaping mouths full of sharp teeth, stupidly long arms and legs and claw-shaped fingers, these were easy to deal with, Locke it just ripped them apart easily with its claws, tearing their bodies in pieces with the mastery of a butcher, the monsters couldn't even scratched him before they had their heads gouged out.

Some were a little more difficult, a huge creature that appeared to be made up of a mass of bodies sewn together, all of its limbs made up of a bunch of smaller limbs, and its head was made up of dozens of bald, skull-like humanoid heads, the eyes are empty and the mouths cried in a thousand voices at once.

This one was much harder to take down, although his battle qualities were laughable, he was so slow that Locke could dodge easily, the creature looked immortal, every time Locke hit him the wounds closed supernaturally, the torn limbs grew again and the open holes closed, healing themselves at a visible speed, at last he was left with no choice, a ball of black fire flew from his hands and enveloped the monster, burning it until it's hideous body was completely gone.

Locke found two others like this, but once he got the trick, the other fights were a lot easier, he just went for the use of his black flames as soon as he realized the monsters were the same, so he got rid of them and continued ahead, he soon found himself with something that would be more difficult to deal with.

After defeating one more monster and entering a new room, Locke could see that he was very close to the source of that filthy mana, that 'room' was empty of monsters and he could feel that the exit was also close, he was ready to continue when he realized one more thing, he turned and began to scan the room carefully, his eyes wandered everywhere, he finally settled on a specific spot that seemed to be empty, he became serious and assumed a battle stance.

"What a surprise! No one had ever been able to notice me as long as I wanted to stay hidden! You really are special!" A lump began to grow from the ground, taking on the appearance of an elderly man in a red priestly robe, his face a gentle smile, but Locke could see the evil in his eyes. The old man continued to speak:

"Could you answer this old man something? Why are you fighting us?"