God Ash: Remnants of the fallen.

An hour later...

Cain snapped his eyes open and stared at the empty skies overhead. The darkness of the night had yet to fade away, which told him that they were still either in the late hours of the night, or early hours of the morning.

He could feel the fluffy and comfortable fur of Ruby beneath him, as well as the subtle warmth that emanated from her insides to his own body. The ear also lay on the ground, snoring gently.

Turning his head, he saw that there was a decent amount of people resting on the dark forest floor. A little bit away from the group resting people was a fireplace surrounded by a few individuals...

Silently, Cain rolled off Ruby's back and landed on the ground. With how high his control was, he was as silent as a cat

However, Hunter, who had just woken up turned to face Cain immediately after he landed on the ground,

"He's awake..."

'Tch! His senses have increased...' Cain could see that he wasn't the only one that benefited from the fight.

Walking over to the group, Cain counted more than ten people which included Sue and Stan, as well as a face he was not familiar with.

Sue stared daggers at him, but he completely ignored her, while Stan had a look of amazement and curiosity plastered on his face as he looked at him.

The others also had impressed looks but didn't look surprised at all.

"To think you can even take down that thing singlehandedly. Incredible!" Stan said as soon as the illumination from the campfire reached Cain's face.

"Hahaha! What do you expect from someone I consider my boss?" Vincent let out a shameless laugh as though he was the one receiving praise.

"I didn't beat it singlehandedly. We all had a role to play in that victory." Cain said straightforwardly. Turning to David who sat down beside the fire as well, he asked with a frown creasing his brow.

"How's your arm, Mr. David?" Despite his power, Cain still chose to address David with the same pleasantries he used since they had known one another.

"As you can see, it's gone. Hahaha!" David layout a slight chuckle at his own joke, which caused the faces of everyone at the fire to darken. After all, David was the only one in the entire team who had come out of the fight with permanent damage.

Seeing that his home had brought everyone's spirits down, David hurriedly clarified, "Don't get me wrong, it's gone, but that isn't the end of the world. Along as I still have life, I'll manage, with or without an arm. Besides, we never know what can happen in the future. It's better to be optimistic than not..."

Hearing that, Cain exhaled a deep sigh. He was glad the injury didn't have as much of a mental impact as it did a physical impact on David. David was the main defense of the team, and even if he had only one hand, he was still able to activate his defensive skills, skills that were very essential in battle.

However, even though David didn't seem affected, that didn't mean Cain was going to leave it at that...

"Here..." Pulling something out of his inventory, Cain tossed the glowing object at David. Due to his deftness and super fast reaction speed, David had caught it without even reasoning what the item could be.

A rush of power flowed through the object and into his hands, taking him by surprise. The object was a glowing, crimson blood attribute mana shard. This mana shard was also a Grade 6 mana shard, which meant it was the highest grade David could absorb at the moment.

"This!" David turned speechless when he saw this. A single grade 6 blood elemental mana shard would allow him to increase the Tier of skill, as well as increase his base power level. To say it was precious to him was an understatement.

"I can also tell you use the darkness element, so here..." Light flashed in Cain's hands as he threw out even more Grade 6 mana shards. Two more Blood elemental mana shards and three darkness mana shards.

"I-I can't accept this!" David said as he tried to return them to Cain, but was shut down immediately.

"This isn't the time for pleasantries, nor is it the moment to shy away. You are an important asset, and this is just an investment as we need you in your top form. Even though you've lost an arm, as long as you maintain your power, you will still perform, perhaps even better than before in the battles to come." Cain said.

There was a silence that was even more pronounced by the crackling of flames.

"Okay..." David immediately understood Cain's reasoning and accepted the mana shards. Turning to the rest of the group that now watched him in silence, Cain began to speak,

"Right now, we need to work together as time is no longer on our side. If you think the foes we have faced up till now are terrifying, you are in for a world of shock." Cain spoke with extreme seriousness. The words of Ashur flowed through his mind once again as he continued,

"We still have a whole world of devils and mutant creatures of varying might to face. And these ones aren't going to be as weak, yet they will greet us with the same savagery."

"The next move we need to make is getting to the central part of the campus. Due to the terraforming that is going on, there might be distance discrepancies, but we will deal with that in time. For now, the most pressing issue we need to deal with is the issue of recovery..."

