21st Century Necromancer

Chapter 23: Chapter 23 The Ceremony Begins

Chen Yu packed the necessary Ritual candles and Skull into a large travel bag and, carrying these items, left his apartment for Kawakami Cemetery next door.

Chen Yu's home was only separated from Kawakami Cemetery by a narrow alley that wasn't too wide. To the left of the alley was the apartment building where his home was located, while to the right lay Kawakami Cemetery.

As a cemetery, it naturally didn't need any superfluous things like walls. After all, who would steal from a cemetery? The cemetery mainly consisted of cremated ashes without any grave goods to take. Even the vast cemetery was only patrolled by a caretaker who would inspect the grounds at night to avoid any disturbances or damage to the graves.

Obviously, Chen Yu didn't choose the actual gravesites in Kawakami Cemetery for the Promotion Ceremony. Partly because the space wasn't quite enough, and partly to avoid being noticed. Although the area around the cemetery was sparsely populated, there were still some residents, and with the caretaker patrolling at night, it would be quite uninteresting if the ritual were to be discovered midway.

Fortunately, Kawakami Cemetery was located at the foot of a small hill, and although there were many graves on the hillside, thanks to a small Shrine at the top, there was still dense vegetation. As long as he hid the ritual site within the dense woods, there was no worry about being seen.

Carrying the large travel bag through Kawakami Cemetery and walking among the rows of gravestones, it must be said that the cemetery at night did indeed have an eerie and bizarre atmosphere. Although this eerie atmosphere was mainly psychological for most people, for a burial ground dense with Negative Energy, it certainly could have some adverse effects on the average person.

Moreover, some ghosts that lingered due to accidents were most active at night. Encountering ghosts on a night walk most often meant running into these so-called "Bound Spirits" from Japanese mythology.

For Chen Yu, a Necromancer, "ghosts" were just highly sought-after experimental materials for his necromancy. Heaven knows, since he became a necromancer, he has been through countless Haunted Houses and cemeteries—over a hundred, but there have been less than ten that were genuinely haunted and where he managed to capture ghosts. To date, he had only seen seven ghosts, three of which he encountered after moving near Kawakami Cemetery.

Upon reaching the Shrine halfway up the hill, Chen Yu still carefully worshipped for a moment in front of the small shrine, despite its modest size, after setting down his travel bag in front of the Torii Gate and clapping his hands.

If ghosts indeed existed in this world, it wasn't a stretch to believe that deities might as well. Having a sense of reverence and performing worship was a small matter. Offending a divine being by negligence could truly be a hassle for oneself.

Moreover, the ritual site chosen by Chen Yu was not far from the Shrine; theoretically, it was still within the territory of the unknown god enshrined there. It was polite to greet the landowner first and seek permission before performing the ritual.

After paying respects to the Shrine, he walked past the modest shrine, and there were no more paths, just dense clumps of trees all around.

The site Chen Yu prepared for the ritual was within this thick shrubbery, requiring him to squeeze through the lush branches. This, too, was one of his protective measures—after all, aside from those with ulterior motives, who would crawl through the woods in the middle of the night?

Squeezing through the bushes, they arrived at a forest clearing that had already been cleared, where the two purchased goats were leisurely grazing on the wild grass on the ground, and the magic circle needed for the ritual had long been etched.

The magic circle required for the ritual was a typical circular magic array, the circle in magic symbolizes the world, that is, the world as a perfect and flawless ring. Within this ring, adding different magical circuits signifies the mage's understanding of the world within.

Within the ring that represents the world, Chen Yu had etched eight smaller rings, connected through magical circuits and runes, evenly distributed within the large ring, the connecting magical circuits fortuitously forming a figure of two overlapping squares, each with eight vertices. If one could comprehend the runes within the magic circle, they would understand that these eight smaller rings represented the eight major branches of necromancy: death, decay, virulent poison, bones, corpses, souls, curses, blood, and the mysterious.

He placed the skulls he had brought in each of the circles and set a ritual candle on top of each skull. After ensuring that there were no errors and that each skull had been carved with the symbol of the corresponding school, Chen Yu finally let out a sigh of relief and began the next step of his work.

The main magic array for the ritual was now ready for use; next was the handling of the sacrificial offerings, which was an indispensable and crucial part of this Promotion Ceremony.

Leading the two goats into another circle etched with a pentagram, which touched the main ritual magic circle, Chen Yu murmured a short spell to make the goats obediently stay still inside the magic array, then he arranged the remaining five skulls and five ritual candles at the five vertices of the pentagram.

After everything was prepared, Chen Yu took out the long-named, verbose black leather tome, adjusted his state, and stood inside the Ritual Magic Circle, ready to begin his Promotion Ceremony.

A low and eerie tone spilled from Chen Yu's mouth, the thirteen ritual candles ignited spontaneously without flame to his chanting, casting the clearing in a dismal green light.

Thick Negative Energy converged from the direction of Kawakami Cemetery with Chen Yu's low incantations. A heavy miasma soon enveloped the woodland. If one were to look down from the sky, the clearing where the ritual was taking place would look like the eye of a hurricane, with Negative Energy from around Kawakami Cemetery and the other two graveyards converging towards this point like storm clouds stirred by a hurricane.

The dense Negative Energy gradually became a grey-black substance due to the convergence, enveloping the entire ritual site. The dismal green light that had illuminated the clearing was obscured, and from the outside, the grey-black mist looked like a wall, constantly tumbling and revolving around the Ritual Magic Circle, stirring up a strong wind in the forest.

Within the magic circle, the eight skulls etched with the symbols of the schools of magic had also begun to float in the air due to the confluence of Negative Energy, levitating and spitting out grey-black mist while topped with the dismal green candle flame, creating an extraordinarily eerie and inexplicable scene.

Meanwhile, Chen Yu was focused on chanting the spells that emerged from the black leather tome, having immersed his entire mind into it.

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