Deus in Machina (a Warhammer 40K-setting inspired LitRPG)

Angar's toes grazed the first step of the pool, finding the heat searing even through his calloused skin. His heart pounded, but he steeled himself and descended.

The liquid swallowed his ankles, then his knees. Each step he took was a lash of fire that gnawed deeper into his flesh.

By the third step, a tide of molten agony burned his nerves as it lapped at his waist.

He gripped the rope tied under his arms. The coarse fibers bit into his palms as he plunged forward.

Clutching the rope with arms above the surface, he sank into the liquid's tormenting embrace. It rushed into his lungs as he forced a choking inhale, getting the drowning out of the way, a part he dreaded, as breathing fluid would never be natural to him.

The thick and heavy muck scorched his mouth and throat, then lungs, tasting of incense laced with lava.

His body shrieked, his skin blistered, peeling away in layers that dissolved into the glow of the pool. The heat wasn't just external, it burrowed inward, searing muscle, boiling blood, charring bone until he became a pyre consuming itself.

His vision blurred into a crimson haze as his eyes burned, and he gripped the rope tighter, his only anchor.

A sister's rod lashed down from above, striking his knuckles, then again, and again, demanding he release the rope.

He obeyed, and his monstrous hands plunged into the burning pool.

Then the true pain began.

Agony erupted, a cataclysm dwarfing even the Harmongulan's venom, or his fading memory of that horror. It was immediate and unrelenting, a searing ordeal that made all his prior pain seem like fleeting shadows.

His warped hands ignited in the liquid. The hardened, dark skin blazed like it was doused in promethium, each nerve screaming with a hideous agony.

The claw-like nails curled inward as the heat reshaped them, and the flesh seemed to melt and reform, caught in a war between the corrupted form and the liquid's sanctifying wrath.

A searing fire clashed with an unnatural cold seeping from the taint, a dual torment that made his bones feel as if they were splintering and freezing simultaneously, every twitch amplifying the unendurable.

His mind grasped for anchors to help him bear the agony, but this pain devoured them all. The liquid felt alive and malevolent, whispering seductive lies of relief if he just surfaced, and he desperately wanted to obey.

He had no choice. He had to wrench his hands from this pool, he had to escape this inferno consuming them. The urge was a primal scream in his skull, drowning out reason.

He had to get his hands free. He had to. But he couldn't. He knew leaving early was annihilation.

The rope, slack around his chest, swayed uselessly as he forced himself deeper, doing the opposite of what his mind demanded, ignoring its cries that even death was preferable over the agony radiating from his forearms and hands.

As he sank, his arms trembled, his muscles spasmed, his teeth gritted against screams erupting in silent torment.

Pain became his existence, a living inferno, a Holy fire that judged and purified.

Time warped, making each second an eternity of suffering. His body warped too, unnoticed amidst the agony of his hands. Blisters popped, new skin grew, hardening into a sanctified shell, his nerves dulled to lesser pains, impurities purged and toxins incinerating in this crucible of flesh.

His hands though, the main source of his torment, throbbed with escalating anguish. He shuttered his mind, enduring the unendurable, surviving one moment, then the next, and the one after, each a victory snatched from ruin.

Just one more moment endured, and then another, and one more after, endless, eternal.

Finally, the rope snapped taut. The pulley groaned overhead as he was hauled upward. He breached the surface, coughing up the thick, burning substance until his lungs felt real air, the scorching muck sloughing off in steaming rivulets that hissed off his skin.

The sisters dragged him over the pool's edge and dropped him onto the floor, his body a shaking wreck.

His hands, still twisted and throbbing, couldn't be used to catch himself, and he hit the ground with a loud thud.

All he could do was hold his twitching hands to his chest, trying his damnedest not to cry out in anguish like a weakling in front of witnesses.

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"Why's he still shaking like that?" one sister muttered with a voice edged with unease and concern. "He's done. He survived."

"Glad another lived," another replied in a weary tone. "If I'd known my days would be filled with dead children, I'd have joined the Ordo Sacra Custodia instead. But look at him. He's a quivering ruin. Did something go wrong?"

"No idea," the first said, peering closer. "He was in much longer than usual before the signal flared. Fully purged and sanctified, though. Look at…oh, Holy Theosis! His hands!"

"I can't see…oh!" The second's breath caught as she recoiled. "Blessed Mother! We all thought the purgation would heal that corruption. What is that? Is that fur?"

"What do we do?" the third whispered nervously.

"Poor soul," the first said. "Give him an incapacitant. Fetch the gurney. Sister Iucunditas can haul him to that shrew Tzedaka. Let Queen High-and-Mighty deal with this. It's not our job."

Angar lay in the familiar confines of his small cell, sprawled across the bed. The searing agony in his hands had dulled to a persistent ache, just a shadow of its former torment.

He lifted them, turning them in the dim light. His forearms and hands were sheathed in short, golden fur, coarse and shimmering faintly, like a lion's pelt kissed by firelight.

