Ascend to Godhood Through Grafting: Starting with a God's Arm

A piercing shriek, loud enough to shatter human eardrums, rang out from the void. The other robed figures maintaining the ritual immediately collapsed to the ground, clutching their heads.

The ritual was completely disrupted. Dark shadows exploded from the formation's glow—some furious entity had sent them straight into the mortal world!

As the ritual's conductor, the alchemist bore the brunt of the shadow's backlash. Black, void-like shadows wrapped around him like countless wailing souls.

The alchemist let out a shrill scream as the shadows coiled around him. He kept flailing his arms, but he couldn't drive those shadows away at all.

Soon, his skin withered and rotted under the shadows' embrace, until death completely devoured him!

The moment things went sideways, David charged into the formation. That terrifying shriek had wounded his soul too, but thanks to his iron will forged from constantly fighting evil spirits, he barely managed to keep his mind together. Still, those shadows latched onto him.

Not bothering with anything else, he rushed forward and tore open the cage with one claw, scooped up the girl inside, and bolted back.

Supported by his powerful life energy, the shadows coiling around him couldn't kill him instantly, but they were causing a continuous 100 points of corrosion damage per second.

Even after he'd rushed out of the ritual's range, the ghost-like shadows didn't dissipate. They cursed, raged, and shrieked furiously, hell-bent on killing every living thing!

Even in this situation, David stayed calm. At this rate of corrosion, the shadows would need a full hour and a half or more to kill him.

But if his health dropped below the danger line of one-third, his mobility would likely be restricted, and that's when things would get really dicey.

This ritual accident was something he hadn't anticipated. Sure, the exploding shadows had directly killed that alchemist, but his mission was far from complete.

As he thought quickly, the Hand of Monster kept swinging, trying to dispel the shadows coiling around him. Unfortunately, physical attacks seemed to have zero effect on those things.

What about the Heretic's Arm?

Couldn't touch the shadows... no effect!

The invincible Hand of Divine Corpse was still on cooldown...

The blessing power from the goddess...

It worked!

David was thrilled to discover that the blessing power, now fully fused into his body, burst forth with warm energy when he deliberately channeled it, immediately reducing the shadows' corrosion damage by a huge margin!

From 100 points per second down to... 1 point per second.

"Ha! Pathetic! At this damage rate, I can play with you guys till the end of time!"

David mocked the shadows, though his legs never stopped moving as he ran like hell.

That malfunctioning ritual was still continuously releasing massive amounts of shadows. Through the Divine Watcher's vision, he could sense even larger darkness sweeping in from the distance.

That earlier shriek from the darkness seemed to have awakened other entities in the Shadow Realm.

While running, David kept checking on the little girl in his arms.

Thank God he'd moved fast enough—he'd pulled her out before the shadows could latch onto her. Surrounded by the goddess's blessing, those shadows hadn't invaded her body yet.

Damn perverts, doing this to a kid...

David cursed inwardly as he stripped off his outer coat to wrap around the child who had no legs and no clothes, then tied her to his body with the sleeves—she was so thin and small that her weak arms couldn't even hold onto him properly.

"Thank... thank you..." the girl said weakly in his ear, lying against David's shoulder.

"Don't worry, kid. I'll get you out of here... after I kill all those bastards."

David noticed the girl's eyes were red. Whether it was from weakness or not, her skin looked incredibly pale, almost glowing faintly even in the darkness.

But he didn't have time to think about it right now. Those surging shadows behind him were already flooding toward them like a tide.

These troublesome things—if it was just one or two clinging to him, whatever, but this many? Even the goddess's blessing couldn't hold up...

"Is there really no way to kill them?"

When David reached a fork in the corridor and was still deciding whether to go left or right, a group of construct soldiers crackling with electricity appeared at the other end of the left passage.

"More of them!?"

David spun around and charged into the right passage. If those annoying constructs caught up to him, the shadows behind would definitely catch up and finish him off!

As David was making his desperate escape, Dorothy, lying on his shoulder, caught sight of something in the opposite corridor.

Those construct soldiers with their bodies wreathed in lightning collided with the shadows. Since they had no souls, the shrieking shadows couldn't do anything to that scorching metal.

But the lightning-charged blades sliced through the shadows' "bodies" as easily as a hot knife through butter!

Dorothy saw the shadows wailing under those lightning blades.

Even though everything in her vision was tinted red, her eyes weren't blind. On the contrary, as a female warrior who'd once fought in the Dragon Ridge Mountains, she had sharp enough observation skills.

"They... can be killed..."

David, with his back to the corridor, obviously hadn't seen that scene, so Dorothy decided to relay this intel to the powerful man who'd rescued her.

She didn't know why he was calling her "kid," and she didn't know what those perverts had done to her, but in her heart, she was still an unyielding female warrior.

"The construct's blades... their blades can kill the shadows!"

David heard Dorothy's strained shout. He glanced back at the scene behind him, then turned into another corridor.

"Got it."

As long as they could be killed, that was good. The blades on the construct's arms... could those maybe work for the Limb Grafting Ritual?

David's lips curled up. He already had a plan.

Right then, a group of people wearing brass masks burst out from a door leading to a large underground chamber ahead. They were rushing frantically this way, only to see David charging toward them too.

Green claws dragged long scratches across the corridor walls...

These people were all assistants to the merchant guild's alchemists—every single one a depraved pervert. Not one of them was innocent.

In a storm of blood and carnage, David tore apart every "obstacle" in his path, just like a demon straight out of hell.

A terrified man in black clothes in the distance saw this scene, spun around, and ran in another direction. David noticed that guy, and so did Dorothy in his arms.

"That's him... that's the guy who cut off my legs..." She recognized him, and the hatred in her heart made her eyes glow even redder.

"Don't worry. He's dead meat."

David grinned savagely and accelerated after him. That guy was clearly his last target—the alchemist, Seymour.

The Hand of Monster dug into the walls, pushing David rapidly through the corridor with great force.

But that damn alchemist was running fast. He zigzagged left and right through the underground passages, heading deeper and deeper, obviously trying to reach some emergency exit.

Finally, David cornered the bastard at the end of a basement corridor.

Seymour was a thin middle-aged man. Right now he was desperately twisting the valve on a gate door. Strangely, he was wearing a helmet that was glowing with an eerie blue light.

Seeing he was about to open the door and slip away, David frantically lunged at him.

Click—!

The door opened right then.

A blast of black wind blew into the corridor from behind the door. The bone-chilling cold made David feel like he'd plunged into an ice cellar.

He quickly skidded to a stop, staring in shock as that alchemist was directly swallowed by a massive black shadow!

It was a group of shadows too numerous and indistinct to count, like a plague of locusts covering the sky, like a torrential downpour, like a flood drowning everything!

Behind the door lay the underground world leading to the Shadow Realm—the shadows' paradise, a hell where light couldn't reach, a mad abyss forever shrouded in dark tides!

But that damn alchemist didn't die in the shadows.

The helmet on his head actually let him avoid the shadows' corrosion!

He was about to escape into the darkness...

Facing the swarm of shadows rushing madly toward him, David had no time to chase. He tightly hugged Dorothy in his arms and spun around to run back!

"Flap flap flap... thud..."

Suddenly, the sound of flapping wings rang out, and a pigeon appeared at the edge of his vision.

It landed (crashed) on top of David's head in a not-so-graceful manner, lifted its bird head, and spoke in a human voice:

"You failed, hunter. Her Highness's orders were to leave none alive..."