I read the ritual again just to confirm it really said that it needed 100 sacrifices. It didn't specify what kind, but with the proper ingredients this ritual will give me what I need.

A weapon of immense power. The kingdom is under threat and the capital must be defended. In desperation the king called on me to help.

I dug through my books for days as the army approached us. People would have evacuated, they would have ran, if they could have.

There was nowhere else to go. If this didn't work we would all die. Yet,

I couldn't bring myself to demand sacrifices. I couldn't ask someone to die so others may live. May being a slim chance, as I had no idea if this would really work.

It dawned on me that I could use bacteria as my sacrifice.

I set to work and created the ritual. I gave it everything it needed.

And I was rewarded with an ultimate weapon. Right as the invaders came to our doorsteps.

I was rewarded but the world was punished.

The ritual spawned a bioweapon. It spread quickly and easily, devastating the army outside our walls, and the refugees within them.

It spread from the refugees to the citizens and the wealth of the city no matter how hard they tried to stay clean.

The army outside collapsed quickly and fled. That only carried it further and further.

Through some arcane horror I was immune to my creation and thus I was forced to watch everything collapse from it.

Nobody knew just how fragile the world we built was. How susceptible to disease and decay it is.

Nobody understood how quickly everything fell to "them verse me" as supplies dwindled, and aid couldn't come.

Until everyone was overwhelmed with fear of disease.

Nobody knew how easily the world could fall.

Until it did.

yeah I would be interested in seeing the after effects of this story since it has a lot of random stuff that kind of gets implied by the ending. Maybe only some people have the ability to sense such small things and will become super powerful wizards due to it.

„But what if space DID exist?“, they said, seemingly deep lost in their thoughts.

Luckily, I've never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I get what you're saying. Can you conceive of a way that the story makes sense? Not everything is always clearly stated.

I can think of ways that make it make sense. For example, I don't think it's literally seeing cells — for that matter, individually seeing, isolating, and targeting millions of cells is entirely impossible in the real world. I think it would be closer to "sensing" or "searching", and maybe that takes intent and awareness into account, unlike many of our normal senses which often work without strict direction.

Maybe sensing cells in the air isn't easy without having a rough idea what to search for. A good analogy is those optical illusions that require focus to change the direction of rotation, or confusing perspectives that require focus to see what others see. If you can't see it because you don't know what to look for, then you can't be aware and focused on it, right? Maybe germ theory is new to their society. Maybe they aren't yet aware that humans are made up of cells, but are aware that infections are made up of many microscopic beings. Similarly, bacteria being in the air may be a blind spot to them, making them unable to focus effectively on them.

I imagine after this point in the story their society probably undergoes a drastic change. We saw a critical turning point in their world, and we didn't get to see the results. If they're able to draw life force from anything counted as "living" that they can focus on with their magical senses, then they've effectively become an immortal society with limitless magic.

There were some blockers along the way, such their senses requiring preexisting knowledge, their understanding of sacrifice being wrong, and the newness of germ theory, but they're on the path to immortality and infinite magic.

I guess I prefer to look at a story and say "how can this happen" rather than assume the least. Filling in the blanks is like a fun puzzle! I do think this is a super lopsided world and I think it would be hard for the author to continue stories in this world while keeping the same setting and atmosphere. They'd have to invent some really wacky rules to prevent insane power creep and massive societal shifts.

Thank you very much! Glad you enjoyed it, kenji

Yeah it's honestly really weird how long germ theory took to develop. The microscope was invented in the 1600s but germ theory wasn't firmly established until 250 years later.

“You bow before my throne, unaware that it was built upon lies.”

this is incredible i love the ending

"He's coming for you!" Alice sneered viciously.

Pull out my bard's outfit

"and what if I were to tell you I were a level 15 Bard?"

Right but literally every cubic meter of air can contain millions of bacterial cells. You could just use that. You don’t even need anything around you. If sensing life force was a thing and it was sensitive enough to differentiate between different cells of a human, the air itself would act like a giant wall of cells that you’d need to filter through in order to see anything.

"And so, you fell too... how unfortunate,"

Wow I want more! Way to draw the reader in. You have my respect.

Mosquitos?

Betrayed by my best friend, I now must survive the worst environment imaginable: Hell.

What the book doesn't tell you is that the level of demon depends on the size of the soul. And since bacteria are barely considered alive, my demon is more of a chaotic evil blob of gelatin. He wiggles menacingly, squirts slime to stain clothes, eats only living rodents, and I think it grows. Its hard to say but I'm pretty sure its at least a few inches bigger than yesterday. It smells lile cherries, but touching it burns like acid so maybe I can launch it at my enemies? In some kind of demon-slime trebuchet? Ugh, I never should have tried to scam the dark ones. Now I have a pet with no concern for life that can't die (I tried) instead of a powerful mega-evil demon to help me take over the world.

"My new roommate is a demon slime who eats rats? He'll help me rule the world!" <- title of the anime this turns into probs.

Maybe they're able to do that too and they just haven't tried. If the spells were based on intent then sacrificing a person is not the same as sacrificing all of their cells. This doesn't fit well with real-world physically-based processes, but magic is often not physically-based and instead based on intent, emotion, etc.

There are good real-world analogies though. For example, is it cheaper to ship a few things together in one big package, or as separate packages? The individual cost of separate packages adds up to more than the cost of shipping everything together at once. In the end, the result is the same because everything ends up at the destination, but in one case it costs more.

Similarly, the life force gained from sacrificing individual cells adds up to more than sacrificing the conglomerate being made up of those cells. And similarly, the result is the same: it's dead either way, but one method gives you more life force.

In the end the rules are obviously lopsided, which we don't see a lot in real life physical processes. Maybe there's a rigid explanation. For example, maybe most of the magic comes from the intent to drain anything's life force, so by sacrificing millions of cells you gain most of your magic from the "overhead" of so much intent on individual lives — similar to the additional cost incurred from shipping overhead when shipping multiple package. You can imagine how shipping millions of individual packages for knick knacks would cost significantly more than just stuffing them in a big box!

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“I hate visitors.”

Food, shelter, or ward off the cravings...

Depends how you kill the human, If it's a big magic circle that just kills/absorbs all life in it you'd also kill the bacteria. Unless the circle would just kill what the creator of the circle would offer as sacrifice in which case my previous comment would still be valid.

If you kill the humans by cutting their throat, for example, you'd probably also kill some microorganisms while doing that.

"Also, Jerry, I'm calling you 'Jim' now."

It was a bright and sunny morning as we laid Grandma to rest in the bed of her favorite pickup truck.

Now I know what I’m about to do.

picks up flamethrower