Chapter 78: Passive Regeneration, The God’s Physique

The golden screen hovered in the cold, dead air of the armory.

Saile stared at the floating text. The system was actively rewriting his biological code, burning away the weak, stolen magic he had taken from the Paladins. The letters on the screen vibrated violently, glitching between a harsh red and a brilliant gold.

[System Evaluation Finalizing...]

[Holy Regeneration (Passive) C-Grade has been eradicated.]

[Anomaly detected. Divine biological matter integrated.]

[Skill Unlocked: God’s Physique (Passive)]

The screen shattered into a shower of golden sparks. Saile’s legs suddenly gave

out.

He dropped hard to his knees, his heavy boots echoing loudly against the ruined

obsidian floor. He gasped, pulling ragged, desperate breaths into his expanding lungs. The dual cadence of his heart—the fast, human flutter and the slow, echoing thud of the divine—merged. It settled into a single, terrifyingly slow rhythm.

His heart now beat only once every four seconds.

Saile planted his bare hands on the stone. He did not feel tired. He felt like his skin was vibrating. The raw, unadulterated power flooding his veins was entirely overwhelming. His Diamond-Tier bones felt infinitely denser, as if they were forged from compressed gravity.

"You survived," Naicul stated.

The ancient God’s voice did not echo from a distant corner of Saile’s mind. It sounded like the deity was standing directly over his shoulder. The thirty-three percent Sync Rate made Naicul’s presence incredibly heavy and intimate.

Saile slowly pushed himself up. He looked at his right arm.

Minutes ago, the biological rejection had flayed the skin completely off his bones. Now, the flesh was entirely flawless. It was pale, smooth, and lacked a single scar.

He needed to test the exact limits of this new physiology.

Saile crouched down. He picked up a jagged, razor-sharp shard of shattered

obsidian from the cratered floor. He held his left hand out flat. Without a single ounce of hesitation, he dragged the sharp glass deeply across his own palm.

He pressed hard, slicing straight through the muscle.

The flesh parted cleanly. But no blood spilled from the deep wound.

Before a single red drop could hit the floor, microscopic threads of dark purple lightning crackled across the cut. The muscle fibers snapped back together like magnetic wires. The pale skin stitched itself shut in a tiny fraction of a second.

Saile wiped the dirt from his palm. There was no scar. There was no pain.

"Incredible," Saile whispered. His voice carried that new, faint, echoing resonance.

"Human healing is a slow, pathetic crawl," Naicul purred. The God felt the physical sensation through their shared nervous system, enjoying the cold efficiency of the mutation. "My blood does not wait for time. It rejects damage. Minor cuts, broken bones, and punctured lungs will now repair themselves before your enemies can even draw their next breath."

Saile dropped the bloody shard of glass.

"What about holy magic?" Saile asked. "The Paladins melted my arms with a single blast."

"The C-Grade regeneration you stole was just a bandage," Naicul scoffed. "God’s Physique alters your cellular foundation. You are now entirely immune to all low-tier and mid-tier holy magic. If a standard Inquisitor hits you with their light, it will feel like a warm summer breeze."

Saile closed his hands into fists.

The physical pain of the assimilation was entirely gone. But a strange, creeping numbness settled over his mind. He had just casually sliced his own hand open and felt absolutely no fear, no hesitation, and no relief when it healed.

He was viewing his own body as a simple tool. A machine to be tested and used.

The human instinct for self-preservation was quietly dying, replaced by cold, calculated apathy.

He pushed the thought away. He had work to do.

Saile turned his attention to the vast, cavernous armory.

The massive hall stretched far into the darkness. Hundreds of weapon racks lined

the black stone walls. They held rows of ancient broadswords, heavy halberds, and spiked maces. This was the personal arsenal of the Fallen God, hidden away for a millennium.

Saile walked down the center aisle. He reached out to grab a long, black iron spear.

The moment his fingers brushed the metal, the weapon crumbled. It turned to fine, gray rust, falling through his hands like dry sand.

"Time is a cruel thief," Naicul murmured, a hint of genuine sorrow bleeding into the shared consciousness. "Naissac sealed this room, but the wild, highly corrosive ambient mana of the Labyrinth seeped through the walls. A thousand years of stagnation has rotted the steel. The weapons are dead."

Saile looked down the endless rows of brittle, decaying armaments.

They were useless for combat. But they were not entirely worthless.

"They still hold the memory of your magic," Saile said softly.

He raised his left hand. The Endless Devourer woke in his chest, hungry for the

ancient metal.

Thick, heavy chains of pitch-black lightning shot directly out of Saile’s palm. The dark magic whipped aggressively across the cavern. It crashed into the rotting weapon racks, shattering the brittle iron swords and crumbling shields.

