[Location: The Abyss – Layer 1: The Ash Wastes]

Time soon passed, and their monotonous lives in the abyss continued

During the day, they would walk on the endlessly dry earth, and at night, they rested in whatever giant creature carcass they could find.

Now, after an unknown amount of time, Darkness once again befell the first floor of the abyss, and both he and Isabelle once again prepared for their rest.

In front of the fire, crackled, casting long, dancing shadows against the ribs of the dead leviathan.

Damien sat cross-legged in the dust, staring at the Contract Gem hanging in his soul.

It pulsed with a faint, rhythmic violet light, syncing with the heartbeat of the girl sleeping a few feet away.

'I am not helpless,' Damien thought, his mind razor-sharp despite his physical exhaustion.

He closed his eyes and visualized the invisible threads connecting him to his subordinates.

The thread to Alfred was there, but it was static. The thread to Barnaby was a faint hum. The thread to Isabelle was a roaring pipeline of energy.

Even Lyra and Leona in the beasts' lands could still be sensed, although faintly.

'I've used Contract Skills before,' Damien analyzed. '

As early as sixteen years ago, I borrowed their abilities. But I always fueled them with my own mana. That's the biggest issue.'

Trapped in this abyss, most of his hole cards were gone.

Here, regular mana is practically non-existent.

But unlike his case, for Isabelle beside him, the air... the air was infinite fuel for a demon.

Raising his hands, he suddenly had an idea.

He opened the floodgates of the Contract Gem. Concentrating hard as if it were regular mana, he commanded ambient Abyss Mana to flow through the gem, filter through Isabelle's sleeping soul, and manifest at his fingertips.

SNAP.

A ball of purple-black Hellfire ignited in his palm.

Not only that, but this time it felt completely natural, like he was merely holding a match to a gasoline-soaked world.

"Isabelle's affinity acts as the blueprint," Damien muttered, extinguishing the flame.

"The Abyss provides the fuel. I am just the trigger."

He tried to switch frequencies. He reached for Alfred's thread. He tried to cast [Spatial Shift].

fzzzt.

"Argh!"

Nothing. Instead what he got was a sharp pain from his mana core.

"Incompatible," Damien deduced, rubbing his temples.

"Alfred's power relies on regular mana. It seems like Isabelle being a half-demon was truly a gift from fate, though I'm not one to believe in fate," he muttered with a wry smile on his face

In short, his arsenal was limited:

Gravity Magic (Isabelle).

Hellfire (Isabelle).

Physical Strength (Currently degraded).

It wasn't enough. Not if he wanted to storm Layer 9 and find his parents.

Damien turned his attention inward. He entered a meditative trance, visualizing his internal architecture.

It was a ruin.

On the Left, his Voss Shadow Core was a hungry void, dormant but vibrating, desperate for evolution.

On the Right, his Golden Dragon Core was silent, comatose, rejecting the environment entirely.

And in the Center... was his Mind. The Will Core.

'The Tri-Core,' Damien mused.

'I spent years trying to balance aura and mana. My will acting as the perfect balance breaker'

'But if my guess is correct, then not only will the balance be better than before, but I might create something that has never happened in the history of Elias!"

He formulated a hypothesis: The Abyss Mana was corrosive. It melted everything.

If he could control that corrosion, he could use it as a solvent to dissolve the walls between the Dragon aura, Shadow mana, and his will core, fusing them into a singular Chaos Engine.

But to hold that reaction... his Will had to be stronger than the chaos.

Damien opened his eyes. He looked at the Pantheon Sword.

"Intent," Damien whispered. "It's time to fully focus on this long forgotten ability."

…................

[Time: Six Hours Later]

The grey ash swirled around them. The wind howled like a dying animal.

Damien stood in the center of a clearing. He held the Pantheon Sword. It was heavy, a dead weight in his hands without aura or mana to lighten it.

Isabelle sat on a rock nearby, watching him with concern. "Master? You should rest."

"No," Damien grunted, sweat dripping down his pale face. "I'm a 6th-Order peak, Isabelle. I didn't get there by accident."

He gripped the hilt.

In the Human Domain, intent to intimidate weaker foes or to lock onto targets.

It was a passive byproduct of having a strong soul and the key to breakthrough fourth order.

But here, without mana to enforce his reality, Intent was all he had.

'Compress it,' Damien ordered himself.

'Don't let it leak. Don't let it radiate. Wrap it around the blade.'

He focused his mind. He visualized the concept of Sharpness. He imposed his will on the dull crystal slab.

WOOOM!

The air around the sword distorted.

The blade suddenly changed. It turned a shade darker, as if the light was afraid to touch it.

Unexpectedly, his guess actually worked

He had somehow managed to wrap his sword with will!

Damien swung.

He swung with conviction and excitement, his fingertips trembling.

SHINK.

The blade sliced through a boulder of obsidian.

There was no resistance. It severed it cleanly, as if the rock had agreed to be cut.

Damien exhaled, dropping the sword point to the ground.

He was panting. Using his Will like this was mentally exhausting, like solving a complex equation while lifting weights.

"Will over matter," Damien grinned breathlessly. "If I say it cuts... it cuts."

….............…

The Next Day

They trekked deeper into the wastes. The terrain shifted from flat ash dunes to a jagged, metallic graveyard.

"Look," Isabelle pointed.

Half-buried in a dune was a colossal shape. It looked like something from the First Era, but it was wrong.

The metal plating was fused with bone. The cannon barrel was ribbed like a throat.

"Runehammer Clan," Damien noted, wiping dust from the rusted crest on the hull.

"Dwarves from the Great War, five hundred years ago."

Remembering the history of Dwarves Hephestus once told him about, Damien approached with caution

He climbed inside the wreckage. The cockpit smelled of ancient rot.

In the pilot's seat sat a skeleton. But the bones were warped. The fingers had fused into claws. The skull had elongated.

"Assimilation," Damien said quietly.

"It's like the environment rewrote his DNA", looking at his bones that didn't look like those of a regular dwarf, Damien said with curiosity.

The Dwarf in front of him even had horns protruding from its skull and a tail, a feature no dwarf in Elias had ever had

Isabelle shivered. "Will that happen to us?"

"To me, maybe," Damien admitted. "To you? You're already partly demon, so it should be fine."

He searched the corpse. In the pilot's chest pocket, he found a heavy, hexagonal device.

[Item Found: Abyss Compass (Magitech).]

[Status: Damaged but functional.]

The needle spun wildly, then locked onto a direction.

"Oh? It seems we finally have a direction to head to" He pocketed the compass.

However, just then the ground began to shake

RUMBLE.

As if setting off some sort of trigger, as he took the compass, the surrounding dune began to self-collapse

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