[Note: Devas is delirious, half-insane, nearly dead, and barely able to see or hear—there's almost no blood left in his body, and his brain is practically melting. This affects his actions.]
(P)(A)(T)/CalleumArtori.
[...]---[...]
Agheel was a dragon of a modern lineage.
Unlike the great Ancient Dragons, which possess four legs, stone-like scales, and wield lightning, Agheel was a Flying Dragon.
Measuring roughly twenty meters from head to tail, his frame followed wyvern proportions, with broad, dark membranous wings integrated into his forelimbs.
His scales ranged between grayish-green and dull brown, with a mossy appearance that camouflaged him against the lake's environment.
His eyes burned with a vivid orange-yellow glow.
Agheel's roar tore through the night.
The sonic shockwave crashed down like a hammer, sending muddy water exploding into violent jets in every direction. Around the lake, Giant Crabs burrowed into the sludge in panic, while smaller creatures fled in desperation.
The vibration of the roar reached the distant ruins, startling the soldiers scattered along the cliffside, already on edge from the "meteor" crash.
The deafening roar did little to affect the already critically weakened human.
The gust of wind merely tousled his blood-matted hair. Strangely, the strands seemed to grow—slowly, yet visibly—with each passing second, losing their natural black color and taking on a dead, ashen gray.
In the next instant, the interior of Agheel's already open maw glowed with a vibrant golden light.
A dense torrent of fire surged toward the human, leaving behind a trail of superheated embers that boiled the water along its path.
The human, already anticipating the instinctive strike, weakly raised what remained of his right arm and activated the Voidbag.
The Web Slinger materialized over the stump of his forearm, fastening directly into the mutilated flesh. The mechanism quickly fired a webline to the side, which shot out and anchored itself to the broad trunk of a leafless tree several meters to his right.
He didn't pull—he simply let the mechanism retract and drag him. His body slid violently across mud and shallow water, clearing the impact zone a second before the golden fire struck the ground and vaporized everything where he had stood.
Completely debilitated, he collapsed.
He rolled through the mud a few times before managing to halt his own momentum, bracing himself on one knee and driving his only hand into the ground.
The movement forced him to cough. Thick blood and fragments of internal tissue spilled from his lips onto the wet earth.
Being unable to breathe—and lacking a heart—hindered him immeasurably. His insides were almost entirely destroyed.
All his focus had to be maintained on the not-so-simple, yet critically important task of keeping himself alive: constantly forcing the frigid energy of the underworld away from his vital organs, manually circulating his blood, and purging the lethal remnants of The Mist of Nothingness.
He couldn't even summon the Nightmares.
All the thousands of eyes he had created were strictly focused on combating the spread of the "void" through his left arm and shoulder.
His energies were fully occupied as well.
Even if he could channel his Aura or Mana, his half-melted, delirious brain at this point wouldn't be able to handle the strain of even more simultaneous actions.
Staring with his single glowing orange eye at the scalding smoke and the dragon that had ceased its flames, the human reached a single conclusion: he would have to kill it physically.
Forcing the Moon Shield to reappear on his left arm, the human pushed his broken body forward and took a step. At the same time, the grotesque mouth carved into the front of the shield opened its iron jaws and bit into the very space around it, activating its ability.
Reality ahead compressed like crumpled paper.
A single step warped the world's metric for a fraction of a second, turning distance into irrelevance.
Like an uncontrollable linear surge through distorted air, his body was launched meters forward before the environment violently snapped back to normal.
Passing directly beneath Agheel's mud-caked, scaled belly, the human plunged his only hand into the Voidbag and drew out the Relic of Destruction.
Gripping the hilt between the trembling fingers of his left hand, he swung in a brutal lateral cut while the distorted momentum still carried him forward.
The blade, glowing purple, tore into the back of the dragon's right leg. The gray-green scales, hard as stone, gave way with some resistance under the relic's edge.
The resistance confirmed what the human had already expected: normal weapons and firearms would do nothing against those scales.
Perhaps his only firearm capable of working would be The Undertaker—but each shot consumed his own vitality. That was why he had instinctively discarded it.
Extremely large, high-yield explosives might be able to wound the beast, but in his current state, he didn't know if he could escape the blast radius in time…
The deep cut split muscle and tendon, sending an arc of thick, dark-red, boiling blood spraying out, hissing against the lake's waters.
Still moving at high speed, unable to stop himself, the human stumbled.
His strengthless legs gave way to the uneven, waterlogged ground, and he fell hard, rolling clumsily through mud and shallow water several times before finally stopping.
