The Shepherds Are Dense-Chapter 33: The Advancement Ritual

When he made the Phantom Demon Card, Aiwass could still sit in a wheelchair.
But during the advancement ritual, that was no longer possible.
Fortunately, Aiwass had already fed the Shadow Demon earlier that morning.
Even when he stood up and fully synchronized with his shadow, the awakened Shadow Demon did not lose control.
Underfoot, his shadow squirmed now and then, sometimes rising just slightly—high enough to confirm it was alive and in attendance.
This rising, floating shadow looked like dry ice special effects—a kind of thick, magical "fairy mist"—except this "mist" was a solid, unbroken black.
It was fairy mist more demon than mist.
In reality, the ingredients and methods for progress rituals were never entirely standardized.
These "universal" rituals were never intended to be strict. Most of them became convoluted and arcane simply because they were intentionally obscured—just like the coded language one finds in many alchemical writings. The intention was to keep anyone from understanding the crux of the ritual.
That was exactly how Aiwass had been able to produce the Phantom Demon Card so easily.
As a ritual that was recently born only three years previously, it had not yet experienced multiple encryption, misinterpretation, and re-encryption cycles. Its original state was preserved, and that enabled someone like Aiwass—whose [Basic Ritual] ability was Level 1 only—to easily copy it.
But the advancement ritual was just the opposite.
Advancement rituals in all traditions differed subtly.
The simplified version Aiwass opted for was one he had read in his adoptive father's library. It was a rite usually employed by Avalon's knightly families.
Its benefit was its ease of use; its drawback was that it used a small piece of white crystal—a thumbnail-sized piece as thick as a coin.
That crystal wasn't overly pricey, though, so that wasn't a problem. Aiwass just bored a hole in it and put it on a string, making a disposable pendant.
He made six silver trinkets: two bracelets, one necklace, two rings, and a circlet.
Then he consecrated them individually with clove oil, cinnamon oil, cypress oil, benzoin resin, immortelle oil, and chamomile oil.
He put them on the six corners of a hexagram that he drew—these six oils, added to the silver ritual tools and the carved six-pointed star, constituted the actual, non-substitutable essence of the ritual.
Aiwass then made three foods that he did not like.
He selected radish, bitter melon, and green pepper. He cut a thin slice from each and put them at the center of the hexagram.
That was it with the ritual setup.
Aiwass wore his seminary alb. Though technically school-issued, it was formal clerical garb nonetheless.
It had a spotless white clerical collar, two golden thorned roses engraved at the neck—trimmings that held real gold.
Over the shoulders and chest was a brown cape, also decorated with gold-colored thorns in antler form. The robe went halfway down his thighs, below which were brown pants and canvas shoes.
Anybody who looked at this attire would be able to identify him as a priest of the Church of the Nine Pillars immediately.
He closed the door and waited until the whole moon ascended over forty degrees in the heavens. It was then that the ceremony started.
"——All nine are assembled."
Aiwass whispered softly.
He ignited a flame to burn a bunch of dried sage and mugwort, bound together like a smudge stick.
He smoked it like a cigar, puffing and pulling and carefully blackening the end.
And indeed, it was a sort of cigar—just as, in another way, coffee was a sort of bean milk.
Sage was the most widely used fumigant in ritual offerings and cleansings.
Various herbs produced various results, and adding mugwort to sage resulted in a smoke that shut out interference from other Paths.
Here, it was used to repress interference from the Path Beyond—a power Aiwass himself possessed.
"Cast away three."
He spoke once more, holding the now-smoking herbal rod to the middle of the hexagram.
"——I renounce Linfeather, Emberlight, and Amber."
These were the names of the pillar deities embodying the Path of Love, the Path of Adaptation, and the Path of Dusk.
This was a part of a full-moon ritual.
No transcendent could represent all Paths equally. Even in a ritual for a full moon, one could not be tentative.
You had to announce the three Paths you most opposed—demonstrate your commitment—before you met your allies or your enemies.
This also implied that you could not work together with allies of the three Paths during the ritual, regardless of their strength. You couldn't switch sides mid-course.
Aiwass had selected his three carefully.
The Path of Adaptation was well-suited to surviving, but its members tended to be the first to cut their own teams loose. Self-preservation, betrayal, and fleeing were its nature.
