Kamiya opened his eyes and what he was met with was a roof made out of large leaves and sticks. The roof was supported by four wooden logs making it resemble a simple outdoor hut.
"What?." Kamiya subconsciously asked, he was befuddled by the structure above him. As he was about to get up, he heard the sound of something moving and turned to his side, there Nuzres was humming a surprisingly peaceful and melodic tone while cooking something in a pot over an open fire.
Kamiya stared at her incredulously and wondered how she carried a pot with her without him noticing.
"I Love Gathering~."
"I love eating~."
"I love building~."
Kamiya watched the small Hellspawn attendant, Nuzres, as she cheerfully hummed her little tune, her white hair swaying slightly as she stirred the pot with a stick that seemed exactly the right length and straightness for the job. The entire scene—a makeshift camp, a cooking fire, and a smiling girl who was literally a piece of divine cancer—was absurdly domestic against the backdrop of a flattened city and a looming inverted structure.
He pushed himself up, wincing slightly. The dull ache from the Scale's tax was mostly gone, replaced by a residual stiffness.
"How did we get here?" Kamiya asked, his voice still rough. "And where did you get all this stuff? I thought we were walking across a charred wasteland."
Nuzres didn't stop humming immediately. She waited until the broth in the pot gave a satisfactory bubble before turning her head. Her jade eyes were wide and innocent.
"Ah, good morning, little King! You slept for an entire day, you know. Your internal system was terribly depleted," she said, her voice light. She then gestured around the hut with the cooking stick. "As for where we are, this is a patch of jungle that managed to avoid the Shingensha's initial blast radius. And the supplies?"
She held up the stick, which suddenly dissolved into a handful of gleaming, black dust. The dust then reformed instantly into a small, intricately carved wooden ladle.
"I am a Hellspawn, little King," she explained with a proud, slightly wicked grin. "We consume and manifest. That pot, the sticks, the logs—they were just dust and earth until I decided they should be something else. The pot is made from the remnants of the old Judgeful King's golden armour, specifically the helmet actually. It holds heat wonderfully!"
Kamiya stared at the ladle, then the pot, then back at Nuzres. "You... you can just materialize things from dust?."
"Within reason, and within my domain," Nuzres corrected, stirring the pot with the now-present ladle. "My domain is Waste and Residue. Everything the gods discard, everything that breaks, everything that settles as dust after destruction—it's all mine. The ruins of a city provide excellent residue."
She then tilted the pot toward him. The smell was surprisingly savoury, earthy, and warm. "I found some large, edible roots."
Kamiya ignored the pot. "But isn't dust basically nothing."
At his declaration, Nuzres smiled gently. "Yes Dust is nothing, that was why I was discarded from the Judgeful Court king, I am of course his vice and the things he so hates, he hates the dust which in his eyes are the ones who are dirty and unjust but that is all. To him dust is nothing but to me dust is always accumulating, slowly forming into sand, beginning to shape into stone and then one day it will accumulate until it becomes a planet, aside from using the scale, it is one of my four fundamental factors that makes up me."
"Soo the Judgeful Court king hated four things." Kamiya asked, intrigued by Nuzres story.
She nodded and sighed. "He hates people that hoard things, he hates things that give judgement while taking am unreasonable price, he hates dust and last of all he hates being covered, that is why I have his helmet, so when he became corrupted he cut me apart and turned to what he would consider himself a 'perfect' judge."
"Four things," Kamiya repeated, testing the list in his mind. "Hoarding, unreasonable prices for justice, dust, and being covered." He paused, looking at the ornate, soot-stained clothes Nuzres wore. "Wait, you said you're cancer cut from him, and you have his helmet... but you're wearing clothes."
Nuzres beamed, genuinely delighted by his sharp observation. "Oh, you are much quicker than some people. Yes, a crucial detail. I manifest and thrive on everything he despises. I hoard all the divine waste, I extract an unreasonable price with the Scale, I utilize the dust, and I always ensure I am covered." She gestured to her elaborate, layered noble dress. "This dress is made of dust and residue, but it serves my function. He loathed the idea of Justice being cloaked in mystery or hidden beneath finery."
She tapped the side of her helmet-pot proudly. "This is why the helmet is so important! It's the ultimate symbol of him failing to achieve his perfect state. It's the one thing he didn't manage to completely destroy, and I materialized it from the finest golden dust I could find."
Nuzres stood up and reached into the pot with the ladle, pulling out a steaming scoop of root stew. "But enough of the old King. You must eat, little King."
Hearing her words and seeing her insisting for him to eat, he opened his mouth and Nuzres fed him with no delay.
It was warm and the taste is surprisingly rich, Kamiya couldn't fathom how a Divine cancer could cook something good even though it looked a bit strange.
