Without a care Vritra brought his right hand closer to his mouth and wildly began to eat away at the invisible flame.
And much to his delight he noticed that it was slowly reducing in size but then as if the flame itself had noticed the change from being a predator to a prey, and felt a direct attack to its pride, it went wild as Vritra felt pain from within his body.
COUGH COUGH
He coughed out blood and fell to his knees, his vision blurring as blood began to seep out of his ears and nose, but that only resulted in making him enraged, with even more intensity he began to bite at the flames as the two tried to devour one another.
And soon another message popped...
[You have consumed the complete Nihil-Anima Mythic Halo.]
After consuming the entire flame, Vritra lay on his back panting heavily and within moment he drifted off into unconsciousness; the pain in his mind and body was too unbearable even with the pain resistance skill, at least he managed to remove all the invisible flame from his arm.
Though now, it rampaged inside his body.
[Synchronization in progress.]
[Processing…]
[Failed!]
[Processing…]
[Failed!]
It continued for several minutes, as Vritra's expression distorted even in his sleep his face grew paler and paler and at a visible rate his body began thinning as blood continued to pour out from his eyes, nose and ears.
Within just a few minutes, it seemed he had lost several kilos of weight. The invisible flames continued to struggle with all its might, trying to devour him and escape, but all its effort were resulting in naught.
The painful and violent yet silent fight continued within his body, two ethereal eyes continued to stare at him from the darkness with anticipation.
[Processing…]
[Failed!]
[Processing…]
[Failed!]
[Processing…]
[Success!!]
[Synchronization with Mythic Halo: Nihil-Anima — 0%... 1%...]
[2%]
[3%]
…
[10%]
…
[99%]
[100%]
[Assimilation complete.]
[Mythic Halo successfully integrated.]
[Nihil-Anima Mythic Halo successfully consumed.]
[Nihil-Anima Mythic Halo has fused with the host's soul.]
***
After an unknown period of time, Vritra finally began to regain his consciousness as his eye lids fluttered and a warm sensation ran through his body completely different from the painful experience from before.
"Ughhh Where am I?" he groaned and slowly opened his eyes, looking at the strange ceiling of the cave as he finally remembered what happened in the past five months.
Sighing he looked down at his body and found nothing wrong, no injury, weakness or any other abnormality.
'Sigh so I survived, but what happened to that darned flame…'
Just as Vritra was about to stand, his body froze as he heard a loud and clear voice.
"I KNEW IT!!!"
It was undoubtedly the voice of a woman; it sounded melodic and mature containing a commanding presence.
Vritra was startled, he hadn't heard anyone speaking in a long time, he jumped to his feet and looked around frantically but aside from the corpses and countless weapons he couldn't see anything.
"Who… are you?" he asked, his voice coming out stuttering.
Vritra had doubt before that someone helped him when he was given those breaks between his battles, but he still wasn't sure if the other person meant him any harm or not.
Just then, the space in front of Vritra trembled making him feel as if there was some problem with his eyes, he stumbled back as an ethereal and majestic figure began to condense right in front of him.
Vritra's breath hitched, he had to raise his head to even see the figure and soon a white dragon formed in front of him but more than an actual dragon it looked like some advanced 3d projection, it was very large as its body stretched over a large area in the cave.
But it was translucent, though the detailing was extremely high; to the point he could even see the tiniest bit of scratch on the scales of the dragon, the scales even shone brightly.
'Is someone trying to scare me with a realistic 3d image? Could it be that the next round had already begun while I was unconscious? What is going on?' Vritra was confused and on high alert, as he took a few steps back until his back was pressed against a wall.
"I knew that you will be able to succeed." Once again the enormous white dragon spoke, her body seemed to be more than a hundred meter long and her white scales glistened beautifully.
Vritra stared at the dragon's ethereal figure but still looked around wondering who was controlling this projection.
COUGH
Sound of throat clearing was heard and once again the mature female voice sounded.
"This isn't just some image or illusion, I am a real dragon in the flesh- well not in flesh or rather in soul... Anyway, congratulations on surviving against all the demons so far and even against one of the greatest Mythic Halos, actually that's quite shocking even for me." She calmed her mind, but her voice was still filled with surprise and excitement.
