The story that emerges from this point differs from what Abigail published in her renowned adventure books. The novel regarding the murder of Pocuán ends after the battle under the abandoned warehouse. Asmodeus —according to this version— protected one of the bombers from the explosion to interrogate him later. That's what he tried, at least, as the criminal ended up taking his own life with a concentrated dose of his own poison.

It was the lieutenant who allowed me to know the true ending. He did so by confessing his concerns about the matter to me. I don't know if it was simply because I was the only man he could confide in or if my mental resilience in the face of issues that would disturb anyone else had something to do with it. If anyone were to ask my opinion on the matter, I would venture to say that the lieutenant was motivated by an inexplicable fear related to how his friend was evolving after the events he was experiencing in the city of Elker.

After the explosion that engulfed them, a gut-wrenching growl caught their attention.

The lieutenant looked at the criminal writhing in pain. He felt a tingling in his arm that intensified to madness; when he turned, he realized that some of the corrosive explosion had reached his arm. Then he understood a bit of what the man was suffering.

An unbearable burning sensation must have been invading half of the criminal's face. The man brought a hand to his face in an attempt to soothe the pain, but he felt the remnants of his melted skin between his fingers. His regenerative factor was not working at the necessary speed. The sensation of losing his humanity infused him with a terror that distorted his face even more grotesquely than the pain itself. Instinctively, he placed both hands on his head to accelerate his regeneration, but his desperate act was interrupted by a punch that broke his teeth.

Even the lieutenant was surprised by this sudden movement.

Asmodeus buried his fingers on the back of the criminal's neck while pushing him savagely, rubbing his melted skin on the floor without the slightest consideration.

What happened next was that he inserted a pair of cylinders into the criminal's nostrils. The lieutenant didn't know where he got them from, although it was easy to imagine that he extracted them from the backpack hidden inside his cloak. The action already seemed brutal in itself, but it was even worse when a thick purplish smoke began to emanate from the criminal's nostrils and mouth while a horrifying and involuntary scream escaped from his throat. He began to wriggle with desperate frenzy, like someone going mad while drowning, moving from side to side, shaking his head, coughing with air he didn't have, and trying to escape from what tortured him, but failing to alleviate his torment. When he could no longer hold his breath, he inhaled a lot of the poisonous smoke coming out of his body, causing him unimaginable pain that made him tear his throat with the ensuing scream.

Asmodeus stood over the man with a foot on his face, ignoring the pain he was suffering.

—What were you doing in this place?

The criminal writhed, trying to get out from under Asmodeus's boot. Realizing he lacked the strength to break free, he begged in stammering speech to be helped to alleviate the pain. Asmodeus promised him he would help when he answered his questions, then he asked the same question again with a deeper, more severe tone of voice.

After that, an anecdote was born that the criminal shared amidst desperate screams. There were no complete sentences, no well-articulated words, but the lieutenant understood the message the man wanted to convey.

The church was assaulting nature. The criminal didn't explain what he meant, but the agony of his agony combined with some terror when he uttered those words, almost as if the fear of what his ambiguous message hid was able to overshadow the torture he was experiencing.

They were doing something in the Great Mother Sierra, hidden on the border that divided the Stavenger and Cassinger kingdoms. There they experimented. The lieutenant knew it was a inhospitable place where not even the most powerful shyvian creatures dared to approach. Corrupt areas were more abundant in that area than anywhere else. King Svólkus had considered the Great Mother Sierra a strategic teleportation point; he tried to conquer it, but he was never able to. The concentration of primal energy was very low in that place, making it difficult for usshyers to use their gifts. It is not known if the Devourers in the area caused that effect or if that characteristic attracted so many of them. It was a very dangerous place, that was all the lieutenant knew. It would be difficult for any usshyer to work there, but it would also be difficult to be discovered. It was as easy to hide as it was to get lost.

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The man tried to describe the place they were taken to. He had it burned into his memory like a brand. He spoke of several icy mountains whose colliding slopes rose like swords as far as the eye could see. He spoke of a cliff hidden in the mist and underground caves that connected to an underground lake. For him, it was so real that he felt he had it in front of him, delirious about what he had experienced, constantly drowning between blurry episodes. He described the trees, then startled as he remembered a twisted specimen. He spoke with such passion about it that he was sure neither the lieutenant nor Asmodeus could confuse it with any other. He also mentioned the soil: gritty and rough to the touch. Even the scents of the air seemed unique to him, as if the place could be recognized by the mere description.

