After getting into the bathroom, Azrael immediately looked towards his system tab to read through everything again! There was still a small part of Azrael that imagined everything that had happened yesterday had been nothing more than a wild dream, and he needed to confirm by himself if it had really happened or not. The moment he saw the God Aspect tab in his system showing the words [Soul Eater] in vivid detail, Azrael realized that it hadn't been a dream!
He had really gotten a God Aspect yesterday.
And that also meant that he had really killed Francis.
The realization of what he had done dawned on Azrael as he stared at his reflection in the mirror. Azrael expected to feel any of the intense emotions that people usually said they felt after taking a life. But there was nothing at all in Azrael's heart. It was cold, and he felt no regret, fear or guilt.
Azrael had chosen this path himself. He did not have the time to regret it. He only had to walk it!
After Azrael returned yesterday, he had to sneak into the dorms to make sure that the matron wouldn't notice how late he had arrived. He had also thought about using his storage space to hide all of the clothes that had been covered in blood, but the description of the Divine Storage reminded him that he couldn't put anything inside that wasn't crafted using Divine Essence, so the clothes wouldn't go in.
Instead, Azrael took all of his clothes and wrapped them in a clean cloth before putting them into his bag and decided to deal with them later. Most likely, he would tie them to a stone and throw them into the river when he found the chance.
After that, he had washed up and gone straight to bed because of how tired he was. Azrael had thought that he would at least have time to look through his system and check the stats and rewards he had received before sleeping, but he was so fucking exhausted that he fell asleep the moment his head touched the pillow!
Since Azrael still had time before he had to go to school for his first day, he reopened his system tab and quickly ran a glance through all of the rewards from yesterday's quest. Azrael noticed that the Necrosis curse had reverted back to 1%, and when he looked down at his hand, he was relieved to see that the rot had also cleared, revealing his normal skin again.
Azrael had to make sure it never returned.
Azrael checked how many days it would take before the rot started to spread again, and he narrowed his eyes curiously as he saw that he only had seven days. This meant that he had to take another life before seven days?
'Maybe I should have kept one of the lackeys alive and killed him later?'
The sheer cruelty of that thought made Azrael a little worried. He had always known that he was willing to go to any lengths for power, but he didn't think that it would be this easy for him to slip into the role that had been given to him. No matter how one looks at it, he shouldn't be this calm after killing three people.
'Am I a psychopath?'
Azrael stared at his reflection in shock for a few seconds before he shook it away from his mind and returned to his normal train of thought.
He couldn't be a psychopath. He wasn't some bloodthirsty monster who killed for pleasure.
He was doing this for the sake of gaining more power.
...That was all.
Still, it would have been a bad idea to keep one of the lackeys alive. They had recognized him. If he kept one of them alive, they would've ratted him out to the authorities.
'I wonder if they've found the bodies.'
Thinking about the authorities brought this new thought to his mind, and he couldn't help but wonder what things would be like today. Today was only the first day of school, and three of the students were already going to be found dead. It was impossible for such an incident not to cause wide panic among the students.
In fact, the school might even issue a lockdown, fearing that a mass murderer was on the loose. And the fact that the murderer had killed three demigods would easily make them come to a conclusion that the murderer was also a demigod. Azrael would become a celebrity overnight if he was found out to be the killer.
But he didn't need to worry about that. He had been careful and had made sure that there had been no witnesses around when he killed those three. His enhanced eyesight and hearing far surpassed what a human had, and even in the dead of night, he would've been able to sense if anyone was eavesdropping around.
Satisfied, Azrael finally closed up the tab showing the quest rewards and opened the stats tab. He then immediately scrolled all the way to the bottom, where two new sections had now appeared.
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ARTIFACTS
[Divine Storage - EX] [Oathkeeper [Cursed Blade of the Death God] - Incalculable]
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ARTIFICIAL GOD ASPECTS
-> POSEIDON: [Water Shield - F] [Atomic Freeze - F]
-> ARES: [Battle Sense - F]
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Azrael's heart picked up again as he scrolled through the description of three new God Aspects attached to his tab, along with the two Artifacts he had acquired.
The Water Shield and Atomic Freeze skills had come from Francis and another of his lackeys who was also a child of Poseidon. Their functions were pretty self-explanatory. The Water Shield formed a protective shield of water around the user and protected them from attacks, while the Atomic Freeze allowed the user to shape water into any form and instantly freeze it into ice to be used as a weapon.
However, both of those were F-rank Aspects, so Azrael knew that they were not going to be too useful after a while. And since there was not yet a way for him to improve on an Artificial God Aspect after he had absorbed it, he wouldn't be able to make these Aspects any stronger.
The Battle Sense aspect, on the other hand, had a little more potential than the other two. The description of the Aspect was simple.
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Battle Sense: While engaged in combat, the user's instincts and alertness will receive a boost. At its current level, the user will gain +5 points to all Mortal Stats during the battle.
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It was an insanely broken ability. The ability to gain a direct boost in your overall stats when you were in the middle of a battle was very impressive, and Azrael couldn't help but wonder which of the two lackeys had possessed this Aspect.
If he had known that the lackey had an Aspect like this, maybe he would have kept him alive for a little longer—just enough so that he could help him in leveling up the God Aspect.
Azrael could only imagine what a God Aspect like this would become if it were cultivated into A Rank or higher.
For now, Azrael decided that he had to test out his God Aspects and see if they actually worked as he expected. He was someone who had lived without a God Aspect for most of his life, so he had no idea as to what it felt like to use his God Aspects, but after gaining a God Aspect through Thanatos, Azrael had a feeling like he always knew how to use this God Aspect and he had just never bothered to. Like someone who always knew how to breathe but never bothered to do it because he had no need for air.
Azrael raised his hand and immediately activated the first God Aspect.