Chapter 14: The Fragment

"Rick Quan. Seems like Samuel hated you enough that his anger passed to me." The creature glared at Rick, its expression distorting slightly in rage. After a moment, it returned to normal, with the same smile as before.

If Samuel were able to check his own status, it would look something like this:

[Status]

[Name: Samuel Mo?]

[Title: Incarnation of Wrath]

[Aspect: The Infernal Guide (Wrath)]

[Race: Human?]

[Mana Cultivation: Level 6]

[Stats:]

[Strength: 66]

[Vitality: 66]

[Agility: 66]

[Intelligence: 66]

[Willpower: 66]

This creature was immensely powerful. Similar to how Samuel felt towards Bo, this creature was leagues ahead of Bo in stats. It was a complete fluke that Bo had managed to dodge the first attack. Of course, he hadn't lived much longer.

The creature began to slowly walk towards Rick. It had promised Samuel that it would destroy his enemies. The anger that lingered had caused it to decide that Rick's death wouldn't be easy.

Rick was still on the ground. He had already dropped his gun a long time ago, and sweat dripped down his face. He began to crawl backwards, trying to stay as far away as possible. When he felt the fire encroaching upon his back, he morphed his eyes and used his Snake Eyes on the creature.

"Your efforts are meaningless. I do not feel fear." The dreadful creature was unfazed. Nothing could stop its advance.

When the creature reached Rick, it crouched down and lifted his face up with a clawed finger.

"Are you angry? I killed your companion. Can you feel the anger burning you up inside? You hated Samuel so much, and now his body is about to end your petty little life."

Rick couldn't bring himself to feel anger towards this creature. The only emotion he felt was fear. There was a deep sense of terror that penetrated his very core.

"Please, sir. Don't hurt me. I can give you money. Just spare my life." Rick sputtered, begging for his life.

"Boring. Maybe this will help." The creature sighed and stood back up before stomping down on Rick's left leg.

"Ahhh!" He cried out in pain. Tears streamed down his face as he clutched his leg.

"Still nothing? What a disappointment." The creature sighed again.

"Uggghhh… I'm sorry! Don't kill me…" Rick lay there on the ground, moaning in pain.

"Humans are such pitiful creatures." With a snap of its fingers, a black spike pierced through Rick's heart. The cries stopped abruptly, only the sound of wood and grass burning remained.

The creature turned away from the carnage and looked into the sky. It stood there silently looking into the sky.

"Hmm. There's nothing to feed on…" the creature shook its head and rubbed its stomach "Well, recovering strength can wait. In the meantime, I'll have a little fun."

As it said that, a pair of black feathered wings sprouted from its back. Each of them was nearly the entire height of its body. Then, the creature bent its legs and jumped into the air while simultaneously flapping its wings. It shot into the air like a rocket before hovering for a few seconds. The creature looked around and once it determined its target, it shot forward in that direction.

——

Meanwhile, the rest of the Awakened were fighting for their lives. After disturbing the lake water a lake lady had risen from the depths, angry at the trespassers. Her humanoid figure was deceiving, as this was a monster through and through.

The guild Awakened were completely overwhelmed. What could they do against a mass of water? Angela's abilities were just fire, completely ineffective against the lake lady. Anastasia and Grandpa Hu had superior physical abilities, but they weren't great against beings made of liquid. Akaash's arrows just sunk into her after losing momentum, causing no visible damage. Only Ariana's energy discs were able to slash through the water, but the cuts regenerated quickly.

Now they were stumped. The lake lady lashed out with her water arms and fired pressurized balls of water. Since the forest around them was completely ablaze, they tried to direct the water to land on the fires. Fortunately, the water did seem effective for putting out the strange black fire but it wasn't completely effective like water normally would be. It was almost like a gas fire and the heat dissipated part of the water before it even hit.

The group gave up on offense and focused fully on manipulating the attacks to land on the water. At least, while they were on full defense, the water attacks did minimal damage to them.

Fwoosh!

A sound of strong air flow and flapping wings could be heard. The battle stopped for a moment, both sides looking at the newcomer. In the air was a tall, snow-skinned creature with ram's horns and black wings. It hovered above the forest, gazing arrogantly over the clearing. It made no move to help, simply watching.

——

Inside Samuel's soul, within the overwhelming pitch-black darkness, a tiny light struggled to maintain its existence. This was Samuel's consciousness. After the devil had kicked Samuel out of his own body, his consciousness was booted into the soul space. Just as the devil had been aware of some things that Samuel could see or know, Samuel was able to watch things happen through the devil's vision. Although it was somewhat blurry and difficult to tell what was going on sometimes, Samuel definitely could understand the gist of the situation.

Rick had been killed. This creature that was hidden in his Aspect was immensely powerful. He had murdered Bo so easily, someone who Samuel was completely beaten by. Although Samuel had felt somewhat relieved and his anger had lessened greatly when Rick died, he felt uncomfortable that it was at the hands of some unknown creature.

