Warning #1: This is a Waifu Catalog story that turns Multiversal very quick
Warning #2: Morally questionable MC, he's a contractor
Warning #3: Bisexual MC with many fetishes, again he's a contractor
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"Are you really sure that this is all you want?"
Riser Phenex, the third son of the noble and great Marquis House of Phenex, asked the question while carefully keeping the irritation out of his voice. Being summoned by a human magician was already an inconvenience. Being summoned for something that barely qualified as a task was insulting.
He could be back home right now, indulging himself with any member of his peerage instead of standing in some cramped ritual space answering questions. The thought only worsened his mood.
"Yes." Cassian Hale replied calmly.
The human magician stood opposite him, his attention fixed on the brazier between them. Golden flames burned steadily within it, rich with demonic mana, their heat sharp and unmistakably potent. Cassian studied them with open interest, as though evaluating the quality of a material rather than admiring the spectacle.
"This is good enough for me." Cassian continued. "The ritual only requires magical fire. The higher the quality the better, which is why I summoned you."
Riser clicked his tongue softly, glancing down at the flames he had conjured. They were flawless, of course. Controlled, refined and utterly beyond what any ordinary magician could produce on their own.
…maybe the human wasn't completely incompetent.
"And what exactly does this ritual do?" Riser asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Supposedly, it grants luck in the near future." Cassian said. His tone was casual, almost dismissive, as if the answer itself wasn't particularly important. "For both of us."
Riser frowned slightly. "Supposedly?"
"I can't say for certain whether it works." Cassian admitted with a small chuckle. "It's more of a family tradition more than anything else."
That earned him a curious look. "You say that you don't even know whether it works or not." Riser said. "Why bother continuing?"
Cassian snapped his fingers and a small box materialized in midair and dropped neatly into his hand.
"As I said." He said before blowing dust off of the box. "Family tradition."
"And your payment, as agreed." He offered the box to Riser, which he accepted and teleported back to Phenex mansion. In a better mood than before.
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"He finally left." I said with a sigh before turning to the brazier. "And now comes the painful part."
Fun fact, the whole luck ritual thing I told Riser was just bullshit. The fires and the brazier had nothing to do with any such thing. The brazier was simply enchanted to keep the fire in and steady for the actual ritual.
And by ritual, I meant mission.
I was a Contractor. An employee of the Waifu Catalog company that was put into this world less than a week before with a modified backstory for my choices. The very choices that put me in a very difficult position. Specifically, it was one Intensity option I had taken that was the problem.
I couldn't take advanced Binding methods. This meant I was stuck in Free Hand option, the only ways I could capture someone was with love confessions and Heritage based methods. Except I was an Aethermorph Transhuman so that was kinda difficult, meaning getting more credits was kinda difficult.
But there was one saving grace here. Missions.
Missions could be issued from both Company members and from people who somehow manage to contact the Company. Completing the mission would get you the promised reward which could be anything from credits to items or even templates. But what I really wanted wasn't any of those things.
It was Heritages.
Missions that gave Heritages as reward were... diverse. While the dragon heritage could easily be gotten from a quest that had you kill a dragon and eat its heart, the rest of them were more complicated. Like the Infernal mission that needed one to make seven magically binding deals with each of them corresponding to one of the seven deadly sins.
The deal with Riser counted as the Pride deal. Six more to go.
The whole brazier was for one of these missions as well. The Phoenix heritage mission was unique as it needed little to no preparation. Merely a brazier and fire, preferably magically strong fire. The hard part was after the preparations.
I had to burn myself.
Not simply put my finger in and pull out and some sort of heat therapy. I had to walk into the brazier full of fire and stay there until I burned down to ashes. That's how one completed the Phoenix mission.
The one who commissioned the mission had to be one sick bastard.
As if needing any more proof of that, the mission automatically disabled the Stress and Environmental defenses so that we couldn't just use Company given abilities to endure the pain. Which leaves me with one question.
Was this necessary?
