Chapter 1025: Sacred Totem Pole
Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
After spending a few hours more, Abel finally woke up from the excitement of gaining so many materials at once. He was a grandmaster blacksmith and master alchemist, too. He understood the worth of these materials far better than anyone else, and that was why he became so obsessed with all of this.
After scanning over the legendary portal bag, he discovered some small items in the corner. The one that stood out the most was a totem pole that was about 15 meters long. On the edge were several tens of steel puppets and some books.
He couldn’t help but to think when he felt the presence, “Is this the sacred item of the barbarian?”
There was just too much sacred essence that was being emitted from the pole. He could feel it even stronger now that he was inside the Rogue’s Encampment. He took the pole, laid it on the ground, and began to observe it. He thought of returning it if the barbarians treated him a little better, but he wasn’t really planning on paying any attention to men blatantly unappreciative of his goodwill.
Speaking of which, there seemed to be an unnatural amount of sacred presence emitted out of this totem. He wasn’t going to let it out of his hands unless he made sense out of this. Yes, he was not returning it to Church forever. He wasn’t feeling guilty, not when he’s saved so many lives of the barbarians over at Battlecry City already.
“Did they know I have this thing?” he suddenly thought to himself, “I don’t think anyone’s going to ask the Nation of G.o.d about it.”
Apart from Frankenstein, he thought that the only ones who would know the whereabouts of this item would be members of the Nation of G.o.d. He was still worried about that, but unbeknownst to him, Knight Mead had already committed suicide because of the humiliation from Frankenstein. No one bothered with the totem pole any time after that.
Abel didn’t know, but he thought that the thing was for him to possess. Therefore, he would not give it over to anyone unless he felt like he had to. This was a legendary item with no one claiming owners.h.i.+p over it. Actually, there was a bit of power of the Will left, but it’s not really any. It should be coming from the barbarian who’s spent a lot of time holding this. Even without becoming its owner, he probably still spent a lot of time using it to gather up forces of prayer.
Abel’s guess was correct. This power of the Will originated from Elder Blair of the Battlecry City Temple. Instead of training to become a barbarian, he specialized in training the power of the Will that belonged to spirits. For the majority of his time, he would be focusing on the totem pole right here. This was why he could interact with it even without being able to own it.
Back to Abel. He took his time observing the totem pole and all the icons depicting legendary figures on it. Upon a closer look, he could see that the lines were formed with countless small patterns. The stories depicted seemed to be nothing but decoration, in this sense. The real power of the pole came from the small patterns that were distributed across. As for the materials, even if it was a grandmaster blacksmith like him, there was no real way to tell the exact composition of the materials. He just knew that it was made from the timber of some sort of plant. It was no ordinary plan, though. The material appeared to contain golden divine forces in his eyes, although its shape was nothing but a regular-sized tree.
Abel inserted his power of the Will into the totem pole. He was immediately rejected. It seemed like that the pole was not supposed to be trifled with, even if no one could claim it. Even him. He did have the divine powers to get it open, but he would have to train himself to be stronger than the G.o.d of war he faced in the past years. Otherwise, he would have to break through the defense slowly and steadily.
Abel murmured to himself, “Is there a lock on it?”
He tried wrapping his own power of the Will onto the weak qi that was coming out. He had thought that the totem pole would return to the temple once the G.o.d of war died, but instead, it went into a slumber. Apparently, death was only a momentary thing for spirits. If there were enough prayers, eventually, the spirit would wake up and return to its original form. This was what the G.o.d of war betted on, but the Wizard Union made it so that it was impossible to cast any prayer power onto the corpse since it was locked up inside the building.
This was why the totem pole was still functional after so many years. Every once in a while, it would spit out a bit of energy for the barbarians to absorb. If it weren’t for the attack of the Nation of G.o.d, it might just grow back into a spirit after repeating this for a few more thousand years. Although a lot of progress had gone to waste, Abel’s spirit ability could help him to insert the power of the Will and reinvigorate the pole once and for all.
