Serena's figure was soon swallowed up by dust and debris from crumbling buildings as she was carried away by her contract while also holding on to the arm of the (still unnamed!) boy.

Kain didn't just stay behind for a dramatic farewell scene. Rather he stayed behind due to a burning set of eyes that practically burned his skin.

The Wrath-born demigod stood beyond the broken walls of the fortress, half-shrouded in a roiling black fog, four vertical eyes fixed unblinkingly in Kain's direction. Not the fort. Not the fleeing and gradually corrupted soldiers. Not the collapsing sigil arrays. Not even the much stronger demigod hand that had intercepted its last attack

Him.

Kain felt it then—not hostility alone, not bloodlust, but something closer to curiosity sharpened into intent. Like a predator pausing, head tilted, having noticed something unexpected in its prey.

As the demigod Hand said... Kain had caught his eye.

'Sigh...why must I be so devastatingly handsome and irresistibly charming?'

While the 'truth' of his strong appeal settled heavily in his chest, it also reinforced how valid his choice to stay behind was. The demigod had not pursued Serena. It hadn't even reacted to her departure.

Which meant he'd been right to let her go.

If he moved now—if he tried to flee—there was no doubt in his mind that the demigod would follow. Not because it needed to, but because it wanted to. Whatever uniqueness it sensed in him, whatever anomaly he represented, abandoning that interest would be unacceptable to a being like this.

So Kain stayed.

Not to fight. Never that. He'd get instakilled if he tried to fight a demigod, and based on what he'd just experienced he's not as resistant to abyssal corruption as he'd once thought.

To hold attention.

The Hand hovered near his shoulder, fingers flexing faintly as if resisting the urge to snap at him again.

"Maybe now you realize how fragile your puny life is and will stop your continuous death seeking behaviours," the Hand said, voice tight rather than flat. "Good."

Kain didn't reply. His breathing was steady, but his star space and Pangea felt hollow—drained, scraped thin by repeated strain. And, even unnoticeably to himself, his pure energy body flickered faintly beneath his skin, light dim and uneven. Kind of like sparks being emitted from a broken electronic device moments before it fails.

He needed fuel.

Normally, that would not have been a problem.

Abyssal energy, all energy, had always been something he could metabolize, break down, and purify into Source energy.

He had built entire strategies around that fact. In protracted wars or when swarmed by a bunch of enemies (like now) it even gave him an edge.

But that sharp edge… had been dulled.

The corruption in the air felt deliberate. It was no longer just wild aggression, but something directed and purposeful. Demigod-level abyssal influence didn't spread randomly—it imposed itself, forcing change even in those that otherwise would have had the power to resist for a time.

Kain could feel it pressing at the edges of his mind again, subtle and patient, like fingers testing the seams of a locked door.

"I'm not immune. At least not fully," he muttered.

"No," the Hand scoffed. "You think far too much of yourself. You are far too weak and so were the opponents you faced, which led you to having such delusions of grandeur. You were just never targeted by a being of this level before. By a level of contamination of this level before. But I can promise you that as the influence of the abyss continues to grow in our world, that will change."

'Comforting.'

Around him, the fortress continued to die.

Turned soldiers rampaged through the lower battlements, bodies twisted by warped growths and burning veins. Abyssals poured through breaches, clashing with defenders in desperate, uneven skirmishes. Normally, Kain would have been able to siphon energy from the chaos around him.

Now, he hesitated.

Absorbing energy from creatures directly altered by a demigod might be more dangerous, especially since the abyssal taint seemed affected by the will of the demigod.

But standing still meant just waiting to die.

Kain exhaled slowly and made a decision.

"Chewy," he murmured.

A faint, familiar presence stirred near his shoulder, almost shy in comparison to the overwhelming forces at play. The small multicoloured spore flickered into existence, bobbing uncertainly in the corrupted air.

Chewy was only green-grade. Weak by every metric that mattered here.

And yet…

Chewy had always been different.

"Absorb what you can," Kain instructed quietly. "Only what leaks. Nothing anchored. And the moment it feels like you've started to absorb something you can't control—stop."

