SSS Awakening: I Can Devour Gods to Evolve My Goddesses

Chapter 8: Five Points to Wake the First Span

Cassian’s chest was still warm.

Four points of Divine Essence had only just entered his body. The wound in his right shoulder kept throbbing, but he felt pleasantly heavy inside, as if six pieces of gold cut straight from an enemy were hidden beneath his ribs.

He sat on the stone of the first relay and enjoyed the feeling a little longer.

Six points.

All his.

A series of faint scraping sounds came from the distance.

The Ashbone road nails aimed at him lowered their tips in unison.

Below the broken span, the golden underground dawnlight brightened.

The old record on the first relay trembled.

[CURRENT SEAL-BREAKER: CASSIAN VALE]

The final letter of his name faded to gray.

Cassian stopped smiling.

A thread of sickly white crept toward him along the old road. It was slow, but every pulse of golden light below let it consume another sliver of ground.

He pressed his palm over his name.

The white flowed around his fingers and continued gnawing at the edges of the letters.

"I just killed one of you. Couldn’t you wait a little longer?"

The stone ignored him.

Several broken lines surfaced beside his hand.

[Underground Dawn Pulse Approaching.]

[The victor may request a response from the old road.]

[Cost: 5 Divine Essence.]

[Missing: A response from the old formation that still lives.]

That was all.

Nothing said how the road would respond. Nothing said what five points would buy.

Cassian stared at the number.

If all it did was keep his name lit for a few more days, five points was robbery.

But if the broken road could actually move—

His gaze dropped to the bottomless golden light beneath his feet.

His stomach tightened.

It was not just reluctance to spend.

It felt more like someone had pushed a sealed box in front of him and said it might contain a territory—or a note thanking him for his purchase.

The sickly white advanced again.

Cassian pushed himself to his feet and caught the coarse cable.

If he spent nothing, his name would definitely disappear.

If he spent the points, at least he might earn the right to curse the road for cheating him.

He made his way slowly back to the near side along the ordinary cable.

Every length the winch reeled in pulled painfully at his right shoulder. His knee did not appreciate the return trip either, but both still worked.

Once he reached solid ground, Cassian did not immediately return to the temple.

Rowan still owed him that priority quote.

Cassian opened the proposal function on the Newcomer Divine Essence Ranking. He resubmitted the same rough load and span categories he had already disclosed, then added one sentence.

[I need a removable method for one person to cross a broken span.]

No coordinates.

No image.

No route name.

Rowan replied quickly.

[It can be done.]

[I will need more data from both ends. Delivery must be divided into stages, and the final price will be high.]

[No on-site access or rights to the route required.]

[This priority quote is now complete.]

Cassian read the reply twice.

Rowan had not used the chance to reach for Cassian’s road. Nor had he pretended three vague sets of data were enough for an exact price.

That made the answer more credible.

It also made it useless.

Staged delivery would never arrive before the next underground dawn pulse.

Cassian neither accepted nor rejected the proposal. He left it there and turned into the east passage.

Veyra raised her eyes when she heard his footsteps.

She saw the blood showing through the bandage on his right shoulder first. Then she noticed the empty place at his waist.

"You came back slower than the coarse cable."

"I lost six meters of thin line on the way. I also killed something."

"That does not sound like the most flattering order to tell the story."

Cassian paused.

The words he had prepared—*but I devoured four points*—suddenly stayed in his throat.

"The Ashbone Acolyte is dead," he said. "I crushed its core myself and devoured every trace of its divinity."

Something shifted in Veyra’s eyes.

"And the old road?"

"The seal on the first relay is gone. The road wrote my name."

"The trace left by the Third Formation?"

"Still there."

The Eclipse Chains beneath her right wrist loosened by a fraction.

Cassian finished the sentence.

"My name is being erased."

The chains drew tight again.

He walked to the Core and placed his palm against it. The broken records from the first relay surfaced once more, stopping on the missing response from the living old formation.

Veyra studied the words for a long time.

"The Third Formation used to answer that road."

Cassian turned to her.

"How?"

"With a marching response."

"And what will the road do afterward?"

"I don’t know."

Cassian frowned.

Veyra noticed.

