Reincarnated as a wolf monster in another world?

Part 16: The Ritual

A man crawled out of a bed that seemed displaced in the room it was in. It looked straight out of a rich noble's house, covered in fine silk sheets, with golden details forming a pattern along the bed covering. It certainly didn't match the cave it was in. Old decomposing planks along the walls and roof holding packed dirt and stone up. As the man walked to a dresser across the room he glanced into the mirror that was on the wall. A determined and serious look on his face. He had been waiting for this day, for years. Almost a decade of hard work would finally pay off. He had abandoned his family, moved out into the middle of nowhere in some random cave, and spent 2 years brainwashing weak-willed men into helping his cause.

Now he would finally get his reward. Eluparity would embody the eyulf in the chamber and while incredibly weakened, to the point where she wouldn't even resemble the goddess she once was she would retain all of that knowledge she had. He couldn't keep the smile off his face while thinking about it. It was the perfect opportunity. In trade for freedom from that held her, Eluparity would be rendered weak and under his control. She literally couldn't fight back. All the skills, spells, and power she had amassed over god knows how long would be taken away and if she wanted out of her prison she couldn't change that. He wasn't in a death cult nor was he insane. He didn't think he could take on a god, he had seen arrogant morons who think they could and it never ended well.

This wasn't like that, this was an unpassable chance. He could get everything he ever dreamed of. The pathetic excuse of the mage Elliot Landar would be no more. Wasting his life serving every whim of the royal family when he could be so much more. With a goddess by his side, he was going to be unstoppable. He would re-amass his followers, it had been difficult the first time but he was far more experienced now it wouldn't be the challenge it once was. Then with the secrets from the goddess, he would destroy the royal family. From there on, the world was his for the taking.

"So close...just have to get this right", Elliot muttered to himself as he looked at himself in the mirror.

He pulled out the signature robes from his dresser and clothed himself. He had been wearing them for years now so he was all but used to the tattered cloth and the way it dragged behind him. Despite that, they still annoyed him from time to time but they were vital so it simply had to be tolerated. The robes were a requirement for a vast majority of the rituals and spells provided by his Cult Leader sub-class. More than that though the robes were there to instill a delusion into his members. A fantasy that they too would profit from the ritual. He had purposely targeted people without magic abilities in order to make sure they never realized the truth behind any of the rituals. He then spent long amounts of time manipulating and promising them power and riches, as well as making them avid worshippers of the goddess. Of course, all of it was lies, with this final ritual all of the cultist members' lives would be used as sacrifices to fuel Eluparites transmigration into the eyulf and Elliot would be the only to ever actually gain anything from this.

Elliot was a mind mage, a rather taboo class to most of the empire he originated from. It had never been his choice to acquire the class, it was simply the one the system deemed fit for him. He never really knew why. He was young when it was assigned to him and he had never thought of himself as a controlling person back then. But if one looked at him now he supposed that term would fit quite well. He was a cult leader manipulating people to their deaths after all. Normally in the kingdom, he hailed from having such a class would be an issue, and Elliot would have been exiled or had it forcibly removed. But his father had been a very powerful noble before his downfall and had a pretty significant influence on the royals. He had managed to convince them to let Elliot keep the class as long as he operated under some rules. He was forbidden to truly access the full potential of his class, and such spells like memory altercation were prohibited. A waste of his talent and potential but he had no choice but to obey. He was also required to essentially act as the royal family's tool and could never disobey requests from them. For years he had acted as their servant, manipulating other nobles to be more of their liking. It was demeaning.