Platt turned his back on the ball of crickets. He was confident that it would finish the woman off, only for it to explode caused by a large black fire. The crickets were burnt into ashes, sparing none of the small insects.

This made Platt hover away slowly. He extended his arms on either side of him and conjured dark green flames in his arms.

"Did you already forget that I have the Blessings of both Gluttony and Sloth?" Malice grinned. "I could feel both their powers in me. All their mana, traveling in my veins as I gain two new skills that will ultimately change the tide of this battle. Now matter how many of you gang up do defeat me, I will never lose. I refuse to lose!"

With a single wave of her hand, Malice formed a vortex made of darkness that spun behind her. The vortex collected all the ashes of the crickets. It continuously spun as it slowly formed a ball of ashes that hovered above the Demon.

She raised her head and opened her mouth, with the ball of ashes slowly coming down to her mouth. Malice's lips suddenly enlarged, her teeth became fangs as the ball got closer. A long slick red tongue slithered from Malice's lips and wrapped itself around the ball, pulling it to her mouth before she swallowed the entire thing like it was nothing.

"This is delicious," Malice laughed. She gulped down the ash and closed her eyes to feel the power that came from it. "Anything made from mana can be consumed by this skill. This is impressive. I want more."

–

"Connor, Ed, Hope," Lance gathered the three of his friends. "Did you got the Bless from the Sins?"

"We did," Connor replied. "After that, I got this notification. It says I gained two new skills. And my stats just exploded."

"Two?" Lance quirked his brow up.

"I got two too," Hope said. "It has one passive and one active skill. My stats also exploded by how enhanced it got."

Lance gazed at his Console, seeing the notification that only awarded him with one skill.

[[ Greedy Venture ]]

Cost: 10,000 MP

Cooldown: 36 hours

// The user shall mark a target and can steal one of their skills.

! After the skill is gained, the damage and effects will scale with the user's level.

! The skill will return to the original owner after the user dies.

To Lance, he got a skill that Aviditio used to steal his attack. It would make sense that he got his skill back since it says here that the owner will get the skill back once the user of Greedy Venture is killed.

With this skill, Lance could steal Malice's strongest attack. It didn't state in the conditions that he must be stronger than his target before he could steal. It was a risk, but he wants to take the chance.

If the other Sins have this type of skill, they were indeed fearsome. This is something that they can use as trump cards to defeat Malice, or any enemy they might face in the future.

"What skills did you gain?" Lance asked. "For my active, I gained one that could steal other's skills. For my passive…"

He trailed off for a moment. He didn't want to lie to his own friends, but until he doesn't know why he only gained a single skill, he should keep this information to himself.

"For my passive, I have one that allows me to keep regenerating my mana even when the bar is filled," Lance lied. "The mana will be stored in a vault so I can use them later."

"So, basically unlimited mana," Connor grinned in excitement. "That's amazing, Lance. My active skill is to trap a target into a trance that makes them get filled with pleasure. My passive one is… erm…"

The other three looked at each other, wondering why Connor suddenly became embarrassed.

"What Sin did you– oh," Ed pursed his lips to stop himself from laughing. "The passive one isn't lewd, is it?"

"No!" Connor yelled rather loudly. "It just… it allows me to increase my stats by collecting the pleasure from the target of my active skill. It seems kind of awkward if you think about it."

"That's actually very useful," Ed said. "I got the Blessing of Envy. The active one goes similar to Lance, but instead I could copy the skill of my enemies. It doesn't have a cooldown but I have four slots to copy, and I can only inflict half its damage. For my passive, I can store my copied skills in their slots and they can stay there for up to two days. In those two days, I can still use the skills unless I dump them for a new one."

"As for me, I have limited time invincibility for my active skill, and then I have lifesteal for my passive," Hope said. "I guess taking down Livor was beneficial for me. Now I could sustain even longer in fights."

"That's awesome," Lance said. "All of us got very useful skills. If we use these against Malice, even when she got two of the Blessings, she won't stand a chance."

"Let's go," Hope cheered. He took a few steps back and morphed into his dragon form. "The sooner we finish this, the earlier we can have a funeral for Mister Moon."

Lance paused for a moment. He gave his friends a forced smile while he clenched his fist. He knew the others were affected by Elliot's apparent death, but they were holding themselves better than he was.

For him, it felt like any moment now, he would explode in tears and cry. It wasn't manly for him to do so, but Elliot was the first person he got so close to. Sure, the others were also close to him, but to Lance, Elliot was special for him. The boy made him realize a lot of things out of his goal to just piss his father off.

"Let's go," Lance said with a determined smile. "Let's finish this."

–

"Just die!" Malice yelled, shooting beams at Platt who kept on regenerating.

She was starting to get annoyed by how much Platt could regenerate. The man had been beheaded thrice and completely ashed a couple of times, but he was still standing.

"All your attacks will go in vain," Platt said. "Just give up, Malice. You already rule one realm, why take the others?"

"You already rule one realm, why take the others?" Malice mimicked with a high-pitched voice. "One realm will never be enough. Especially after what all of you did to my daughter! Your puny collective group of bastards tainted her and now she's broken."

"We can sort this out, Malice," Zeus said as he got off from his chariot. Miria and Haley were behind him, also floating towards the enraged woman. "We don't know what you mean."

"Oh, you don't?" Malice laughed with her voice filled with sarcasm. "Of course, you didn't know. What do you know anyway? All of you turns a blind eye if your brethren commits a crime and even blames the victim for what happened."

"Malice, we don't understand–"

"Pentos!" Malice yelled. "Pentos kidnapped my daughter and broke her mind. They all broke my only daughter!"