"The last time I passed that way, the road was whole and the soldiers had not been reduced to a record waiting for someone to put a price on it."

Her tone was level, but Cassian let his brow smooth out.

She was not deliberately giving him half an answer.

The other half was simply dead.

"If the road hears you," Cassian asked, "who will hear you in return?"

"Ashbone."

The answer came without hesitation.

Silence settled over the temple.

Veyra lowered her gaze to the Eclipse Chains around her right wrist. Her thumb moved slowly along the edge of one chain and stopped when it touched the old wound.

Cassian did not decide for her whether it was worth it.

After a while, Veyra looked up.

"The Third Formation still stands."

Cassian waited half a breath.

"That’s it?"

"No one has time for long speeches while marching."

"Ashbone will know you’re still alive."

"They are already erasing my people," Veyra said. "Let them know someone still remembers."

No oath followed.

No explanation of how much she had just placed in his hands.

Only that sentence.

The Core lit again.

[Old formation response confirmed.]

[Allocation: 2 Covenant / 3 Dominion.]

[Covenant allocation requires Veyra’s consent.]

Cassian looked at her.

"Two points will go to you. Are you sure?"

"I am." Veyra paused. "Don’t say it wrong."

Cassian almost laughed.

"If that road only flashes my name once, I’ll come back and curse it."

"Don’t curse me."

"Depends on the result."

Veyra gave her consent.

Two points of Divine Essence crossed the Core and sank into her body.

The Eclipse War Banner behind her showed a black-gold outline for a single instant without extending beyond the Shrine. The chains hummed, but did not loosen by even an inch.

[Veyra Evolution Pool: 4/24]

[No Evolution.]

The other three points sank toward the Dominion.

The five points did not vanish at once. They condensed in Cassian’s palm into a heavy current of black-gold heat.

It had not entered the old road yet.

Until the underground dawn pulse arrived, it would travel with him.

[Available Divine Essence: 1]

[Cumulative Divine Essence Acquired: 15]

Cassian flexed his hand.

The tension in his stomach grew stronger.

Five points were already on the table, but the box had yet to open.

To his surprise, he was excited.

"I’m going."

Veyra leaned back against the divine seat.

"Cassian."

He looked over his shoulder.

"The Third Formation still stands," she repeated.

This time, there was no explanation at all.

Cassian nodded and entered the east passage.

When he crossed the first gap again, the coarse cable was still nothing more than a coarse cable.

It tightened behind him and slowly carried him back to the first relay. The underground dawnlight had grown brighter while he was gone, its gold rising and falling just beneath his boots.

Only the first half of his name remained on the stone.

The sickly white was less than a handspan away.

Cassian dropped to one knee and pressed his hand against the surviving record.

"The Third Formation still stands."

Nothing happened.

The black-gold current remained trapped in his palm. Not a trace entered the stone.

His voice crossed the broken span, circled the empty old road, and came back unchanged.

He sounded like a novice who had just learned a password and was solemnly repeating it to a door that had rotted away years ago.

Cassian glanced to either side.

Of course no one had seen him.

Somehow, that made what he had just said feel even more ridiculous.

He waited one breath.

Then another.

The old road remained as silent as if it had never heard him.

"Good," he muttered. "Got the first line wrong."

Heat crept into his face.

His first thought was that Veyra might have remembered it wrong.

The suspicion lasted only an instant, but it irritated him even more.

He was the more likely one to be wrong.

Veyra had seen the old road when it was whole. Cassian probably had not even been born. Expecting the entire road to recognize him because he spoke one old phrase to a heap of ash and broken stone was giving himself a little too much credit.

The sickly white crept another inch closer.

The remaining record flickered beneath his palm.

[CURRENT SEAL-BREAKER: CASS—]

Cassian stared at the letters.

The road did not know the Third Formation now.

It knew him.

Not because he had said the right words.

Because the thing that died here had fallen to his hand.

A low hum rose from below the gap.

The underground dawn pulse had begun.

Sickly white lunged toward his name.

Cassian pressed his right hand down again.

Cold wrapped around his fingers. The old wound in his right shoulder gave a vicious throb.

He did not recite a string of rules he did not understand.

"Cassian Vale."

The black-gold current bore down.

"I won this ground."

The sickly white covered half his hand.

