God Ash: Remnants of the fallen.

This feeling was very similar to the one he had felt from the tree itself...

Cain screamed, but no sounds came out of his throat. His body thrashed around, but he felt as though he had fallen into quicksand. The more he struggled, the faster he sank into the pit.

Eventually, he stopped struggling and simply accepted his fate. However, shortly after, he sensed that something. The 'darkness' around him was slowly starting to recede.

Bracing himself, he prepared for the worst...

A dull radiance suddenly assaulted his eyes. He felt the darkness separate and drip off his body. First, his head was liberated, then his torso. Still shocked, Cain looked up at what had trapped him.

Thousands of inky-black roots of darkness were still wrapped around his lower torso.

"What the hell?!" Cain panicked and immediately tried to remove the rest of his body as fast as he could.

That was when he noticed what was below him. Suddenly, he wasn't too interested in leaving the terrifying darkness...

The first thing that struck him was the terrible nauseating stench. His body was stuck directly above, and below him, hundreds of thousands of decaying flesh and bones bubbling together in one giant pool of rotting bodies.

Cain went pale in fright as soon as he saw it. And that was when he heard it. The voice that had called out that incantation. Now, it was many times clearer and seemed to belong to a woman. The voice was beautiful, but it seemed to contain boundless evil and depravity.

The soft radiance came from the center of the underground space.

The roots of the tree were surrounded by a pool of rotting bodies. Cradled at the center of these roots, was a pure white seed with eerie black and red veins pulsing on it.

'Just the hell did it end up in this mess?!'

Cain was suddenly at a loss for words...

That was when he noticed movement within the pool of rotting flesh. The {Golden Spine Gorilla} was struggling above the quagmire of decaying flesh, trying to stay above it. Despite that, the creature was still very much alive.

'Great...'

Cain knew he couldn't take the damned beast down on his own yet. Its defenses were just too strong. If he had access to his skills, then it would have been possible. However, the lock on his mana, ki, and devil essence was still there, making sure they were completely unusable.

The only thing he could do was use his weapons, but even then, he was still at a disadvantage.

The darkness suspending him suddenly gave way, and in the next moment, he was falling straight into the disgusting mass of rotting flesh.

'Hell no!' Cain immediately controlled the trajectory of his fall. Thanks to {Gravity Defying} and the passive effects of the {Abhorrent Devil Enchanted Gloves}, he was able to control his fall and land on the roots of the tree.

The aether beast struggling in the pool of rotting flesh soon noticed him, but there was little it could do. One disadvantage of its large, bulky frame, was its complete lack of buoyancy. Cain was even surprised it had held on this long.

Letting out a sigh, Cain realized he was out of danger for now. He took this time to properly study his surroundings.

The walls were also made from the same writhing darkness. Something told him that the only reason the darkness was so docile was because it was being reigned in. He had a feeling that the darkness wanted to consume him, leaving nothing but corrupted bones behind.

And then, there were the roots and the voice. As soon as he landed on the tree roots, the voice became even clearer. However, he couldn't decipher what it was saying. This meant the system didn't have the language registered.

The sweet-sounding voice nearly drew him closer, promising him relief should he give in. However, he was no fool. There was no way in hell he would fall for it.

Probably...

"Ha... What an unfortunate situation I have found myself in..." Cain couldn't help but let out a sigh.

His mind thought of how he had been coaxed by Evangeline to go on this fool's errand.

"I knew I shouldn't have trusted that crazy which!" Cain said bitterly to himself. However, it was too late to do anything now. He had to live with the consequences.

"First things first, that thing has to die," Cain said as he glared at the large {Golden Spine Gorilla}. The creature couldn't see well, but it had noticed him and immediately landed on the root.

'Getting my powers back is the only way I can defeat this thing, even if it is for a little while.'

His mind immediately churned as he thought about the glorious magic circle he had witnessed. Grand wasn't even the word. It was just as majestic as the Golden Gate he had seen in Ashur summon in his dream.

'Whatever that thing was, no ordinary entity can summon it.' Pursuing that line of thought, he began to worry.

If his hypothesis was correct, then his situation was more complicated than it was.

Coming back to his senses, Cain was suddenly assaulted by fear he had never felt before. For a moment, he had no idea where the fear originated from, but a few seconds later, a terrifying understanding washed over him. Before, he had been standing on the other side of the congregation of tree roots. The eerie white seed was on the other side.

However, he now stood directly below the seed, his hand reaching toward it. Cain didn't recall ever moving from the spot.