His hands had become larger, the fingers thickened into blunt, powerful digits. Their sensation was still muted. They now seemed even more durable, as if clad in living armor.

The once jagged and sinister claws had lengthened and sharpened, but now could retract within his fingertips.

These changes were somehow born from the Baptistry's wrath. He'd hoped the purgation would scour away the taint, and restore human flesh, not reshape it into this. Everyone thought it would. Everyone assumed the Baptistry would heal them, if anything could.

But, between the monstrous claws of before and this leonine strangeness, he much preferred the latter.

This didn't look like Hellsign. It looked extremely weird and unnatural, but no longer in an infernal way.

Resigned with his new, strange hands, he inspected the rest of his body.

His smooth and unmarred skin, every scar accrued over the last year gone, had hardened, reforged in that burning liquid.

He opened his System screens and summoned his Annals, smiling again. His Body Attribute had increased by 4, and his Toughness Stat by 4 too, gains surpassing the purgation's average of 3 and 2.

Once again, he'd exceeded the norm, gaining beyond what could be expected.

He flexed his furred hands, testing the claws' retraction.

He wondered how many aspirants had survived.

THE DIVINE CRUCIBLE

Finally, the Divine Crucible, the last test of aspirants, a personal and individually created Hellscape administered by Holy Theosis in dilated time, where one's soul and resolve are tested beyond mortal limits, and details of this sacred trial never remembered.

Here, failure leads to mandatory service in less glorious but vital roles, such as within the combat arms factions of the Ecclesiastic or Laity, or as a questing Free Agent.

Though rare, those who complete the Divine Crucible, instead of becoming a Crusader, may request these far less glorious and honorable assignments as well.

Ascending to Tier 2 sorely tempted Angar now, but he decided against it in case there was some rule he was ignorant of.

The Grim Ordeals remained unfinished. One final crucible that could be failed awaited, followed by sacred rites to grant more power, and, after that, three implants installed.

Then he'd ascend, but he'd do so immediately, before the Anointing.

His flesh felt clean, so he bypassed the shower. A folded and larger sweatsuit awaited him, fitting his new size, but fit far too snugly.

He donned it alongside his ring and harness, the fabric stretching against his transformed frame, then devoured the food on the table, washing it down with water.

As he meditated, cycling energy through his channels in silence, a knock rapped on his door as a sister entered, beckoning him wordlessly.

First, he was led to a room where brothers silently took samples from his hands, then the same sister led him to a chamber unlike any other he had seen, like a chapel consecrated to Holy Theosis alone.

The chapel's walls and vaulted ceiling blazed with sacred scenes of Holy Theosis, its form only known by the fevered visions of a few faithful. He towered as a Divine angel of wrath, his flaming sword searing the dark, clad in resplendent golden, bulky plate coursing with azure circuitry that also wreathed his colossal, ethereal wings in sanctified light.

A soft, pale-blue radiance emanated from runes etched into the stone floor. Angar sat down near the center, on a rune, beside two other aspirants, as directed by the silent sister.

With knees pressed into the cold floor, he waited in silence as others trickled in.

There were seven other aspirants, all much larger now, eight in total. Six males sat on one side, two females on the other.

The Baptistry's toll was grim, as six of the fourteen had perished in its fire.

They sat in silence, ignorant of what this Ordeal entailed, all their gazes fixed on the glowing runes on the floor.

The Divine Crucible began without fanfare at all. No herald, not even a chime, just the seamless plunge into dilated time.

One moment Angar was sitting there, bored, waiting. The next, he jolted upright, his sweatsuit drenched as if he'd bathed in sweat, clinging to his skin like a second, sodden flesh.

His heart hammered powerfully, straining to burst from his ribcage. A primal terror was strangling his mind, its grip loosening slowly as he whipped his head around with wild eyes, seeking the unseen danger he knew was there, but wasn't.

No recollection lingered. The Divine Crucible had left no memory, only the certainty that it had happened, and was now over.

The air reeked of sickness, fear, and feces, fouling the chapel's sanctity.

Angar's nose wrinkled. As he checked, becoming certain he wasn't the source of the fecal stench, relief flooded his chest.

His gaze swept the seven aspirants. Beneath two boys and a girl, the blue light had curdled to a pitch-black shadow, bathing them in an eerie void. It had to be failure's mark.

He glanced beneath himself and saw only stone and the faint blue rune.

Five had passed the Divine Crucible, and thus, the Grim Ordeals, himself included.

Since no System message came, he opened his Annals. Both his Spirit and his Power Level increased by 1 each.

There was no average for this ordeal. It was passed, or it wasn't. If passed, it gave 1 to Spirit and Power Level.

Angar still smiled. He loved gaining more power.

The Grim Ordeals were done. He had survived, as had four others.

Ahead lay the rites to claim his full power, the implants all Knights needed, and an end from the Cloisteranage as home.

He stood, and he stood victorious.