"Obviously." I scoffed. I could travel the multiverse with Company's resources. Which meant I could come face to face with anything. Anyone who didn't do their utmost to gain as much as power in a situation like this, the power to make their desires reality, were half assing it.
That was the whole reason I took a relatively low Power Swap like Doris Lusendra, for the Transhuman discount and access to her reinforcement based magecraft that modified one's own body to become greater.
With which I started altering my own pain receptors. Not to the point of making myself unable to feel pain, which I couldn't do, but to the lowest point of sensitivity I could take them. Yet even with that, I knew, the magical flames would hurt.
I took one last deep breath as I stepped forward and got into the brazier.
And the fire closed around me.
There was no buildup. No warning. One step, and then everything was heat.
It forced itself into me. Through my clothes, through skin and through the very air. My lungs locked the instant I inhaled; a dry, burning seizure that tore the air out of me. I tried to scream and nothing came out. The sound died somewhere in my throat.
My magecraft blunted the pain but it didn't matter. What got through was still too much. Too big. Too everywhere. My nerves screamed in overlapping waves, each one worse than the last, until there was no single point of agony anymore. Just a single fact.
I was on fire.
My skin began to go.
I felt it in layers. First the surface, then deeper, the sensation changing as nerves failed and others took over. Heat stopped being sharp and became crushing, like my body was being pressed into itself. Muscles spasmed, jerking without rhythm as my mind tried to give orders they could no longer follow.
Every instinct I had demanded that I get out.
I didn't.
I stood there and let myself burn.
My vision whited out. Shapes dissolved. Time stopped behaving. Somewhere, distantly, I registered the smell; sweet, thick, unmistakable. That should have been the moment I broke. When the reality of it cut through the preparation and the theory.
It didn't.
I held onto one thing.
Not courage. Not resolve.
Desire.
A raw, ugly need that sat deeper than fear. Deeper than pain. I wanted power. I wanted permanence. I wanted to never be this fragile again. I wanted the power to make every desire I had into reality.
My legs gave out, but there was nothing solid left to collapse onto. My body lost its shape, structure failing as bone blackened and split. The pain narrowed, then flared again, screaming as whatever nerves remained fired blindly.
I stayed conscious far longer than I should have.
Even as I came apart.
Even as I became ash.
By the time thought began to unravel, there was nothing left of me but the desire.
And it burned hotter than the fire ever did.
That's when the heat stopped bothering me.
It didn't vanish. It was still there, enveloping my body. But it no longer hurt. Instead it was like I was being held gently, transforming from a destructive bonfire to a warm heart.
And then my body started to rebuild itself.
The first sensation was pressure, from the reality itself, as if it had decided that I should exist again and was unwilling to wait for my consent. Bone came first, snapping into place with brutal certainty. Each piece carried warmth instead of marrow, heat flowing through it like blood.
Flesh followed, dragged along by that framework. Nerves ignited as they formed, lighting up in sharp, intimate flashes of pain that made my thoughts stutter. This wasn't agony like before. This was awareness being forced back into me.
I tried to breathe.
There was nothing to breathe with yet.
The heat pulsed, impatient.
Lungs unfolded around the demand, and I choked as air tore its way inside me, hot and acrid, scraping against tissue that felt raw simply because it had never existed before. My heart ignited with a heavy, deliberate beat, each pulse sending controlled warmth through my veins instead of fire.
I collapsed forward as gravity reasserted itself.
My hands struck solid ground. Newly reformed skin burned as it met the cooler air beyond the brazier. Ash slid off me in clumps, sticking to my palms, my arms, my chest, before falling away to reveal unmarked flesh.
I lay there, gasping, before raising my head and looked back.
The brazier was empty.
I chuckled, and then the chuckles turned into full blown laughter as I felt the heat inside me. I rose up and flexed my back, causing wings made of fire to burst out.
When I woke up today, I had been an Aethermorph. Now, I was also a Phoenix.
And this was just the beginning.
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