God Ash: Remnants of the fallen.

The relationship between symbiotes was very strict...

One couldn't take more from the other, as they could only benefit mutually from one another. Once this rule was broken, and one began to take more than he gave, the relationship would automatically become parasitic.

Cain understood this well...

Should he feel that Vincent was becoming a parasite, he would be forced to do what he must. A parasite that was left to fester for too long would end up turning into a huge problem.

"Now that that's out of the way, I guess we just have to wait for the others," Vincent said. He slung his rifle back into his arms in an attempt to continue where he had left off.

"What exactly are you doing?" Although Cain had an idea, he wasn't entirely sure. After all, there were better ways to go about this without causing too much of a mess.

"What does it look like, boss? I'm getting the mana shards out. This is the easiest and most humane way to do this stuff." Vincent said with a smile.

'Humane my ass!' Although he said that, Cain didn't believe him one bit.

"Alright, suit yourself. I'll go over there and wait for the others." Cain decided to just leave the insane fatty to his devices.

He walked a few meters away from Vincent before finding a relatively clean place to sit. There was blood and dead mutants everywhere, so this was the only place in the outside vicinity of the department complex he could sit comfortably.

His clothes and body were drenched in blood that had begun to dry, making him feel irritable all over his body. However, he bore with it in silence. Just this bit of discomfort was nothing to him.

Cain sat on the ground and then pulled his status screen up. A couple of swipes later, he was once again looking at his inventory. The space in the inventory could be observed directly from the status window, so Cain was able to easily observe the contents without restriction.

After deducting the 20 water elemental mana shards he had traded with Vincent, he had 1 spatial, 4 darkness, 20 blood, 19 nature, 20 metal, 41 wind, 20 fire, 30 earth, 11 lightning, and 22 poison mana shards.

He had no use for the majority of them, but a few did catch his eyes. Apart from the metal, the spatial, darkness, blood, lightning, and fire mana shards were the ones he wanted to keep. The rest would be traded away.

He retrieved all the metal elemental mana shards from his inventory and began using them one by one.

{+100SP to {Meta Creation} skill...}

...

In the blink of an eye, the only things left around him were lusterless cracked gems that had been robbed of their light.

{Metal Creation Lvl 3.}: Gather wisps of Metal elemental attribute mana to create constructs of metal. All effects of this skill are influenced by the host's magic, control, and spirit stats. The duration of the spell has increased by 20%. (2,000/100,000SP).

'Still, a long way to go before level four.' With the speed he was using to obtain mana shards, Cain figured it was only a matter of time before he took the skill to the next level.

With the new increase in level, the skill is bound to become even more powerful. And since {Metal Creation} and {Metal Manipulation} came hand in hand, it made things even better for him.

Cain channeled some of his mana into his palm whilst activating {Metal Creation}. A glob of amorphous golden metal quietly floated above his palm. The formless glob changed shape a few times, from an arrow, to a tiny imitation of the {Devil-eyed White Primate}, then back to its original form.

As his understanding of mana and skills improved, Cain had come to see all the pros and cons of the skills in his possession.

The {Metal Creation} skill was very useful, but its only problem was the short lifespan of the items he created with it.

The duration of the spell meant the amount of time the creations of metal would last before they disintegrated back into the environment as elemental mana. As long as he wasn't pouring mana in constantly, it would break down after a while.

According to Cain's calculations, the duration of the skill was roughly five minutes, plus the extra 20% increase, making it six minutes. The skill was also more suited for defense rather than offense. Although these restrictions were an issue, the pros still outweighed the cons.

When Cain thought about this, he recalled the origins of the skill. He was one of those system-granted skills he had gotten when he had killed his first elemental mutant beast.

Afterward, he acquired {Metal Manipulation}, which was essentially just a way to increase his control over the {Metal Creation} skill.

{Metal Manipulation}: Grants the ability to freely control metal of weight that does not exceed 10 tonnes. The effectiveness of this skill increases simultaneously with the {Metal Creation} skill.

But to Cain, {Metal Manipulation} was far more powerful than {Metal Creation}. With {Metal Manipulation}, he could control actual preexisting metal as well as metal created by {Metal Creation}. This made the skill far more useful because it had fewer limitations than the {Metal Creation}.

