God Ash: Remnants of the fallen.

Chapter 272: Chaos Goblins.

A flood of light broke through his closed eyelids, dying the world around him with a crimson hue.

Cain's eyes fluttered open as he tried to regain his bearings.

"Blegh!"

His eyes opened wide as he threw up the contents of his stomach. When there was nothing else left to throw up, he continued retching for some time before he finally stopped.

'That... Wouldn't do that again. Never.'

Cain felt his head throbbing severely. However, the pain quickly washed away as the warm energy flowing in his body circulated.

However, he was assaulted with another type of pain as an intense hunger made him tremble weakly.

"Food..." His throat felt dry and cracked as well.

He stood to his feet weakly and turned around. Behind him, in the far distance, was the forest he had come to know as the Garden of Self-Reflection.

Cain had no idea why he had been teleported so far away, but he didn't want to think about it too much. After all, he had other things he needed to be thinking about.

He slowly turned his head around to gaze at the mountains looming in the not-so-far distance.

"T-they are bigger than I thought." Cain's face paled significantly when he saw the mountains.

Their sheer height and scale were enough for him to nearly develop aero phobia just by looking at them. Not only that but there were a lot of cliffs. The mountains were not going to be easy to climb at all. In reality, it would have been impossible for someone who couldn't fly to climb them.

However, Cain had the gloves that had been gifted to him by Og-Solath.

"He knew I would need them." Cain was suspicious. After all, the devil had no idea he was coming, so it seemed just a little bit too inconvenient that it would have created an item like this that would suit his purpose.

"It doesn't matter either way." Shaking his head, Cain fought the intense hunger pangs and began walking forward.

He had a lot of climbing to do...

***

From the foot of the mountains, Cain saw the sharp sword-like peaks cut through the clouds. For some reason, despite the layers of clouds between him and the mountain peaks, he could still see them clearly, almost like they were taunting him with the unachievable dreams of touching them.

Shaking his head, Cain summoned the {Abhorrent Devil Enchanted Gloves} or Abhorrwnt Gloves for short.

The gloves materialized onto his hands with a flash and he got to take a better look at them. They were black with blue and white lines running across them. Cain could see that each line was created with hundreds of runes chained together.

'Incredible...'

With his limited knowledge of how runes and magic circles worked, Cain knew for a fact that the effort, materials, and knowledge required to create the gloves were top-notch. Despite that, he couldn't figure out why they were only graded as [Deadly].

From what he could understand about item and weapon grades, he knew they were determined mostly by the materials used in their creation, the power and tier of their creator, and most importantly, the expertise and knowledge of the creator...

'A primordial devil should create something of the celestial grade, right?'

Although he was suspicious, Cain shoved these distractions to the back of his mind.

'Now isn't the time to ponder on these things.'

He began circulating his mana within the gloves. The blue and white lines began to glow. He suddenly felt a lot lighter. Because of {Gravity-Defying}, the runic array on his body, he was already fifty percent lighter than he was supposed to be.

"This is..." Cain's eyes widened in amazement. It was almost like the smallest movement would send him flying through the skies.

A grin slowly appeared on his face as he kicked against the ground. His body immediately soared toward the sky. When he felt his skyward momentum was decreasing, he latched onto a crevice in the rocks of the mountain. Exerting just a little strength, he pulled up.

His body shot up like a rocket. Occasionally his speed would drop as he still exercised caution. After all, he had no idea what lurked within these rocks.

The Evil Mountains had a strange structure. Cain had no idea why or how something so absurd could have formed naturally. He had inspected the rocks' strata and found out that the surface rocks were mostly metamorphic.

When he thought about it, he realized that the mountains were most likely formed by volcanic activity.

However, the way they were shaped was more like the molten magma had been forced out from deep within the ground and had been turned into a lumbering mountain, which was very strange.

However, it got stranger the further up he went. Not only did the rocks begin to change and become darker and more igneous, but he also began to notice the caves...

He had seen a lot of caves when traveling through this strange land that wasn't quite located within the Aether Realm. However, they were different from these caves. These caves were all interconnected.

And for some reason, he didn't want to enter any of them. He felt his instincts warn him of the dangers lying in wait for him within the caves.

Hence he tried his best to avoid entering any of these caves. He moved as far away from them as possible. He didn't even need them because he could move even faster relying on the Abhorrent Gloves and [Gravity Defying}.

Cain had just gotten used to the rather peaceful journey when he suddenly heard a slight whistle in the air.

His eyes widened when he caught something flying at him from the corner of his eyes. Cursing this luck in his head he activated {Golden Halos}.

BANG!

The sound of a single halo shattering filled Cain's ears. He stopped his movement to stare in the direction the projectile came from.