The dark lightning acted as a massive furnace. It melted the rust away, violently stripping the useless decay from the metal and isolating the pure, raw magical essence left inside the ancient steel.

The system rapidly vacuumed the glowing dust directly into Saile’s High-Tier Storage Ring.

Golden screens flashed quietly in rapid succession.

[Loot Acquired: Ancient Weapon Fragment x50]

[Loot Acquired: Ancient Weapon Fragment x120]

[Loot Acquired: Ancient Weapon Fragment x330]

The entire armory was stripped clean in less than two minutes. The heavy stone racks were left completely empty. Saile lowered his hand, letting the dark lightning fade back into his core.

He checked his inventory. He had just harvested exactly five hundred Weapon

Fragments from the decaying arsenal.

It was a massive, highly concentrated haul. He had enough raw materials to upgrade the Calamity Fang again, or forge an entirely new arsenal when the time was right.

"It is time to leave," Saile stated, turning his back on the empty vault.

"The exam is still running above us," Naicul reminded him. "The sheep are still hunting in the shallow floors. We must return before the sunset arrays pull the students back to the surface."

Saile walked toward the entrance of the armory.

He stopped near the rusted iron archway. The thick canvas wrappings he had discarded earlier lay in a heap on the floor. He picked them up and retrieved the Calamity Fang. He wrapped the pitch-black, Epic-grade odachi securely in the dirty cloth, hiding the lethal weapon once again.

He slung the bundle over his shoulder.

Then, he reached into his pocket. He pulled out the delicate silver elven choker.

Saile stared at the artifact. Wearing it meant returning to the cage. It meant suffocating his massive, Level 66 Diamond-Tier core down to a pathetic spark.

With the sync rate at thirty-three percent and his mana pool drastically expanded by the heartblood, the compression was going to be excruciating.

He snapped the silver clasp around his neck.

Saile closed his eyes. He seized the raging, violent ocean of dark magic in his chest and brutally forced it downward. He strangled his own power, pushing a single, microscopic thread of energy through the artifact’s filter.

A sharp, searing pain stabbed directly into his throat. His newly healed veins burned with artificial heat.

A weak, flickering yellow glow pulsed to life around his skin.

He opened his plain blue eyes. The terrifying Sovereign vanished. Gabriel, the weak commoner, returned.

Saile stepped out of the armory and back into the unmapped hallway of the tenth floor.

The towering mechanical Guardian remained exactly where he had left it. The

giant iron machine knelt respectfully on the cracked obsidian tiles.

Aira lay unconscious on the floor near the Guardian’s heavy metal knees.

The Holy Saintess had not moved. Her silver armor was dented and stained with her own blood. Her right arm hung awkwardly from the dislocated shoulder. She looked small and fragile in the dark.

Saile walked over to the kneeling machine.

"Secure this vault," Saile ordered the Guardian, keeping his voice a low whisper

so it would not echo. "Lock the doors. If any Church personnel reach this floor, terminate them immediately."

"As you command, My Lord," the machine ground out. Its glowing purple eyes dimmed as it shifted into a dormant, defensive sentry mode.

Saile crouched down beside Aira.

He reached out and gripped her uninjured left arm. He hauled the Saintess up from the floor, throwing her heavy, armored body over his left shoulder. Her dead weight settled against his back. Even with her armor, she felt incredibly light to his Diamond-Tier muscles.

"What is the play here, kid?" Naicul asked.

"We need an alibi," Saile thought back. He adjusted his grip on Aira’s waist, ensuring she would not slip. "The nobles dropped Class F off the map. Aira dove into the abyss right after me. The Church proctors are going to notice her missing."

"They will send a rescue team," Naicul agreed. "High-level instructors."

"Exactly," Saile said. "If they find us on the tenth floor standing next to a dead Demigod Gargantua, they will ask questions I cannot answer. We need to go back up."

Saile looked down the dark, winding corridor. He remembered the layout of the

labyrinth from the blueprints he had stolen in the Restricted Library.

There was a crumbling, ancient stone staircase located two miles north of this hallway. It led back up toward the seventh floor—a highly dangerous, but officially mapped zone.

"We pretend we fell, and she saved me," Saile decided. "We climb the stairs. We let the rescue team find us in the upper ruins. I remain the helpless victim."

Saile broke into a steady, rapid jog.

He carried the unconscious Saintess and the heavy wrapped sword without breaking

a single drop of sweat. He navigated the pitch-black tunnels with flawless precision, relying on his dark senses to avoid the wandering beasts of the deep zones.

He needed to get into position.

The true test of his disguise was no longer about hiding his magic. It was about looking a furious rescue team in the eyes and telling them the perfect lie.