God Ash: Remnants of the fallen.

He realized that if he wanted to move forward, he would have to confront this entire community of devilish creatures. He had to think long about his next steps.

Cain quietly slinked back into the natural darkness. A few minutes later, he arrived at his original campsite with a dark look on his face. Suppressing his tumultuous emotions, he began strategizing. He knew trying to fight an entire contingent of creatures like that would mean his death.

\'They might be numerous, but they don\'t seem very intelligent. I can use that to my advantage.\' Cain thought as he began going through several scenarios in his head.

\'System, what information can I get on these {Chaos Goblins}?\'

{Replying to host: The host currently lacks the necessary amount of system points to acquire such information...}

Cain suddenly remembered that he had spent all his system points just to listen to a story that revealed only vague details to him.

He clicked his tongue, \'I\'ve got to be smarter about the way I spend these damned points...\'

Cain sighed. There was nothing he could do now. He had to find information by himself. He then went back to concentrating on his thoughts.

Since there were numerous corpses around him, he decided to poke at a few of them and study them for some clues on what weaknesses the abominable creatures could possess.

However, he ended up not finding anything. Cain couldn\'t help but click his tongue as he wiped the grimy blood away from his palms.

Taking another look at the ugly face of the corpse beside him, Cain was determined to find a way.

\'Perhaps I can try dwindling their numbers slowly? Or I can try collapsing the entire cages on their heads...\' Many ideas and simulations ran through his head, but he was unable to find one that was reasonable.

He suddenly sighed...

\'I don\'t have enough information to work with right now. I should study them for a while before doing anything rash.\' He thought to himself.

Sighing again, he let his head rest against the stone. He sent the {Dark Soul} on a scouting mission. The {Dark Soul} spent a few hours observing the group of monsters, watching their actions, their behaviors, as well as other things.

It was this way Cain found out how the creatures found food. As it turned out, every member of the entire community was expected to go hunting for their meals. However, not everybody could go hunting at a single time.

Hence, every small group would go hunting for periods. Once one group had come back from a hunt, then another group could go. If the group that had gone hunting couldn\'t make it back in six hours, then the next group could follow. However, there were never more than three groups out at a single time.

Each group was made up of about a hundred {Chaos Goblins} and ten of the bigger creatures, which Cain had come to figure out were called {Chaos Trolls}.

When a group came back from a hunt, they were expected to give roughly forty percent of their hunt to a few {Chaos Trolls} that stood as the chief\'s guard. They were meant for the chief and his concubines to consume...

Cain felt bitter, thinking about how a dreadful monster was having a better time than he was.

However, armed with this new piece of information, Cain knew what he had to do. He had finally formed the basis of a plan.

His plan was simple...

The first step was to stalk a group that was headed out of their cave. Once the group had gotten far enough from the mountains, he would ambush them and wipe them out clean, whilst making sure any other groups outside at the same time would simultaneously be unable to notice they were being wiped out and would be unable to do anything about it.

Cain nearly patted himself on the back over the brilliant plan. However, executing the plan flawlessly came with a few caveats.

One, he couldn\'t spend too much time on a single group of Chaos creatures. If he did, then the chance of the situation changing unfavorably for him was high. He had to kill them all, without any one of them escaping to report back as that would put a wrench in his plans.

Two, he had to make sure the other two groups wouldn\'t notice the sounds of battle. However, Cain could pretty much say that was impossible. He knew from experience that the senses of the horrible creatures were outstanding. Their ability to hunt and lay in wait for their prey was equally terrifying. That was why he hadn\'t noticed the initial attack when he was climbing the mountain.

Hence, he had to come up with a way of stopping them from noticing. It was a tall order, but he had no choice.

\'I bet Susan would have a spell or two that could easily fix that.\'

Cain had come to realize how important fighting in a group was. No single member of a group could possess all the skills that every individual had or apply them as well as the others could. There were so many aspects to combat that made fighting as a group much more efficient than going solo.

However, he didn\'t have much of a choice right now. He had to build his house with the bricks available to him.

Taking a deep breath, Cain got to work on a new spell that could block out both sound and sight. He set its principles on the basis behind the {Emblem of Darkness} spell.

Cain had become accustomed to modifying spells and skills, so this wasn\'t something new to him. He loved the feeling it brought him as well.

Within the sanctity of his mind, he found peace. A different kind of peace. He would study the runes and sigils and magic circles for what felt like hours in his mind, yet when he came back to reality, only a few seconds had passed.

That way, he was able to process magical information much faster than a regular being, or any other being for that matter. Cain knew this wasn\'t normal. There was no way an ability that allowed him to freely modify spells as he saw fit was a random ability that anyone could possess.

However, it wasn\'t listed as a skill or a spell in his status window. So he had his doubts. Was it just an innate skill, or was it something else... He had no clue.

However, even though the ability was unbelievable, it still took a toll on him. If he used it for too long, he would begin to develop headaches that wouldn\'t leave no matter how hard he prayed for it to go away.

He also had to rely on himself and his understanding of magic theory. There was no cheat for that. Regardless of how much time in the world he had, it would all be futile if he was unable to use it for anything productive.

Cain fumbled around with the magic circle and the runes inscribed within it. The runes within a magic circle and a rune that could be attached to the body, or a weapon were both the same thing and different things.

The runes in a magic circle were in a way, more like alphabets, numbers, and symbols for basic and complex calculations. By relying on them, he could encode that information with mana. From there, it would be interpreted by the Spiritual plane and the results would manifest physically.

However, it was a bit different for attachable Runes. These runes were created using Ki. Although they needed to be run through the Spiritual plane as well, it wasn\'t as complex as the magic circles.

These runes were already existing and didn\'t need to be manifested every time. As such, they brought about a more passive effect. They could affect stats, status conditions, and provide their users with strange, yet useful abilities that were unlike regular skills or spells.

Both had their pros and cons. However, Cain hadn\'t reached the point of affinity with Ki where he would be able to use it to inscribe Runes onto his body yet. He could use mana to draw runes, but using Ki was still very difficult if not outright impossible.

However, as his control over the energy increased, he would be able to draw Runes and even more amazing things.

In real-time, it took him about three hours to finish creating a modified version of the {Emblem of Darkness}. He spent quite a long time breaking out of his inner conscience to take a few breaks, as well as trying to see the runes he could add and take away from the overall magic circle.

When he was done, a huge sigh of relief escaped his mouth...

\'Attack spells are so much easier to deconstruct and reconstruct. Utility skills are by far more complex as they require more conditions and variables before they can work.\' Cain thought to himself as he stared at the improved version of the {Emblem of Darkness} spell with a proud look in his eyes.

***

{Sigil of Darkness}:

Description: A Dark symbol of omen shines perpetually in the sky. No being can witness its light, but they are aware of its presence...

{Sigil of Darkness}: All light and sound within a five-hundred-meter radius of the host is distorted by the Sigil of Darkness that hovers overhead. The scale of the spell can be adjusted and a time-limit range of one minute lost for every fifty-meter increase starting at a hundred-meter radius is established with fifteen minutes as the starting time.

Costs: 3000MP.

***

The skill would enable him to cover an area of one hundred to five hundred meter radius. However, if the spell could stay active for fifteen minutes when the area of effect was reduced to the minimum, then at the maximum range, which was the five-hundred-meter radius, the skill would only last for five minutes. It also costs a whopping three thousand points of mana to activate.

\'Nonetheless, a success is still a success...\' Cain smiled as he stared at the details of the spell. There was nothing more satisfying than looking down at your creation with fulfillment after all...

A grin spread across his face, \'Let\'s go hunt some goblins...\'