Chewy, like Aegis and himself, was one of the only beings he'd ever met (regardless of grade) with the means to absorb and purify abyssal energy for 'food'.

Chewy pulsed once, as if saluting, then drifted outward. Tiny tendrils of its form extended, carefully sipping at stray spiritual residue shed by the fighting abyssals and warped soldiers—not the core corruption, but the excess, the overflow.

Even that made it wobble.

Kain felt the feedback immediately. A faint trickle of energy flowed back into him—not clean, not pure, but diluted enough to be manageable. It burned faintly as it settled, like swallowing alcohol instead of water.

Better than nothing.

His time-attribute contract reacted the moment he got some 'fuel'. There was no dramatic surge of power, no attempt to seize control of the battlefield. Instead, a quiet pressure settled behind his eyes, sharpening his awareness.

Movements around him became easier to follow—as if his thoughts existed a beat faster than the world around him. The timing of collapsing walls, the stagger of corrupted soldiers, the split-second gaps between surges of abyssal influence all stood out with incredible clarity.

The demigod was different.

No matter how he focused, it refused to fit into that heightened perception. Its presence felt immovable, as though it existed on a layer of reality his ability simply could not touch.

Kain didn't push further.

Trying to force this new time ability onto something like that would get him killed faster than doing nothing.

Instead, he focused inward—using the time contract to stabilize himself. To give his own thoughts sharper edges. To prevent the creeping mental pressure from fully synchronizing with his mind.

It helped.

Not enough to be safe.

Enough to not have his mind be lost immediately if the wards dampening the demigod's influence behind the walls continued to weaken, and it focused fully on Kain.

The Wrath demigod took a single step forward towards the fort.

The ground compressed beneath its foot, stone folding inward with a sound like distant thunder. The air thickened, emotions spiking across the battlefield in response—rage flaring hotter, despair sinking deeper.

Several more soldiers turned instantly, screams cutting short as their bodies reshaped into monsters that only knew wrath.

Kain clenched his jaw.

Then—

Something changed.

He felt it before he saw it.

A pressure spike, vast and structured, surged from the direction of the relic's core beneath the fortress. Heavy. Sovereign.

The air stilled.

Far beyond the walls, the dense black clouds scattered to allow golden sunlight through as an immense silhouette rose into view—one that resembled an eastern dragon.

The demigod-level contract of the 9-star/demigod level tamer within the relic finally appeared.

Each of its scales glowed like ruby jewels laced with molten gold. When it exhaled, the air froze, then cracked from sheer density of power.

A true demigod contract.

Its domain expanded outward in a colossal sphere of shimmering pressure, crashing directly into the Wrath demigod's influence.

For the first time, the abyssal demigod reacted.

Its momentum halted. The black mist partially shrouding its body roiled violently as the two domains collided, reality itself groaning under the strain.

But the Wrath demigod didn't look disappointed by the new arrival, rather, if one looked closely, its eyes held an excited flicker.

This had been a test.

The Wrath demigod had been probing. Measuring. Waiting to see if a human demigod would answer.

And now one had.

But only the one.

And the aura of its accompanying human was faint.

As the two colossal forces clashed, something else happened—something Kain felt deep in his bones.

Four more presences stirred.

Far beyond the immediate battlefield, deep within the crack in the horizon that led to the Abyss, powerful auras began to surface one by one. Each carried its own distinct weight, its own twisted flavour of corruption.

They watched.

Greedy.

Excited.

But cautious.

Their memories held pain—of being crushed by the true domains held by the demigod-level contracts of the human stationed in this fort. They were helpless to fight back even when all five of them attacked together while restricted by this world's limitations.

Yet now, they saw something different.

They saw an ally operating with a domain far stronger than expected.

Not full.

But not crippled to only 10% of its true strength like usual.

Around fifty to sixty percent.

They didn't know why.

Nor did they care.

Four beings with burning violet eyes, flecked with varying amounts of gold, turned toward the fortress, toward the dragon, toward the chaos—and finally, toward Kain himself.

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