Mictlantecuhtli was a curious fella from a curious land. There didn''t seem to be a centralized government in this country, even calling it a country was a misnomer as it was closer to the tribes of the Loyatan Coalition than the Sultanate of Ydaz. Villages were independent and their cohesion came from culture and religion rather than any mandate.


    The question is, how do I know this? Umar grabbed his head in pain. He and Mictlantecuhtli hadn''t talked, at least not enough to get this much information out of his. It''s like I''m reading his… Legend? What does any of this mean? The shadow grunted and cyan air came out of his mouth. What''s this?


    The act of thinking was paining him, degrading his cognition even if he was being observed by Mictlantecuhtli, but he couldn''t stop doing it. He was close to getting answers. Any of them.


    Enlightenment, the dead assassin mused. I''m… revealing something as I''m being revealed something at the same time.


    He looked at the man before him. Mictlantecuhtli looked at him back in confusion, he too felt something. Experienced something.


    There''s a bond here. Similar to Enlightenment. He seems to practice the arts even if he himself isn''t aware of them, I''ve seen that happening before with some drug addicts and vagabonds before. But his connection is not with the drugs, not entirely at least, but with… me.


    Umar looked at his hands. The images and the resolution of his body degraded and reconstructed in a sinusoidal manner, ebbing and flowing between peaks of definition as clear as his living body had been and valleys of oblivion where he was nothing more than a mist.


    I''m being the source of this specific set of Enlightenment abilities, whatever it might be. Every drug provided peculiar abilities. Tobacco allowed telepathic communication, any alcohol boosted one''s strength, hashish – the trademark of assassins – unlocked the ability to become shadows and step across them, and there were many more substances a person could consume.


    But Umar had never imagined he would become one of these substances.


    Has the Apotheosis truthfully succeeded? Is this why I''m able to connect with this priest-looking man? No other alternative was formed by his mind. But what even is Apotheosis? What shape should it take if no one has performed it before?


    The lore of the assassins mostly came from the masters of yore that managed to highly connect with the Greater Understanding, they got answers when no one had had them. The most accepted definition of the ritual of Apotheosis was that if an assassin survived the trial – which was basically ritualistic suicide as one needed to take enough substances to run a hospital for a week – then they would be able to perform Enlightenment with the need of any catalysts any longer.


    It may seem underwhelming for foreigners, the word Apotheosis was certainly too big for such a trivial modification, but what it did was eliminate two of the most egregious faults of Enlightenment: consumables and mental state.


    According to the lore, in this state of Apotheosis, the assassin could be able to perform any of the abilities they were acquainted with without the need to consume the substances that would have once triggered them. This meant that the ascended assassin would have been able to use any given ability without a limit as they would no longer need to carry substances around and those wouldn''t be expended, but also and most importantly, they were clear of mind and body.


    Drugs affected the mind, which was a surprise to no one, but they also weakened the body. Any assassin beyond the status of Shadow was physically weaker than the average person as their body was devastated from the continued consumption of substances. But even then, a pure body couldn''t even be compared to a clear mind. Assassins had to go wasted on missions, which meant that mistakes were common, even for Masters. But if one assassin had clarity of mind whilst being able to perform at their utmost maximum capabilities…


    That was the true might of Apotheosis.


    I''ve failed my Apotheosis, of that, I''m sure. Umar pondered. But perhaps I was close enough that… this happened. I may not be able to use the perks of Apotheosis myself, but maybe, just maybe, I can dote them to other people.


    "Mictlantecuhtli," the shadow finally raised his voice after minutes of silence.


    "Yes, great spirit?" The foreign priest still kept his bowing posture. He had been there so long that some people had gathered to look around, defining furthermore his image.


    "I will grant you my blessing," he announced, "but you will need to fulfill my tasks."


    "Of course, oh great spirit. I pledge to serve your cause."


    Mictlantecuhtli wasn''t actually going to provide him with any answers, but his assistance could help him come up with them. That''s why you guided me here, haven''t you? No one may give me the answers, but with these revelations, I may reveal them myself.


    The Greater Understanding acted in weird ways, not many people could hear it as clearly as Umar, but even then, the answers it brought were harder to understand and even harder to interpret.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    For now, he would use this man of a foreign land to live for longer. His cognition would be far more valuable than Karaim''s granddaughter as he seemed capable of maintaining his consciousness in the world of ideas, unlike her who had vanished as soon as he had told her to wake up.


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    Days quickly passed by as the foreign priest acted as Umar''s voice, though the man fancied to call himself a ''druid''. The word didn''t exist in Ydazi, so Umar just existed that it was the word for ''priest'' in whatever language Mictlantecuhtli talked with, though the term had naturalistic remarks. Some kind of middle ground between priest and herbalist, with touches of apothecary.


    They almost had a symbiotic existence with one another. Umar would give him the ability to perform Enlightenment without the need to consume drugs, whilst the druid gave him the necessary acknowledgment to continue existing.


    I still have no idea how to come back to life, though. Mictlantecuhtli didn''t have answers, so it was still up to him to come up with them. And there was a problem with the relationship besides the dependence, and that was the exchange. Whilst Umar willed their bond, Mictlantecuhtli would be able to use any Enlightenment skill like telepathy or pyrokinesis, but the druid was still a human. He couldn''t always be in the world of ideas either because he wasn''t intoxicated, or he was sleeping.