With desperate effort, he drove the tip of the Relic of Destruction into the rocky ground. He leaned heavily on the weapon, remaining kneeling on his right knee, with the sole of his bare left foot—his shoes long since destroyed—sunk into the mud as precarious support.
He coughed and spat a mouthful of dense blood to the side. The interior of his wounds pulsed with the violet glow of Shadowflame.
Through his wavering vision—flickering between darkness, blur, and clarity—the human watched the colossal beast turn in fury. Agheel's jaws opened once more, and the back of his throat lit up with the lethal golden glow of gathered embers.
Using the Bone Helm's ability, the human forced the manifestation of a single black hand.
The helm's severely damaged state reduced the number of appendages from eight to just one. However, as a reactive ability of the item itself, the manifestation was instinctive and did not draw from his exhausted reserves of nightmare energy or mental focus.
The shadowy hand formed to the right of his head.
Long, black fingers clenched firmly around the icy blue hilt of the Ice Blade, pulled from his inventory.
With a swift, aggressive swing, the phantom hand cut through the air. A crescent-shaped projectile of ice shot from the blade, crossing the short distance and striking deep into the back of the dragon's open throat.
The ice grew on impact.
The golden glow was instantly swallowed as the ice expanded uncontrollably. Thick layers of frost cracked and locked the dragon's jaws shut, blocking the breath attack.
Frost solidified around its fangs, spreading aggressively across its snout and much of its scaled head with sharp cracking sounds.
Seizing the beast's momentary vulnerability, the human forced himself up from his braced knee, intending to step forward and deliver another strike.
But another part of his body had reached its limit.
"Craak!"
A sharp, unmistakable crack split the air.
The femur of his left leg fractured and snapped in half under the strain. Without support or balance, the human collapsed instantly, falling into the cold, bloodied water of the lake.
As the human remained submerged in the mud, Agheel clenched its jaws.
With brutal force, the dragon bit down on the frozen layer locking its mouth, shattering the ice with ferocity as it thrashed its head to break apart the frost coating its snout.
Without hesitation, the beast roared, threw its jaws wide open, and unleashed another golden torrent of fire toward the intruder.
The human, who had lifted his head and was resting his chin in the mud, watched the flames approach.
Through his clouded thoughts, he quickly realized the Ice Blade wouldn't work; firing ice projectiles against dense, already-formed flames wouldn't be enough to stop them.
He needed another approach. Grasping any coherent thought demanded monumental effort. In his current state, processing even a simple decision felt like pushing an enormous, crushing weight.
Still, he did it. Forcing his mind forward, he ordered the black hand conjured by the Bone Helm to swap the Ice Blade for the Blood Thorn.
The lake was covered in his own spilled blood, so he had to be careful. Focusing the ability, he made the blade resonate strictly with the blood pouring from the freshly opened wound in Agheel's leg.
The Blood Thorn responded instantly.
The dense liquid running along the beast's scales and pooling in the water crystallized explosively. Massive, jagged spikes of red crystal erupted outward, tearing through flesh, muscle, skin, and scale.
They ripped through Agheel's leg from the inside out, partially piercing into his body and the base of his tail as the internal crystallization continued to spread slowly like an infection.
The tearing pain forced the dragon to recoil.
Agheel reacted instinctively, snapping his neck back and roaring in agony.
The abrupt movement threw off the lethal breath, sending the golden fire blasting straight into the night sky like a volcanic eruption that tore through the darkness.
Grabbing the hilt of the Relic of Destruction beside him, the human used it as support. Slowly and painfully, he forced himself upright. With his left femur shattered, he rose in a precarious, staggering stance, placing almost all his weight on his right leg.
Pulling the relic free from the mud with his left arm, he steadied himself as best he could. Then he hurled the sword upward like a heavy spear, aiming for the dragon's left eye as it writhed in pain.
The blade crossed the short distance and drove deep, piercing the eyeball and cracking the beast's skull.
However, due to the human's skewed posture, the throwing angle was slightly off. The tip of the blade missed the brain, passed through the cavity, and burst out the side of the dragon's head, lodging there.
Agheel let out a second shrill scream, the sound vibrating across the lake's surface.
Agonizing with a blade lodged in its head and its blood slowly crystallizing, the dragon lashed its massive tail with brute force, shattering the blood-crystal spikes that restrained it.
It immediately beat its colossal wings, whipping up a storm of mud, water, blood, and crystal, and took to the air.
