Free Web NovelChapter 2: The World Is Black...
Caius had been here for seven whole days... locked in his room... he had avoided everyone and perhaps if he was a regular Child Of War then his brothers or his father would have given him more time of day but he was a failure so no.
House Draxos was not a place that nurtured the weak or coddled the grieving; it was a militaristic meat grinder that only respected strength, blood and the terrifying martial aura of their patron deity.
By choosing to hide away in his chambers, subsisting on whatever meager rations the maids quietly left at his door, Caius had essentially declared himself a ghost.
If he had possessed a raging crimson core like his older brothers, they might have kicked his door down and dragged him out to the training yards to beat some sense into him but because he was a cripple burdened with a dying Ash contract, his absence was simply treated as a blessing.
They were ignoring him, waiting for him to either fade away entirely or gather the courage to accept his eventual exile.
And after all those days of agonizing wait, after a full week of staring at the vaulted ceiling and dreading the inevitable arrival of the reincarnated God of Light, he finally had this screen in front of him.
The glowing blue interface was completely alien to the grim magical aesthetic of Ur, casting a cold light across his pale face.
It was simply amazing to awaken a System.
He had read enough web novels in his past life to know exactly what this was, but seeing it manifest in reality, feeling the weight it carried was an entirely different experience.
Perhaps if he was a normal reincarnator, a spoiled protagonist who expected the world to be handed to him on a silver platter, he would have complained about the System not coming earlier.
He would have cursed it for leaving him to suffer in terrified isolation for seven days.
’But I’m just grateful it came at all...’ Caius thought as he looked at the blue screen in front of him.
A profound sense of relief washed over his exhausted mind, loosening the tight, suffocating knot of anxiety that had been coiled in his chest since he first realized he had possessed the body of a doomed Main Villain.
"Yes."
The instant he said that, the world around him that was still paused kept glowing.
The frozen dust motes suspended in the slivers of moonlight seemed to vibrate.
[Congratulations, you have now signed in! As the First ever Sign-In Of The Host, you will be receiving Two Rewards!]
Caius almost licked his lips.
Two rewards right out of the gate? This was the lifeline he had been desperately praying for.
He needed power, and he needed it immediately. Anything... absolutely anything that would help him survive this brutal world even without having to find the blood-stained corrupted altar of a Heretic Devil.
He would gladly take a rusty dagger or a slightly enhanced physical constitution. If he could just get something to bridge the massive humiliating gap between him and the rest of his militaristic family, he could start plotting his survival properly.
[Rewards are decided at random! It can range from a stick to power beyond your very imagination!]
’What the fuck?’ Caius thought as he dropped down to his knees, his hands planting firmly onto the expensive carpet.
His initial surge of hope violently crashed into a wall of ingrained pessimism.
It was over... Knowing his luck, he would be dealt a very bad hand.
The universe of [God Reborn] had already proven that it hated him by forcing him into the body of the continent’s most pathetic punching bag.
Why would a randomized reward system be any different? He braced himself for the absolute worst, half-expecting a wooden stick to literally drop onto his head.
[You are now receiving your first reward!]
A brilliant flash of azure light materialized in the air a few feet in front of him, swirling into a tight condensing vortex of energy.
Caius didn’t even dare to look up at it. He kept his head firmly pressed toward the ground with his shoulders tense as he lamented his terrible fate.
"Knowing my luck, it’s going to be a broken twig," Caius muttered bitterly under his breath. "Or maybe a lump of coal. Oh, wait, that would actually complement my pathetic Ash magic perfectly. A single, damp lump of coal to defend myself against the absolute apex predators of the Divine Academy."
He kept his head to the ground for another long moment before finally gathering the courage to face his disappointment.
Caius slowly raised his eyes, squinting against the fading blue light, and his breath completely hitched in his throat.
"A Grimoire?" he whispered, his eyes widening in shock.
Hovering gently in the air was a small incredibly ancient-looking book. Its cover was bound in thick cracked leather that looked as though it had been carved directly from the scales of a mythical beast.
Caius scrambled forward on his knees and brought his hands up, reverently receiving the book in his palms.
It was surprisingly heavy for its size, packed with an immense number of pages. In the world of Ur, Grimoires were legendary artifacts.
They were ancient, highly coveted books that had spells or complex martial skills permanently stored inside them by the most powerful Blessed of past eras.
They allowed a user to bypass decades of grueling meditation and learn a technique immediately, though the absolute caveat was that the user needed to possess a monstrous amount of innate talent to actually comprehend the divine script inside.
His hands trembling with a mixture of awe and desperate anticipation, Caius gently flipped the heavy leather cover open to peer at the legendary spells contained within.
His heart violently sank.
He flipped to the next page, and then the next, his frantic fingers quickly thumbing through the thick volume.
The archaic parchment was completely... entirely empty. There wasn’t a single drop of ink, a single rune, or a single trace of divine mana anywhere in the book. It was just a heavy stack of blank useless paper.
He stared at the blank pages as a bitter self-deprecating smile spread across his face.
’Just my luck,’ he thought with the absurdity of the situation threatening to break his sanity. ’Of course I’m receiving an empty Grimoi—’
Suddenly, a glowing blue tab appeared directly in front of his eyes, shattering his train of thought.
[Ding! Bonding with the artifact has granted you an Ability: Appraisal!]
[Description: The ability to gaze upon the absolute truth of all things, bypassing illusions, divine concealment, and mortal ignorance. To activate Appraisal, one must focus their intent on the target and speak the command word.]
Caius blinked, reading the glowing text twice to make sure his mind wasn’t playing cruel tricks on him.
An innate ability just for holding the book? He immediately looked down at the heavy blank Grimoire resting in his palms and his crimson eyes narrowed with sudden focus.
"Appraisal."