And the Path of Dusk and the Path of Love. the individuals attracted to them were simply too odd.
——That so-called Path of Love was just a euphemism.
It was a Path bound to lust, instinct, and excess. Its adherents worshiped the animalistic drives to reproduce and consume.
So who were they?
Perverts, hedonists, sugar babies, food addicts… not so safe a team to play with. Though admittedly, highly adaptable to today's online culture.
The Path of Dusk, meanwhile, adopted the philosophy of "the sun must set, and all things shall end." It wanted to defy death and decay through constant preservation.
Embalmers, taxidermists, gravekeepers—even portrait painters or sculptors of memorial portraits—might have taken that Path. It involved mummification, waxwork-making, necromancy, and reincarnation.
None of these Paths was particularly famous for creating top-notch teammates.
As Aiwass concluded listing the three pillar gods, a strong gust of wind blew through the room.
The three slices of food burned separately, each with a flame of a different color—black, jade green, and amber.
They flared rapidly into nothingness, becoming black smoke.
But oddly, in spite of the churning wind sweeping around Aiwass, the smoke of those three foods ascended perfectly upright.
It created a dense, wrist-thick column that flowed straight up—toward the white crystal pendant suspended under the chandelier.
Then Aiwass started walking back and forth around the perimeter of the ritual circle, still carrying the smudge stick.
He stooped low, following the edge of the circle as he smudged the perimeter.
"Six shall bless me…"
He held the smoldering bundle over each of the six silver objects, reciting the names of the other six pillar gods:
"Hourglass. Candler. Sage. Silver-Crowned Dragon. Twin Mirror. Serpent Father."
As he spoke each name, the silver trinkets darkened to black.
It wasn't soot.
They seemed to have been handled by something poisonous—or had absorbed some foul essence from the air.
The wind in the room grew stronger.
Each candle in the room was extinguished… yet not one thing was overturned—not even a loose piece of paper.
"I walk the Way of the Candler."
At that moment, the smudge stick suddenly burst with a crackling.
Aiwass released it, flinging it into the center of the hexagram.
It kept snapping and popping, sending forth a burst of shining white smoke—so brilliant it overlaid and purified the blackened pendant above.
——The ritual was a success.
Watching his [Basic Ritual] progress bar leap forward by 20%, Aiwass finally relaxed and breathed out.
He took back the pendant from the chandelier and kept it close to his heart.
He had known it would be an easy ritual… but still, this was his first hands-on advancement ritual.
Before this, it had all been theory. Now it was real.
As he put the pendant around his neck, he caught a hint of peacefulness… and a hint of sleepiness.
It wasn't powerful—something he could fight with willpower.
It was more like the after-dinner fatigue, or the state of taking melatonin as a sleeping aid.
But Aiwass didn't fight.
He sat in his wheelchair, closed his eyes, and let that gentle pull get its way.
It was as though he were descending slowly into the dark depths of the ocean—though still in full awareness, he could feel himself being pulled down into a lower plane.
"Good evening, Priest."
A cold voice echoed out—oddly familiar to Aiwass.
He opened his eyes and realized that he was in a black space.
There was no source of light, yet he could see perfectly.
He was sitting on a massive chair with an oversized back and expansive arms.
Despite the fact that Aiwass was more than 180 centimeters tall, he was unable to fill the seat.
If he placed one elbow on an armrest, he couldn't stretch to the other side.
He glanced up—and spotted eight additional chairs identical to his, in a circle.
In the center of the room, a gigantic stone sculpture of an hourglass towered over everything—five or six meters tall, the sort of supersized art installation you might see at a mall atrium.
He was the fourth to arrive.
Three others had already sat down.
They were all seated next to one another.
The first was an old man with his head bowed, grasping a cane.
The second was a young man in a double-breasted brown trench coat and bowler hat.
The third… well, his dress was suspicious.
He had on a full-face knight's helmet—when all he had under it was a button-up shirt and a wool sweater.
Aiwass couldn't make out any of their faces—like a dream in which all strangers were faceless.
But he recognized the second man instantly.
——It had to be Sherlock!
That tone of voice was unmistakable.
And to boot, simple disguise was something he wasn't attempting at all.
It was almost screaming:
Yes, I am Sherlock Hermes.
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