The intense heat from Agheel's flames, launched into the sky and violently mixing with cold air currents and the heavy humidity above the lake, forced a sudden atmospheric reaction.
The scattered rain clouds already hanging over that region of the Lands Between swelled, rapidly clustering into a dense, storm-laden mass.
It didn't take long for the sky to break.
Rain began to fall—heavy, thick—drowning the world in a darkness that dimmed even the golden glow of the Erdtree.
The entire sky above the lake turned pitch black.
The only visible source of light in that vast expanse of darkness was the oppressive golden glow leaking between Agheel's clenched fangs as he flew above, like a furnace slowly building heat.
On the ground, the human looked up.
Cold rain poured mercilessly over his broken body, washing away part of the thick layer of mud, but exposing the true misery of his condition.
On the visible right side of his face, his single eye burned in the darkness like an orange ember.
His hair, once naturally black, had turned completely gray, having grown rapidly through the distortion of death and loss of vitality until it reached his neck, clinging to him under the weight of water and blood.
On his forehead, the Demon Slayer Mark no longer shone. It lay dormant like an ordinary tattoo—yet one that felt disturbingly alive.
His skin was severely cracked, taking on a sickly gray tone.
Filth and blood covered everything, and from within his deepest wounds, the purple glow of Shadowflame pulsed faintly, struggling against the darkness and the cold breath of the underworld still devouring his essence from within.
Above, Agheel made a wide arc over the lake.
The dragon growled incessantly, a muffled sound of agony. Its right leg hung uselessly, torn and heavy, its blood shattering and crystallizing from the inside out, draining its strength with every beat of its wings.
Consumed by fury and pain, the dragon came back. It dove toward the human, jaws thrown wide.
This time, it wasn't a diffuse breath.
The concentrated fire surged straight from its throat like a violent jet of golden plasma, roaring as it incinerated and vaporized everything in a deadly straight line.
The human, already standing in a wavering, hunched posture beneath his own weight, did not hesitate.
He threw his ruined body forward, falling into a clumsy yet precise roll, slipping out of the direct path of annihilation milliseconds before the ground beneath him boiled under the flames.
Rolling brutally across the wet stone, he used the momentum to rise. He drove the bloody stump of his right hand straight into the ground, cracking the ruins beneath, forcing his body upward until he stood again.
He had fallen onto part of the Dragon-Burnt Ruins.
They were old stone structures worn down by time, with collapsed walls in the distance and moss-covered pillars rising like small, sorrowful islands amid the lake's shallow waters.
Facing the massive silhouette of Agheel above, already circling back for another pass, the human raised his left arm at his side.
His fingers clenched empty air. In response, space warped, and his hand wrapped around the "handle" of the Haemorrhaxe.
He didn't try to hold it suspended—he simply let gravity take over.
The enormous weapon dropped, dragged by its own weight, and slammed into the stone of the ruins with a wet, meaty, repulsive thud—the sound of a colossal mutilated body being thrown onto the ground.
The stone cracked under the weight, splitting into fractures.
The stench of death was already present—but now rot joined it.
Mentally tossing the Blood Thorn back into his inventory, the human commanded the Bone Helm's black hand to overlay and trace over his only functional hand.
Clenching his teeth, he tensed the muscles of his left arm and shoulder to the absolute brink of tearing.
The hollow "voids" in his flesh pulled grotesquely.
Thousands of Nightmare eyes flickered frantically beneath the edges of chewed skin, while glowing symbols and red veins surged across his body, pumping what little vitality he had left into that single limb—even as they spiraled around the "void."
Dark blood leaked from the corner of his cracked lips as he opened his mouth. His voice came out hoarse, ruined, dragged through insanity and madness:
"Filthy divine spawn… lizard…"
The human pulled the heavy Haemorrhaxe from the ground and lifted it.
"I cast you down!"
He hurled the Haemorrhaxe with grotesque force.
The impact on his own body was immediate and devastating. His left shoulder dislocated violently, the muscles of his arm tore from clavicle to forearm, and the already fractured bones gave way with wet cracks under the strain of the impossible throw.
But the Haemorrhaxe flew.
Tearing through the storm-darkened air, the aberrant mass spun at a nearly incalculable speed.
The profane weapon cut through the distance—and struck the dragon head-on.
The mass of bone, muscle, and rotting flesh collided with brutal force, driving straight through the base of Agheel's right wing. The entire structure was torn out at the root, flesh, scales, and tendons exploding outward along with a large portion of the beast's chest musculature.
With its support suddenly annihilated, the massive flight stopped.