The air above the book rippled as if a stone had been dropped into a calm pond. A massive golden system tab cascaded downward, hovering majestically over the cracked leather cover.
[Name]: The Grimoire Of Emulation
[Class]: Conceptual Artifact
[Rank]: SSS-Rank
[Level]: Max
[Description]: A mythical vessel capable of defying the foundational laws of the gods. This Grimoire allows the Host to store spells or martial skills from other Blessed simply by seeing them cast with their own eyes. The Host may then emulate and cast the stored skill flawlessly exactly once, requiring half the expenditure of mana to do so. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
Caius simply stopped breathing.
He stared at the golden text, his mind completely short-circuiting as he read the words ’SSS-Rank’ and ’Emulation’ over and over again.
In the rigid, uncompromising world of the Divine Ascendancy, magic was strictly bound by a god’s authority.
A Blessed of the God of War could never cast an arcane spell from the Goddess of Truth.
It was an absolute, unbreakable law of reality but this tiny, unassuming book allowed him to completely bypass the gods themselves. If he watched a Saint-level pyromancer unleash a devastating inferno, the Grimoire would record it.
Caius practically kissed the ancient leather cover, pressing it against his forehead as a wild euphoric laugh tore its way out of his throat.
"I’m overpowered," He gasped. "I finally have something. The ability to emulate is absolutely amazing... I can actually survive this."
The Grimoire suddenly flared with a piercing ethereal blue light, and before his eyes, the physical book dissolved into pure energy.
The light sank directly into the palm of his hand, leaving behind a faint, tingling warmth. He flexed his fingers, realizing that the artifact had bound itself to his very soul; he felt an innate profound connection to it, knowing instinctively that he could summon the Grimoire back into his hand immediately with just a single thought.
As he basked in the euphoric high of securing an SSS-Rank artifact, the system screen chimed again, drawing his attention back to the glowing blue interface floating in the center of the room.
[You are now receiving your Second Reward!]
Caius looked excitedly at the screen, his mind racing with infinite possibilities.
Honestly, the Grimoire Of Emulation was big enough to secure his survival for the foreseeable future.
He could have received a standard iron sword for his second reward and still considered this day the greatest triumph of his two lives.
He began giving himself wild impossible options leaning back on his heels as the system calculated the drop.
"Honestly, with a Grimoire this broken, I really don’t need much else... maybe a higher mana reserve?" Caius said aloud as a massive genuine smile stretched across his face. "But if I get a contract with some kind of Strong God right now, that would really make my day."
The moment the words left his mouth, that made him laugh. He shook his head, running a hand through his crimson hair.
When was he ever that lucky? He was a doomed villain slated for execution by the protagonist.
He was very sure that he had used up all of his accumulated luck just bringing the Grimoire Of Emulation into realit—
[Ding! Congratulations! You have now been binded with Ereba, Goddess Of The Void!]
His eyes widened to the absolute limit. The laughter instantly died in his throat as a secondary glaring red warning tab violently overlaid the blue interface.
[Alert! A supreme authority has entered your vessel! Your contract with the Minor God of Ash has been forcefully terminated!]
Before Caius could even process the words on the screen, a sensation of unimaginable agony exploded within his chest.
Terminating a contract with a god was not a process that felt good at all; it was a violent amputation that tore at the very fabric of a mortal’s soul.
The pathetic dying ember of Ash magic that had resided near his heart was ruthlessly, brutally crushed into absolute nothingness by an overwhelming weight that poured into his veins.
Caius violently doubled over, clutching his chest as he let out a choked agonizing gasp.
’Fu-fuck...’
He forcefully coughed, his throat tearing as he spat a massive mouthful of dark blackened blood directly onto the expensive carpeted ground.
His entire body trembled and his nerves screamed as the invasive terrifying authority of the Void forcibly rewrote his magical pathways, purging the weakness from his flesh in the most agonizing way possible.
As he threw up blood for a second time, the world around him simply vanished.
There was no flash of light and no magical portal.
His luxurious bedroom, the vaulted ceilings, the heavy oak doors... they all faded completely into a world that was absolutely suffocatingly black.
Caius stopped throwing up with his chest heaving as he stared into the abyss.
He wiped the crimson stain from his chin with the back of his trembling hand, only to see himself sitting in a world of endless liquid darkness.
It didn’t just look black; it felt solid and infinitely deep.
He flinched backward in terror, falling hard on his ass. The dark, blackened blood he had just spat onto the ground didn’t pool; it slowly sank directly into the shadowy liquid floor, dissolving as if the darkness itself was actively drinking it.
Suddenly, a small rumble went around the whole place. It wasn’t a sound that could be heard with ears, but a physical vibration that rattled his very bones.
From the endless sea of shadows, something shot forward with terrifying speed. It was formless, cold, and immensely powerful.
The shadow tightly held his right hand forward in the darkness, wrapping around his wrist with the unyielding strength of forged iron.
Caius tried to yank his arm back, his heart hammering violently against his ribs, but he couldn’t move a single inch.
Then, the void above him shifted. High in the endless, pitch-black sky of this bizarre prison, the darkness ripped open.
Several countless, massive eyes slowly unsealed themselves, peering down at him from the heavens.
They were ancient and held deep terrifyingly cold purple pupils that seemed to pierce straight through his mortal shell and into his very soul.
Every single one of them was looking directly at him, carrying a crushing weight that made him feel like an insignificant speck of dust.
The silence was heavier than a mountain until a voice finally echoed.
It didn’t come from the eyes, but bypassed his ears entirely, resonating directly inside his skull.
"How... How did you get into my Prison?" the voice demanded with the countless purple pupils narrowing slightly in the darkness. "Who are you and why have you binded me to you?"
Caius blinked... He was...
Looking at a god.