"Yeah... We can make HP potions, the only problem is the ingredients needed, or the lack thereof..." Steve said with a hand to his chin and a contemplative look. He had already shared this information with everyone in the group so it wasn't news to anyone. He also shared the list of ingredients needed to make a batch of HP and MP potions.

"I can handle the elemental water..." Vincent raised his hand and said with a grin.

"As for the mana stone, we will first have to reach a region of high mana concentration to mine it as it is, in fact, a rare gem..." Stan said.

"Hernia and Valerian are herbs, so might be able to find them in the central region's forest." Susan said while gazing at Cain.

"The only ingredients we have availabe right now are the Blood elemental shards and... The Blood Bismuth lilies. However, the second one isn't so easy to reach." Steve said to Cain who wore an unchanging look on his face.

"Getting the Blood Bismuth lilies won't be an issue. Just give me a few minutes..." Cain said in confidence. After all, he had the [Records of Akasha I] that contained information on the basic fundamentals related to magic in the universe. This included knowledge on plants, herbs, and even poisons.

"Who knows where she is?" Suddenly, Hunyer who had been silent for some time said in a low dark voice.

There was a brief moment of silence before Cain answered him, "For now, we can't know for sure, but it is safe to assume she is still around here somewhere and couldn't have gone too far away. She isn't that stupid..." Cain said slowly.

"What do you mean?" Dan asked with raised brows.

"The fear of the unknown is one of the greatest limiting factors to those who are overly cautious. Someone like her definitely wouldn't venture into the unknown without having some sort of informational security..." Cain explained.

"That was why she waited for us to defeat and a battle with the devils first before making her move." Vincent said with a dark expression on his face. The more he though about it, the more displeased he became with the thought of someone using him for this benefit. Normally, it was the other way around...

"Since she carted the {Broodmother} way to do god knows what, we can only imagine she didn't stray to far. However, I have to ask you right now, what do you intend to do when you see her, Hunter?" Cain asked, his eyes narrowed down to slits.

Hunter stared at Cain for a while before speaking slowly, "We'll see..."

Cain could sense that apart from being oddly calm, this new Hunter that bore some differences to the old Hunter also had a bit more fire in his eyes. Before, his eyes were as cold as millennial old glaciers, but now, something had changed...

"Hmm... Cute tail..." Cain said with a smirk. He couldn't help but poke a bit of fun at Hunter just for the sake of it.

"I'll kill youuu!" Hunter let out a loud howl at Cain and prepared to lunge at him, but was stopped by Dan, causing everyone to chuckle.

"How the hell did this happen though?" Cain asked curiously once Hunter calmed down.

"The price for power that doesn't belong to me is great..." This was all Hunter had to say before he closed his eyes and crossed his arms in silence.

"Is that so..." Cain said with narrower eyes.

Hunter's howl had woken all those who had been sleeping up. Those that had been sleeping were the regular humans that had been rescued by Jenny, Sie, Stan and Li.

Cain took a closer look at them with his devil eyes and was surprised by what he saw.

"They have a bit of mana running through them. What happened?" He asked.

Stan stared at Jenny who nodded her head at him, giving him the go ahead,

"I found something... Something strange in the ocean right on the bedrock beneath the beach." Stan said.

'There should be no way this would be possible without the existence of an external treasure as a catalyst.' Cain though to himself. However, he didn't realize how accurate his guess was.

Pulling them from his inventory, Stan lay the glowing corals in the ground for everyone to have a look.

"These are a portion of the remnants of the Sea god, Levron. They are called Vitality coral."

Cain picked one of the glowing objects and focused his gaze on it...

A few seconds later, he out it down with a weird expression on his face.

"System, how is it possible for a celestial being that had turned into god ash eons ago to still create these... Things?"

{Reolying to host: These are called remnants for a reason... They are formed from the aggregation of residual energy and knowledge of the powers of the cosmos in a celestial being that has met its demise. God Ash in created from the destruction of the body and soul, but there are some things that can't be destroyed even with the power of the sacred flames in a celestial...}

Cain decided not to reason about it too much after he had digested what the system said.

"Alright... Enough chatting."

Cain turned to all the fairly normal humans and said at the top of his vocal cords that had been reinforced with Ki,

"I think it's time to put all you sore bones to work..."