Donut: HE’S OUTSIDE! IT WORKED! WOW, THAT GUY REALLY IS WEIRD-LOOKING. HE’S GIANT!
I relaxed.
This deity is too distant to activate your Scavenger’s Daughter.
Poor bug-headed Khepri. He had nothing to do with this.
I actually had no idea for certain who killed Geyrun, though I now knew this was something—if I survived this—I would still have to figure out. I was starting to have a sneaking suspicion that one of the key details of the whole mystery was a lie.
“Where is he! Where is he!” Emberus roared.
I held up a hand. “He’s coming,” I lied. “He was only one of two people to kill your son.”
I reached over and pulled the Emberus ring off my finger, and I put it into my inventory. I moved into my menus, clicked over, and made my selection.
Here we go.
Uh, Carl? Are you fucking sure? Holy shit.
I clickedYes.
Y-y-you have left your faith, and you no longer worship Emberus. You have abandoned your god. Prepare for a smite. Something tells me this is gonna be a bad one.
Both of the tattoos on the back of my hands burst into burning, searing flames. A notification appeared regarding the ring I’d just shoved into my inventory, and I waved it away.
Emberus just stood there, looking at me, confused, outraged, and starting to glow.
“The other guy to kill your worthless smear of a son wasme. That’s right. I killed him with my bare hands, and as he died, I said, ‘I’m doing this because your dad is a little bitch.’?”
And then, as so many times before, several things happened at once.
[ 96 ]
Carl:Now!
Emberus, crying, sobbing, enraged,growing, reared back with a flaming ball in his hand.
Donut zapped into the room, using one of Lucia’s infamous loop-de-loop traps, replacing Penny, who had suddenly been teleported outside, right at the feet of Taranis.
Penny was, also, now in the same area as Khepri, whose god effect was the reason why I’d chosen that god to appear in the first place. She was invulnerable for ninety seconds.
Donut had her Scorpion’s Bite weapon mount with the crossbow on her back, cocked and ready to go.
Loaded into the weapon was Katia’s Bolt of Ophiotaurus. Donut aimed, and she fired true. The bolt buried itself directly into the smoldering eye socket of Emberus. A second bolt shot entered the second eye. This was one of her ten Danforth bolts designed to hold the god in place.
The yellow invulnerability glow winked off. The god was now vulnerable for fifteen seconds. And he couldn’t move.
At the same moment, Emberus hurled some sort of fire incineration spell directly at my chest that would, under any other circumstances, have killed me instantly.
Your Four-Leaf Clover Patch has activated! Your party member Penny has received the attack!
Outraged, now clawing at his face, Emberus continued to glow, and the heat of the room became unbearable.
“Toodles,” Donut said as she jumped to my shoulder and activatedPuddle Jumper.
At level 17, the spell had the ability to return her to any place she’d recently visited at almost any distance. In this case, she took us outside to the entrance of the arena, where a scene of absolute chaos greeted me.
The food truck was spinning in circles, flames pouring from the side window near the deep fryer, missiles launching one after another at the Krakaren boss as sluggalos crawled over the thing.