The sound of muffled screams rang throughout a cave.
If an average person would have ran from the scene because of the heart-chilling noises.
On looking around the cave, one could see a puddle of blood slowly forming.
Sometimes, violent ripples went through it when Licht's body shook.
The process of integration kept going on. It didn't care about how much pain he felt. In a way, it raged on with more fervour with every scream of his.
The more he screamed more the pain increased.
It just didn't stop.
Tremors came and went through his body the more his stats increased, but in a way, it was Licht's fault as well.
After trying every possible solution, he could think of and getting no results from them.
Licht tried to make these spikes go away with the integration chances he had gained after killing those calamities.
In a nutshell, it was a very suicidal idea, but he had to do it sooner or later.
It was just that this idea didn't end there.
He first wanted to find a place to go through the process without worrying about calamities, so…he ran, rolled, and even crawled through the whole path, and in that process, he found some new calamities.
Quite cute calamities at that...
What could have been a pleasant evening or morning with a pair of cute-looking gnomes was ravaged by their undead counterparts.
The undead gnomes were not even half a meter in height, but they were still deadly enough.
The duo held forks and spikes in their hands, which weren't threatening to Licht at first.
They were weaker than even Undead Rodents in some ways, but with his 'newly acquired power' which was more like a curse, he struggled while fighting them.
In the fight, he even had to resort to biting and scratching his nails after his sword broke away.
Halfway through the battle, his sword broke when he missed his swings with it time after time.
It shattered into many pieces after just a few swings.
The fascinating thing about all of this was that the spikes on his body weren't even that pointy.
They gave no damage to the pair of calamities.
Already at a great disadvantage, Licht only survived thanks to his skills-cough butcherer's knife.
The more he used that knife, the more he fell in love with it.
In all of this, the craziest thing he did was stacking integration.
He was skeptical of surviving it, but there was no other hope for him.
If, even by a small chance, this mutation didn't go away after integration then it was going to be hard to survive.
He wasn't skillful enough to survive the coming trials with such a comical handicap.
So, Licht chose the most deadly yet efficient way in his eyes, stacking up integrations chances.
And here he was….on the brink of death.
'GRHHHHH!'
Licht gritted his teeth as he felt the searing pain coursing through his body. He could hardly bear the intensity of the process he had willingly subjected himself to.
The cave wasn't even dimly lit. It made him on the edge at every moment, that something will spring out of that darkness.
Yet he couldn't bear to stop his screams. His mind broke with each bout of pain, and his mentality began to crumble, yet it was being held solely by his will.
Will to not die.
His hands trembled as he clutched onto the ground, making bloody patterns with his bleeding fingers, his knuckles turning white.
Beads of sweat dripped down his whole body, mixing with tears of agony streaming from his eyes.
The pain was unlike anything he had ever experienced before relentless, burning sensation that seemed to consume every fiber of his being.
It felt like his soul was being torn asunder, but amidst the torment, Licht refused to yield. He had a goal, a purpose.
He knew that enduring this ordeal was the only way to achieve it, and as if the god had heard his call, the pain ended, and his body slumped down in his blood.
Only after what had felt like an eternity did some groans come out of the cave. Licht stood at the entrance of the dark cave, his heart still pounding loudly in his chest.
He knew this was the only way to get stronger quickly, but like always he underestimated it.
After hours of lying down in extreme pain, exhaustion had set in.
His body ached, and his movements were sluggish.
All around him was an eerie darkness, but the most shocking thing was that there was no path back.
The path he had taken back then to get here was no more.
Instead, there was a wall some meters away, blocking off it.
'Did I trigger some mechanism when coming here? I am sure this was the entrance, but what is it….'
Pondering more over what could be the case, Licht turned his head back. 'The only answer to my questions is to explore this cave more,'
'It surely holds the answer to my questions….' just as Licht was about to move out of the entrance, a sudden headache spread throughout his head.
Fragmented memories of something he hadn't experienced bombarded his mind, yet a familiar voice echoed.
Arkein's voice.
This was his way of telling Licht his goal.
The goal wasn't too complicated, but it was dark.
The aim was to kill two people, and their goal was to kill him as well.
All three had to kill their opposite duo to get each other's monsters.
Weirdly, that dreadful monster Arkein had two other siblings, a brother, and a sister. They were all scattered among different hosts.
All of them were under the same banner of 'Aspect of Devil'.
Heavily breathing, Licht's already exhausted mind was becoming more exhausted, 'That's why he said that I only have him as my means to reach my goal...'
'Yet he has three ways.'
But in a way, killing the other two hosts wasn't a demerit. Aspect of Devil wasn't just one power.
Alternatively, it was an amalgamation of three different powers.
'Blood, Bone, and Muscle.'
'And of them all, Arkein is the one with bone…'
'Blood would have been so much better...Even muscle sounds cool...What can bones even do,' Licht asked the question in his mind, a question that he would soon get to know about more.
While thinking this, Licht's hand instinctively moved toward the palm of his other hand. The fingers moved as if they were inspecting something.
The more his fingers moved on his palm, the more something felt strange to him.
And just as he had expected, a bone burst forth from his hand, slowly protruding out but no blood came out of his hand…