There, right in front of the cave system, was a strange creature. Cain immediately realized the creature looked quite familiar.

'The Devil Spawn?'

The creature before his eyes looked like the {Bladeless Devil Spawn}. However, there were a few things different this time. The creature's features were much more well-defined. In a bad way...

It had sharp teeth and a long, black tongue rolling out of its mouth as it stared at Cain with a huge grin that spread across its wide mouth. Cain recoiled in disgust. The creature's eyes were glowing red, and he could sense a rather familiar energy within the creature.

'The same energy I emit when in my Rakshasa form?' Cain's eyes narrowed when he saw this.

He had no idea what was going on at this point. The creature was not abnormally huge, just a little shorter than he was.

He activated the {Eye of Clairvoyance} and focused on the creature to bring its description out.

***

{Chaos Goblin}: Level 60(Elite)

Strength: 500.

Agility: 500.

Defense: 100.

HP: 8,000/8,000.

Aether: 5,000/5,000.

Skills: Magic Resistance, Basic Weapon-Handling, Devil Source.

***

Cain stared at the creature in shock...

'It's... Weak?' Cain couldn't express his thoughts in words.

However, he still frowned. The creature's long-range attack was capable of destroying the magical properties of {Golden Halo} although it couldn't destroy all five at once, destroying even one with a single attack was already very impressive considering how terrible the creature's attacks were.

However, Cain simply summoned a spinning {Flame Orb} and shot it at the creature. The orb of compressed flames shot at the gesticulating creature and exploded with a bang.

Cain heard the creature let out a scream of pain with satisfaction but was shocked when he realized that the system hadn't awarded him the necessary commentary to indicate his victory over the detestable impish creature.

Indeed, Cain watched as the creature stumbled to its feet, blood streaming from its forehead.

"What?!" Cain's eyes widened as he stared at the creature before him. However, his expression quickly morphed into a frown.

'Magic Resistance, huh...' Cain had an ugly expression as the creature shook its head to clear its momentary confusion. Once it was done, it directed a nasty, angry glare at him.

Cain saw it pull a short javelin from its back. A layer of energy wrapped around the spear, causing his eyes to open. However, when a wave of familiar energy also wrapped around it again, Cain knew he had to stop being surprised.

Both Aether and Devil Essence were now flowing around the shaft and sharp head of the javelin.

The creature's muscles bulged as it flung the projectile forward. Cain gritted his teeth as he excited the mana flowing in him. Thick metal plates suddenly shot out of the mountainside and tried to block the spear. However, it simply pierced through the thick metal plates.

However, the momentum of the javelin was killed rather quickly. Cain quickly deactivated {Dovine Essence of Metallurgy} just in time to see the little bastard run back into the cave.

Not knowing whether to give chance or simply leave the creature and continue his journey, Cain grasped onto a rock jutting out without moving. Since he didn't need to worry about his balance thanks to the skills attached to the Abhorrent Gloves, he stayed like that thinking...

'Devil Essence, Aether... Just what type of creature is this?' Cain was stumped.

In the description of the Rakshasa skill, a demon was a creature born from the unholy mixing of two bloodlines. The Devil and Aether bloodlines. However, from what Cain had learned from Og-Solath, these two blood limes shared the same ancestor.

Hence, the Demon bloodline was rather strange. Which meant, they possessed access to two special energies...

'Devil Essence and Aether. That means...'

Yes, it was exactly that. This {Chaos Goblins} was a demon. A creature born from the combination of a devil's bloodline and Aether.

'However, how is this possible? Did one of the primordial devils vet freaky with one of their half-spirit descendants before dying? Is this that bastard, Og-Solath's doing?'

Cain had so many unanswered questions. However, no one was going to answer them for him...

Cain was about to resume climbing. However, a certain commotion stopped him in his tracks.

He heard the shuffling of hundreds of feet coming from all sides. He immediately noticed one thing. Apart from the front, he was completely surrounded by the caves from all sides. It was then the realization dawned on him.

'Of course, that bastard borough backup.'

Cain could only shake his head as hundreds of small, red eyes threw glares at him. He wanted to laugh, but couldn't he was faced with the reality of the situation.

'This is not good. Not good at all.'

Cain activated a few skills all at once as the creatures got into their throwing poses. His mana boiled as he activated the {Burning Spirit} and the metal enchantment. At the same time, a thick layer of golden armor covered him. He was already covered with the {Weak Blood Carapace}, but there was no harm in overcompensating.

Once his entire body was covered, he summoned the {Seven Golden Stars}. The blades manifested themselves into reality through their respective magic circles and swam through the air to their respective targets.

Almost at the same time, the sky was quickly filled with the sound of the air being split by numerous flying projectiles.

Cain gritted his teeth as the battle began with gusto.