Chapter 611: The clue hidden in plain sight

Axel opened his mouth wide like a monster, exposing rows of sharp, long demonic teeth that dripped with an unknown black substance. The viscous fluid ran down his chin, glistening faintly against the dim backdrop of the False Void.

The Void Beasts that were madly devouring his ruined body did not even notice his sudden action.

They remained focused entirely on tearing away at his flesh, driven by their endless, mindless hunger. Seizing the opportunity, the Demon lunged forward with his head and directly bit off the head of one Void Beast clean from its body.

As his jaw closed up with immense force, the torn head inside his mouth was instantly crushed. Bones cracked and alien flesh buckled under the pressure of his demonic bite.

Gulp… Axel swallowed the mangled remains without a single moment of hesitation. No flicker of emotion or distaste could be seen on his pale face. His cold, emotionless mind was taking the optimal course of action for his own self-preservation.

A string of urgent red runes flashed in front of his eyes in the dark space:

[Warning! Warning!! You have devoured the alien substance of Void Creatures]

[It has actively started to destroy you from within]

The other void creatures that were currently tearing down his flesh stopped their feeding for a brief instant. They growled viciously, their alien eyes locking onto him before lunging at him from all directions with renewed savagery.

Axel completely ignored the red flashing warnings issued by Prime Nexus, nor did he mind the gut-wrenching pain of severe corrosion spreading simultaneously inside and outside his physical body.

He knew precisely what he was doing. He opened his jaws once more, clamping down on the writhing limb of another void creature. He tore it away from the creature's torso, eating the black flesh mercilessly along with the dense bones inside.

As his sharp demonic teeth flashed in the dimness of the False Void, a gargantuan killing intent burst outward from his frame, weighing down heavily over the surrounding swarm of Void Beasts.

For the very first time since entering this realm, a brief sense of hesitation appeared among the thousands of mad abominations.

However, that hesitation lasted for only a fleeting moment. Their everlasting instinct to devour everything belonging to the material world was far too strong.

That primitive desire was too powerful for them to disobey. Even if it meant rushing mindlessly toward their certain death, these creatures would still do exactly that to consume anything from the material realm.

Yet in that very brief lapse of hesitation, Axel did not stay put.

He targeted the corpse of the first Void Beast whose head he had just devoured.

Without pausing, he bit into that lifeless body once again. This time, his sharp jaws tore apart the outer hide and thick muscle, digging deeper into the chest cavity until a pulsing, almost perfectly spherical heart was exposed.

The organ throbbed with a dark, unstable energy.

Axel reached with his jaw, tore away the black colored heart, and swallowed it whole.

[You have eaten a Void Heart.]

[Error!!!! Error!!!!]

[An unknown reaction is occurring within your bloodline]

[Hidden innate ability of your Demon Bloodline 'Heart Devourer' has been activated]

[Attempting assimilation of the attributes from the swallowed Void Heart….]

[Error!! Assimilation attempt failed!!]

[Assimilation condition has yet to be met…]

[Complete Assimilation is impossible…]

Axel still showed no visible reaction to the alarming messages. His mind registered only the cold words whispered by Prime Nexus, with utter detachment.

His emotionless mind quietly noted that his chosen course of action was indeed correct. With his ability to feel emotions now entirely gone, he was no longer distracted by panic, despair, or physical agony.

He could think, analyse, and take decisive actions with absolute focus and maximum efficiency.

As such, using the full extent of his analytical mental power, Axel was indeed able to find a single, crucial clue that could truly give him a chance to live, whether ironically or unironically.

That clue had always been laid out in plain sight, hidden within his past experiences.

Axel clearly remembered the pivotal moment when he had eaten Ivor's heart. [In Chapter 13]

That was the precise event through which he had gained his Demon bloodline in the first place. To be precise, through the act of him devouring the Demon Heart, the bloodline of the demons was assimilated inside of him.

And then, there was that other distinct moment. [In Chapter 444]

When he had felt an overwhelming, instinctual urge to eat a Human Seeker's heart while attacking the forces of the Vex family.

At that time, Axel had consciously refrained from eating the human heart because he did not want to degrade himself into a cannibalistic monster.

