I Can Devour Monsters' SSS Talents

The last thing Lian remembered was a series of System messages that appeared one after another in front of his eyes in the darkness inside the Cocoon.

[Calamity Vessel Replacement Process Started.]

[New Vessel: Lian Vorhelm.]

[Gestation Process Is Being Reconstructed...]

Then everything went black.

He expected to feel the next pain.

He expected the energy of Black Silence to enter his veins, tear apart his Mana Channels, or at least for the pressure of that huge entity to cause his body to break apart from the inside.

But when he felt something again, he realized there was no pain.

Not because the pain had stopped, but because he could no longer feel his body, his fingers did not exist, he could not feel his legs, there was no chest moving up and down, there was no pulse, and he could not even feel the flow of Mana inside him.

For a moment, the only thing that remained was his consciousness, a consciousness floating in endless darkness, and a short thought passed through his mind.

”Am I dead?” He received no answer, and he doubted that was true, after all, he had an extra life, so even if he died, he should be able to return to life.

But at that exact moment, he felt something.

Hunger.

At first, Lian thought his own hunger instinct had reacted.

But this was different, very different.

The hunger he felt was not for meat, it was not for power, it was not for any of the things he knew.

An unwanted image formed in his mind.

An ocean.

Then a forest.

Mountains.

A plain.

Cities.

Billions of living creatures breathing inside a complete World.

Mana flowing through the land.

Souls.

Life.

Death.

All of them had only one meaning to whatever Lian was feeling... food.

”This hunger isn’t mine.” He felt danger.

At that moment, something moved in the darkness and a System message appeared, but the edges of the words shook like a broken image.

[Foreign Memory Flow Detected.]

[Source: Black Silence.]

[Vessel’s Consciousness Has Been Pulled Into The Calamity’s Memory.]

Lian stared at the message for a moment, then the darkness in front of him broke and another World appeared.

There was no sky, or maybe there was and he could not understand it.

There was no clear ground under his feet, although he did not have feet to stand on anything either, everything was floating inside a colorless and endless space.

And in the distance, something was standing, Lian tried to look more closely, it had the shape of a creature.

Maybe.

But the more he tried to put it into a clear shape, the more the image broke apart.

He could not guess its height, it had no face, and no gender that he could recognize.

Even its body had no fixed shape, sometimes it looked like a very tall human, the next moment, it seemed as large as the sky.

And when he focused more, he even thought that maybe what he was seeing was not the creature’s real form at all, maybe his own mind had been forced to create an image for something that could not be understood.

But he could feel two things with certainty.

The first was its age.

Not the age of a thousand-year-old or ten-thousand-year-old creature.

Something much older.

So old that even the Worlds themselves seemed young compared to it.

And the second...

Hunger.

Before this, he had thought the hunger of Black Silence was huge, but now that he was facing this presence, that endless hunger even seemed small.

Around the dark presence, five other things were floating, they were not bodies, at least Lian could not call them bodies.

Five presences, five forms of existence, each with a different shape and feeling.

And he recognized one of them, the one from whose point of view he was seeing everything.

Black Silence.

And if his guess was correct, all of them should be Calamities, so there were five Calamities and that great figure should be the Father.

”So Caelus wasn’t completely crazy.” Lian thought inside the darkness.

He had said the children of the Eternal Father would live forever, he had said Black Silence was one of his children.

Until then, Lian did not know whether that sentence was a religious metaphor or a real fact, now he at least had part of the answer.

Black Silence really was one of the five children of that being, that great being whose true nature was not clear at all.

But what those five Calamities were was still unknown.

Children? Creations? Pieces separated from its existence? Or something else?

The memory did not allow him to investigate further, the image broke and the World changed.

Sunlight hit Lian’s imaginary eyes, but this was not the World he had seen during the past few weeks.

There was no Dead Zone, no dead trees could be seen, the ground was not black and cracked, and the Black Silence veins were not coming out from under the ground.

The World was alive, golden plains stretched to the horizon.

Rivers of bright blue flowed between them and Mana could even be seen inside the water.