Agheel let out a broken screech, drowned out by the thunder of his own blood, before plummeting from the sky and crashing violently into the surface of the lake that bore his name.
The human watched as Agheel fell and slammed into the shallow waters nearly a hundred meters away.
The impact sent up a muddy wave that broke against the ruins.
The human remained still, staring into the darkness in total silence for several long seconds, like a cadaverous statue, listening only to the heavy storm pounding down upon the world.
Slowly, he raised the bloody stump of his right arm and slammed it with brute force against his own left shoulder. A hollow, wet, repulsive crack echoed beneath the rain as the dislocated joint was violently forced back into place.
He then commanded the black hand of the Bone Helm, which was wrapped around his left hand, to release.
The shadowy appendage obeyed, dropping swiftly toward his left leg.
Dark fingers gripped the flesh and the broken femur beneath it, aligning the shattered bone and clamping the pieces together, squeezing them tight like a crude vise.
He then grasped at empty air and pulled the Slick Cane from the Voidbag.
Gripping the handle as firmly as he could, he struck the cane's bone tip against the stone ground and began to walk.
His march beneath the torrential rain was crooked, painful, and unsteady.
The darkness was nearly absolute, broken only by the glow of his single eye, which tore through the night, leaving a trail of suspended orange light with every exhausted step.
He stumbled over submerged stones and drowned roots, falling to his knees more than once, but each time bracing himself on the cane to rise again and keep moving through the mud.
When he finally reached the crash site, the dragon's state was perhaps nearly as deplorable as his own.
Agheel lay sprawled within the crater he had carved into the lake.
His right wing was gone, torn away explosively, leaving a gaping, fleshy cavity in his chest where fragments of organs and broken ribs spilled into the water.
The Relic of Destruction still remained lodged in the side of his skull, and the blood-crystal spikes continued to eat through his legs and tail from within.
Stopping just over two meters from the beast, the human leaned on his cane.
The two stared at each other in silence.
Agheel's massive reptilian head, crowned by an irregular horn at the tip of his snout, covered in cracked scales, lifted shakily.
His single remaining orange-yellow eye locked onto the human's glowing orange one.
Slowly, the back of Agheel's throat lit up.
The lethal golden light of gathering flames built once more as the dragon opened its jaws, preparing one final blast to pulverize the intruder.
The human opened his fingers and released the Slick Cane, letting it fall into the water. In the same instant, he forced his broken body forward into a charge.
He drove the open palm of his left hand, with the full force of his falling body, directly behind the horn on Agheel's snout, violently forcing the dragon's gaping jaws shut.
The breath fired inward.
Blinding golden light burst through the gaps between the dragon's clenched teeth. The pressure and heat of the flames rebounded, turning back and plunging downward, tearing through its own throat, incinerating the airways and the beast's internal body in fractions of a second.
The contained blast traveled until it found the nearest escape within its structure: the massive wound caused by the Haemorrhaxe.
The flames erupted outward.
Golden fire gushed violently from the gaping hole in Agheel's chest like the ruptured valve of a furnace, vomiting a torrent of flames mixed with boiling blood, creating a bloody mist in the rain as charred organs splattered directly into the lake's mud.
The human kept staring at the dragon.
He was hunched, supporting the fragile weight of his own body on the palm of his left hand, which was pressed firmly against Agheel's snout.
Straightening himself with a wavering motion, he extended his hand to the side.
Activating his mental link with the Voidbag, he pulled the Relic of Destruction back into his inventory. The massive blade simply vanished from the side of the beast's skull, causing a thick spray of dark blood and brain matter to spill from the empty hole.
In the same instant, the human made the weapon reappear in midair just above his hand.
He caught the hilt and drove the blade straight down, piercing Agheel's scaled snout into the mud to pin it shut.
Exhausted, he leaned to the left.
The dragon's snout reached his waist, but the irregular horn at its tip rose high enough to serve as support. He rested his shoulder and the side of his head against it, letting his broken neck settle at an awkward angle against the beast's bone structure.
He remained there, motionless like a corpse, staring at the dragon for long seconds.
The two faced each other as the rain fell around them.
Agheel's remaining yellow eye no longer held the dominance of a territorial beast; long ago, it had become the gaze of a creature that was genuinely frightened and broken.
The human's gaze, however, seemed empty.
His single eye glowed in the dark like an unfocused orange lamp. It was lost, as if his mind had shut down and he no longer remembered why he was there or what he was doing. The limits of pain and his melting brain kept his thoughts buried in a dense fog.
