∼ Day 220 ∼

Armor and clothing burnt away, Cain's blonde white hair billowed in the flames that coated his entire body. And behind him, sprouting out to massive proportions in comparison to his human frame, were colossal translucent wings of white flame.

The sight of him was something straight out of my wildest imagination and I had to consciously stop myself from staring in instinctual awe. It was almost as if his presence was attempting to make my mind grovel before him in all his angelic glory.

But the further I looked, the more I came to a realization that the previous disgust was gone from his eyes, replaced with pure and unadulterated condescension.

Was he truly a fervent zealot or but a puppet on a string? I wondered.

I doubted that he was all there, and who was looking at me that wasn't Cain anymore. It was someone else. Someone much more powerful.

He lifted his ivory spear, the only other foreign material in his possession that hadn't been entirely incinerated by the flames. Rather, it was channeling them, coalescing at its tip with small fissures of deep white light running along its shaft into the spearhead.

Sensing the danger, Sombra had barely enough time to react as she carried me out of the path of the shower of flames that billowed from the spear, scorching the sky and making the clouds dissipate all around.

The heat from those flames made my jaw clench as I had almost been bathed in them, my soul twitching in pain at just how close we were.

I refocused on the flaming angel that must wield only but a fraction of its god's power, noticing how even my mark of Stagnation had failed to remain within the flames.

Running through my options as more waves of heaven scorching flames were cast my way, each one becoming harder to evade as Cain moved with me and gained pace, I tried to figure out some way that I might possibly survive this deadly and inequitable encounter.

[You have taken 64 damage!]

But as one particularly dense and fast wave of flames surged at me, Sombra wasn't quick enough and one of her dark wings was coated in white flames that tore at her form and soul. She let out a shriek of pain, the flames not going out but intensifying. I had to recall her for now, leaving the flames behind as she no longer retained any form in the physical world, only the damage done by the white fire left.

The damage was small, but I wasn't regenerating it.

It was the first time in a long time that I felt frail and fragile in my nearly indestructible body.

I had to make a move now or my end was certain. Upon wings of my own that sprouted from my back once I stopped suppressing them, I used Blitz to cross the distance between me and the angel of flames within but an instant.

With his speed returned, the flames that coated every inch of him, and the power that now flooded his body, it was a hopeless feat to even attempt to get through his defense as any advance I tried was deftly swatted away and answered with strikes that could leave me dead if I was too slow or careless.

Like demigods flying through the sky, existence beyond anything my old world could've produced, we fought in a sky-shattering battle.

It was only with Petrifying Gaze and sacrificing a portion of my health that I was even able to land blows on him. Each time I got too close, my soul would just take damage from just the flames so landing hits was a costly endeavor. But to kill him before he killed me was my only hope.

Ducking under a swipe from his spear that sent an arching plume of flame out, I attempted to impale him through and through, wanting to end him in one fell swoop as his regenerative abilities seemed to be on par with mine with those flames of his.

However, I was too slow to react when the spear, still extended far and leaving his guard open, suddenly spun with such blinding speed and poise that the initial swipe had definitely been a feint.

[You have taken 1124 damage, a critical hit!] [You have taken 32 damage!] [You have taken 61 damage!] [You have taken 45 damage!] [You have taken...]

Flames scorched my insides as the spear impaled in my chest poured a cascade of white-hot and soul-rending fire into me.

I was gripped by the throat, the flames around his hand scorching my neck. There, he held me in place as my body struggled to regenerate the continuously burnt flesh of my insides and my soul tried to resist the flames burning it away.

From my awkward purchase, I threw strikes and slashes with whatever I could conjure in the haze of agony my mind bathed in, the attacks quickly becoming panicked.

However, he merely took the brunt of each attack, the flames healing the terrible wounds inflicted onto his body within but seconds. But as the damage became ever more serious, my soul in tatters from the unwavering flame of my own flickering as a candlelight to the sun I was facing before me, my attacks faltered in strength and coherence.

Knowing the embodiment of shadows that was Stygian Manifestation would do nothing but weaken me in the face of a god of light and flame, I wondered if my Domain would even help as my health and stamina were already too low. Maybe I should just do it, and at least take him out with me - if that is even possible...

My power was waning.

Just as I was to conjure my certain end, I thought of what I was leaving behind if I were to fall here. Those whom I had made promises to. The clan, Bob, Lily, Mia, and my unborn child.

In a sudden moment of clarity from the turmoil of emotions those thoughts caused me, the currents of chaos became clear to my mortal mind and I marveled as the strands of a higher energy, one that suffered the mana all around and even the world itself. It was like staring into a nebulae of power all around me, the flows of energy laid bare before my eyes.

With that clarity, I plucked one to my will and let the chaos within my core flow along it.

From the center of my being, my chest, extinguishing the torrents of flame that tore at my body and soul, flowing further up my shoulder and down my arm, and lastly exiting out through the palm of my hand as I laid it upon the chest of the flaming angel of light.

For a brief moment, the flames that covered his chest whisked out, quelled by the higher energy that they could not even defy.

"Rend," Was the one word that lanced through my mind.

With a tearing wet sound, a spike of blood that had nearly turned creamy white ripped through Cain's solar plexus and tore a gory path all the way from his heart to his skull and out.

[Human "Cain" has taken 2052 damage, a critical hit!]

Grip faltering, I managed to pull out the spear and went straight for the kill as even with his brain skewered through and through he somehow still had a sliver of health left.

I had him.

But before I could, life stirred in the grotesquely wounded angel, his spear suddenly moved to intercept the killing blow, taking my entire arm in the process as I had been taken off guard. Using Blitz to dash away, I stared in incredulity as the man who before my very eyes healed the wound that should've turned his brain into nothing more than dead meat.

It was a gruesome sight, watching as his head reformed and eyeballs were pulled back into sockets.

"Hard to kill, like a cockroach," He sneered once his mouth reformed to at least functioning state, the first words he spoke since his overwhelming transformation.

But something was quite odd about his voice, distinctly different in both tone and magnitude. Now there wasn't a shred of doubt in my mind that I was in fact fighting against not Cain, but the projection of a god. Or at least, it wasn't entirely Cain anymore as the mastery of his spear retained.

"You're one to speak," I managed with a bloody smirk, not really feeling the confidence I tried to display.

His sneer going even more twisted, I knew that I had truly managed to enrage a god. A bonafide being of unimaginable proportions and power.

Quite the accomplishment I had to say.

But through his rage, I noticed something.

"His flames were weaker than before?" I wondered.

It was first then I realized that the power of his flames had been in a constant, but slow, downwards decline.

Since it was a god being channeled through this human, I had initially thought that while the amount the god could bestow was limited due to the sheer limitations of a mortal body, the source of power would intrinsically be without end as the might of a god should be inexhaustible. At least to a mortal's comprehension.

However, as the flames waned ever so slightly over time, a new reality came to pass. One where the patron god who funneled his power through this human wasn't actually above the system itself.

One where there is only so much a god can do to influence in matters of the systems or mortals.

There was still a chance.