There were forests and huge cities built on cliffs, there were cities underground.

Different races moved through the streets.

Some were almost human-like, some had horns, some had skin with unusual colors, and some had wings.

Civilizations lived beside each other that made the modern Cindari look like little more than small remains compared to them.

But even all of this was small compared to what stood at the center of the World.

Primordial Root.

The tree was so huge that Lian could not see its highest branch, its branches covered a large part of the sky.

Its roots stretched thousands of kilometers through the ground.

Mana flowed through them into the entire World, underground water moved through its network of roots.

Clouds formed around its crown, forests stayed alive because of the flow of Mana that came out of it.

Without needing an explanation, he understood, this tree was not only a living creature, it was part of the structure of the World, maybe even the main reason life still existed in it.

And among all this greatness and beauty, there was also war, a bloody war that had started between several small civilizations.

Cities were burning and innocent creatures were being killed.

And in the middle of it, a lone man was kneeling beside the ruins of a burned house.

Lian recognized him.

Cindar Vael.

But he looked nothing like the legendary Founder of the Cindari.

He was younger, weaker, and his clothes were torn, his dark hair was covered with blood and dirt... his hands went under the rubble and moved the pieces of stone aside.

One.

Second.

Third.

Then he found something, a motionless hand and Cindar moved the rubble faster.

The body of a middle-aged woman was under the house, her eyes were closed, her chest was crushed... dead.

Cindar did not move for several moments, then he pulled his mother out from under the stones, but before he could see more, the memory suddenly broke.

Another image replaced it.

Graves.

Three graves beside each other.

Mother.

Father.

Younger brother.

Then the next image came, Cindar was standing beside a woman, the last person who was still beside him.

His lover.

Lian did not hear her name, or maybe Black Silence did not remember it.

But Cindar’s feelings for her were so strong that even Lian, who was only watching a memory, could feel their weight.

The woman was holding Cindar’s hand, they were running away from a city at war, screams came from behind them, the light of magic lit up the sky.

Cindar pulled her, only a few more meters, just a few more meters and they could escape.

But a wave of energy passed through the buildings behind them, he was thrown forward and when he turned around... half of a building had fallen onto the woman.

She was still alive, at least for a few seconds.

Cindar moved the stones with his blood-covered hands, the woman said something.

Lian could not hear her voice, then her eyes closed.

Cindar stopped moving, something inside him broke there, not at that exact moment, but the first crack had appeared.

The memories became faster.

Months.

Maybe years.

Cindar went from city to city, became stronger, fought, but everything he saw brought back a memory.

A mother holding her child in a market.

Their smiles.

His own mother’s face.

A couple sitting together in an inn, the woman’s hand on the man’s hand.

Seeing that scene reminded him of his lover.

Then heroes who were celebrated in the city square because they had won wars.

And the same question kept coming from Cindar, when his city was burning, where were these heroes?

And his hatred slowly took shape.

”They are all guilty.” This thought passed through his mind for the first time and then became stronger.

”The ones who started the war.”

”The ones who could have helped but didn’t.”

”The ones who watched.”

And then—

”The ones who are still alive.” This last part no longer made sense, Cindar himself probably knew that.

But it did not matter.

Seeing the happiness of others reminded him of what he had lost.

And sadness became jealousy, jealousy became anger and anger became hatred!

This was hatred toward all living creatures, hatred that wanted to burn the entire World and burn everything!

But hatred without power was worthless... he had no power to take revenge...

One night, he fell asleep on the ruins of an abandoned temple.

And he dreamed.

The same colorless space, the same presence... the Father!

Cindar first tried to raise his head, but he could not, the pressure of that being’s existence forced him to his knees, not with power but simply with its presence.

No voice was heard, but the words formed directly inside his mind.

”What do you want?”

”Power.” Cindar hesitated, was he dreaming? A stupid dream? But in any case, he answered.

”No.” The answer came immediately.

”What? I am sure I know what I want, and that is power!”

”That is not what you want.” The presence paused and then slowly said.