The heavy rain continued to lash against the lake's water and mud beneath the dark night.
The only dominant sounds were the pounding of rain and the hiss of bloody vapor still escaping from the charred wounds in the dragon's chest.
The shock of cold water striking the exposed side of his face seemed to bring him back.
The human blinked, appearing to regain immediate focus, and let out a low grunt, weakly shaking his head. Bracing his left hand against the dragon's firm horn, he forced his body upright.
He raised the stump of his right arm and commanded the shadows.
The Bone Helm's black hand released his left leg and flew through the air.
Without the claw holding his fractured femur in place, his leg immediately gave out, bending grotesquely—but with his weight fully supported by his grip on Agheel's horn, he did not fall.
The black hand attached itself to the mutilated stump of his right arm. Darkness stretched outward, forming the shape of a forearm made of dense shadow, ending in long, black fingers.
He looked at the newly formed hand for a few seconds.
He opened and closed the immaterial fingers a few times, testing their responsiveness. His delirious, fogged mind held only one thought: he didn't have a weapon to kill the creature.
So he straightened his fingers, shaping the hand into a blade—and drove it straight into his own chest.
The shadowy fingers pierced through mutilated flesh and sank into the central cavity, passing through the completely ruined space where his heart should have been.
His interior was a wreck of torn muscle, mangled flesh, and blood he kept circulating by sheer force.
He guided the internal hand toward his left ribs. The fingers probed through blood-soaked cartilage until they found the sixth rib.
He gripped the bone tightly. Without hesitation, he pulled.
The sound of tearing flesh and structural bonds being ripped apart briefly overpowered the rain.
The cartilage gave way first, followed by dry cracks as the rear connections were forced beyond their limits.
As he tore the rib free, other parts of the ribcage cracked in sequence.
He wrenched the structure violently out of his own chest.
The motion opened the already ruined cavity even further. A gaping hole formed in his torso, wide enough to expose the hollow interior where his heart should have been.
Nothing but an empty, distorted space, where torn muscles and masses of mutilated flesh contracted irregularly, kept functioning through sheer will.
Thick blood poured freely from it, running down his abdomen and dripping into the mud.
The rib came free in his hand—long, curved, and thick, one of the largest in his frame.
The torn end remained jagged, with fragments of cartilage and tissue still clinging to it, forming a crude, serrated point.
Completely soaked in his own blood, the surface of the bone was covered in engraved, glowing symbols.
Strangely straight lines of gold and silver—the marks of Echo Humanitatis and his Anima—ran along the rib from end to end. Around them, blood-red veins and symbols carved across every exposed section of bone.
The human dragged his broken body forward.
Supporting his weight on his one good leg, he slowly climbed Agheel's snout, using the cracks in the fractured scales and the tilt of the beast's head as precarious footholds.
Once he steadied himself atop the dragon's skull, he raised his own rib.
Both hands—his left, flesh and bone creaking, and his right, formed entirely of dense shadow—gripped the thicker, curved base of the rib.
The jagged tip, sharpened into a crude blade, pointed downward.
Lifting both heavy arms overhead, he tensed what remained of his muscles and struck.
The rib's tip tore through scale and flesh with a wet sound—schkrrk. Hot, dark blood sprayed into the air, splattering directly across the human's already stained face and neck.
Agheel let out a guttural cry—"GHRRRAAAGH!"—a choked wail from within his ruined throat.
The beast tried to lift its head, to thrash its neck in a desperate survival response, but its body did not obey.
The blood-crystal spikes embedded in its legs and tail locked its muscles mercilessly, and its massive wounds had stripped away what little strength remained.
The dragon only trembled beneath him in spasms, releasing a low, broken growl—"khrr... khhrr..."
The human pulled the rib free from the wound. Slowly, moving with the stiff lethargy of a corpse, he raised his arms again.
The second strike fell in the same place.
A hollow, dry crack echoed beneath the torrential rain—CRAK!
The sharpened bone tip slammed against the creature's skull, fracturing it further and sinking centimeters into the split.
Agheel groaned weakly.
The beast convulsed one last time, its single orange-yellow eye trembling in its socket.
For a moment, the human remained still, hands resting on the embedded bone, his head lolling loosely backward.
With his broken neck hanging at an angle, he stared up at the dark sky and the falling storm, cold water striking half his face.
Then, lowering his head again, he pulled the weapon free. In absolute silence, he raised his arms a third—and final—time.
The blow came down directly into the crack.
The rib tore through the cranial membrane and drove deep into the beast's brain.
