Standing on a vast plain of scorched earth, there was an imposing shadowy figure with bat-like wings and a maw full of sharp teeth. Under his dark red skin enveloped by flickering shadows, there were hardened muscles, but he did not give off the impression of someone healthy as his flesh was scorched, partly by wounds inflicted on him and partly by his very nature, the nature of a malevolent corrupted being. Clever and hateful, his heart full of malice and a strong sense of unjust punishment that was being dealt upon him every day by his very existence.

  He was the lord of hell, but at the same time he was a prisoner in his own kingdom, a slave to a higher purpose that had been bestowed upon him. The burden that made him shout with anger at the glorious being in front of him that was like a reversed image of himself.

"I had enough of this nonsense again and again!" The hideous mouth of the demon spat saliva along with a loud screech, but as if by accident not a single drop ended up staining the one who stood in front of him.

  The figure of an angel so glorious there seemed to be none other like him. His features speaking of immeasurable strength, the image of him being one of gold and white mixing into a holy icon that was known and revered throughout the worlds and across all the universe. His wings made of golden feathers were soft as silk, yet could cut through steel when need arose. One would expect that such a being would look with disgust at the frothing demon in front of him, but there was no pity or insult hidden in his golden eyes, he was looking at the shadowy creature in front of him as if he was simply his kin that had lost his way.

"Tell me, Gabriel, why is it that I have to reign over hell where the most despicable dwell? Why do I have to look at all the suffering day after day? You on the other hand are enjoying your time in Heaven, filled with beauty and luxury. This is unfair!" The demon lashed out with his hand and a flame made of shadows erupted in the direction of the holy being, drowning Gabriel completely and the sky itself seemed to darken due to this single attack.

  A second later, the archangel made a single light flap with his wings and with a laud thunderclap all the shadows consuming him vanished, the sky clearing again painting the surroundings in bright colors with the holy being itself not suffering a single injury, the light enveloping him not losing an ounce of its intensity.

"It was a choice of your own Sammael, Heaven could be your home as well if not for the revolution." Gabriel reprimanded the demon, not shaken by his sudden attack, there could still not be seen a sliver of enmity in his beautiful face.

"And I will never regret that day! However, it was Heaven that forced all hideous and unkind under my banner, I was simply not a hypocrite and accepted them as my own." Sammael stomped and jumped at the archangel, his fist aiming at Gabriel's jaw supported by the fiend's unimaginable power. Despite his attempt, the moment his fist touched the archangel, the whole image of the vast plain cracked like made of glass, shattering like broken shards with a web of golden lines no longer connecting the image together. In its place, suddenly there was the same scene as before as if the time itself had been turned back.

Sammael's face turned even more ugly at the arrogant display of power of the one standing in front of him.

"The choice is real Sammael, you have what you chose." Gabriel stated calmly.

"Bullshit, there is no choice! There is none, only suffering for those not compliant with the system!" Sammael spread his hands and shadows burst out of his body. All around them transparent silhouettes of unspeakable horrors began to manifest and gained more substance with every passing second, materializing right before their eyes. Before a minute passed, the whole plain had been turned into hell with hideous fiends and black fire everywhere, almost drowning the archangel with their sheer bulk.

Looking from afar, one could no longer see the glorious light of the archangel, the scene turned into hell.

"As shadow infects light, light infects shadow. You cannot extinguish what always will be." Gabriel waved his wings and soared to the sky, his body suddenly tearing through the sea of demons and shone like billion Suns. All the demons, fiends, horrors and nightmares tried to cover their eyes before turning into dust, their demise accompanied by loud roars and screams of their suffering. Even the skin of Sammael himself began to steam like his whole body had been submerged into acid and his arm was trying to block the archangel's devastating light,

When the brightness finally receded, there was only pity in Gabriel's eyes and Sammael could not but be infuriated by how Gabriel looked at him.

"Liar." He sneered through the clenched fangs of his hideous maw.

