Killed Me? Now I Have Your Power - Chapter 285

Chapter 285: Chapter 285: Set your Heart…
Chapter 285 – Ablaze

‘Seed of Fire, huh…’ Kaden internally murmured as he looked at the notification panels from Death.

It was his first time hearing this concept. But at this point, Kaden was getting used to having new information appear out of nowhere.

Answers would come to him. That, he was sure of.

He sighed softly, then strode forward, his bare feet patting gently against the steeled ground. With a single leap, he mounted the piled-up mountain of cores, then slowly sat upon them. He crossed his legs, closing his eyes once more.

‘Death, show me my stats attributes,’ he ordered, and Death obeyed.

<<<<<<<>>>>>>

[Stats Attribute]

STR: 850

AGL: 800

CONS: 900

PER: 750

MANA: 700

INT: 650

WILL: 1000

<<<<<<<>>>>>>

Kaden smiled subtly at the sight of his stats. He always liked to see them progress and improve steadily. It wasn’t that he couldn’t feel the difference internally, within every movement and thought but having a visual sense of it always made it easier to grasp.

He noticed that only Will had reached 1000 stat points, refusing to go any further. The other six hovered around the 700 range.

Noticing this, Kaden didn’t even need Death to tell him that 1000 was the limit for all Masters, stats-wise.

The difference between each rank continued to grow wider.

At Intermediate, the limit was only 500. Now, it had doubled to 1000. What would it be at Grandmaster? Kaden wisely decided not to think about it yet. When the time came, he would face it naturally.

And yet, he wasn’t worried. He had far too many ways to gain stats beyond quests alone. He could obtain them through his Will, or through Synthesis. Both were wonders, cheats in their own right, in both worlds.

Added to that were his Death Coins… Kaden truly was abnormal.

A faint smile basked his face before melting away into a focused, neutral expression. He still needed to assess the saturation of his Origin Core.

He breathed slowly, exhaling and inhaling until perfect balance settled within him. The cores beneath him began to pulse, matching his rhythmic breathing. And not only that, the entire room seemed to fall into sync with him, the air growing strange and mystical.

Sinking deep into his inner world, Kaden examined his core. It was round in shape, glowing with an intense red, almost black light, the unmistakable mark of his Origin. But part of it — around seventy percent — shone brighter, more profound in hue than the rest.

That alone told him what he needed to know: he was missing just over thirty percent before full saturation. Something he could achieve with the white core of Goremaw alone, let alone the thousands of others surrounding him.

“Huhhhh…” Kaden exhaled, a satisfied smile touching his lips before he opened his eyes again.

“Perfect. I’ll saturate my core today, leaving only the Grandmaster Quest before I step into that rank,” he muttered under his breath, a quiet giddiness lighting his features.

He wondered what being at that rank would feel like. He also wondered what kind of Quest he would receive.

He already possessed a mythical stone… but he still needed to find a myth. Something he didn’t expect to be as straightforward as the encounter with The Slave, but still…

Kaden had a lead. Not one actually, but two.

If even one of them proved true, he would meet another bloody myth.

And that…that was something he was eager for.

Because meeting a myth meant learning something about the worlds and their secrets.

And as all sensible people acknowledged…

…Knowledge is power.

And yet… he knew he wouldn’t go back to Fokay so soon. He still needed to stay here until Waverith became functional and stable once again. All of that to avoid any unforeseen event where even the advantage of dying and rewinding time would become more difficult to use.

But first, before saturating his origin, Kaden felt the need to do something with all the fire he had recently obtained.

At his thought, five different types of fire burst into reality around him, circling him gently like stars orbiting a vast cloud of dust. They were black, blue, pink, red, and white.

Each of these flames had its own specific characteristic.

The black fire was his signature, everyone knew it by now. The blue fire was one he already had hidden within the black, it was a flame that could burn mana itself. The pink fire touched emotions, capable of either burning them away or igniting them into something consuming and maddening. The red fire was pure destruction, unfettered and primal, meant for nothing but annihilation.

And the white one… the white was special. It was the hottest among them all, hot enough to burn even space itself. The very air around it seemed to quiver and recoil from its heat.

Yet it was also a fire that could heal, a paradoxical flame of destruction and rebirth.