GREAT ENEMY FELLED!
At the moment of Agheel's death, the colossal body ceased all movement, sinking into the mud under its own weight.
From the stillness of the corpse, a faint golden glow began to leak from the deep wounds, the ruptured chest, and the creature's wide, lifeless eye.
They were runes.
The energy manifested as tiny physical runes, drifting through the damp air like shimmering golden dust. The particles floated toward the blood-soaked rib held in the human's hands and seeped into its structure.
The runic dust sank directly into the red veins, markings, and symbols etched into the bone, settling there like minute, glittering script embedded in blood-red lines.
The human's head dropped forward, motionless.
His chin struck against his own hollowed chest as his arms remained tense, still gripping the rib lodged in the dragon's brain.
After several long seconds frozen in that position, he finally moved.
He wrenched the rib free from the skull with a wet pull and, moving slowly, turned his body. He let himself fall backward, lying sprawled across the dead dragon's snout, between its eyes.
He remained there, his shattered body resting against the rough scales, chest open, wounds faintly burning with violet light, his single glowing eye fixed on the dark sky above, half his face covered by the Bone Helm.
Black clouds covered everything, and the rain continued to fall—heavy and relentless.
His arms lay slack at his sides.
His right arm rested lifelessly, but the shadowy black hand still held the rib tightly, dripping blood and brain matter, faintly glowing with golden runes.
His left arm, like a mirror, lay limp on the other side of Agheel's snout.
In silence, the human stared at the sky.
Like the flame of a candle slowly being extinguished by each raindrop falling upon his dying body, the orange glow of his eye began to fade.
The sound of the heavy rain grew distant, muffled.
None of the Stream's desperate messages reached his sight. None of Jinn's attempts to communicate through the Shadow Puppet lying on the ground reached his ears.
Even the frantic attempts of the "consciousness" within the "brain" of his soul were swallowed and silenced, drowned within the dark, freezing ocean he was slowly sinking into.
The darkness around him deepened with each passing second as his vision flickered, on the verge of going out entirely.
Then—alone in a foreign world beneath the storm—the last light in the human's eye finally began to fade—"No!"
A rough, furious snarl tore from the cracked lips of what, by all rights, should already have been a corpse.
"Not yet… not tonight."
Clenching his blood-stained teeth, the human forced his will upon his ruined flesh one last time, driven by a desperate hunger to survive.
Hhhrrrraaaaahhh…
Then, he tried to breathe.
His chest expanded in a dry, broken motion, like an empty reflex. No air entered. His lungs were torn and collapsed, incapable of sustaining any exchange.
And yet, the motion happened.
The body executed the idea of breathing.
And somehow—that was enough.
His right eye erupted with light, the pure orange glow tearing through and burning away the darkness of the night.
Within his veins, the blood that had begun to slow suddenly surged unnaturally, boiling and pulsing through his shattered body, hot as magma.
From his parted lips and nostrils, a dense, scalding orange mist was exhaled violently, spreading rapidly and engulfing the area around the dragon's corpse, hissing against the falling rain.
With the sudden clarity that struck him—cutting through the delirious haze gnawing at his thoughts—the human began to move.
First of all, he needed blood. A lot of blood.
More specifically, one million liters: [Requirements to Ascend to the Green Stage: 1,000,000 liters]
He forced his torso upright, throwing the dead weight of his body to the left.
His feet searched for footing in the slick, blood-soaked mud of the lake; he stumbled, the broken femur protesting under the strain—but he did not fall.
Staying upright, he shifted all his weight onto his good leg and the sheer force of will now burning in his orange eye.
The orange mist exhaled from his lips and nose now surrounded him like a mantle, and his gray hair, hanging just below his neck, swayed under the force of the storm and the energy radiating from his body.
Slowly, he drove his left hand into the gaping hole in his chest. His fingers sank into mutilated flesh, probing the absolute "nothing" where his heart should have been.
Between his fingers, The Chalice materialized.
It was a simple item, devoid of unnecessary ornamentation, yet colored in a deep blood-red identical to the fluid leaking from his wounds.
As he pulled the Chalice from within his chest cavity, the flow of his blood stopped instantly.
Without the Chalice acting as a "spearhead" to guide the manual circulation, the flow began to slow rapidly.
The human felt the weakness immediately.
He didn't have much time now—but he knew it would be enough.
He mentally visualized part of the item's status:
[…]
Current Restoration Stage: Blue
Ability Name: Blood Transmutation
Effect:
Upon reaching the Blue Stage, the Chalice gains the ability to convert any blood poured into its cup into another type of blood.
