Klaus woke with a groan, sitting up slowly as his hand ran through his disheveled hair. His essence had recovered, the heavy weight of exhaustion lifting as his spirit and body stabilized, the transformation finally complete. But despite the restoration, there was no peace in his thoughts.
The statue. That damned statue. He had hoped to find a creature of true darkness here, something that would serve his purpose. Instead, he had encountered a specter. How typical. His luck was always cursed. Years spent searching for spirits that matched his vision, only to be met with disappointment at almost every turn.
It had been nearly a decade of this relentless search and he only found four suitable spirit. Now He had been hunting for a creature of darkness for a reason. Mordret's escape and the sudden appearance of Sunless had set his mind ablaze. Both were vulnerable to darkness. A creature of darkness would be the perfect counter—a weapon to wield against them. Should either Mordret or Sunless make a move, the creature would tip the scales in Klaus's favor, making their destruction easier.
He frowned, considering his next move. Creating spirit creatures wasn't a casual endeavor. Each needed a purpose, an essence that would make it more than just a tool. A darkness creature is greatest enemy of reflection and shadows. A rival to light itself, a force to oppose the three divine aspect users who controlled light, shadows, and reflection. Darkness was the key, the missing piece in his strategy.
Lich had his uses—an invaluable mind, a wealth of knowledge. He would help reinforce Klaus's citadel and, eventually, his domain when Klaus ascended to supremacy. Hemera had her place as well. She was the perfect counter to darkness, capable of hunting and destroying it, healing and purging with ease. Then there was Miseria, a necessary trump card against Asterion. Her mind-related abilities would give Klaus the edge in dealing with that troublesome bastard.
But a darkness creature—he needed it more than anything. With it, he could push back the divine bloodlines. Yet, it wasn't just the creatures of divine lineages he wanted to confront. He needed their very traits.
The Akashic Records while a memory was still authority born of the Heart God. Not a spirit creature, but a force all the same. Hemera carried the essence of the Sun God. Miseria held the traits of both the Heart and Dream God. Loki, for all his power was more profane than divine but that loathsome bastard was sinister and quite terrifying.
And then, the darkness creature. It would carry the trait of the Void Being that give birth to true elemental darkness.
But now Klaus faced a decision—should he focus solely on overpowering those who carried blood of gods, or should he pursue raw power and versatility? The latter would require a spirit of shadow—a being that could adapt, a creature of death, of shadows. But that wasn't all. He would need a harrowing beast too, ideally one that bore the Lineage of the Beast God.
It came down to two choices—shadow and beast. Klaus needed the shadow creature's adaptability, its fluidity. But from the Beast, he sought the cycle of birth and death.The Beast God's authority was the embodiment of life's cycle, and Klaus craved that mastery.
The more he thought, the more he realized how much needed to be done. He had to learn how to bind his relics to his soul, to unlock new types of Ritualistic Magic. He had to experiment with his newfound abilities, strengthen his spirits, and create relics with a will of their own. It was a never-ending cycle of work, experimentation, and obsession. But Klaus couldn't help it—he craved power. Klaus was ambitious and greedy, after all.
But now... now he needed to focus on that damned specter.
Klaus laughed under his breath, a ragged sound edged with madness, and rose to his feet. The air in the tower was cold, almost biting, but it was a chill he welcomed. It made him feel alive. Sharp. Ready to carve his vengeance into stone.
He stared ahead, his amusement curling into a wicked smile.
"Yeah... definitely cutting back on horror movies."
He cracked his neck, shadows dancing around him, and in a blink—vanished.
Teleporting outside, the island's distorted terrain greeted him like an old friend: eerie, silent, and wrong. The statues stood like mourners at a cursed funeral, frozen in grotesque poses, yet very much aware. He could feel them watching. No… he could see them now.
His amethyst eyes glowed with malevolent glee, luminous cracks splitting from his pupils and spider-webbing across his cheeks like fractures in porcelain.
Oh, that bastard was about to find out what torment really meant.
The island trembled.
"I hope you're ready to dance, you marble-faced freak."
Klaus began inspecting the statues, each more disturbing than the last. And the bastard hid inside them. Kill one, and the soul would slither into another—then restore the rest like a cowardly parasite.
Klaus grinned, rolling his knuckles until they cracked like gunshots. "I'm gonna grind your sculptured balls to powdered ash, you preposterous bitch."
Then—it happened.
Every statue on the island snapped its head toward him.
Eyes opened wide.
Mouths split in crooked, frozen howls.
And they screamed in unison:
"Come!"
"Come!"
"Come!"
"Join us! Stop resisting and be one with us!"
Klaus tilted his head mockingly. "Sorry, sweetheart. I'm more into soft curves and moaning, not jagged rocks and cult chanting."
And then the stampede began.
Statues lunged with unnatural speed, their movements twitchy and wrong, like puppets pulled by threads made of madness.
Klaus vanished.
He appeared above them, floating upside-down like a predator savoring the moment. At his fingertip, a crimson sphere spun into existence, warping the air around it like a miniature vortex.
He pointed like a gun.
"Bang."
The sphere exploded from his hand like divine wrath—crashing into the horde below. A tidal wave of force cracked the earth, shattering dozens of statues into dust and sending a thunderclap echoing across the island.
Chunks of stone flew. A gust of fire followed. A crater remained.
Klaus hovered, smiling wickedly as he flipped the statues his middle finger.
But the sky darkened.
The broken statues screamed as stone wings burst from their backs. They took flight—hundreds of them. Eyes glowing with malice, limbs reshaped into spears, swords, scythes.
"Oh? Now you're trying to fly?" Klaus laughed, voice high and unstable. "Bitch, I own the skies!"
