This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange - Chapter 879: Abe’s Return Home
Chapter 879: Chapter 879: Abe’s Return Home
Abe staggered backward, his body trembling in fear, abyssal energy emitting from his skin as he tried to use it to escape the repression coming off of Kain.
This was his trump-card, an ability perhaps derived from the demigod that gave him this core, that would allow him to teleport using shadows. It had never failed before…until now.
Kain’s whole body, head now reattached, stood still with his head lowered. A faint violet light flickered from his eyes and from the thin lines running across his skin like lines where his body was stitched back together.
Then, slowly, Kain moved toward Abe.
The motion wasn’t deliberate. His body moved on instinct—no, not instinct, something deeper. The Source energy within him stirred like a living will, ancient and hungry. He felt it pressing outward, expanding beyond his control, as if the reconstruction had awakened a primal reflex he’d never known existed.
Abe sensed it too. His abyssal corruption recoiled from that energy, warning him that to stay meant death. He spun, still trying to summon the shadows to flee.
He never made it two steps.
It was as if the world paused, and when it started again, Kain was now in front of him.
Teleportation? Or was his speed just that fast?
Kain’s hand—covered in translucent violet light—clamped onto Abe’s chest. The moment their bodies touched, Abe convulsed. The abyssal energy covering his body like shattered with a sound like breaking glass, and a torrent of dark energy surged outward, dragged against Abe’s will from his core.
Kain wasn’t doing it consciously. His fingers dug in, veins pulsing as the Source power in him devoured everything it touched. It was a one-sided, silent feeding—the abyssal taint unraveling, stripped apart and refined into pure power. Abe’s voice broke into a hoarse cry, his form flickering between human and a fully corrupted abyssal.
“Kain—please! I’ll tell you anything you want to know! Just stop—please!”
But Kain didn’t respond to his pleas for mercy, or perhaps he didn’t even hear them.
As Abe’s strength drained away, his surroundings began to fade. For a brief moment, the surrounding forest disappeared. In its place appeared the small fishing village of his youth—the smell of salt in the air, the creak of boats on the water. He could see the crooked little house at the edge of the pier where he’d grown up.
In the doorway stood his mother, her familiar silhouette framed by the evening light. She smiled, the same gentle, weary smile he’d carried in memory for years. “Shohei,” she said softly. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. Come home.”
He took a shaky step toward her, confusion giving way to relief. “Mom… I’m sorry… I tried to avenge—”
But before he could finish, the light from Kain’s hand flared again. The image of the village crumbled into ash, his mother’s voice echoing faintly one last time.
His words dissolved into a rasp.
The light grew brighter, swallowing his face, his limbs, until only a silhouette remained—a man-shaped outline disintegrating from within. The shadows he tried to summon simply fell apart, their essence consumed before they could form. Through his now translucent skin, a pitch black core could be seen in his body that faded to grey, and then white.
Abe’s last thought before his body crumpled was of his mother’s smile and the sound of waves against the pier of their village. He thought of how long it had been since he had gone home, and how he wished he could have seen her one more time before everything went wrong.
Kain’s expression never changed. He simply stood there, hand outstretched, as what remained of Shohei Abe collapsed into a brittle, hollow husk.
The body fell with a dry sound, like a barrel of hay.
For a long moment, nothing moved.
Kain exhaled slowly, lowering his hand. The hunger faded, but the echo of it lingered—a faint vibration through his entire being. He could feel the energy swirling inside him, clean and potent. Even after purification, the quantity was staggering. Abe had devoured countless lives, including the former royal family members and some top guards had been attacked by him from behind. Even if only 10% of the energy remained after purification it was a lot.
“Almost enough to repay what I took from you,” he murmured, glancing inward toward Pangea. The world within him pulsed faintly, calmer now, as the sudden influx of new Source energy had been enough to restore it to its previous state.
The light beneath his skin dimmed. He looked down at himself—and blinked.