    This meant that, technically speaking, Umar didn''t have a constant source of observation. Maybe unlimited, but not constant. Thinking took too much cognition, meaning that the assassin couldn''t afford to think with all his prowess. It was curious that if he willed it, he could live for eternity. But that sluggish, thoughtless existence was not something that he wanted. Perhaps a corporeal and ephemeral life was better than an ethereal and eternal one.


    "Mictlantecuhtli," Umar voiced out throughout the world of ideas and a few moments later the druid manifested himself from the world of ideas.


    "Yes, oh great spirit?" Even if it had only been a few days, the man no longer looked as pathetic as before. Umar couldn''t quite point out if it was because the man was mostly clean of drugs, or because of his growing confidence from his newfound powers.


    The druid had been gifted an Apotheosis, after all.


    He had been using his newfound abilities to perform party tricks to impress the villagers, but nothing much. Nor did Umar want the man to overextend himself. Some of the abilities of Enlightenment could prove lethal to the user if used unwisely. It was better to let the man gloat if that meant acclimating to his powers.


    "Has there been any progress in the quest I assigned you?" He spoke to him as if it was one of his assassin acolytes.


    "We have been gathering all the hallucinogenic substances we know of besides most medicines available to us already, but there''s a limit to what we could get."


    "Mmm," the dead assassin grunted. "Is there something you can do to get access to more? What I want is quantity, distinct drugs that may have unique properties."


    "Well, we could rage war against other villages…" Mictlantecuhtli meekly offered.


    "Too direct," Umar turned him down. "You can blend into shadows, are stronger than most men, can feel the movements of the earth, and do a myriad more of things. Go get them yourself. Steal them if you must."


    "But the druid must stay with his community!" He talked back.


    "Mictlantecuhtli, I''ve observed you for a few days. Your value to this community is purely ritualistic. You have the properties of a healer, but you have an herbalist in this village already. They can do a few days without an apothecary."


    "I…" The druid seemed to speak, but he quickly shut himself. "If you wish so, oh great spirit."


    Dejected, Mictlantecuhtli turned back to the world of the living. A few hours later after he bid his farewells to the folk of the village, the druid departed for the jungle. Umar commanded his orders through telepathic communication. This meant that Mictlantecuhtli had to constantly take smoking breaks to refresh his tobacco.


    The Apotheosis Umar had granted him was flawed. A true ascended assassin wouldn''t need to refresh their drug effects. Mictlantecuhtli seemed to need some modicum of contamination to perform Enlightenment, but at the same time, he was able to use every skill Umar had known over his long life with only a drug as harmless as tobacco was. Harmless for the mind, at least. Going through a whole satchel of leaves in a whole day surely couldn''t be good for the lungs, and Mictlantecuhtli''s coughs showed it.


    At least the journey across the jungle – as Mictlantecuhtli and the villagers called it, though the concept was novel for Umar – was swift and safe. Enhanced senses, enhanced strength, and being able to teleport from shadow to shadow tended to do that.


    Umar ordered the druid to mostly move between shadows to acclimate himself to the assassin art of shadow stepping. It was one of the most difficult Enlightenment techniques, but also arguably the most powerful. Intangibility, near invisibility, teleportation… it brought a lot of advantages.


    And also severe mental exertion.


    But Umar was pleased to find out that was mostly out of the copious amounts of hashish the assassins had to consume to keep shadow stepping over long distances. As Mictlantecuhtli was clean from the drug''s influence, he had greater resistance and didn''t tire as fast, both mentally and physically.


    Yes, this is how Apotheosis should be. A tireless assassin with an unlimited skillset. If we get our hands on more drugs, and new ones at that… The greater his arsenal was, the more chances Umar had to become alive again, and not this shadowy state that couldn''t be considered life.


    The assassin could easily follow the druid across the jungle even if the man was teleporting around in the world of the living. In a way, they were both teleporting as space didn''t behave equally in the world of the living. Mictlantecuhtli stepped from shadow to shadow, but Umar''s steps were more significant than any living being. This section of the jungle was poorly observed, allowing Umar to calmly walk even if Mictlantecuhtli was shadow stepping with all his might.


    Moving this hastily, it didn''t take them long to find the closest neighboring village. Mictlantecuhtli had wanted to declare war on them, but with a single shadow step, he was able to infiltrate into the local healer''s hut and steal every drug he didn''t recognize. Alongside their tobacco stores. It took but a minute and they were already gone.


    For the next one.


    Using the mantle of the night as any fully-fledged assassin should, they moved in secrecy to loot any drug, medicine, plant, alcohol, and whatnot that could be useful to them. The more, the merrier.


    In a single night, the dead assassin and the ascended druid had ransacked twenty-seven villages. Certainly a feat of strength even among Grandmasters. It showed the might of Apotheosis that a single untrained assassin could be capable of such destruction and mobility. If Umar had allowed him to use pyrokinesis, he didn''t doubt Mictlantecuhtli would have set the other villages on fire to raze them whilst everyone was sleeping.


    Such an act of skullduggery almost brought Umar back to his young years, but he didn''t have the cognitive capabilities to reminisce about the past. Nor the time. They had a lot of work to do now.