The greater the vital potency of the desired blood, the larger the quantity of weaker blood required for conversion.
At the Blue Restoration Stage, the Chalice gains the ability to create new types of blood. However, it can only convert blood into types it already knows—those that have previously been sacrificed to and absorbed by it.
Known blood types:
Human (+)
Terrarian (+)
Faunus (+)
Beastkin (+)
Dwarf (+)
Goblin (+)
Wolf (+)
Orc (+)
Bird (+)
Troll (+)
Rabbit (+)
Antlion (+)
...
[NEW!] Dragon.
[…]
[NEW!] Next Restoration Stage: Green
Ability Name: Blood Self
Effect:
Grants the Master absolute kinetic and biological control over their own blood—and only their own.
The Master gains precise control over the flow, pressure, and movement of their blood within their body.
Allows the Master to solidify their own blood into constructs of extreme hardness, such as weapons, projectiles, or armor.
The Master may accelerate tissue regeneration, instantly purge toxins and poisons from their bloodstream, and hyper-oxygenate muscles to achieve sudden bursts of strength and speed.
[…]
The Blue Stage had been reached just over two days ago.
At the time, upon seeing the colossal amount of blood required to ascend to the Green Stage, the human had been discouraged. There had been no pressure, no immediate need for that specific ability.
But now, with his body in ruins and death breathing down his neck, he needed it.
He extended his hand forward and tilted the Chalice over Agheel's corpse, as if pouring out an invisible liquid. Though it appeared empty, a scarlet torrent began to gush forth.
Liters upon liters of blood, accumulated within the item's internal reservoir over the past few days—his own blood.
While the Chalice existed within his heart, the human had designated one third of all blood passing through it to be diverted into the Chalice.
That would have killed any normal person in minutes—if not seconds—but for him, it had merely forced his body to produce more blood to meet the new demand.
The human released the Chalice, which remained suspended in the air, continuing its steady outpour.
The blood spilled over Agheel's scales, running down into the water and soil below, already stained red, turning the ground into a growing crimson pool.
The moment the liquid touched Agheel's body, the dead dragon's blood began to be "absorbed," drawn as if alive toward the stream pouring from the Chalice, merging into a single flow.
As the blood continued to pour, the human reached into the Voidbag and retrieved another item: a white card.
The Blank Card.
The object felt as strange as ever in his hand, and looked wrong to his single eye.
Ignoring the sensation, he held the Blank Card between his fingers and stared at it for a moment.
His perception—sharpened now by madness, near-death insight, and the awareness of his own insignificance—whispered a bitter truth: nothing was guaranteed.
Least of all tomorrow.
He remembered the thought that had led him to choose this world over the other Rainbow ticket.
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown...
Parting his lips slowly, he completed the phrase in a whisper nearly lost to the rain—yet heard by many:
"And the oldest and strongest unknown is the uncertainty of tomorrow…"
The item's words echoed in his mind: ~ This is not the right world. ~
It would never be the right world.
If he waited for the perfect opportunity—for the "ideal world"—even if such a place existed, he might never live to see it.
He could not afford to wait.
As Agheel's blood was drained into the Chalice, the human activated the Blank Card between his fingers. It melted into a pulsing, amorphous form, hovering above his palm.
The moment the Blank Card activated, the human breathed a second time. More and more orange mist spread outward, thickly covering Agheel's corpse and the blood-soaked waters of the lake.
He knew that once activated, the item would absorb information from the surrounding world and reshape itself accordingly.
So, with that in mind, he would simply reshape the world first.
If he couldn't find the "ideal world," he would create one as close as possible.
As the orange mist engulfed the surroundings, the human brought the rib held in his shadowed right hand to his mouth and bit down on it, clamping the bone between his teeth.
With his left hand now free, he grasped the air—and slowly, a hallucination born of illusion began to take form.
The manifestation took shape from the bottom up. First came the pommel, then the grip, followed by the crossguard, until finally the blade itself was formed.
From the illusory light emerged a long blade—elegant in shape, yet veined with glowing cracks that ran through it like exposed arteries.
Its edge pulsed in red and black, like magma trapped beneath a fragile golden crust.
The guard was adorned with worn gold, and at its center burned a deep crimson core—a pulsing orange glow, like an eye wrapped in flame.
The hilt, wrapped in dark leather, seemed to devour the shadows around it—an anchor for a weapon that should not exist.
Its oppressive presence lit the world around it.
