The Akashic Mandate

Chapter 8

The black fire washed over the beast. The shadow-flesh melted instantly. The ribs burned away into nothing. The beast turned to ash in his hands.

The golden orb entered his chest.

Instantly, the deep bite mark on his left arm stopped bleeding. The torn muscle knitted itself back together in a fraction of a second. The pain vanished completely, replaced by a warm, soothing comfort. The tiredness in his swinging arms disappeared. He was perfectly healed, and his stamina was completely reset.

Elijah’s eyes went wide. He understood the system now. He understood the Akashic Mandate.

As long as he kept killing, he could not get tired. As long as he kept absorbing their souls, he could heal any wound. He was practically invincible, as long as he never stopped fighting.

The realization was intoxicating. It was like a powerful drug.

Elijah let out a loud, wild laugh. The sound frightened him a little, but he could not stop. The dark energy was pushing him, driving him to kill more.

He jumped into the middle of the remaining pack. He became a blur of violent motion. He fought using basic, brutal martial arts—punches, kicks, and knee strikes, but every single hit was powered by the explosive black fire.

He kicked a hound in the chest, snapping its spine. He grabbed another by the jaw and ripped its mouth apart, blasting fire down its throat. A hound scratched his back, tearing his shirt and his skin. Elijah simply spun around, crushed the beast’s skull with his bare hands, absorbed its orb, and felt the deep cuts on his back heal instantly.

It was a beautiful, bloody, terrible dance. Every time he took damage, he felt a split second of pain. But then he killed, he devoured, and the pain turned into pure pleasure.

Smash. Burn. Devour. Heal.

The cycle repeated over and over. Blue text flashed constantly in his vision, but he ignored the words. He only focused on the feeling. The raw, violent power. He was an engine of destruction, burning everything in his path.

Less than five minutes later, the battle was over.

Elijah stood alone on the rocky shore. He was breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling. His gray shirt was completely torn to rags. He was covered in black ash, dark mud, and bright red blood.

But beneath the dirt, his body was completely perfect. There was not a single scratch on him. His muscles felt tight and powerful. He felt like he could run for a hundred miles without stopping.

He looked around. The ground was covered in the gray ash of the dead monsters. The thirty Lesser Hellhounds were completely gone, erased from existence.

Elijah slowly lowered his hands. He willed the black fire to stop, and the flames shrank down, disappearing into his skin.

As the battle adrenaline slowly faded away, a cold feeling washed over Elijah’s mind. He looked at his own two hands. They were shaking.

"What is happening to me?" he whispered to himself.

He thought about the wild laugh that had come from his own mouth during the fight. He thought about how much he had enjoyed crushing the monsters' skulls. He had enjoyed the violence. On Earth, he only fought to survive. He hated killing. He hated the blood. But here, with the dark fire in his veins, he had loved every second of the slaughter.

He pressed his hand against his chest. The golden energy was swirling inside him, warm and heavy. The system had called him a "Devourer." It had warned him that the power was a forbidden law.

Was the magic changing his mind? Was it making him evil? He had just escaped becoming a mindless, hungry Hollow on Earth. He did not want to become a different kind of monster in this strange new world.

He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. He needed to find answers. He needed to find other people, if any lived in this terrible place.

Elijah walked away from the blood river, moving past the shattered remains of the giant dead tree. He walked into the dark, twisted forest.

The purple light of the cracked moon barely reached the forest floor. The ground was covered in dead, dry leaves that crunched loudly under his heavy boots. As he walked deeper into the woods, he noticed something strange on the ground.

Among the small, scattered tracks of the Lesser Hellhounds, there was a different set of footprints.

These tracks were huge. Each footprint was the size of a large shield, pressed deep into the hard, black dirt. Whatever made these tracks was massive, incredibly heavy, and moving in a straight line toward the center of the broken continent.

"An Alpha," Elijah muttered, staring at the giant prints.

He decided to follow the tracks. If there was a larger monster, it might be heading toward a food source. And in a place like this, a food source usually meant people.

Elijah walked for over an hour. The strange purple sky never changed. There was no sunrise. The heavy, magical gravity of the world made every step feel slightly harder than normal, but his newly enhanced body did not get tired.

Eventually, the dead forest began to thin out. Elijah stepped out from the trees and stopped in his tracks, staring at the sight before him.

Sitting in the middle of a vast, flat plain of black ash was a massive building. It was a cathedral, built in a beautiful, ancient gothic style. But it was completely ruined.

The tall stone towers reached up toward the purple sky, but their tops were broken off, looking like jagged teeth. Huge stone gargoyles hung from the edges of the roof, but their faces were smashed and broken. The giant wooden front doors were hanging off their iron hinges, smashed inward by some incredible force.

Elijah slowly approached the ruined cathedral. The air around the building smelled strongly of old incense, burning wax, and the sharp, metallic smell of fresh blood.

He carefully stepped over the broken wooden doors and walked into the grand hallway.

The inside of the cathedral was huge and dark. The moonlight shone through massive, broken stained-glass windows, casting colorful, dusty light onto the stone floor. Long rows of wooden benches were smashed into splinters. The beautiful statues of angels holding swords lined the walls, but someone, or something, had violently scratched the faces off every single angel.

The place felt holy, but abandoned. It felt like the Gods had left a long, long time ago.

Cough. Cough.

The wet, painful sound echoed softly through the large, empty room.

Elijah froze. His hand instinctively balled into a fist, ready to summon the black fire. He walked slowly and silently down the center aisle, moving toward the front of the church.