"You… are a dragon's soul? Are you the one controlling this cave all this time? Aren't you just an image?" Vritra questioned, still looking doubtful but even more cautious.
"Sigh Yes, I am now merely a soul. And no, at least not completely I can only control this cave to some extent and that is why you were able to get those breaks between each fight later on." The female dragon replied.
"Ah… So what is hell is going on? Who are you exactly and what was that halo or whatever?" he asked, a frown appearing on his face, as if those waves of demons weren't enough now, he had to deal with even more strange things.
Vritra was suddenly feeling homesick and even the boring school seemed like such a good place, at least there was a canteen which didn't serve just demon meat.
"Haven't you noticed anything different, did you check the messages that appeared?" she spoke in a melodious tone, there was a feeling of happiness in her voice.
Vritra finally looked at all the messages and his status window.
[Nihil-Anima Mythic Halo successfully consumed.]
[Nihil-Anima Mythic Halo has fused with the host's soul.]
And in his status window a new section had been added.
++++++++++++++++
Name: Vritra Arclis
Level: 181 [2%]
Titles: The Cursed Hunter (Level 5)
Mana: 2080/2080
Vitality: 100%
Halo: Nihil-Anima Mythic Halo
[Description]: The 3rd ranked Mythic Halo, it possesses the power to raise and control the souls of the dead. It grants the ability to manipulate wraiths, shape soul essence into powerful forms, and harness souls for various purposes. The most ferocious Mythic Halo, devourer of Gods and Demons.
++++++++++++++++
Vritra read the description but couldn't get much information from it aside from the fact that it is related to souls, so he raised his doubtful gaze towards the female dragon, before taking a calming breath and speaking.
"I am Vritra Arclis, what's your name?" he asked.
"What an odd name, Vritra… but it is a pleasure meeting you here. I am Yasmine Firehart, a dragon from the Firehart family.
I know you must have a lot of doubts about your situation and this place, so let me explain in simple terms." Yasmine shifted her body slightly, letting her giant body stretch as she began.
"You must be aware how treacherous and evil those demons are, but they are undeniably strong and have much larger number than most other species that's why all the others have to come together just to hold them back.
A labyrinth is different from some random den or cave or demons, it is only created through the death of a powerful demon and the stronger the demon is the more terrifying the labyrinth will be."
Vritra listened carefully, wondering why she was starting from that point, but he didn't interrupt her none the less as he gazed at the beautiful and large dragon in awe.
Yasmine continued to explain: "There are Halos in this world, strange entity or let's say treasures that couldn't be defined by normal explanations, which could possess different abilities.
They could be in various forms and possess abilities from as useless as a paperweight to something far more dangerous.
The mythic halos are the top treasures across all the universes, every single one of them possess extraordinary ability where the top ones among the twenty mythic halos could even match or surpass the strength of the gods and demon gods.
So in simple they are something very deadly and powerful, and the one you had just consumed, it might have been ranked at 3rd although that is already very very high but that rank can't do justice to its abilities and strength.
The Nihil-Anima mythic halo rose through the ranks the fastest, from a mere halo it became one of the most destructive force of the entire universe, then it challenged the rank 2 Demonic Veyll Mythic halo.
It was a fight that greatly affected the entire universe, Nihil-Anima even though ranked an whole rank below, still brought Demonic Veyll mythic halo near death but after being weakened in the fight; a demon god who had already secretly formed a bond with rank 2 halo attacked Nihil-Anima along with that demonic Mythic halo.
Hence is the reason why even someone as low levelled as you were able to devour it and form a bond, it was far too weakened under their combined attack and could only slaughter its way through to escape, but it lost the entire armies of Souls that it controlled.
It was resting in this labyrinth that was created because of the corpse of the demon lord that Nihil-Anima had killed and brought along before escaping.
Well that's the gist of this, now that Nihil-Anima had become yours you will get to know more in the future, but even in such a weak state, I can't understand how you did it, that's just impossible."
Vritra listened carefully and felt quite shocked, even that tiny part of that invisible flame was so terrifying not to mention that it could control an enormous army of souls, no wonder that even the ranked 2 mythic halo almost got devoured by it if it wasn't for that demon god.
"Of course, the Demonic Veyll was in an even weakened state and the demon god too suffered a serious injury while most of his army ended up dying." Yasmine spoke.
__________
Thanks for reading...