The Ultimate Devourer

The head doctor

I decided to nod toward the healer and take up his offer:

"I will do it, but hopefully you guys won't back out or do something else to me while he analyses whatever he needs to."

The healer chuckled and shook his head as he told me:

"That would be no problem. We the mage guild pride ourselves in our ability to hold up the bargains we make, don't worry."

I didn't know much about the reputation of the mage guild, but up till now, they looked like an upright organization. Of course, they must have had their dark side, just like any other place with considerable power.

I got up from the table and the healer waved his hand, indicating for me to follow behind him.

We left the white room through an indistinguishable door, making our way through corridors that looked like we were in a maze before entering a dark room with a chilly atmosphere.

The darkness was profound, but my improved eyesight let me spot a person hiding inside of it, sitting on a chair behind what should be a desk, if the outline I saw was correct.

The healer gave a slight bow before he said:

"Lady Maria, we have a volunteer for your dissection and analysis. In turn, he wants you to remove something from his body."

A rather tall woman figure got up from the desk as she appeared in front of me soundlessly. Now that she was rather close, I could make her appearance a little bit more clearly.

She had long dark hair that reached her shoulders, very pale skin, purple thin lips, and a nose that looked a little bit big when she was that close to me.

Her green eyes were pouring into my own as she analyzed me up and down, a small but firm hand came out of her long leather robes that covered her whole body as she said:

"Leave us alone."

The healer took one more bow before he left us in the dark room.

She towered over me as she grabbed me by the shoulder, making me tense up, but the room finally lit after she did that.

However, the surroundings made me a little bit thoughtful about what might happen to me.

There was an operating table in the middle of the room, and near it was a tray full of knives, needles, and other sharp things that I didn't recognize.

Besides the desk, which had some blood-splattered scrolls and papers on it, the room was rather bare.

"Now, up on the operating table with you."

I was getting second thoughts about letting her do what she wanted with me, but I was more scared of Aratas than her.

So I went up to the operating table where he tied me up with some leather straps before the table flipped horizontally without any warning, making me look directly at her face.

Her eyes had dark bags under them, showing that she hadn't sleeper in a while, but as she looked at me, I could sense some madness evoking from the green pupils that looked like she had already started dissecting me.

"Ok then, let's start."

Dark runic energy started to appear on her hands as it entered the tools on the tray, making them levitate around her, she started with a small knife as she made an incision on my chest, starting by analyzing my two hearts, even making small holes in them to see their insides before sealing them right back up so I wouldn't die.

The pain was rather high, getting cut open was something that made me want to scream, but I endured as it wasn't worse than what happened to me before.

Seeing how I didn't let up a peep made Maria whistle as she said:

"Most people would have started crying or screaming by now, even if they agreed to this beforehand, cannibals or not."

I didn't say anything as she continued to mess with my insides, her pupils were glowing with dark-purple haze, analyzing everything she could with a critical eye.

She took looks at my bones, my intestines, the whole package.

Then after she was done, she started concentrating as she closed her eyes and said:

"So you want me to remove the obedience seal of the fire god Church?"

She chuckled as her arms started to slowly turn into bones, her skin and muscles slowly dissipating as if they were never there:

"Messing with these damn Churches is rather fun, after all, they hate my occupation quite a lot, even more than cannibals."

Her bone fingers inserted themselves into my open chest before tracing to some blood veins, ripping one open very quickly and catching a spark of fire before sealing it inside a dark runic barrier that resembled a laughing skull."

"Done."

After that, she had sewn back the broken blood vessel before I could bleed out to death and then started sewing back everything together and sealing my wounds with some of that dark energy that was always surrounding her at certain times.

The straps that bound me to the table came undone as I fell to my knees, feeling a wave of weakness drowning my whole body.

I tried to get up, but my legs were trembling, Maria chuckled as she looked at my weakened form and said:

"You still lost quite a bit of blood even though I acted very quickly. You shouldn't be strong enough to get back up even with your current physique. Let me help you a little bit."

More of her dark energy entered my body, reinvigorating it, and making my two hearts pump faster and faster until some of my lightheadedness went away. However, because of that, I could feel a different type of exhaustion creeping up on me.

"Now that our exchange is over, you can go."

I looked at the sealed fire spark in her hands and asked:

"What about the obedience seal? Would the person that put it on me know that it was removed?"

Maria shook her head as she looked at the sealed fire and responded:

"Not really, my ability is foolproof, and even if they activate it, they wouldn't sense that the seal had been removed from your body, you just have to act the part. If that's all you want to know, please leave as this information was a little beyond what we agreed, and I have some new knowledge to ponder upon."

I nodded at her and left the room, immediately being rather startled by the healer, who waited at the door, our faces were very close to each other as I turned back after I closed the door behind me.

I narrowed my eyes, and he gave me a rather strange smile as he said:

"If that's all you need, I will escort you back to the lobby."

I followed him back, and the woman with long ears glanced at me before asking:

"Something else?"

I shook my head and left the building. Hopefully, no one tracked me when I left towards the mage guild, and if they did, and I wasn't able to sense them, things won't be nice when I went back to the Church.

Unfortunately, running now would confirm any suspicions they had, so it was better to return and play the part for now.

My path to greatness needed a lot of corpses that I need to step on, or rather than step, I could say that there were quite a lot of corpses I needed to devour!