His face went pale as he quickly dragged his hand down and moved away from the pulsating seed.

'What the hell is going on?!'

He had never encountered a situation so strange before. This, he had no idea what to do...

'In a single moment of distraction, I was compelled into moving against my will.' Even the thought of it was frightening. His mind immediately became on high alert.

'It is the voice... I'm sure of it!'

Gritting his teeth, Cain came to an awful realization.

He tried covering his ears, but much to his dismay, he was unable to block the words as they seemed to drill straight into his soul.

Blinking his eyes rapidly, he discovered that he had become distracted again. His face paying, he quickly regained his bearings and found himself reaching for the seed again.

"Argh!" He yelled as he pulled back as quickly as possible.

It was then he noticed something. At one point, the {Golden Spine Gorilla} had stopped struggling within the pool of rotting bodies. Staring closer, Cain saw that at some point, the creature had died. He could tell by his still the creature was, and the thick lifeless aura it exuded, just like the rest of the rotting flesh and bones.

Just a few moments ago, it was struggling fiercely, and now, it was decaying slowly. Cain was filled with shock and fear.

Soon, he got to witness something very strange. As its flesh became corrupted with rot, fine threads of energy bled out of its decaying corpse and swam toward the tree roots. The thick tree roots greedily sucked the dense threads of energy.

Cain watched in horror as the roots pulsated, transferring the energy to the seed at the center of the congregation of roots.

The veins on the seed pulsed as it drank the energy greedily like a thirsty fish...

Suddenly, the voice assaulting his mind seemed to increase its tempo. For a brief second, all he could think about was the strange seed. He could see its majestic shape.

How good it would be to caress its smooth exterior, how warm it was...

Before he could even register what was going on, his hand had already touched the seed. It wasn't very big, about twice as big as a walnut. However, the soft radiance it exuded seemed to fill the entire underground space.

It was only for a second, but that was all the time vile thing.

As soon as his hand touched the seed, he was assaulted with a bone-chilling freezing sensation that seemed to lock his very being in place.

Then his ears began to comprehend the words of the maddening voice. However, his mind couldn't comprehend it. As soon as the evil chants burrowed into his mind, his soul fell apart.

***

Within the darkest regions of his mind, the phantom of an immeasurable being seemed to shake its head in exasperation as though to say,

'What has this idiot gotten himself into now?!'

***

Back in reality, the seed had detached itself from the tree roots and had burrowed into his flesh. Once it was in his body, it indiscriminately tore a path straight to his heart.

Beside his heart, was the physical manifestation of his {Mana Heart}. However, the seed seemed completely interested in it as it swam into his heart as though it had a mind of its own.

Once it burrowed into his real heart, the veins on it stretched out and patched onto his cardiac muscles. The pure-white exterior of the seed was immediately dyed the color red. The black and red veins spread rapidly to cover the rest of his heart. In seconds, whatever was left of his original heart was gone. However, the veins didn't stop there.

Instead, it continued expanding, traveling through his body and replacing his veins and arteries.

Cain was completely out of it, so he didn't notice that his body was being taken over.

Instead, most of his consciousness was focused on his crumbling mind.

In his sea of consciousness, an exhilarated voice filled with millennia of madness rang out,

Cain recognized the voice as the voice that had been chanting all this while. He still couldn't understand what the voice was saying. Suddenly, his mind was assaulted by immense pain again,

The pressure on his mind went up a notch. The chanting continued, and his consciousness was still being washed away.

'What are you?!' Cain managed to think even as his mind crumbled.

However, the voice paid him no attention. Instead, it increased the pace at which it changed.

His vision was filled with only darkness initially. However, a figure was revealed from the darkness. More accurately, it had been there all this time, but he did not notice its presence.

It was far bigger than anything he had ever seen. The entity's body was black with large alabaster markings running all over it. Two curved horns were situated on its face, and its body was covered with sharp protrusions. However, its face...

Its face was the most beautiful thing Cain had ever seen. Its face was humanoid, yet Cain could tell it wasn't even remotely related to humans. Instead, it had an eerie resemblance to the devils he had seen, only far more beautiful.

From what he could tell, based on the entity's general features, it was most likely female. Its body looked like something only a demented god could concoct. However, there was an underlying beauty beneath the

terrifying surface.

As he stared at the humongous entity, he noticed that its lips were moving rapidly. He immediately came to the conclusion that it was the owner of the chanting voice...

After what seemed like an eternity, a phrase he could understand wormed its way into his deteriorating consciousness...

"At last, the perfect vessel of my redemption has arrived..."