'Well, technically it's my body so I guess it's fine. And I don't have to worry about this close threat anymore.'

Now, the issue was how he could possibly take his body back from this devil. Luckily, the devil hadn't devoured him outright.

Currently, what Samuel was seeing was similar to when he first Awakened. His consciousness was a spirit body that had all his features. This time however, rather than a pure expanse of blankness, the area around him was foggy and unclear. The reason was because of the black smog that filled his soul. He could just barely see something in the distance.

When he approached that object, it turned out to be a large book. Its height was about the same as Samuel's spirit body. He floated upwards to get a better look.

Once he got a full view of the object, he immediately felt a familiar feeling from it. His instincts were telling him that this was his Aspect. Right now, it was an open book with the pages opened to chapter five. He could see that the page was stained with black, though it wasn't ink.

As he observed the book, he was also racking his brains for some solution to his predicament. However, as he wasn't knowledgeable about anything related to souls and the Aspect, he had no idea where to even begin.

That was when he noticed something unusual. When he circled around the book, he saw a speck of light on the mass of pages to the left. This was the half of the book that was towards the beginning of it. He couldn't see it before because he was looking from the other side. The light was somewhat bluish-white and seemed to be trying to escape. It looked similar to something but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.

Regardless, he floated over to the book and attempted to lift the pages.

'Heavy!' Samuel first tried to just flip directly to the page where the light shone from but it was extremely heavy.

After failing to lift it, he then tried to flip one page at a time. It was still strangely heavy, but it was much lighter than before. However, when he finally flipped the page over, the black smog moved automatically and forced it back over, keeping the book open on chapter five.

'Someone doesn't want his chapter to end.' Samuel glared at the smog.

The light continued to shine, tempting him and keeping him focused. The devil could devour his soul at any moment, completely erasing him from existence. He needed to figure out how to expose the light which was his only hope.

This time, instead of flipping the page over, he lifted it and pushed it to the side. Since it was an actual book, he could just flip through several pages by pushing them, exposing just half of the page beneath it. He could only hope that it was enough to free the light.

Little by little, his spirit body pushed the pages, until finally he managed to get to the page where the blue light was. As the last page was pushed aside, the light intensified greatly and squeezed its way out of the book.

[Hey there, Sam! Thanks for letting me out.]

A familiar looking text box appeared.

'Mammon.' He thought.

Suddenly, a spirit body much larger than Samuel popped out of the floating text box. In front of Samuel was an androgynous looking figure, very short in stature. A long black cloak fully wrapped the spirit body leaving nothing to be seen but the head. Tiffany-blue skin and large round eyes constituted the face of this person. The eyes were very unusual. They were completely black with millions of tiny bright lights dotting them like mini galaxies. Adorned atop the head was a pair of dark-blue horns, short and slightly curved towards the inside of the head. A feminine sounding voice came from the spirit body's mouth.

"So, I wasn't completely honest with you the first time around. I actually could have answered your questions, since I'm a fragment of the soul of the original Mammon, which means I have my own consciousness. But I didn't feel like it at the time. Sorry about that." the fragment of Mammon smiled, clearly not very sorry. "Anyway, I can see you're in a bit of a predicament. It looks like that old fogie Satan did a number on you. That bastard, I knew he was gonna pull something like that.

"Luckily, I, the great and wise Mammon predicted this in advance.

"Actually, the Reincarnation Game thing was fake. I didn't make a spell that was this powerful, it's basically impossible. All the things you've been seeing were just me showing you the information. Actually, I was surprised that you used me so little. It's like you forgot you could. Anyway, the point is, I can still help you. The Reincarnation part of the Reincarnation Game is kinda true. The details aren't important, all you need to know is that I can get your body back for you and make you more powerful. Kinda like reincarnation right? Now, unfortunately, this fragment of me will also disappear since I need to put in a lot of effort into erasing that old bastard."

"You're gonna kill Satan?? How are you gonna do that? He's so powerful." Samuel was shocked at the nonchalance of this fragment of Mammon.

"Powerful? He's nothing but a shadow of his former self. I am way stronger than him, even as a fragment." the fragment of Mammon smirked proudly before continuing. "Any last questions before I get started? You won't be seeing me for a while."

"Yeah, who are you anyway? Last time you said I should find you when I'm stronger. Where will I find you? And why should I find you?" Samuel wanted to know these things.

"I told you. I'm Mammon. Technically, you don't have to find me. But I have a feeling that you will look for me anyway. One day, you'll have need of my services. Oh by the way, once you actually unlock the chapter of Greed, you'll be able to have some similar powers. I could tell from your face that you were thinking that." The fragment of Mammon answered before switching topics.

"As for where you'll find me," the spirit body began to float upwards, growing larger as it moved. "I'll be waiting for you in Philoma, the City of Knowledge in the Netherworld."