Hill of Scraps

Soon after entering the Pyramid of Giza, Olive's eyes adjusted to the stark darkness. During that time, Cain explored their immediate surroundings. 

Long and forsaken passages littered the pyramid's interior. Randomly built rooms with nothing in them, walls covered in hieroglyphics, and a constant sound of humming plagued the pyramid. 

In addition to the lack of everything, each step on Cain's behalf summoned a cloud of dust and polluted the air. After only a few minutes, the air grew thick and unpleasant — Cain was constantly sneezing due to the constant assault on his senses. 

Stumbling their way through the pyramid, Cain and Olive haphazardly discovered another passageway that led further into the ground. Like the corridor on the edge of the pyramid outside, this newly discovered one also resembled a slide going down. 

Slipping his feet in first, Cain dropped into the square hole and plummeted further below. 

Cain's speed accelerated. The stone bricks in front of his eyes merged together until nothing but a blur remained. Then, Cain's body crashed onto a pile of junk. 

Torn rags, broken vases, tools, sticks, barrels, Cain plummeted into all of it. It did well to soften his landing, but Cain's altered density sent him straight into the center of the trash-heap — penetrating the layer of cloth and rags that lay on the junkyard's surface. 

It took a few moments for Cain to drag himself out of the pile of garbage and, just when he broke out, Olive crashed onto his head and launched him back into the abyss. 

This time bursting out of the pile of junk like a rocket, Cain soared through the air and landed some ten feet away from the mess. 

He looked around. 

They were in a large cavern that seemed almost natural. No straight walls, no exotic pillars, no craftsmanship of any sort graced this space and yet it was assuredly man-made. The size of the cavern alone hinted at its origins, not to mention its attachment to the pyramid above and the junk pile of ancient Egyptian scraps that was deposited here. 

At the end of the cavern, a single hole split the wall in two and formed a passageway of escape. 

"A little help would be nice!" Olive shouted, clearly ticked off. 

Cain followed the sound of her voice and found her waist deep in the scrap mountain, presumably trapped. 

Cain climbed the junk and grabbed Olive's wrist. Pulling her from the garbage, Cain lifted her above the ground and prepared to leap across the cavern towards the exit. 

To his surprise, however, he noticed that although he pulled Olive from the trash-heap, something was still attached to her ankle; the boney arm of a skeleton. 

Cain snapped the bones in two and pulled them off Olive's ankle. In the meantime, he also studied the pile of junk they stood upon. 

Ripped rags and torn cloth, aged sandals and spent tools, but beneath the pieces of cloth, bones hid. Cain rummaged through the pile. 

He found skulls, ribs, arms and legs, complete skeletons and even mummified ones. 

They were standing upon a pile of death. 

On a mountain of corpses. 

Decayed long ago, of course, and dry as the desert above, but ancient bones nonetheless. 

Finally realizing what he had fallen into, questions immediately began to assault Cain's mind. 

'Was it a trash chute for corpses?' 

'But why go through all the effort of mining out this huge cavern just to store corpses?' 

Then, Olive successfully made it down the mountain of bones, still unaware that they were bones at all. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark, but not enough to properly see. At the moment, all Olive could see was different shapes of gray and black unlike Cain who could see almost naturally. 

After toppling down the bone hill, Olive found the solid stone floor and embraced its return. She dropped to her knees and placed her palms on the ground. Tilting her head forward, she lowered herself to the ground to kiss the wonderful floor she so desperately missed. 

And then the familiar feeling of mana draining from her body exploded throughout Olive! 

No, Olive's mana wasn't just draining. It was disappearing! Her mana was violently sucked out of her body to facilitate the Magic Circle engraved in the stone.

Unlike with Cain's sacrifices, whatever was draining her mana now was truly gluttonous. In a matter of seconds, Olive's body thinned and her skin shriveled! 

Out of mana almost instantly, the Circle switched gears and began absorbing Olive's lifeforce! 

Suddenly, an eerie toxic glow ignited around the mound of deceased bones. Various symbols and markings glowed green, surrounding the mountain of bones in ancient Runes that appeared similar to hieroglyphics.  

Then, a hole appeared beneath the corpses. 

A round maw with thousands of teeth opened up and swallowed the mound of corpses whole. 

Cain and Olive included. 

Olive passed out due to mana exhaustion. Her body grew limp and she couldn't resist the devouring of herself. 

Cain, on the other hand, met the walls of the beast's throat with savagery. His arms turned to swords, Cain slashed the meaty walls encasing them and dug his blades deep into the cage of flesh. 

Coursing his Spirit into his blades, Cain released |Corrupt Slash| directly within the flesh of the monster and an overwhelming vibration followed suit. 

*BOOM*

The sound of a bomb exploding, a loud wail pierced Cain's ears as a chunk of flesh tore off the beast's esophagus! Instantly, an insanely strong suction pulled at Cain's body! 

Like the reaction of being in space, Cain dug his arms into the flesh wall and grabbed Olive while the remaining contents of the beast's stomach were rapidly expunged into who knows where. 

Cain turned to look at the hole in the beast's throat, but he saw nothing on the other side. 

Nothing but darkness. Nothing but emptiness. 

'The Void?' Cain's eyes widened. 

Before he could study the mysteries of what lay beyond the beast that swallowed him, however, a tidal wave of mucus came barreling down the monster's throat and swept Cain and Olive along with it. 

The picture of the Void vanished from the monster's bleeding hole and was instead replaced by gray stone. 