All of these fires were interesting, versatile in their own ways. Kaden’s mind was already flashing through countless possibilities for their use. But then, another thought came to him…instead of having all these different attributes scattered across separate flames…

Why not combine them into one?

He smiled faintly. “I’m a simple guy, and I like simple things. Let’s just do it.”

“Synthesis, my dear child, let’s get back at it again,” he said softly, before adding, “and I swear, if one day I ever get the chance to give one of my traits a physical body, I’ll give you one.”

He chuckled under his breath. “You want to be a boy or a girl? I prefer a girl, personally. I want to spoil my princess and kill any boys who come near her. And also…”

A hint of melancholy curved his lips. “You’d get along with Asael’s daughter too… you two would be best friends, right? Pretty nice, huh?”

Thinking of that made him realize how much he missed his friend.

He missed Asael, deeply.

‘I wonder where you are… are you doing okay, Asael? Or did you find yourself trapped in another dungeon again?’ He added that last part with a quiet, joking laugh.

He truly hoped Asael had reunited happily with his daughter. And more importantly…

‘I hope you said good things about me, Asael… don’t slander my name!’

He truly hoped so, otherwise, he’d kill that guy and then kill himself just to rewind time.

Suddenly, he paused, sensing an emotion transferred by Synthesis.

“Oh… you want to be a boy?”

He clicked his tongue in disappointment. “Tch. Then what about you, Soulbrand?”

But Soulbrand wasn’t advanced enough yet, and no hint of emotion rose in response.

Kaden shrugged reluctantly. “A boy then. Now, my boy, do your thing.”

His smile spread, quiet and determined.

“Combine all these fires into one. A fire unique to me.”

Synthesis glowed with both energy and excitement, then enveloped all of Kaden within a white cocoon.

The process began, and pain flooded his senses from every direction. This time, his expression didn’t falter, not a single grunt escaped his mouth.

He felt something deep within him begin to shift, transforming into something entirely new. It was… inside his heart.

Or perhaps, it was his heart itself.

Here, his eyes bulged wide open, his crimson irises tainted by every color as his heart began to change…to become something else entirely.

Soon, multicolored tears streamed down his pale, smooth skin, splashing on his knees and patting softly against the cores beneath him.

He gasped, feeling his heart stop for a heartbeat, a heartbeat too long for Kaden, who caught the shadow of Death glancing at him from the edge of his vision, before it started again just as the process reached its end.

The white dome burst apart, melting into streams of light that dispersed with the wind swirling through the room.

Kaden coughed, falling backward into the mountain of cores, and suddenly a vision flashed through his mind. It lasted only an instant, yet he felt it linger far longer than that.

He found himself in a wisp-like state, floating above a place that stirred no memory within him. Before him stood a massive, apocalyptic tree — so vast his mind could not fathom its scale — rooted deep within a black-and-white river that flowed endlessly upon itself, its branches large enough to cradle worlds within them. Its bark was an immaculate black, and its leaves were hearts set ablaze…hearts and flames of every shape, color, and rhythm imaginable.

Kaden gazed at it for barely a second before it all dispersed like mist, leaving him back in the room, his breath ragged.

Raising his head, he looked toward the panel flickering before his eyes.

[Your Heart has been changed. Your Seed of Fire has been changed.]

[Seed of Fire → Seed of Prometheus.]

[You have created a new fire: Fire of Prometheus.]

Kaden stared at the notifications and then, something burst within him, shrouding his whole body in a radiant, protective embrace. He raised his hand and watched as a magnificent crimson-gold fire, laced with hints of white, pink, blue, and black, shimmered across his skin like constellations carved in flame.

“Now… this is something,” he muttered, feeling the immense power throbbing within that flame.

‘Prometheus, huh…’

His lips curled upward. ‘Another beside Pandora, I see.’

He shook his head, and the flame retreated into his body but not before weaving itself into a new set of crimson-gold garments that wrapped around him, hiding his once-bare form.

Reditha clicked her tongue in disappointment inside his mind.

Kaden laughed softly at her reaction, then turned his gaze back toward the cores, his smile shifting into something more wry. “Another pain incoming. Ah, dear Mother Nature…” he said quietly, and then…

“My boy, go on.”

Synthesis responded immediately.

And soon, Kaden synthesized two Epithet Realm cores, saturating his Origin Core completely and…

…seemed to have completely forgotten the vision of the Black Tree.

—End of Chapter 285—