Darkness once again filled his vision, but this time, with a thud, he landed on another solid ground.
'What the heck is this place? Every single area is a trap, and now what? More searches to reach the pavilion above?'
Just as he stood up, he heard multiple sounds of feet scraping against the ground.
'Are those the same sea creatures?' His eyes widened in astonishment, which also held a flicker of fear. Clearly, fighting hordes of them wasn't an option for him.
But as soon as his eyes landed on the nearest sea-like monster, he once again was pleasantly surprised by his discovery, and hope filled his eyes, but at the same speed, his hope turned to despair.
'They don't have their spears, and they look weaker than the ones from above...but what is with their numbers?' In the dim lighting from where he fell from in the night, he could see hundreds…no, even thousands might be an understatement.
One of them lunged at him, but he quickly took his knife and stabbed it in its eyes, but the second one slashed with its padded-like claws from behind him.
He slashed again and again, continuously, until his body couldn't take it and started to slow down. His eyes widened in fear as he screamed "I don't want to die, not here. Please help, someone or anyone."
He shouted with all his might, but alas, there was no one except him in these whole ruins alive and sentient.
Minutes turned into hours, hours into days.
Asterion had lost track of time, as he was currently lying down on the ground, his whole body covered in deep gashes, his left arm torn apart.
His whole body was now blue in color, but there were still faint traces of his original skin somewhere in between. Apparently, after his body started turning blue, those creatures stopped attacking him.
Only now was he able to move a little, but he was completely at death's door due to the high amount of poison in his body.
He was still lying like a dead log on the ground. His eyes were half closed, and his feet were slightly twitching.
There was no grass here for creating fire. What he was repulsed by initially, now he ate the same raw meat without any emotion on his face.
Days turned by, and a year had passed. Asterion's eyes flickered open. He slowly stood up as he took in every scene around him.
After some months, he was finally able to adapt to the poison and stand up, but surprisingly, those creatures didn't attack him.
Maybe because he already was filled with the same poison or was now so blue in color that they recognized him as their own, he didn't know.
His eyes shifted to a small puddle of blood reflecting the sunlight from above; his body didn't look like a human anymore.
His missing left arm, the right half of his waist, and one of his eyes were taken out before they had stopped their attacks.
He stood up, went to a nearby sea creature, which didn't attack him now, and sliced its left arm with his knife.
This was his meal; either due to hunger or hatred, all he ate was only the limbs of those creatures.
Here darkness had teeth. It did not simply blanket the ruins but consumed them, gnawed at every particle until even the echoes of time were swallowed.
Asterion lay within that gnawing abyss, half-alive, half-unmade. His breath came out in shattered fragments, his remaining eye dull and glassy like a drowned jewel.
The faint bioluminescence from the sea creatures flickered out one by one, as though something unseen had ordered silence.
But something changed in him. Slowly, but surely. He felt the Void creeping through him, a slow, deliberate tide. It traced the cracks in his bones, the wounds carved by desperation, and the hollow spaces where flesh once thrived.
But this time, it was not a poison. It was a resonance, a hum that came from beneath, deeper than the ruins and deeper than the world.
The ground vibrated. Dust rose from the stone floor, forming spirals that glimmered like sunlight.
Everything around him changed, and now he was lying down in what seemed to be a long, elegant hall made of dust with surprising details and horror.
It looked like a hell of a place long forgotten and dead. "What is… happening?" Even whispering those words felt wrong; the air twisted at the sound, as though rejecting language itself.
Below him, under layers of sunken rock and ancient bones, something awakened. He sensed it but not with his eyes, but with whatever was left of his soul.
A will older than existence flexed, stirring from slumber.
A Void Emperor's Core, buried since the fall of the first Gods and Void Emperors, responded to its reflection within Asterion's dissolving essence.
And far away, or perhaps close enough to breathe on his fevered skin, a Leviathan-shaped god beast's fragmented spirit shifted.
Its massive consciousness, trapped in a prison of crystal and pressure, recognized a vessel capable of harboring its eternal hunger.
It reached out at the same time as the core.