Tossing around in the river of spit, Cain and Olive erupted from the monster's throat and shot across an open room. They crashed onto stone and slid across the floor — blood and saliva dripping from their every pore. 

"Betsy?" An unfathomably deep and powerful voice shook Cain's cells to their very nucleus. 

"Betsy?!!" The voice said again, although this time louder and with hints of concern. 

Each time the strange voice spoke, Cain felt like he was speaking directly into his soul. His every part of him paid rapt attention to the strangers words. They completely overwhelmed him. 

Through hazy eyes, Cain struggled to perceive his surroundings. 

It was dark, but not pitch black. Soft and flickering lights lined the hall they were in. 

Gray stone columns supported the room. The columns were robust and intricate, as thick as a van yet as detailed as Gogh's paintings. 

In the back of the room, a throne. Massive and raised above the rest of the hall — a staircase required to even reach the immaculate seat. 

The throne was covered in bones. Mostly human, but at the peak of the throne, the skull of a jackal eerily watched over their surroundings. Also, the jackal skull was huge. Twice the size of a bull's. 

And its eyes, although hollow, were not empty. Where the jackal's eyes once lay, a polluted emerald energy ignited in its place. 

Cain gazed into the green energy. He felt trapped within it. The world began to spin around him and nausea started to plague his senses. 

Ripping his attention away from the jackal's eyes, Cain's haziness wore off and he got a good look at the hall. 

Ancient murals covered the walls — depictions of giant bi-pedal jackal's controlling and ruling humans. Whipping them for their carriages, slaughtering them for their woes, sacrificing them in battle. 

The walls of the hall depicted the enslavement of man. 

"You insects DARE HURT BETSY!!" The previous voice exploded throughout the hall. 

The walls shook. Debris fell from the ceiling and dust polluted the air. 

Crain tried to stand, but the sliminess of the mucus covering him made it difficult to do so. On his knees, Cain spun around to face his opponent. 

Immediately, his eyes widened. 

A massive worm lay strewn across the hall's space. Breathing weakly, blood pooled underneath the beast as a crater worth of flesh was missing from the worm's figure. 

In front of the worm, just as depicted on the walls, a ten foot tall jackal approached Cain. The jackal was fluttering in gold: gold bracers, anklets, necklaces, arm-bands, even the jackal's ears wore golden armor. 

Two long strips of purple cloth hung from the jackal's shoulders, both in front and behind the creature, acting as both a cape and a set of robes. Beside the elegant strips of cloth, white bandages wrapped the jackal's extremities, his arms and legs. 

The jackal's lips raised into a snarl, his violet eyes narrowed onto Cain and not even a moment later, the jackal stood above Cain with his black staff pointed inches above his head. 

'Fast!' Cain screamed internally! 

He didn't even see the jackal move! He couldn't! 

"State your last words, vermin!" The jackal erupted. 

"For now, you will enter the afterlife!" 

The onyx sphere that sat atop the jackal's staff ignited vibrant green. A miasmic energy pooled off the orb's surface and coated Cain in a cloud of mist. 

Then, the orb's light diminished and the miasma dissipated. 

"Fool." The jackal turned towards Olive and began to approach her. 

He raised his staff above her head. Green light emitted from the staff's sphere. 

During this process, Cain charged as much Spirit as he could control into a single Ability. 

Turning the edge of his arm into a blade, the corrupt energy swarmed to his sword and coated it in thick bursts of black lightning. 

Cain launched his supercharged |Corrupt Slash| towards the jackal. The arc of electricity tore through the air, igniting a brilliant light as the slash burned the oxygen found within the air itself. 

Pearlescent flames sparked off the bolts of black lightning and drowned the ancient hall in pure light. 

The |Corrupt Slash| slammed into the jackal's back and upon contact, the light vanished. The air stood still and for a moment, it appeared as though nothing happened. 

Then space itself cracked. 

The incessant light returned and an explosion followed. The ground shattered, the columns came crashing down, and a black shadow remained where the explosion took place — the jackal's silhouette now forever etched into the stone on a molecular level. 

Cain stumbled over his feet. He was exhausted. His lungs burned and his arm felt charred. 

It was the first time anything had ever hurt his arms. 

"That was impressive —" The jackal's deep voice whispered from behind Cain's ear, "for a mere human!" 

Cain spun around as fast as he could, but before he could do anything, the scrawny finger of the jackal appeared between his eyes. 

The jackal flicked Cain across the forehead and immediately, Cain's body exploded through the air and slammed into the stone wall across the hall. Penetrating the stone and embedding into the wall, Cain felt incredibly groggy. 

"Oh? You're still alive?" The jackal once again appeared before Cain without making a single noise and in an instant. 

The jackal leaned closer to Cain's face. His snout running along his features, the jackal momentarily inspected Cain. 

"I smell something else on you…" The jackal deliberated, "demon? No. Demon Lord?" 

Meanwhile, through bated breaths, Cain focused his already flickering eyes on the invisible Status window in front of him. Slowly slipping his eyes further down the screen, he eventually stopped on his last remaining hopes. 

Through his connection with the System, Cain conjured the |Jug of Mist| into reality. Out of thin air, an ancient looking jug appeared in Cain's weak hand. The jug was ivory, cut from bone, and black cloth was tied around its mouth — bound together by an old and decaying scarlet rope. 

The jackal naturally noticed the instantaneous summoning of the old jug, and when his eyes laid upon its ivory surface, the jackal froze stiff. 

His violet eyes widened. His black lips parted and his mouth hung open. 

The jackal looked away from the |Jug of Mist| and returned his attention towards Cain. 

Recognition plastered in his gaze.