The translucent outline of Excalibur Asura shimmered slowly.
The weapon wasn't truly there. In his current state, the human couldn't manifest anything more than a fragile illusion of an illusion—but even its image was enough for the orange mist around him to react, as if it carried the presence of the Nameless Foreign World.
The human drove the blade into the ground. It passed through the earth without truly touching or damaging it, yet remained planted there all the same, serving as an anchor despite not "existing."
Grasping the concept of a "door" from the Apprentice sequence, the human created one door within the Spiritual Realm and another within the orange mist.
Slowly, a large, double-leaf door—illusory, sealed, and marked with countless strange symbols—formed from the mist.
The human didn't even try to open it. He knew it was impossible for his current self.
Even so, though the illusory door could not be opened, the mere "fact" that a "door" existed caused the "connection" between the Nameless Foreign World and the Lands Between to deepen.
Like a painting—the Lands Between—being stained by the paint of another—the Nameless Foreign World—the surrounding environment seemed to be tainted by the orange mist.
Letting his spirituality leak from the fingertips of his left hand, the human tried to recall the sensation of the gray mist from the Fool's world, linking that feeling with the "consciousness" in the "brain" of his soul.
Because that "consciousness" had been copied from something native to that world, he found the process far easier than expected.
Around his fingers, swirling across his left palm, the orange mist slowly began to lose its color and the human aspect tied to the presence of the Nameless Foreign World.
In its place, it took on a deeper, more inscrutable quality—becoming, at last, a thin gray fog.
A clear imitation, lacking the true "weight" and absolute "symbolism" of the genuine gray fog—but more than sufficient for his purpose.
"Ten… thirty… sixty…" the human murmured through clenched teeth, the rib still wedged between them.
He wasn't a painter, but he understood the theory. Providing the "paint" was his role—the one who would "paint" was the world itself.
Sensing that this was the most he could add, the human waited. He felt that introducing a fourth "world" into the mix would do more harm than good.
With three, there was a fragile balance—a trinity that formed the foundation of everything. Anything beyond that, he felt, would inevitably collapse the pathway he was forging.
Above his palm, the amorphous mass began to react to the pressure of the three "worlds" surrounding it.
It twisted violently, spasming, melting and shifting through random, grotesque forms—impossible angles, malformed claws, unnatural textures—before contracting, briefly taking on the shape of a ring, only to flatten and solidify once more into the form of a card.
The human held it between his fingers and turned it over, revealing its face.
The card's background was an abyssal expanse of dark space, filled with countless points of orange light resembling stars.
At its center floated a blue and green planet.
Earth.
Below it, two golden human hands—detached, without arms—were cupped as if gently holding the world.
They did not touch the planet. A small, eternal gap remained between them, as though they could not—or deeply feared to—make contact.
The hands were connected to a uniform, closed circular ring that enclosed the entire scene, forming a clear and absolute boundary between the empty exterior and the interior.
Protecting the world from what lay beyond.
Above the planet, an orange eye stared forward—watchful, vigilant.
At the bottom, anchored to the lines of the ring, a rectangular plaque with ornate edges bore its name.
A title:
The Foreigner.
[The Blasphemy Card — The Foreigner has been created!]
[...]---[...]
As explained, the stupid decisions in this chapter are because Devas is operating at about 6% of his full capacity—and maybe 3% of his brain. Cut my boy some slack.
Agheel's dead, runes in hand (rib)—we're not dying tonight.
You all guessed the damn creation of the Blasphemy Card, obviously. I'm not even surprised at this point.
For clarification: The Blank Card works by absorbing information from the world around it.
If the card were used only in LOTM, it would absorb that information and create some kind of Sealed Artifact or an already existing Blasphemy Card—something along those lines.
Since it was used in contact with the Nameless Foreign World, the card created something compatible with Devas.
If it had been used in contact with the Nameless Foreign World and part of the LOTM world (a copy of the gray fog), then what would be created would be something LOTM-related, but still compatible with Devas.
But since it was used in contact with the Nameless Foreign World, part of the LOTM world (the gray fog copy), and within the world of Elden Ring—which is basically about blaspheming against the divine until you reach it—it ended up creating a Pathway compatible with Devas, with aspects of Elden Ring/LOTM.
The sequences will be revealed over time. Sequence 9 and 8 should appear in the next chapter.
I've got an AI-generated image of the Pathway. I'll commission an artist later—I already hired one to create an image of Devas that will show up in the next chapter.
As always, good afternoon, everyone, and enjoy the chapter!