Pulled off like the wings of a butterfly, the tendrils infuse the arms of the being still held steadfastly within their domain with an eldritch energy. They slam them into the ground, and a formation of light glows around them, the silhouette of the black shapes visible where the carapace absorbs the energy from the array.

As the arms collide with the earth, the rock and dirt move aside to allow them passage. They are each stored in one of the farther eight corners of the triangle, waiting for the completion of the ritual before all the limbs are scattered to the four corners of the land.

This didn’t stop the figure’s attempt at holding back the bulging fabric of reality. In fact, as its arms were torn off, the power brought to bear upon the expanding glome doubled. Rather than expanding at an increasing rate, as it had been despite the structural supports built within the areas that hadn’t yet been bent out of four-dimensional space, its acceleration grinds to a halt. However, space was still bulging. Eventually, these efforts would not be enough, and reality would be torn asunder to allow sterilizing radiation to destroy everything on this planet.

Uncaring, the array formation moves on to the figure’s lower extremities. It grips all three of the armor-plated limbs with the combined energy of four class three lives, the majority of another, and all the energy the five had spent years condensing within their circle. As it had already figured out the trick, it was only a moment before all three appendages were torn asunder, leaving nothing but a torso and head floating in the center of the array.

Once again, the figure’s focus intensifies, further doubling its output. Sixteen cells are supported by simple tesseracts, shoring up the sections more likely to split. The grand contraption of pure energy coalesces into a wedge-like mechanism, a structure attached to itself and pinched onto the space along the cracks. It wraps around each dimension of the bulge, in one area looping around itself. Back up along where the doubling occurs, a lever of sorts stretches out from the intangible object, nearly parallel to both the cracks and the restraints themselves.

As the air begins to flare, bright and hot, tendrils of power rip the torso from the head. Surprisingly few fluids have flowed from the severed limbs up to this point, and the trend continues as the section presumably containing the source and director of such hydraulic systems is separated from all other parts and disposed of into the circle. Now, six of the eight corners have been filled with an appendage, the ones to the bottom and center remaining to accept their macabre offerings.

At this point, the demi-figure seems to have exhausted its bag of tricks, when it came to suddenly doubling its power. Instead, it simply pulled back on the lever. With an inaudible, intangible, indelible movement, the entire mechanism, built over the course of three seconds, snaps shut. Every combinatory array of fourth dimensional squares and triangles pushes the appropriate fragment of space back into the slot it belonged within. Abruptly, the heat and light disappear as the bulge disappears far more suddenly than it had erupted into this plane of existence. With this simple snap, space returns to normal.

Unbeknownst to any here, the jerk created by this maneuver would fling the supernova strike back toward the towering colossus, smashing one of its crystalline backups. This, while important in the scope of the cosmic battle occurring, would be completely superfluous information in this reality.

Again not caring about the near destruction of itself, its creator, and its world, the formation array completes its final step. Lancing through the head from the bottom, severed part, it ensnares the energy, consciousness, and very soul of the figure, while discarding the head to the bottom corner of the cone squared. All the power then coalesces into the center of the formation, with the purpose of wiping out any possible marker on the power to be absorbed.

With this ritual, each step has a purpose. Removing each limb removes the possibility of the entrapped utilizing one of their hidden treasures to break free, or at least waste energy activating it. Every iota of power used struggling is that much less power for the ritualist to absorb. Typically, armor or dimensional storage utilized by higher ranked beings is locked to the user’s aura. With such a powerful encryption method, enough energy would be wasted attempting to break it that not only would the ritual have the potential to run out of power, but it would likely allow the victim to retrieve and activate some sort of consumable item to self-destruct and take everyone nearby with them. Thus, the torso is typically consigned to a corner of the array, to be buried deep within the planet for the ritualist to retrieve after integrating their gains, or to launch far away should the array deterimine the item is either useless, too powerful to extract anything from, or self-destructing.

Finally, the head, the seat of thought, where all decisions are made, is plumbed to the depths for everything that makes it important. Once all of that has been removed, the worthless husk can be discarded at leisure. Holding it in the bottom of the pentatope displays the superiority of the ritualists, as even this captured creature must now lower its head to them. At this point, the seat of power is flooded with the entirety of the energy drawn and used for the entire formation. This is to diffuse the spirit, and grind down the will into chunks, which can be dissolved easily. Upon completion, there is nothing but a floating energy field, larger than one’s head in the eighth point, the center.

A black robed figure gestures, having the array launch the disparate pieces in the various directions, and steps forward. As the only survivor of the ritual, he doesn’t spare a glance at the black robed humans that were obviously less powerful. Their sacrifice was just a means for his ascension. Chuckling to himself as he raises his arms to the field, he begins to absorb the incredible power. Just the energy of the four sacrificed people around him would have been enough to catapult him into rank four; the energy accumulated by all five of them over the course of years to rank five. It was unknown how much power this unlucky creature possessed, but if he were lucky, he could perhaps break through to rank six, or at least the ninth stage of rank five.

His chuckle evolves into a full blown mad cackle as the power courses through his meridians. Within his body, the energy overflows, shunting power further along his muscles and veins, until it overflows into a new organ below his stomach. Having this to store the energy, he pulls the power faster and faster, until his new dantian overflows. Not having a place to store itself, the energy flows around his body once again, until it consolidates anew into a sphere next to his heart. At this point, the energy has dropped to a quarter of its size; he draws it in anyway.

Taking a moment to look within himself, he is somewhat pleased to discover that he has reached the fourth level of the fifth rank. While this means that the entity had very little energy to syphon, he also was not dead from a torrent of heavenly fire that could rend apart the very fabric of reality. Despite the fact the ritual had been unable to stop its target from using its energy, the results were still the closest he could think of to optimal he could get in these circumstances. He would much rather have less power and not be facing that attack than the other way around.

The human walked back toward his sect housing. It would not do to attract too much attention, with him not having yet acclimated to the new power he had acquired. Once he had trained with his new dantians, and mastered the abilities that come with his new rank, all three sects would know, and rue the name, of Wang Yutian.