God Ash: Remnants of the fallen.

Seated on a wooden chair, Cain scribbled away on a piece of paper on the desk in front of him.

He wore a rather serious expression on his face as he swiftly jotted down. Laying in a corner of the room, gnawing on a huge being of bone from an unknown creature was Ruby.

Almost three weeks had passed since the battle with Valestorm.

After the bodies of the dead had been buried, Steve, Blaze, Manny, and a few others had used the {Spatial Gate} to gt back to the island which Cain had decided to call Redscale.

With the battle being over, there were a lot of repairs to make and a lot of issues to address. But that didn't mean he wanted to abandon other parts of his rapidly growing... conglomerate.

Hunter, Dan, Vincent and others likewise also left to take care of Gwendolyn. Cain himself made a trip to Redscale to retrieve the {Dark Soul}, his long lost friend of the shadows.

He had given the Dark Diver two missions; scope out the entire forest and find out what the Ant Queen was up to.

It had managed to complete the first task beautifully.

Right now, Cain had a rather detailed mental image of what Redscale looked like in its entirety.

It was a magnified version of what is had been and then some...

There were also more to it than met the eye, but he figured he would think about it later.

Then, there was the issue of monitoring the Ant Queen.

While it had continued to observe the normal {Redscale Soldiers} rather efficiently, it was unable to do so with the queen.

Not only because of the danger, but also because scouring the entirety of the Redscale Colony was far more difficult than Cainnhad initially thought.

'Still, I'm quite satisfied with the results.'

He had given the {Dark Soul} a hefty sum of darkness elemental mana shards for its hard work.

Although the issue with the Redscale Colony was important, it definitely wasn't as pressing as the other issues he had to address.

For one, he had to find a way to keep Gwendolyn safe. He couldn't take her off the shores, so the ship was stuck in the dangerous waters.

From the reports he had received from Hunter, the attacks mounted on the ship grew in both frequency and intensity over the past few weeks.

It was a miracle Haru and the others were able to survive so long.

Then, there was the most pressing issue at hand.

The rapidly declining Dome of Sands.

Quite frankly, Cain had believed the barrier would come crashing down after a day or two.

But it continued to stay up even after so long.

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But he could sense its energy reserves were already in their last legs. It wouldn't take much longer for it to fall. And when it did fall, the entire place would be over run by Devils.

And they would all die.

Cain had a few ways to delay the problem.

The best of them was providing a new energy source, in other words, the plentiful amount of mana cores he had with him.

However, the greatest obstacle to that, would be the fact that they and Valestorm were not on the best of terms yet.

Over the past few weeks, he had gotten to know of the turmoil Valestorm was facing internally as well.

He sighed, 'That woman is definitely the cause of it. There's no doubt she's waiting for me to make my move.'

But it wasn't time yet. Valestorm would have to wait for a while.

Because he also had to make preparations in this end.

Motes of light were woven into an ancient looking tome.

He dropped the magic pen in his hand and flipped it open.

As it turned out, the thirtieth volume of the [Records of Akasha] was quite something. According to Azazel, it had all the things he would need.

So far, however, all it had given him were frustrations.

Because no matter how hard he tried to see otherwise, the entire time was just an elaborate, almost indecipherable compilation of stories.

It was even difficult to call them stories. The tome made use of an ancient runic lettering system, so the System automatically translated it for him.

However, most of what was translated made absolutely no sense.

This was the thing that had been dwelling on his mind the most for the past three weeks

He gritted his teeth.

And so, since the system wasn't very useful, he had decided to try deciphering the book on his own.

Runic letters were what most runes were made of. Most runes consisted of only one or two runic letters.

In their essence, runes were simply words that could elicit a response from the arcane powers that make up the spiritual realm, sort of like a feedback system. The runes were the information that were put in to bring about a desired change.

Because of his strong foundation with runes and magic circles, Cain had only moderate difficulty in his quest to decipher the tome.

And after struggling for almost three weeks, he finally managed to crack the first chapter.

To anyone else, it would seem bizarre and not worth the effort.

