"Arggggghh!!!!"
The raw scream tore through the surroundings, echoing against the vast open space as the titan's body convulsed violently under the pressure crushing him from above.
"Is the pain better than being my slave?" The voice was calm and curious, yet it held no mercy.
"Arghhhhh!"
"Stop screaming, shithead." The Blue Raven bent down, and with his hands clenched, he gripped the titan's head, the grip being as tight as he lifted the massive body into the air with ease.
The titan's legs kicked helplessly as his entire weight hung from that single grasp.
"Stop resisting!!"
"Argh!!"
"I SAID STOP RESISTING!!, FCKR!!!"
The blue raven roared, and for a few moments, the titan continued to writhe violently, his body thrashed in panic and desperation.
Then, slowly, something changed. A thick, corrupted demonic aura began leaking out of his mouth, carrying a stench that made the surrounding air feel heavy and foul.
[ding!! mark of a slave has been placed on the Faceless wraith 'Amorphous']
A transformation followed as Will gave a mental command to the demon to return to its original form.
Flesh twisted unnaturally, bones reshaped, and what had once been a titan collapsed inward upon itself, reforming into a grotesque demonic wraith.
The new form hovered briefly before William released his grip, and the creature fell heavily onto its knees. Demonic energy surged uncontrollably from its body.
This wraith was Amorphous.
He was a demon, yet the irony of his existence was that the entire demon race considered him their enemy.
His talent was shape-shifting, a gift he had never used for battle or conquest. Instead, he had used it to infiltrate demon strongholds and sleep with the wives of powerful demons.
He had cucked so many of them that he had unknowingly become the father of thousands of demons across his lifetime.
Eventually, his actions caught the attention of Demon Lord Kylark himself.
What followed was less of a battle and more of a prolonged hunt.
Amorphous ran, hid, shifted into different forms endlessly, but eventually, he was caught. His cultivation was destroyed personally by the demon lord, leaving him broken and powerless.
While awaiting his death sentence in the very palace that housed the harem chambers, he once sneaked into, he used his talent one last time and managed to escape.
He crossed into Aris and succeeded in saving his life, but it also ended his degenerate lifestyle.
Detection formations were everywhere, and his talent had a very unforgiving weakness in Aris, his demonic energy could never be fully masked even if he changed forms.
He didn't find pleasure in sex, instead, he found pleasure in destroying a powerful individual's woman.
Will hated his degenerate personality, and he would eventually kill this demon. But for right now, he had a use for Amorphous.
"Ugh, you are so disgusting," William said with visible disgust as he looked at the kneeling wraith, "but since you are useful, I will have to keep you alive for now"
With a simple wave of his hand, the demon vanished, pulled into the Domain of Infinite. Not into the serene grassy plains where time flowed peacefully, but into a hellish pit William had personally created, a place designed solely to contain demonic slaves.
William let out a slow breath as the Armament Nexus disappeared from his hands and returned to his inventory.
The tension drained from his posture, replaced by a cold expression.
With another wave of his hand, the Trickster's Veil materialised around him, and his figure faded from sight as he left the place.
By this time, the titan ritual had ended. Silence spread across the city as no titan made any noise out of reverence.
This ritual was meant to call prosperity. The ruler slapped the river to awaken it, believing that a slow-flowing river meant it was asleep and unaware of the suffering of its people.
Once angered by all the slapping, the river would flood and display its wrath, which the titans believed would cleanse misfortune and moisten the vast desert lands of the sky break empire, to make it farmable.
Other races mocked them for such beliefs, but titans were not beings whose pride was easily wounded.
What others called stupidity was truth to them.
William moved swiftly out of the city, his pace steady as the structures faded into the distance.
The land soon turned barren, a desert stretching endlessly with no forests in sight. Once he was completely out of view, he quietly summoned his spaceship and resumed his journey.
Maris was not with him.
He had already sent her on a mission, and for her assistance, he had provided cultivation techniques and spells, along with a shared portion of his darkness affinity.
She had cultivated for the past few days inside the domain of the infinite, which for her was a few years inside.
Through the Mark of Servant, a lowered version of his affinities was bestowed on her by him, granting her an SSS-rank darkness affinity.
He also shared the Eclipse Veil spell with her, though its mastery degraded to the master stage upon transfer.
The same was done for his movement technique, radiant flash step and light affinity.
William felt no concern about betrayal. The Mark of Servant ensured instant death upon treachery, and Maris was fully aware of this condition as the bearer of the Mark of Servant.
Moreover, this was not a one-sided exchange.
William had gained something far more insane in return.
Space affinity.
His heart pounded with excitement as the realisation fully settled.
Maris had been born with only an A-rank space affinity, but the moment it was transferred to William, the imbalance of ranks with his absolute affinities triggered a reaction.
At first, his existing affinities moved to swallow it, but then Absolute Adaptation activated to restore equilibrium, elevating the space affinity to absolute rank.
After observing this process repeatedly, William reached several conclusions.
First, a being could not hold lower-ranked affinities alongside high-ranked ones.
In the novel, when Ethan awakened new affinities using Omni Affinity, clashes occurred between preexisting and new affinities, but Heaven's Favoured probability effect of his legendary talent suppressed fatal outcomes rather than elevating the affinity itself.
William's Absolute Adaptation, however, directly raised the rank to the highest one.
The second conclusion he had come to was that when affinity's rank increased gradually, a faint consciousness slowly began to form within the element itself.
Tamasya had once told him that she spoke to Shadow.
At first, William laughed it off, thinking it was a joke, but the seriousness of her words became clear when he witnessed her speaking to herself on several occasions.
He once dismissed it as PTSD from countless years of isolation in the prison of the gods.
But then memories of her crushing him effortlessly despite her powers being sealed completely resurfaced, forcing him to reconsider.
A Millionaire From London Explains How She Earns $1,000 A Day1/2 Cup Each Morning Eliminates Diabetes Quickly!(Try It)This Trick Will Give You An Erection At Any Age (It's Genius)!
It made him question his understanding of the novel 'Saga of the God Slayer' entirely.
He had never read about absolute-rank affinities, yet he possessed several. He had never read about characters communicating with elements, yet his own master was proof of it.
A thought crept into his mind.
What if absolute rank was not the highest?
[It is the highest rank. Think differently.]
"What do you mean?" William asked, narrowing his eyes.
[I said absolute rank is the highest rank of elemental affinity. Think differently if you want to find the truth further.]
"Hm," William muttered, his gaze sharpening. "If absolute rank is the highest, then to know what's beyond it, I need to stop thinking about rank itself."
[Yes.]
"Oh," William's eyes suddenly lit up. "I think I got it."
[Yes, what is it?]
"If absolute rank is the peak, then what if...."
BOOOOOOM!
The thought in Will's mind was never finished.
Suddenly, one side of the spacecraft's thruster shattered violently as a devastating attack struck it mid-flight.
Notifications blared on the spacecraft's monitor in front of William.
[Alert!!! Alert!!! Alert!!! Alert!!! Alert!!! Alert!!! Alert!!!]
[Demonic entity detected!! Rank beyond engageable.]
[Waiting for instructions!!]