Once his power went in, the first thing he looked for was the empty owners.h.i.+p circle. There was no influence of the G.o.d of war over it now. He had no worries about alerting anyone or triggering the security mechanism. He just went ahead and activated the owners.h.i.+p circle, claimed his owners.h.i.+p over it, and very quickly, the whole item was for him to use.
Now, there were four main functions for the totem pole. One was the reinvigorate blessings. This was meant for anyone who wished to specialize in becoming barbarians but possessed no talent of the sort. Elder Blair couldn’t own the totem pole, but he could use it on his followers every once in a while.
The second was elemental resistance, which would increase 30 points of resistance. Elemental attacks were the weakness of the barbarians, but holding the item pole would eliminate all the threat of elemental threats. There was a problem, though, and that’s that no one was going to hold a 15-meter long pole in the middle of a fight.
The third was a 200 point increase in a physical attack. Again, the same issue stood. No barbarians were known to fight with a totem pole.
The fourth one was to increase all barbarian skills by two levels. Abel could tell by this point. If this totem pole actually qualified as a melee weapon, it would’ve been almost the same as some powerful weapons inside the dark world. As a matter of fact, he could use it as so only if he was in his giant dragon form. He’s not going to need any weapon if he was in his dragon form, so after giving it a bit more thought, he decided to let Doff use it. Doff did have the ancient pillar already, so he thought it’s probably better to change up its weapon once and for all.
“Out, Doff!”
Abel summoned Doff out of his portal beast ring and ordered it to place the ancient pillar on the ground. He then started with a comparison. The ancient pillar did not have much special about it, but its weight and resistance effect was always a great advantage when fighting against fanatic knights. Things would be very different if Doff were facing off law-defying wizards that could teleport and launch long-distance attacks. The totem pole seemed to be very versatile against that. The barbarian skill buff was not as much as he wanted, but being able to immediately use it made things a lot easier.
“No!”
Once Abel tried to conduct the dark golden energy inside the totem pole, he was now free to turn it into whatever shape he wished. This was a genuine legendary item, after all. If he had enough divine power for it, he could modify it to be whatever he wanted. With that in mind, he started guiding the divine power inside the crystal angelic state inside the pole to melt it. Like liquid mercury, the pole started melting and ran towards the ancient pillar.
The pillar was about 50 centimeters in diameter before, but it was now 80 in total. As for the surface of the pillar, new patterns were starting to show up. Abel didn’t bother changing the pattern related to the legendary myths as he didn’t want to risk changing the totem’s effect. Still, it would be surprising to anyone who recognized this piece as so many of its appearances had changed already.
Abel spoke to Doff, “Try this new weapon, Doff. Let’s call it the ancient totem.”
Doff reached over to the ancient totem. As heavier as it became, there really wasn’t a change in terms of swinging speed. On top of that, as its owner, Abel could sense that none of the original features were gone. If anything, the resistance effect was even stronger.
He decided to prioritize strength or maneuverability, so he decided to allow Doff to gain certain owners.h.i.+p over the ancient totem. This way, although it was scary that Doff could use the pole in whatever ways it wished, there was no higher chance to receive the 200 physical attack buff and activate critical hit.
“Activate enlightenment blessing!” Abel then spoke to Doff. Doff complied to activate the totem pole, and as it was doing so, a golden light was emitted outward, unleas.h.i.+ng a shock wave that reached over an area of 20 meters in diameter. The shockwave energy was like water. Abel and Doff were just engulfed in it. It felt warm for some reason. After thirty minutes, the light finally disappeared, leaving the two to discover on their own what changes took place.
Strangely enough, Abel couldn’t really find anything wrong that’s happening to him. He tried to practicing basic barbarian screaming. It was the easiest way he knew to test whether he had barbarian potential. Disappointingly, he didn’t generate any vibration or barbarian-type qi after doing this.