But to him, it was a breakthrough that nearly made him burst into tears.

With a sigh, he rubbed his eyes and dismissed the tome back into his inventory.

He took a moment to calm himself, then stared at the stack of paper sheets before him.

The dark circles under his eyes creased as he scanned through the information of the first page.

The first story was bizarre to say the least. It was being narrated from the perspective of the writer, quickly sucking Cain in.

'Quite immersive...'

"The world was black that day. The stars broke free from the sky and fell upon us, leaving us to behold the evil fiends from beyond the darkness."

Cain quickly recognized what that scene was trying to portray.

'The Apocalypse...'

Then he frowned. According to Azazel, the Nomad was the author of all the [Records of Akasha]. If that was so, then why was there the account of the demise of some unnamed world from some unnamed mortal?

'Interesting...'

He continued regardless,

"When the Devils came, the world was plunged into a never ending nightmare. The Avalon Guild and the Empire called upon all their forces, but were only able to drive the Devils back for some time."

"The Devils grew more powerful, and the mana that pervaded our world slowly became corrupted."

"Seeing this, a few who had given up and had fallen into despair decided to embrace the evil. The Devil Corrupted were our own undoing."

Cain stopped reading.

'Devil Corrupted, huh... A term the system has used to describe those who could assimilate and use a small portion of Devil Essence to aid their abilities and increase its power."

Cain's frowned deepened as he continued,

"I, Xer'al, last son of Emperor

Aalgath, the Silver Howling Star, and the last living defender of my home, as the last breaths of life escaoe from my lips and i soul is extinguished, shallnoffer my life as witness..."

Cain's face suddenly paled as his mind stretched and his soul broke apart.

A scream of terror rose from his soul, but he was unable to let it out, as the next moment, there was darkness.

***

And then, the darkness became a bit less dark.

Then, the light slowly revealed itself.

To his amazement, Cain watched as the darkness surrounding him slowly lit up with dazzling starlight coming from the distance.

And then, the scenes began unfolding.

Cain watched it all happened. All from the perspective of one man... no, not a man. Cain had no idea what this race of beings were supposed to be.

They were certainly humanoid, and they were obviously intelligent, judging from their level of civilization.

However, he was very sure they weren't humans.

But that didn't make any difference.

Because he got to see how the once prosperous beings that ruled over a world were wiped away from history, and their world was consumed by a scourge of black in the wake of the Devils.

It was rather chilling and frightening to watch.

Xer'al, or at least, that was what he translated his name to be, was the last and only living son of the Empire that used to rule a large portion of this world.

The rest of his family, including the Emperor, were killed during the Apocalypse.

And so, he had to become a warrior and a savior.

He had fought valiantly, looked for ways to save what was left of his people, gathered resources, formed alliances, ingeniously created several fascinating pieces of magic that had guven his people more hope for the future even in the darkness of their despair.

In short, he had become a beacon of salvation.

Of course, in face of the darkness, the radiance of his light ended up being far too little.

Because as he lay there, grasping for air, his throat crushed and his organs spilling out of his body, Xer'al looked towards the lightless sky.

"The sky has been dark for so long." He muttered.

That was the last Cain would see it hear before he was sucked out.

"Shit!"

Banging his head against his desk, Cain looked around frantically.

Beads of sweat ran down his face. The feeling of despair in Xer'al as he fell into death's embrace managed to affect him a bit.

After he was able to calm down, he went over the experience again.

He sighed, "In short, this entire thing is a Memoir. A collection of stories from those long dead, who have gone through the same things I am currently going through."

Cain understood the value of this.

He could learn from the experience of others rather than from his own experience.

As he witnessed the life of Xer'al, he had learned so many things he could say were vital.

For one, the methods in which he had gone about rebuilding his broken world, or the way he had gone about acquiring resources that could tend to the needs of a large number of people, to finally making those resources sustainable.

All of this was incredible valuable information to Cain who had no idea how to go on from here.

He could also learn to avoid the mistakes that had led to the despair and a tragic fate.

With a sigh, Cain leaned against his chair.

Then, a knock came from the door.