Asterion convulsed. His body arched backward, mouth open in a silent scream as two incompatible reasonings collided inside him.
He felt his heart rupture, not from pain, but from weight, the unbearable gravity of trying to contain both the Nothingness of the core and the Life of the Sea.
He saw visions: a cosmos folding inward, galaxies being destroyed and devouring themselves, or maybe something else.
His thoughts shifted back as he felt the changes in him. The Core merged first, threading its black radiance through his veins.
His heart beat once, then twice, and each thud was muffled and heavy, as if dragging creation itself downward.
His blood, once crimson, became darker than shadow. When a drop touched the ground, it did not splash. It consumed.
Then came the Leviathan like beast. A voice, ancient and fluid, coiled through his mind.
"You devoured our offspring. You drank the tide of my kin. And yet, you survived it. You shall not be my vessel… You shall be my reflection and my rebirth."
Asterion's scream tore through the ruins, shaking the walls until they bled dust. His body liquefied and reformed with every pulse, his skin turning translucent in places, showing constellations of black veins beneath.
His missing arm regenerated, his skin changed from blue to his original one.
And then came the stillness. For a moment, everything in creation paused. No wind, no whispers of time.
The universe, vast and unfeeling, turned its gaze upon a single anomaly deep within an ancient ruin.
The Void Emperor and Leviathan, two poles of existence, had merged. Asterion had become the singular contradiction the cosmos had forbidden since its birth.
The universe reacted.
[System Awakening Detected]
[Initializing stabilization protocol.
Designation: Void Physique (Evolvable) Warning: Host's body exceeds existential parameters.]
He didn't even have the time to see the golden screen that had appeared in front of him.
His body had adapted. He didn't die from the Leviathan-like beast's spirit but instead consumed it. How? No one was there to answer it.
He felt every change in him, but his scream couldn't even leave his mouth, like he wasn't allowed to speak.
Some moments later, he gasped, lungs expanding for the first time without pain, yet every breath distorted the air itself.
Just as he started feeling better and opened his eyes, he saw something that made him widen his eyes.
"Wha... what's this now?" He questioned aloud, expecting some answer, but even after some time, none came.
His heart pulsed again, slower now. With every beat, it generated a gravitational pull, subtle but undeniable; loose stones drifted an inch off the ground before settling back.
The [System] spoke again, not as sound, but as understanding.
"Transferring essential data regarding Void Physique to host."
'What do you mean by void physique?' He asked again without expecting an answer, but this time knowledge unfurled within him which was instinctive, primal, and horrifyingly vast.
This knowledge also explained about the system.
The Void Physique was something no one should possess. But somehow, he did. This physique consumed and adapted. It absorbed essence, memory, concept, and identity.
And each time he took, each time he fed, it would evolve him into something else, something inhuman.
After knowing everything about what he had become, he calmed down and analyzed the screen before him.
'It says that I now have something called a special physique, which can evolve infinitely. Does it mean there is no end to how powerful one can become?'
He wondered as he was now in perfectly fine shape after being transformed.
"Won't I ever be the same again?" He wondered with worry in his eyes. And he trembled under that thought.
Everything that occurred, the pain, and the horror didn't have an effect on his mental state right now due to the Void Physique.
A crack of blue lightning split the cavern overhead, illuminating the ruin's depths.
He looked down at his reflection in the blood-soaked puddle. The surface rippled, not from his movement, but from the gravitational pulse of his heart.
His new visage stared back, still the same face but his hair turned silver, and his eyes? They were golden in colour.
Clearly, he was changing. Right then and there.
The ruins trembled again. Dust cascaded like silver rain from the ceiling.
The halls faded into the chamber he was originally in. In the deaf quiet, Asterion felt his own existence stretch, it was as if he was standing at the edge of himself, looking into a reflection that no longer mirrored back.
He could feel the sea breathing with his lungs and the void core beating with his heart.
And within that impossible harmony, he understood. The System wasn't a gift from a god, nor a tool. It was the universe's desperate response but a cosmic safety valve built to prevent his existence from tearing reality apart.
"System, show status."