The reflection in a nearby pool of black blood was almost unrecognizable. His previously healthy tanned skin was not a glowing pale purple, shot through with dark violet veins that pulsed softly with each heartbeat. His eyes burned like twin violet flames, and even his hair drifted upward as if suspended in an invisible wind. Around his neck, a thin, line fading by the second, marked where his head had been severed only minutes before.
He tilted his head and squinted at his reflection. “…Well, that’s new.”
Then, he let out a faint snort: “Super Saiyan mode activated.”
Looking at a nearby boulder that remained intact from the earlier battles, Kain held his hands out toward it with his wrists touching.
In a somewhat joking tone, he yelled, “Kamehameha!” Naturally, nothing happened, and Kain coughed in faint embarrassment, especially after seeing the disgusted and disdainful eyes of Vauleth nearby.
The absurdity grounded him. But beneath the humour, a deep unease stirred. His body didn’t feel like his own anymore. Every breath seemed to carry a strange power. If he focused, he could sense that this form wasn’t completely biological anymore—it was a construct, a vessel rebuilt partly from Source energy.
He flexed his hands experimentally into a fist. The air trembled. “…Stronger,” he whispered. “Probably strong enough to defeat a green-grade beast barehanded. Maybe even blue-grade.”
The realization was both thrilling and disconcerting. His body wasn’t human anymore—not entirely.
He looked at the glowing violet eyes in the reflection, then frowned. “Yeah, Serena’s gonna love this. She’s going to think I lost control again.”
Worst case scenario being that, rather than believing the far-fetched story that Abe was somehow a coherent corrupted human going undetected within society, she’d just think Kain lost control and killed him due to hunger…
Closing his eyes, Kain drew in a slow breath and reached inward. The energy that filled his veins resisted at first—alive, reluctant—but gradually it subsided, sinking back into the core of his being. The glow around his body faded. His hair settled. His skin darkened back to its natural bronze, though faint light still shimmered beneath the surface. Only a thin violet ring around his pupils remained.
By the time he exhaled, the unnatural aura was gone.
“Now how am I going to explain this…”
Even if he no longer looks like a glowing purple alien, and Serena believes him due to their relationship…friendship…whatever they were, it’ll be hard to convince Takeru, especially since his ’Super Seiyan mode’ had erased much of the evidence of Abe’s corruption.
The ground around Abe’s remains was clean—too clean, purified entirely by the Source energy of any Abyssal energy. Only the brittle shell of a man remained, collapsed in upon itself.
Then a sound cut through the stillness, two fast-approaching spiritual signatures.
Branches snapped. Leaves rustled.
Serena burst through the foliage first, bow drawn and face solemn. Takeru stumbled in after her, breathing hard. Their gazes swept over the carnage—the cratered ground, the ash, the faint haze of violet still lingering in the air.
Kain stood in the center of it all, calm and unharmed.
Serena’s grip tightened. “Kain…?”
He turned slightly, offering a faint, easy smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You’re late.”
Her gaze darted to the mummified husk on the ground, and for a moment, suspicion flared—then confusion. “What happened here?”
Kain’s expression softened slightly as he glanced toward Takeru. “He’s gone.”
Takeru’s face paled. “Gone? What do you mean?”
Kain paused before speaking. “He wasn’t who we thought he was. He’d… changed. The Abyss had him for a long time.”
Takeru shook his head, disbelief clear in his eyes. “No. Advisor Abe would never—”
“He already did,” Kain said quietly. “I didn’t want it to end like this, but it was him or us.”
Kain then goes on to explain how Abe had ambushed him, and how it’d been revealed that he was responsible for the complete demise of the royal family aside from Takeru.
Takeru looked as if he’d been hit hard, but Serena was more focused on Kain. She had a feeling that he was leaving a lot of details out in his retelling of the events.
The violet ring in his eyes caught the fading sunlight, glimmering faintly. Serena’s instincts prickled—something about his presence felt different. But before she could ask, Kain turned away, his hand brushing faintly over the air where Abe’s remains lay.
“Come on,” he said softly. “We’ve still got a long way to go.”
