Chapter 2: Restoration
"Vos des!"
Mike's voice cracked through the heavy air—ragged, desperate, each word torn from a throat that had already surrendered to death. Blood pooled beneath him where his leg had been, dark and viscous, spreading across the churned earth like spilled wine.
"I know… this must be why the cult sent us." His chest heaved. Each breath was labor. "We have to kill him before he grows any stronger."
"Vos," Kakarai intoned flatly.
He jabbed a finger toward the empty space where Mike's limb had once been.
Mike's gaze followed—and the world tilted.For
a heartbeat, pure terror carved itself across his face. Eyes wide. Mouth slack. Thedisbelief . His expression shattered, twisting into something broken and unhinged. Laughter spilled out—high, frantic, teetering on the edge of madness.
"Ahahahaha—Kakarai! Please…" He clawed at the dirt, dragging himself forward with nails that tore and bled. "Give me your blood! Heal me!"
Kakarai stood motionless.
Head tilted at an unnatural angle. Eyes gleaming with something far darker than loyalty. The smile that pulled at his lips did not reach any part of him that had once been human.
"Why are you hesitating?" Mike's voice thinned, dragged under by blood loss and the creeping cold. "Hei!"
"Hei."
Kakarai's lips peeled back.
He looked like a demon freshly clawed from the abyss—all teeth and hunger.
With deliberate slowness, he shrugged off his blood-red robe. The fabric pooled at his feet like a wound opening. Beneath, his torso was a map of ritual scars—lines carved with purpose, symbols branded into flesh, the centerpiece a festering inscription carved deep across his chest.
The letters writhed.
They moved like worms burrowing through meat, pulsing with sickly crimson light. The wound breathed. In and out, Hungry.
"Haha… so that's how it is."
Mike tilted his head back. His eyes found the sky—bruised purple, indifferent, eternal. Acceptance settled over him like a shroud, heavy and cold.
"It's the way of the cult." His voice was barely a whisper. "Let the world drown in blood." He coughed with a smile that was more grimace than joy. "Kakarai… do it. Consume me."
Step.
Kakarai advanced. Bare feet silent against the gore-soaked ground. His shadow stretched long and wrong behind him, reaching toward the treeline like fingers grasping.
Step.
Mike did not close his eyes. He watched. He waited.
Stab.
Kakarai's arm punched forward—clean, merciless, surgical. His hand drove through Mike's chest with the ease of a knife entering liquid. Bone cracked. Flesh parted. Mike's heart ruptured between his fingers.
Kakarai lifted the corpse effortlessly, slinging it over his shoulder like a butcher hauling fresh slaughter. Blood poured in thick rivulets down his extended arm.
But it did not drip.
It moved.
Crawling toward his flesh. Drawn by invisible threads, the crimson streams coiled toward the rotting inscription on Kakarai's chest. Sinking into the pulsing letters, slowly absorbed into the wound as though the flesh itself drank greedily.
"Vos!"
Kakarai's voice rose—ecstatic, delirious, breaking apart into sounds that had no meaning beyond worship.
Mike's body began to sink into his being.
Skin split. Meat reknit. Bone ground against bone with a sound like stones being crushed. In moments, Kakarai's right arm bloated and twisted into something grotesque—demonic, veined with black, ending in claws that gleamed wetly in the dying light.
Mike's head protruded from his shoulder like a tumor.
Eyes burning with sickly emerald flame. The mouth hung open, frozen in a silent scream that would never end.
From his storage ring, Kakarai drew forth a massive tome. Its binding was made from human flesh and its pages seemed to breathe. The cover bore letters that did not sit on the surface but bled into it, sinking, staining the earth.
Worship the Blood River.
He opened it with reverent care, tracing the ancient script with a blood-soaked finger. His lips moved, shaping words that had no sound, that perhaps had never been meant for mortal throats.
"Vos… Vos vos vo… Vos des."
He nodded slowly, as though the book whispered secrets only he could hear.
"Vos ehh."
---
Meanwhile, Dax was far from idle.
"You almost had me," he said quietly.
He rose from the crater where Kakarai's blow had hurled him. Shattered rock crumbled into fine dust beneath his feet, drifting away on the thickening wind. He dusted off his robe. Like he was recovering from a minor inconvenience.
Telekinesis lifted him with effortless grace meters into the air, hovering above the cultists like a scholar observing specimens beneath glass. Blood still trickled from the corner of his mouth, but his eyes burned with something that was not pain.
"Oh? They're preparing something."
He watched the final stages of the ritual with detached curiosity. Head tilted. Expression neutral.
Interesting.
Almost casually, he reached down and plucked Mike's severed leg from the ground. He examined it for a moment—turning it over, noting the angle of the break, the way the blood coagulated.
Bringing it to his lips he bit down with every bite was deliberate like he was savoring tge taste.
There was no hesitation as he swallowed. The act was not rushed. It was savage in its calmness— like a man sampling jerky on a leisurely afternoon.
"Ahh!"
The scream tore downward from the heavens.
Raw. Anguished. Laced with divine fury that made the air itself recoil.
The ground shuddered. The sky cracked. Rain began to fall.
Pat.
A droplet struck Dax's upturned palm. He stared at it, brow furrowing faintly.
"It's raining…"
The liquid was warm. Thick. Metallic.
He lifted his hand to his face, letting it run between his fingers.
"Crimson," he murmured. "Blood?"
Ding.
Ding.
Ding.
A cascade of ethereal chimes rang inside his skull. Clear. Pure. Inevitable.
Congratulations, Master. You have broken 105 shackles.
Restoring physical body to the Trait General realm.
Power flooded back into him like a dam finally bursting.
Warm. Familiar. Intoxicating.
"Ahhhhh…"
Dax exhaled, long and low. His entire body vibrated with deep, bone-level satisfaction. Veins lit faintly beneath his skin—gold and crimson intertwined—as ancient strength reawakened in chambers of his being that had been sealed for too long.
He turned his gaze downward.
Kakarai stared up at him, horror carving new lines into his already twisted face.
"Fucking bug."
With serene composure, Dax crossed his legs midair into a perfect lotus position. Behind him, reality tore open forming a black hole yawning wide, edged in absolute darkness, hungry beyond comprehension. Above his head, two radiant halos materialized and stacked, their light soft and deceptive nature.
At first, the pull was subtle.
Then it became ravenous.
Every drop of rain curved toward him. Streams defying gravity, spiraling into the void. The black hole drank greedily, and with every swallowed droplet, Dax's presence grew heavier. More oppressive. The weight of a world pressing down on a single point.
"Vo! Vosss!"
Kakarai staggered. His legs trembled beneath the crushing pressure radiating from Dax's body. His knees buckled involuntarily. The demonic arm scraped against dirt, clawing for what did not exist.
"What are you doing?"
Vabon's voice erupted from the earth as he burst partially upward. His face was pale, drained of energy.
"We need to report back. We've failed the mission." His eyes darted toward the sky, toward Dax, toward anything that was not Kakarai's twisted form. "Kakarai—move!"
Without another word, Vabon sank once again into the ground.
Fleeing like a bolting shadow—desperate, dishonorable and alive.
"Damn… that is a monster." His voice echoed up from the depths, thin and shaking. "Why did he let his companions die if he had this kind of strength? The cult miscalculated. I will not die here. I will not—"
"Halt."
Dax's voice drifted downward.
His eyes were still closed. His posture had not shifted. But the word carried the absolute weight of divine command.
Setting over the battlefield like a shroud.