For the demon worshiper, death was sudden, unexpected, and surely full of regret in his last moments.
Klaus stood over the fallen body, breathing heavily. The steel pipe fell from his numb fingers with a clang. The weight of killing someone and just settled in his mind, cold and heavy.
He had killed someone for the first time. But this time, it was different. This time, it was a man, a cold-blooded killer. His hands shook, not from fear now, but from the fight, the adrenaline slowly left his body.
He had faced death and against all odds he had won. He sat back against the slimy sewage wall, trying to understand everything, the smell of blood and sewage strong in his nose.
After a few minutes, his mind cleared. He had to move. He had to clean up. With a new sense of purpose, he forced himself to his feet and carefully went to the body.
He needed to search it to make sure no proof was left behind. His bare skin of the hands felt through the masked man's ripped clothes. He found a small, plain ring on his finger, a storage ring, he recognized. it was a rare and valuable item so he took it off. Then, tucked into an inner pocket, he found an identity card.
He pulled it out, squinting in the dark, It wasn't a Hunter's Association ID, as he might have expected, but Instead, it had strange symbols and words: "Demon's Apostle Clan" and a strange, horned figure symbol.
"So, the rumors were true about the demon worshipers, I had heard about earlier"
he quickly pulled out his phone and searched about them and to his surprise they were all around the news famous for their notorious deeds.
They weren't just a cult, they were an organized group of demon worshipers, with ranks and missions. This discovery sent another shock of fear through him. He had just killed a member of a powerful, dangerous group.
Fearing that the card might have hidden trackers or magic marks, Klaus quickly decided. He couldn't risk it. With a grimace, he threw the identity card into the flowing sewage water, watching it vanish into the murky depths. The storage ring, however, he kept. It was too valuable to throw away.
Then, with a shiver, he started to drag the body. It was heavy, but his strength was enough. He pulled the body deeper into the winding tunnels, until he found a wider, faster-flowing channel.
He decided to push the body in expecting the current to quickly carry it away and be swallowed by the darkness. A cold feeling ran down his spine, but he knew he had to do it.
Before he moved, a thought hit him. The body, He had almost forgotten about this, He activated his Origin Absorption skill, focusing on the masked man's corpse before pushing it away as it disappeared into the currents of the murky water.
He was too shaken from the fight, too overwhelmed by adrenaline to truly notice what he had absorbed. The panel flashed, showing new additions, but he didn't look closely. His mind was only on getting away and getting clean somewhere before he heads back.
He stumbled out of the sewer, pulling himself through the destroyed manhole, breathing in the cleaner night air.
He walked fast towards the nearest river stream. He found a quiet spot, partly hidden by overgrown bushes. Without a second thought, he stripped off his blood-soaked, filthy and torn clothes, throwing them into the fast-moving water.
He then jumped into the cold river, scrubbing himself hard, trying to wash away the smell, the dirt, and the terrible memories of the alley. It was well past midnight. The streets were empty so almost no one saw him.
And even if someone did, covered in river water and mud, he looked more like a homeless person than a killer. His wound at the back was apparent. He was alive and had survived. But the cost, and what it meant for his future, were only just starting to sink in.
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A few moments later ....
Klaus climbed out of the cold river. The moonlight was soft, painting the world in shades of silver and black. He shivered, pulling himself onto the river bank, his skin prickling from the cold and the lingering water. He sat down, sighing, the heavy weight of what he had done settling on him. He had killed a man. It was real.
He looked at the storage ring he had taken from the corpse. It felt strange and out of place in his hand, a small, dark piece of metal. He willed it to open, and a faint shimmer appeared. Inside the ring, he found a few items.
There were some papers with writing in a very ancient language he didn't know of. It looked ancient, with sharp, unfamiliar symbols.
Next to the papers was a small book, its cover plain and black. It felt like a skill book, similar to what he had seen in the market.
And then there was the orb. It was small, about the size of his fist, encased in clear glass. He held it up, using the faint light from his phone's torch to look through the casing.
Inside, he saw many tattoo-like designs. They looked like dragons, etched onto the orb's surface in a shade darker than the orb's own white color. The designs seemed to shift and writhe, almost alive, even though they were fixed patterns.
He felt drawn to it. It was an odd feeling, a pull he couldn't explain. He didn't even know why he was doing it, but he reached out, his fingers already moving towards the orb.
As soon as his fingers fully touched the orb's surface, it shone. Not just a little glow, but a blinding, pure bright light that erupted from it. The light was incredibly intense, filling his entire vision.
He squeezed his eyes shut, his head reeling. It was too bright, like staring directly into the sun. With a sudden, jarring flash, Klaus found himself no longer by the river.
The light faded, and he was floating in an endless, dark realm. It was like the deepest part of outer space, completely black, stretching out forever. Tiny, distant stars glittered like scattered dust, countless pinpricks of light in the vast emptiness.
His body felt incredibly light, weightless, as if gravity had simply stopped existing. He looked down at himself, then at the impossible surroundings. He was completely shocked. His mind struggled to understand what had just happened.
One moment, he was on Earth, covered in grime. The next, he was suspended here, adrift among the cosmos. The silence was absolute, broken only by the frantic beat of his own heart.
He wandered slowly, the scale of the universe around him making him feel incredibly small. He could see no end to the darkness, no walls, just stars.
Soon, far away among those stars, something began to form. A mark, shaped like a dragon's head, started to appear in the distance. Its color was a pure, dazzling bright white, blinking and pulsing uncontrollably, like a distant, newborn sun.
Directly opposite to it, another similar mark manifested, but this one was a pure, deep violet. It also glowed, but its light seemed to pull in the darkness around it, a stark contrast to the white one and then, after these two main dragon marks, many smaller colored lights began to shine.
They were all in the same dragon head print, scattered across the vastness. Each one pulsed with a different, vibrant colors of reds, blues, greens, yellows, purples a cosmic tapestry of Draconian symbols.
Suddenly a voice, deep and ancient but still clear suddenly echoed in Klaus's ears. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, resonating within his very being, shaking him to his core. "Weak... too weak, my inheritor. I never expected you to be this weak and fragile, on top of that you are a manaless human"
Klaus spun around, startled. His eyes snapped to the source of the voice. There, floating a few feet behind him, was a small humanoid creature.
It was no bigger or different looking than a ten-year-old child, but he radiated an immense, timeless power that made the very space around it feel heavy, almost suffocating, despite the weightlessness of his own body.
if not for the aura Klaus would have mistakened the being for a ten-year-old child.
Small, sharp horns curled back from his forehead, black and glossy. his eyes, though small, held wisdom that seemed older than the stars themselves, full of an unreadable depth.
His skin was like polished obsidian, smooth and white. his movements were effortless, like it was made of smoke, floating with perfect ease, as if he ruled the space, Klaus stared at him, his mind racing.
This couldn't be real. Floating in space, talking to a horned child? from what he had seen this was definitely a dragon, he had never seen one, but he was sure of it, everything that happened till now those marks, that orb all hinted towards something related to dragons.
His thoughts were frantic and jumble. He tried to speak, but his voice felt stuck in his throat, a dry lump of disbelief. The small figure seemed to sense Klaus's confusion. It drifted closer, his form shimmering slightly,
"Yes, mortal"
the voice rumbled again, his tone a mix of calm and maturity. It was not a voice of a child, but of something infinitely old and powerful, compressed into a small form.
"I am what you would call a Dragon. The Dragon God. The Progenitor of all dragon kind."