After he ate the first spoon Nuzres scooped up another one and fed him. Kamiya accepted the second spoonful without protest, his eyes half-closed in mild satisfaction. The stew was simple, earthy, and filling—a genuine comfort after the exhaustion and terror of his encounter with the goddess. It was profoundly unsettling how easily the Hellspawn adapted to the role of a caring attendant.
_She's literally nurturing me back to health so I can use her as a divine battery. It's unsettlingly transactional_
Kamiya thought, chewing slowly.
"That's enough for now i guess, you said my authority is too weak to refine you or something like that." Kamiya said as he sat up.
Nuzres pursed her lips and then the cauldron and the laddle turned into dust which floated towards her sash, she turned to Kamiya and cleared her throat. "That is true, your authority has not matured yet and in order for it to do so, you must master it by practicing it, your Authority is one that does with command or installing your words upon a being or an object, using a single word can be negligible but forming sentences may make you weak, so you would have to say single words."
Kamiya nodded, digesting the information about his power and its usage limitations. "Single words. Like 'Cinders' to burn something, or 'Banish' to... well, banish something."
"Precisely, little King," Nuzres confirmed, walking a tight circle in the small hut space. "Your strength is your Verbal Decree—your ability to assert a fundamental law of reality through simple words. Think of it as invoking a law upon the world, for example: This object shall be thus, because I, the Divine King, have decreed it."
Kamiya frowned, the violet energy in his chest which hadn't reacted for some while felt like it was wriggling, wanting to go out all of a sudden but Kamiya suppressed it entirely. "I get the gist of it, I shouldn't work on long sentences and use simple words instead."
Nuzres nodded. "Yes, gradually you will get used to forming sentences that could affect an area without it causing you energy."
_Yeah and I don't want to use your scale again_ Kamiya thought irritably.
He got up from the mat he was under and stretched his body, it indeed still hurts but it was better than before, he can still continue his journey but he would need to rest once in a while. "Let's get moving then, staying here longer is wasting our time."
Nuzres nodded and placed a hand on one of the beams of the makeshift hut, within moments it began to turn to dust which circled around her before entering her sash. "Then little King, as your future divine symbol i will ensure you become strong and also fill the gaps of knowledge about this world."
The two thus continued their journey upon these ominous lands.
Nuzres who was enthusiastic at following her King, so as the little attendant that she is she spoke. "Little King, the heroes of this world are beings who are deluded to think that the five Divine Kings are the greatest disasters, even beings like the demon lords would go against you and try to annihilate you, so to grow your strength you shouldn't just rely on your Authority but also other means of strengthening yourself."
She continued as she walked pass a small rock. "Originally there were ten ways to get stronger in this world but it has been reduced to three as the seven other methods would corrupt you and make you become the vessels of the fallen gods. The three ways are free from the control of the fallen ones because they are not Originally from this world. The first way to strengthen yourself Is to gain a class which is the most simplest way and to do that you would have to find a class stone but that is not possible because frankly speaking some of the more mythical classes are extinct and common classes remain."
"So we are not choosing that path sadly so it leaves us with the other two. The second path is making a contract with an Otherworldly creature in exchange for a price, it can allow you to use it's abilities or even partially fuse with it, to do that we would have to create an Otherworldly channel and wait till a creature approaches you and form a contract with it."
"The third path is to Awaken by fusing your body, mind and soul to awaken the third eyes, once it is awoken you will posses the qualifications to use Aether and cultivate a small concept within yourself to use as your power, it has a success of 30% but If you're willing to try it would be a good investment."
Kamiya listened intently as they walked, the sound of their footsteps on the dry earth providing a steady rhythm to Nuzres' explanation. The information about "Heroes" being brainwashed hunters made his stomach churn, but the breakdown of the three paths of power gave him a much-needed sense of direction.
"Let me get this straight," Kamiya said, stepping over a twisted root. "Class stones are mostly gone or mediocre, contracts involve paying a price to some monster from another dimension, and the 'Third Eye' is a 70% chance of failure but lets me use something called Aether."
He looked at his hands. They were still trembling slightly from the residual strain of the "Banish" command.
"The third path sounds the most like a 'cheat ability' from my world's stories," he muttered. "But a thirty percent success rate? What happens if I'm in the seventy percent that fails?"
Nuzres stopped walking and turned to him, her expression shifting from playful to unnervingly somber. "If you fail the Awakening, little King, your soul becomes a fragmented mess of 'residue.' You wouldn't die immediately, but you would essentially become a hollow—a mindless shell that leaks Aether until you simply evaporate into dust."
She smiled then, a flash of jade in her eyes. "Of course, I would be there to collect your dust, but I'd much rather have a King than a pile of sparkly sand."
Kamiya shivered. "Right. Noted. Let's keep that as a last resort for now. What about this 'Otherworldly Channel' for the second path? What kind of price do these creatures usually want?"