God Ash: Remnants of the fallen.

Chapter 300: Bloodbath (1).

Cain dashed through the wet corridors, blood and sweat willing the insides of his armor.

The spell, {Charybdis}, had not only swept away the entire settlement of Chaos creatures, it had also killed off a majority of them.

As they were a true community, not every one of them was fit to engage in battles. There were a few old goblins and trolls, the females who weren't as strong as their male counterparts, and the children. They were a warrior race, but even then, how could they go against something as strong as a natural disaster?

As such, a majority of them were swept away by the flood. The able-bodied males could hang on and escape immediate death.

However, the rest were washed through the corridors and away from the mountains, where they would eventually fall to their deaths or were crushed to death by the battering waves.

Cain forced himself not to think about what this meant. While he had his conscience and morality tugging at his heartstrings, he had to suffocate them, as there were some things he had to do. If he was hesitant about killing the Chaos creatures off, then it would be better for him to die then and there.

Running through the dark corridors he claimed the lives of disgruntled and unsuspecting {Chaos Goblins} with ease. Since the creatures were disoriented, picking them off one by one was not very hard.

Hence, he continued dashing through the corridors, going through bends and corners, leaving the walls stained with blood.

'Faster...'

He couldn't waste any time. Evangeline was facing off against not only the {Chaos Chief} but an entire platoon of multi-headed {Chaos Trolls}.

She could die at any time!

Gritting his teeth, Cakn kicked against the ground, slicing through a {Chaos Troll's} head as soon as he rounded a corner.

The poor creature was disgruntled and didn't even notice the top half of its head was missing until a few seconds later. However, by then, Cain was long gone.

Soon, the {Chaos Creatures} began recovering. By then, he had only picked off a few stragglers. The resistance increased...

The Chaos creatures that had been dropping like flies suddenly started screaming before they were butchered up. This meant their brethren would have enough time to either prepare to be killed by Cain or were already fleeing.

Cain knew things were finally picking up speed. As he suspected, some of the {Chaos Trolls} tried shifting the rocks, which led to more than a few rock slides that ended up killing dozens of them without him having to do anything.

Cain rounded another corner just to be greeted with a spear flying faster than a bullet at his chest.

A curse escaped from his lips as he used {Nexus Tether} to dodge, sacrificing a sword that was broken into two and destroyed.

Cain rolled on the ground and assessed the situation promptly...

'One Three-headed {Chaos Troll}, ten Two-headed ones, and a few dozen normal ones. No goblins...'

Once Cain glanced through their ranks, he wasted no time and dove straight at them. The one who threw the spear was one of the two-headed {Chaos Trolls}. Cain was like an infuriated incarnation of death as he swept forward with the nimble blade in hand.

Jumping up, his hair scared against the roof of the cave his knee made contact with the creature's skull, leading to a sickening crunch. Holding on to the blades in a reverse grip, he plunged it into the creature's spine, cutting its spinal cord. Coincidentally, the blade also stabbed through its heart, ending its life before it could suffer anymore.

Cain didn't even spare it a glance as he dodged an axehead. Holding onto the dead {Chaos Troll's} head, he spun around and kicked the attacker in the jaw, causing it to stumble backward. An iron chain appeared in his hand, wrapping around the creature's neck and pulling it closer.

Cain stabbed one of his blades into its mouth which was gasping for air, leaving the creature to choke on its blood.

Cain continued to rampage through the group, receiving more than a few injuries of his own as well.

Soon, all that was left, were the corpses of the fallen and their lingering echoes.

Cain let out a tired sigh as he continued moving, the purple cloud around him growing thicker...

***

Cain let out the thousandth sigh of the day as he stabbed the thin tip of his blade into the eye of a struggling {Chaos Goblin}. The creature looked up at him with pure terror, hatred, and fear in its eyes before all those emotions faded away into nothingness.

Cain felt his heart quiver,

"Sorry..." He whispered to the corpse.

He was battered, beaten, and bruised. Yet, he still had no idea just how many creatures were left. The {Dark Soul} scoured the corridors ahead of him, trying to find more prey for him to kill. However, it couldn't find any.

He had been killing for hours now. He had taken small breaks in between to recover spent energy. He had lost count of just how many {Chaos Goblins} he had killed during this time. If he was counting, he would have been shocked to know that they had already exceeded the thousand mark a long time ago. He had killed a large amount of {Chaos Trolls} as well, but yeh numbers couldn't even be compared.

Despite killing so much, he could tell he wasn't done just yet. Evangeline's spell should have cleared eighty percent of the total population, which was around eight thousand. He didn't even want to know just how many stat points she had gotten from that.

All he had to do, was kill off the remaining thousand or so...

Cain was about to round another corner when he felt something. Normally his intuition wasn't very strong. However, for some reason, alarm bells went off in his head, telling him, screaming to him that something was wrong.

Cain paused and listened...

On the other side of the turn, there was another branching corridor that was connected to the one he was currently in. If he continued, he would be unable to react in time to any attacks that came at him from the other side.

Cain immediately understood what was going on. The Chaos creatures on the other side were planning to ambush him. Unfortunately for them, Cain had sensed their presence beforehand.

Taking a deep breath, he retrieved something from his inventory. The object was black, smooth, and had a shiny exterior.

Without wasting any more time, Cain threw the {Black Egg} into the other corridor. A second later, a resounding explosion reached his ears.

Cain rounded the corner quickly and was greeted with a rather grizzly sight. The {Chaos Trolls} on the other side were wounded, but none of the wounds were life-threatening. But they were in no condition to continue fighting.

Cain took advantage of this fact and pinned forward like a tiger spotting injured prey. His blade dashed and flashed around, ripping flesh from bone and claiming life after life until there was nothing left to take.

In the end, Cain left, completely drenched in blood, the dull red of his armor now a d very dark shade of crimson. His energy was drained but his eyes had taken on a purple glow as the cloud of purple floating around him grew more potent.

These scenes became a very common occurrence as Cain swept through the corridors. Goblins and Trolls fell to his blades and arrows rather rapidly, but he got dealt more and more injuries as the battles became more drawn out and tiring.

Despite all this, he refused to drop. Rather, he fought with even more ferocity and madness. The true essence of the {Dracinic Transifiguration} skill coupled with the {Dragon's Gate Ki Plundering Technique}, was the ability to steal a portion of a creature's Ki or devil essence once he had killed it.

This meant that with every battle, with every kill, he managed to recover slightly. So, he was stuck in a cycle of killing and recovery. And he would stop only when every single creature trapped here with him was dead.

After a while of not killing anything, the {Dark Soul} noticed something up ahead. The corridor just a few paves in front of him was a very large one and was one of the exits that he had blown up.

The rest of the Chaos creatures were gathered just up in front. The eyes of the {Dark Soul} scanned through, and Cain came to a frightening conclusion.

'Five hundred, huh...'

A total of five hundred {Chaos Trolls} of varying head counts. The four-headed {Chaos Troll} stood before all of them, its face contorted into a frightening visage.

'I knew it... The water washed away most of the goblins. However, most of the trolls remain alive'.

Obviously, fighting five hundred {Chaos Trolls} was nothing more than a death wish. Regardless, Cain didn't mind. He was sure he would be able to pull it off.

However, he would need to get a bit... Creative.