Adrean alucard's Arc

Chapter 7 of 28

The platform still hummed with dying fire. Adrean stood on the cracked stone, a new god, and felt nothing he understood. His system flashed a fresh line: DIVINITY, twelve points. Below it glowed a class he could not read. The letters bent and shifted whenever he looked. He was divine now, but the power sat locked inside him like a fist he could not open. The system chimed. A new quest burned across his vision: ABOVE GODS. No steps. No goal. Just the words and a hunger behind them. Adrean pressed a hand to his chest and reached for the hidden class. Nothing came. His blood ran hot and stayed useless. Shiva watched him fumble. The small blue god had trained Adrean through fire, and he showed no patience now. "You hold a weapon and stare at it," Shiva said. "Pathetic." He raised one hand. Flame gathered in his palm, blue at the core. "I don't know how to use it," Adrean said. "Then you die learning." Shiva threw the fire. It hit Adrean full in the chest. He flew back and skidded across the platform. The flames ate at his god-flesh, deeper than any burn Megalom had given him. He screamed. Shiva walked closer and threw again. "Reach for it," Shiva said. "Or burn." Adrean burned. The fire cooked him from inside. He clawed at the locked class in his mind and it stayed shut. Shiva gave no mercy. Blow after blow, each hotter than the last. "A god who cannot fight," Shiva said, "is meat with a title." Something broke in Adrean. Not his body. His fear. He stopped grabbing at the class like a lock. He let the fire in. He let it feed the thing inside him instead of fighting it. The pain turned to fuel. His blood answered. The hidden class snapped open. Words burned clear in his vision at last: SOVEREIGN OF UNENDING BLOOD. Red light poured from his skin. Shiva's next flame struck him and Adrean drank it. He felt the god's own power slide down into his blood and stay there. Stolen. Kept. Shiva froze. For the first time, the god of destruction stepped back. "So," he said quietly. "That is your path. You take what you touch." Adrean opened his hand. Blue fire danced there now, borrowed from Shiva himself. He understood the quest at last. ABOVE GODS meant this. His class did not grow through his own strength. It grew by draining the strength of gods. A cold weight pressed against his mind from far away. Adrean knew it without seeing. Yahweh Christ had felt the surge, the way he felt every kill. The god who wanted him dead now sensed exactly what Adrean had become. The quest updated. One line only: DRAIN A GOD. Adrean closed his fist on the stolen fire. He knew where the weakest gods still slept. And he knew Yahweh was already looking.