For him, it was real. Unfortunately, his descriptions remained very ambiguous and could correspond to any area of the Great Mother Sierra.

The man participated in their experiments. He didn't say it was consensual. They had taken him there in chains, so it was possible that he was a convicted criminal. He made no comments about his past and spoke as if his life began just when he entered the cave system where he was tortured for years.

It was after many injections, food, and rituals that one day they came to him with a blackish substance. When they injected it into him, he felt nothing. After a few seconds, corrosive poison emanated from the center of his chest, eclipsing his entire energy aura. His muscles, his gifts, and even his consciousness weakened with each passing second, but the worst of all was the burning sensation spreading throughout his body.

What he suffered was the first prototype of the poison. The church was developing that substance to turn the gifts of the usshyers into Dark Ether. They didn't succeed. Instead, that prototype only managed to suppress his gifts.

The man shook his head trying to forget what they had done to him. Voices, chants, and an evil energy constantly surrounded him in those memories. He babbled about it. He shook his head several times while trying to control the pain he was suffering.

—They didn't succeed —he said—. They threw me into an underground lake, along with others. A current dragged me, I found romular stones at the bottom, used them to replenish my energies, and emerged in another area, in Cassinger.

The criminal was already tearing his throat at the end of each sentence. The lieutenant leaned towards him to ask exactly what they were doing in that place. The man was on the verge of collapse, but he struggled to answer. What they were doing there was replicating the church's experiments, he said. Asmodeus interrupted by pushing his head to the ground.

—They experiment with children —he said.

—It's necessary! —the man shouted.

—You're only doing to them what was done to you —Asmodeus said.

—It's not about revenge —the man said—. We have to finish what they started! —He turned to the sky—. He must understand.

The purplish smoke that was suffocating him suddenly turned yellow. The change ended up driving him crazy because not only had the color of the substance changed, but also its corrosive properties. His lips began to dissolve, then the cartilage of his nose, and gradually his teeth. By then, the man was already screaming and writhing uncontrollably on the floor, begging from his throat to stop the pain.

The lieutenant tried to approach, but Asmodeus stopped him.

He observed the movements of the criminal, whose pleas had been reduced to unsettling gurgling sounds. The movement of his limbs had become erratic. The man tore his skin with each movement. He tried to get up on some occasions, but his sense of balance seemed to have been completely shattered. The lieutenant couldn't bear such a scene. He wanted to move forward, but Asmodeus stopped him again with a simple gesture of his hand while preparing his sword.

The criminal eventually positioned himself in an ideal position. Asmodeus then delivered a powerful slash that severed the man's neck.

The movements of both parties abruptly reduced. They didn't stop instantly, but at least there were no signs of suffering. What remained were just reflexes. After that, the poisonous smoke turned into foam and came out of both his nostrils and what was left of his trachea. Not even the lieutenant is sure what kind of expression he had on his face when he witnessed that outcome, but he senses that it was communicative enough for Asmodeus to read his thoughts.

—I promised I would eliminate his pain —he replied with a cold expression that he had never seen on him before—. That's exactly what I did.

It wasn't the first time Asmodeus had killed. Nor was it new for him to act in ways that the masses would label as immoral. The problem lay in the fact that the lieutenant had never seen him proceed as he did that day. He didn't enjoy killing. He didn't care. If he did it, it was solely to reduce the chances of any reprisal. But on that occasion, he had been unusually bloodthirsty.

The lieutenant wasn't even sure what that substance his friend had injected into the criminal was. It seemed he had invented it for the sole purpose of torture. Upon seeing him, he perceived the same indifferent face that he almost always wore like a mask, but a cold current ran through his chest when he noticed a slight sign of passion reflected in his friend's lively eyes, manifesting in his iris as a blue glow that conveyed the vibes of a grim smile for what had happened.

When asked about his behavior, Asmodeus returned to the indifferent state he was almost always in.

—My longevity is not a product of luck, but of the philosophy I have adopted —he said, then looked directly at the corpse—. I have no enemies.

He took the rings off his hands with a trembling movement. These were linked together by threads that the lieutenant hadn't seen. Their ensemble resembled that used for ascension rituals in royalty. He took a metal box from the side of his belt where he stored them, then hid it again. His hand continued to tremble awkwardly until he hid it behind his nolet.

Asmodeus checked his wound in the abdomen. It was still bleeding, but he didn't care.

—Incinerate the body —he said—. If your civilization were to discover that compound, they wouldn't use it for anything good.