Two days had passed.
Dr. Aris, impatient, checked on Cassian every hour, too excited to sleep. Slumped in his chair, he watched the boy lying unconscious inside the capsule, occasionally whispering fragmented memories of his own past life.
Then… the atmosphere around the capsule suddenly began to change. A foreign aura had joined the ominous presence of Lilith's curse. Dr. Aris's eyes gleamed with excitement; the moment he had been waiting for these past two days had finally arrived. But deep in his heart, there was a dark feeling that something was wrong.
Suddenly, black flames engulfed the capsule. The aura of Lilith's curse was now besieged by those sinister dark flames. The two forces were waging a relentless war for control over the boy's body. Cold sweat trickled down Dr. Aris's forehead.
"This… this wasn't supposed to happen…" he mumbled through trembling lips.
As the battle intensified, something unexpected occurred. A third, overwhelming aura, born of pure darkness, joined the fray. It moved in concert with Kaiser's flames, fighting in harmony with them to suppress Lilith's curse. With each passing second, the curse grew weaker, dragged toward annihilation. Unable to withstand the weight of these three auras any longer, the capsule shattered with an ominous crack.
Dr. Aris watched in horror. He could understand the source of the first two auras, but this third one… It carried a power so deep and ancient it could have belonged to the old dark gods. What was such a thing doing inside the boy's body? Moreover, why was it in harmony with Kaiser's flames?
As the curse weakened, the power density in Cassian's mana core surged, and the boy experienced successive ascensions. First to the third level, then the fourth… he advanced without stopping until the seventh ascension. Finally, Lilith's curse was completely extinguished, vanishing into nothingness. Cassian now stood at the peak of the seventh ascension. But the power in his body was still growing.
With each ascension, his Mana Core, unable to bear the might within, was shaken by deep cracks. It trembled like a heart ready to shatter at any moment and was seconds away from complete destruction.
Just then, Cassian's eyes opened.
He pushed himself up on the wet floor, amidst the shards of broken glass. Two eyes, one blood-red, the other pitch-black, locked onto Dr. Aris like harbingers of death. Cassian pushed his hair back with one hand. His face wore a contemptuous expression, as if he were looking at a worthless insect.
Dr. Aris's body screamed at him to run.
But he couldn't tear his eyes away from Cassian. It was as if the slightest wrong move would mean the end of his life…
In an instant, Cassian vanished from where he stood.
Dr. Aris froze, stunned by the disappearance that had happened right before his eyes.
The next second, he felt a terrible pain in his chest. Looking down, he saw blood gushing from two deep cuts that slashed diagonally across his chest.
"Wha…?"
Standing before him was not the boy who had been unconscious in the capsule moments ago, but death itself, holding a sword made of black flames: Cassian.
A sudden kick slammed into Dr. Aris's stomach. The blow was so powerful that it sent him flying from room to room, shattering the walls.
He staggered to his feet, covered in blood, but something was wrong—he couldn't feel his arms. He glanced around in a panic, only to see blood streaming down from his shoulders. His arms were already gone.
"Damn it… What's happening… why is all this—"
His words were cut short by a punch from beneath his chin.
"Shut up, you old fool."
Cassian's voice was like a headsman delivering the final verdict. He watched him with the eyes of a predator. As he raised his sword again, Dr. Aris screamed in desperation:
"Subjects! Puppets! Stop him!"
From every corner of the laboratory, masked men and pathetic test subjects lunged at Cassian. Dr. Aris, hoping the boy would hesitate, added with a demonic grin:
"You wouldn't kill them, would you? They're children who were tormented here, just like you…"
Not a flicker of emotion crossed Cassian's face. The attacks swarmed him from all directions, threatening to suffocate the darkness. Dr. Aris felt a momentary rush of relief, thinking his plan had worked, when…
Cassian whispered:
"Absolute Intersection."
First, it was as if time had stopped. Everything fell into silence.
Then, in an instant, the entire laboratory—the subjects, the masked men, even the walls—was shattered to dust by a single sword strike.
Even Dr. Aris, in the blink of an eye, had been split in two at the torso.
"Damn it… I never thought I'd be forced to do this… now. Damn you, you brat!"
As a last resort, Dr. Aris pulled a black pill from his pocket and swallowed it.
He used his final trump card to buy time.
Choking on blood, he screamed:
"Awaken, Chimeraaa!"
A massive crack formed on the floor of the ruined laboratory. The ground trembled as if an ancient beast were awakening from deep below. From among the shattered test tubes and piles of metal, an unimaginable creature arose. It was a fusion that neither nature nor reason would accept. Limbs from different animals were merged with parts of decaying human bodies; trembling flesh and bare bones were locked together in a grotesque harmony. The monster had six massive arms, and enormous tentacles writhed from its back as if they had a will of their own. Countless eyes, scattered across its body, moved constantly, scanning every inch of its surroundings.
It was the embodiment of disaster, designed for perfect destruction, leaving no openings for its foe.
The Chimera had answered its master's call.
The beast acted on a single instinct: to protect Dr. Aris. Sensing Cassian's murderous aura, the Chimera didn't hesitate for a second. A part of its body liquefied like jelly and enveloped Dr. Aris. The terrified doctor was now safe inside the Chimera's core, as if in a cage.
As soon as this disgusting union was complete, the Chimera tore through the earth with its massive claws as if it were paper and dove underground. It sped away through the tunnel it left behind, carrying its master away from death.
Cassian, left alone amidst the rubble, showed no sign of panic. He simply focused on the spot where the earth's tremors had subsided, a scornful look on his face. Escaping underground would not save them.
He slowly placed his hand on the ground. The sword of black flames vanished, and in its place, pure darkness began to spread from his palm. This darkness seeped through the cracks, penetrating deep into the earth.
The next moment, the entire underground turned into an inferno. Cassian's dark flames filled every cavity beneath the soil, melting rocks and turning the earth to ash. The flames, which had turned the underground into a hellish furnace, instantly caught the fleeing Chimera.
A chorus of agonizing screams from countless creatures rose from within the beast. Dr. Aris, inside his cocoon of the monster's flesh, was experiencing the horror of being cooked alive. Remaining underground was no longer an option.
BOOM!
The earth exploded as if it were a volcano. The Chimera, writhing in flames, launched itself to the surface. The sky was cloaked in the darkness of night, and the bright moon cast its silvery light upon the land. The monster, reeking of burnt flesh and smoke, crashed into an empty field illuminated by the moonlight. A large portion of its body had melted, and the fleshy sac protecting Dr. Aris was on the verge of disintegrating.
Just then, a silhouette appeared at the edge of the crater created by the explosion. Cassian walked calmly toward them, as if born from the shadows themselves. The moonlight created a deadly glint in his eyes, one blood-red, the other pitch-black. His sword of black flames had reformed in his hand.
The contemptuous expression on Cassian's face never wavered. "What's the matter, doctor? Don't you like pain? To think that someone who inflicts so much of it could be so weak... you're truly pathetic."