Cassian heard Veyra’s voice as she repeated the words in the temple.

"The Third Formation still stands."

All five points sank into the stone at once.

The erased letters of his name lit one by one.

The sickly white stopped in front of `CASSIAN VALE`.

The pressure in Cassian’s chest eased.

Then he felt like cursing again.

Five points.

Had they really bought back a single line of text?

He was about to lift his hand when a thunderous impact sounded below his feet.

It was not an interface notification.

It sounded like something enormous, asleep for far too long, had smashed through the stones pinning it in the abyss.

Cassian instinctively took half a step back.

The tremor drove through his boots and into his knee. His right shoulder tightened with it. He had seen the Chain Gate close under a manual lever. He had watched the Eclipse War Banner unfurl inside the temple.

Neither had ever risen toward him from the bottom of an abyss he could not see.

For a moment, he even forgot the five points of power still beneath his palm.

A massive shadow cut through the underground dawnlight.

An ancient black-gold road slab slowly rose from the golden glow.

One end had been buried beneath the near wall. The other lifted toward the first relay. Gray shells hardened over countless years broke away from its edges and fell into the light without an echo.

Several sickly white marks had been wrapped around the slab.

As it rose, those marks split apart and peeled from the black-gold stone.

A long, narrow black-gold line emerged down the center.

It held no name.

Only the direction once taken by the Third Formation.

The ancient slab continued to rise.

One final, muffled impact shook Cassian’s knee.

It locked into place between the near side and the first relay.

Yesterday, Cassian had needed Predator Step and a steel cable as insurance to cross the first gap.

Now there was a real road.

It was narrow.

Only wide enough for one person to cross carefully.

But it began directly in front of Cassian’s boots.

Golden light spilled past both sides, casting the slab’s shadow beneath the first relay. Cassian could see the near-side rock bolt, the hand winch, and the coarse cable he had dragged across the gap. He could also see the ancient stone filling the empty space that had been there yesterday.

It was not a quote.

It was not something that might become useful later.

It was stone.

Cassian stared for a long moment.

Then he touched it with the toe of his boot.

The slab did not sink.

He put more weight on it.

The black-gold surface held him without the slightest shift.

Cassian still did not walk immediately.

He glanced down at the underground dawnlight, then back at the coarse cable behind him.

His exit was still there.

Good.

He stepped onto the slab with his full foot.

A second step.

A third.

No skill burst.

No steel cable biting into his waist.

No knee slamming into a slope when he landed.

Cassian simply walked from the first relay back to the near side.

When he took the last step, he turned to look at the slab and smiled.

This smile came more easily than the one after he had devoured four points of divinity.

A shallow black-gold palm mark had appeared at the near edge.

Cassian placed his hand over it.

The slab gave a deep grinding sound and slowly lowered below the edge of the gap, revealing the dangerous golden light.

Then it stopped.

It did not rise by itself.

Cassian pressed the mark again.

The black-gold slab rose and locked neatly against the first relay.

He could not resist trying it again.

Down.

Up.

A piece of ancient road that massive now answered to one hand.

[First Relay Has Acknowledged: Cassian Vale.]

[First Span of the Old Road: Manual operation available at both ends.]

[Farther Old Road: No response.]

[Territory Rank: F.]

The coarse cable remained beside it, ordinary and heavy.

Cassian did not remove it.

An ancient road that could rise and fall was good. A backup steel cable that would not care if something went wrong with divinity was also good.

He walked across the black-gold slab and returned to the first relay.

In the distance, the Ashbone road nails still pressed into the old road. The sickly white had not vanished completely.

Ashbone had only lost this first slab. Its white could no longer climb over the black-gold line down the center.

Cassian pressed his palm against the new mark at the edge of the relay.

With one press, the slab behind him sank halfway. With another, it rose again.

Rowan’s temporary crossing proposal could remain where it was.

There were more broken spans ahead.

But he did not need to buy a solution for this one anymore.

Cassian stood on the first relay.

Behind him, the first real span of road answered his hand.

Ahead, the second gap remained dark.

He stared into that darkness, his smile still in place.

Five points of Divine Essence had not bought him a promise.

They had bought the stone beneath his feet.

Now he wanted the next slab to rise.

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