It was also more attack-oriented. It was the skill that enabled him to use {Metal Creation} to attack his opponents. It formed the basis of his spells such as Fetters of iron, Golden Severance, Golden Halo, etc...

'But is it enough?'

It occurred to Cain that although this skill was very powerful, at the end of the day, it still wasn't enough. The metal element lacked the explosive attack attribute he was looking for.

Luckily for him, there was a way he could fix this, and that was through the use of mana shards.

Cain looked at the mana shards he had on hand...

'These are certainly not enough to achieve what I want. Let's wait for the others to get back.'

With that, Cain closed his status window. He let out a groan and a tired sigh. He looked up to the sky and realized that the sky had begun to brighten up.

Even through the grey clouds, he could tell that dawn had come...

The darkness had been pushed aside, making him able to see the full extent of the destruction that had occurred the previous night. The battle had taken place for more than five hours so he was thoroughly exhausted.

The only reason he was able to fight as long as he did was because of {Blood Ingestion Regeneration} which enabled him to fight for a very long time as long as mutant beast blood was available.

Now that he had the opportunity to sit down, he realized that he had barely slept for the past three days. The only time he had rested, was after the fight he had with the {Miasma Devil}, which didn't classify as rest because he had fallen unconscious.

That was about a day ago...

He decided to have some proper rest before he did anything. Plus, he didn't want any of his secrets exposed. He didn't want the others to see what he was doing. With the way the system worked, every piece of information was extremely precious.

This included information he didn't obtain from the system as well.

Information gotten from the system was determined only by the questions the host asked. The probability of two people asking the same set of questions was next to none, so only those who asked the right questions would have the right information to work with.

Suddenly, his ears twitched...

Can could hear very fast footsteps quickly approaching their general area. He and Vincent glanced at each other before exchanging a nod. In a single breath, Vincent smoothly aimed at the approaching cloud of dust.

'Is it a mutant beast?' Cain wondered.

Just in case, he silently retrieved his weapon from his inventory and rose to his feet.

A tremendous gust of wind churned up the dust as the culprit dashed at them like a hurricane.

BANG!

"Hahaha! Those monsters didn't even stand a chance!" Manny said as he stopped his charge with a graceful flip in the air. He landed perfectly on his two feet without even breaking a sweat.

'He's very fast, and his control is also outstanding.' Cain had to acknowledge that Manny was probably the fastest one in their group. Although he was fast as well, his stats were more on the balanced side.

Vincent looked at him with a grumpy face, "You idiots! You all just ran after those mutants like rabid chickens!"

"It's not our fault you are too scared to go after them on your own!" Manny replied with a snarky remark.

"You rascal!" Vincent said through gritted teeth.

"That's enough, you two. Let's just wait for the others." Cain could feel a headache coming up as he watched these two interact with each other. He already began regretting his decision to join them.

"You've got it, boss. I don't have the time to argue with this simpleton." Instantly, Vincent's face changed from annoyed to pleasant.

"Who are you calling a simpleton?!" Manny yelled angrily as he pointed his blade at Vincent threateningly.

"Hahaha! What are you gonna do, attack me?"

'These guys...' Cain didn't really enjoy the company of others, so he was already exhausted just by watching Manny and Vincent go at it. But he could tell that although it seemed as though they were at each other's throats, there was no real enmity between them.

"Either you guys shut the fuck up, or you both die!" Cain said menacingly, as he raised his blade to threaten them. He even activated {Fear} to make the threat more effective.

Although he meant it partially as a joke, Vincent and Manny took it quite literally.

Manny leaned in a bit to whisper into Vincent's ear, "Isn't he the one that caused all that commotion?" Manny was referring to the commotion caused by Cain's activation of {Hollow Judgement}.

"Yep..." Vincent whispered back fearfully.

"Damn... What a monster!"

Turning back to Cain who now had a dark look on his face, the usually violent Manny now had a tame expression on his face.

"Yes, boss."

'I heard everything, you bastards!' Cain didn't know how to respond, although he did find their antics quite funny.

"Ha... Let's just wait for the others." Cain let out a sigh.

Not long after, the others began appearing from the forest one after the other...

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