They swarmed.
Klaus blurred, phasing through them, a flash of violet glow. One statue swung a jagged axe—Klaus leaned back, time slowing, the weapon grazing his nose.
He vanished again, reappearing mid-air above the statue's head.
"I like my statues with less face."
Crack!
His punch came down like a hammer forged from hatred and kinetic fury, shattering the statue's skull.
Another. Two more. He struck like lightning, fists imbued with raw essence, every blow backed by years of ruthless training. His control was impeccable. His aim—surgical. Destructive.
But the numbers didn't decrease.
The Specter reformed them just as fast. Statues regrew, reassembled from shattered limbs. The sky was a storm of shrieking stone and divine mockery.
Klaus grit his teeth. That freak... it just won't die.
A polearm came at him like a missile.
He let it hit.
His body turning intangible, reappearing behind the attacker. He landed on its shoulders like a dancer, and before it could react—
CRUNCH!
He tore its head clean off and laughed as it crumbled.
"Come on! Is this all you've got? You shriek like a little girl and fight like a wet fart!"
The statues howled, their voices twisting in rage.
The Specter's true form began to flicker between the statues now, appearing in their shattered cores—a shadowy figure, twitching, leeching, growing.
Klaus saw it.
Finally.
The source. The core.
He grinned like a lunatic. "Oh, you're mine. I'm going to peel you apart, thread by thread, and feed your soul to Miseria for breakfast."
As Klaus weaved through the air like a ghost of wrath, statues lunging and tearing at the sky behind him, liquid darkness coiled around his finger, pulsing like a living vein. The Hunger Enchantment stirred. Klaus always preferred Devourer in the form of ring.
Enchantment: [Hunger]
"Allows its master to devour up to seven abilities. Hunger can fuse abilities to create new, more powerful ones. However, the abilities must be compatible, or the results will be unpredictable."
[First Slot: Lightning]
[Second Slot: Seasnake]
[Third Slot: Seed Of Life]
[Fourth Slot: Gigantification]
[Fifth Slot: Frostbite]
[Sixth Slot: Swamp]
[Seventh Slot: Hurricane]
He glanced at it once—and grinned.
Then he teleported, slamming down onto the earth like a meteor. His boot cracked stone as he landed in front of reforming statues, arms spread like a conductor before a lunatic orchestra.
"Swamp."
The ground beneath him bubbled, and then—collapsed. Viscous darkness oozed upward like tar given life, morphing the island's soil into a gaping mire. The broken remnants of the statues—those crawling back to coherence—were swallowed, dragged beneath the surface in sludgy agony.
But that wasn't enough.
"Seed of Life."
Underground, something writhed. Vines exploded from the corrupted swamp—wrapping, choking, strangling the half-formed statues in a tangle of roots like ravenous serpents. One statue screamed as it was bound mid-formation, never even finishing its own resurrection before being silenced.
A sword came for his head. Klaus leaned back with lazy precision, frowning as the blade missed by inches.
"…Tch. Get in line, you cheap knockoff gargoyle."
"Hurricane. Seasnake. Frostbite."
The abilities merged into a maelstrom of terror. First came the winds, howling like banshees. Then coils of serpentine liquid surged through the vortex—lightning-etched water serpents that lashed and spun, forming the skeleton of the storm. And then the cold came.
A tornado of biting frost and water serpents ripped through the battlefield, statues caught in its wrath. They were shredded, then frozen mid-air, only to be shattered into fine dust by the force of the winds. The sky itself turned pale and howled.
Klaus hovered in the chaos, his silhouette framed by swirling destruction.
"Try harder, you pathetic lawn decorations!"
He stepped sideways through the air, standing on the vertical wall of a tower as though it were the floor.
He observed them with disdain, violet eyes narrowed.
Only a couple dozen remained. But he was running on fumes—one spirit core still full. The rest? Dry. Bone dry.
From behind, pain blossomed. A stone spear pierced his shoulder—sickening and deep. He snarled and was thrown from the wall like a ragdoll, crashing into the dirt.
Above, the statues descended. They wore wide grins, their hollow eyes crying bloody tears. They chanted with sick, unified joy:
"Join us... Become one with us..."
Klaus, bleeding and slumped, looked up at them with a blank face. Then vanished—teleported away in a blink.
They crashed into the ground where he'd been, pulverizing earth—and then froze.
Hovering above. twisted, sadistic grin split Klaus's face.
He pointed downward.
An amethyst sphere flickered to life in the crater where he'd just been. It pulsed, growing.
"What's the matter?" he said with cruel amusement. "Cathedral's too quiet for you?"
The statues stared—entranced—trapped inside the sphere.
He clenched his fist.
The sphere collapsed inward with sickening speed. Gravity flipped. Light and matter screamed as they were compressed into a singularity, the core of the sphere devouring all within it. Like a black hole wrapped in amethyst flame, it chewed through stone, essence, even the screaming wills of the trapped vessels.
A roaring detonation thundered across the island. Land warped. A crater gouged deep into the island.
Klaus floated above, barely staying conscious. His eyes were bleeding. His essence burned, nerves shaking, but he was still grinning through bloodied teeth.
"…Haaaah… Bloody hell. That fucking parasite almost got me…"
And then—everything went cold.
Something shifted in the air.
His grin vanished as his eyes widened—no, stretched in disbelief. A twisted shape materialized in front of him.
The Specter. But not in a statue.
Inside him.
It surged forward, phasing into his body—and Klaus screamed. A sound of real agony, the kind that no pride or rage could hide.
He hit the ground like a corpse and didn't rise.
Darkness took him.