But now it seems that there was a greater secret hidden in his urge to eat the Demonic Heart at that time.

Axel only knew from the original story he read that eating a demonic heart or a powerful human seeker's heart would temporarily grant a Demon an enormous boost of raw power; but it came with a terrible drawback.

The act would amplify all the Demon's negative emotions by more than a thousandfold.

As a direct result of that emotional surge, any Demon would undoubtedly lose their sanity, turning into a raving, mindless beast that cared for nothing except devouring powerful entities.

The common point between these two distinct events was centred entirely around the 'Heart'. In the first instance, he had eaten the heart to assimilate the Demon Bloodline.

In the second instance, his Demon bloodline had actively craved the heart of a powerful seeker to flood his body with energy.

If this had been the old Axel, the version of himself before losing his emotional spectrum, he would never have been able to connect these seemingly separate and unrelated events to draw out the hidden clue.

His judgment would have been clouded by disgust, fear, and moral hesitation.

However, the current Axel, completely free from emotional discrepancies, could easily hypothesise the truth. He deduced that there indeed existed a pathway to a hidden power locked between those two occurrences.

Now, the only obstacle stopping him from achieving the complete assimilation attempted by the Heart Devourer ability was the unknown condition that still needed to be met.

Naturally, his cold, calculating mind had already begun constructing several logical hypotheses regarding what that condition might actually be.

Even without meeting that unknown condition right away, he received another massive benefit that could not be overlooked.

Axel's ruined body was suddenly flooded with an immense surge of power.

Eating the heart of a powerful entity would inherently fill a Demon with overwhelming energy.

Normally, that temporary boost of monstrous strength came at a fatal cost: the severe amplification of emotions by thousands of times, forcing the Demon to lose all reason and act like a wild beast.

Yet, Axel no longer possessed even a single ounce of emotion. Because he had no emotions left to amplify, the side effect could not trigger in the first place.

It was a mathematical certainty, equivalent to multiplying zero by a thousand.

You cannot amplify something that does not exist in the first place.

As a direct result, Axel Nomrad received the full, unfiltered boost of enormous power without suffering the slightest negative side effect.

With that overflowing, potent energy swimming rapidly through his veins and flesh, Axel's destroyed limbs began to regenerate. Broken bones knitted together, muscle fibres reattached, and fresh skin pulled over his wounds within a mere matter of seconds.

All of this deep analysis inside Axel's mind, as well as the rapid physical healing of his limbs, took place within the tight time frame where the swarm of Void Creatures had hesitated.

His act of devouring their kin, combined with his terrifying, emotionless killing intent, had temporarily stalled their assault.

Standing tall once more on his newly restored legs, the Demon let out a mighty, thunderous roar filled with pure challenge toward the thousands of abominations surrounding him.

The swarm of monstrosities snapped out of their brief stupor and lunged toward Axel all at once, overwhelming his position in an instant while growling with mad, insatiable hunger.

Axel summoned his pitch-black sword into his hand. With cold precision, he began killing and cutting through the horde, hacking away relentlessly at the Void Creatures.

He calculated every angle, finding tiny gaps between their writhing bodies to manoeuvre himself through the mountain of endlessly attacking beasts.

However, the constant corrosion of the void remained as dangerous as ever. It pressed against him with unyielding weight because the complete assimilation of the void element could not begin until he fulfilled the hidden condition.

The temporary power boost he had gained from devouring the heart was holding the erosion at bay for now, but that energy was already draining away at a rapid rate.

Axel managed to kill only about a hundred of the abominations before his deteriorating physical condition and piling wounds caught up to him. His movements grew sluggish, his reflexes dulled by the severe physical exhaustion of his battered vessel.

The pitch-black sword in his grip cracked along its spine, its edge blunted from striking through dense bone and corrupted hides before it finally shattered into useless metallic shards.

With no weapon remaining, Axel fought on with his bare fists, but inch by inch, his skin and flesh all over his body were torn away by the ferocious bites of countless Void Creatures.

Black blood sprayed into the dim space as claw after claw gouged deep furrows into his exposed muscles.