  Sammael's claws elongated and black fire covered them, emanating a level of danger that was superior to anything else he had tried to use against his adversary yet, but before he could even move to use his ominous weapons, dozens of golden chains shot out of the ground and enveloped his body. Sammael struggled, cutting the chains one by one, but there was too many and he had been overwhelmed shortly. Bound by the golden chains, he was no longer able to move and looked at Gabriel with hatred.

"That is the truth, even at this moment you can choose." Gabriel's levitating body touched the ground and he stepped closer to the chained demonic figure.

"Fine I choose to build my own system. My Hell and my Heaven, with puppets that control it all, as HE does it." He shouted with defiance, as his voice was now his only mean that had not been restrained.

Sammael looked up and roared the loudest he could in a single inarticulate display of defiance.

When he vented his anger, he took a deep breath and asked his last question, no longer asking Gabriel that stood in front of him.

"What you say, liar? Do I really have a choice or is this just the usual manipulative propaganda of your puppets?!" He questioned with no respect in his voice and for the first time, there was a frown in Gabriel's face. The archangel waved his hand and a thick golden chain wrapped around Sammael's head and mouth, the demon bit down on the golden chain, trying to break it to be able to speak again, but it held firm while burning the insides of his mouth.

"You will show respect." The Archangel clenched his hand into a fist and the chains tightened even more.

The terrible demon stood there wrapped by golden light, chained and unable to move or speak, yet his will was unbroken and even though his voice no longer proceeded with his lament, his eyes continued to look up with determination and defiance.

After some time, Gabriel removed the chains, knowing that he was not permitted to eradicate the demon.

"Leave." He said, emotionless, but Sammael could not let it go and wanted to have the last word before he left the hypocrites.

"I knew it, you lie and twist and act almighty, but there is no choice in your kingdom of lies, only slavery." The demon mocked and prepared to leave the place, returning to Hell before the archangel bound him again, when suddenly a voice like no other spoke in response, permeating all existence.

* * * *

"Nothing again? But that one had a soul!" Frei sighed while looking at a corpse of a wolf, but he shortly lost interest and began looking for another target.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Maybe the special ones have one? Like rare monsters, or creatures with destiny or something?" Nitarja stood a few meters away from him next to a trunk of a huge tree covered in turquoise moss. She fit the environment of the humid forest so well that one would expect that the next creature to spawn here would be her.

"With destiny? More like named monsters or glitches. I might start to consider searching for some bad people to kill." Frei was annoyed by the limited success of their operation of gathering souls. They had managed to collect just a few during the last hour.

"I have seen that one a number of times. You start with bad guys, continue with incompetent and lazy ones and end up killing everyone, because the greater good is worth it." Nitarja sneered at him.

"Fine, do not look at me like that. I was just brainstorming." Frei avoided her eyes like a little boy that took more candy than he should, but only for a moment before he looked at Nitarja like a detective interrogating a suspect.

"Don't tell me that you have become one of those do-gooders. You know what will happen if we lose to Gabri'El." Frei asked and his attention returned to the small clearing where a creature began to spawn, it was a sight he had never quite gotten used to. At first it looked like the ghost of a wolf, a transparent mirage of what was going to materialize. As time passed it gained substance and before he knew it, a wolf stood in front of them.

  In the original game there were clearly just hard coded environments that had a particular kind of monsters to spawn in them assigned, but the whole process turned almost magical as the game elements blended into reality and faded into the background, distorted and intangible.

"You are quick to jump right to the stage of doing greater good." Nitarja laughed and watched Frei unleash dark magic to deal with the creature. The wolf tried to dodge, but the multiple dark lights were too numerous to avoid and it had been slain in a matter of seconds.

"I have not become anything, I have just seen first hand the process of how people turn into murderers. It all starts when to kill becomes a tactical option, not a necessity." Nitarja's smile faded away and she seemed lost in some memory.

  Their plan was to raise Frei's number of souls to a decent level before hunting for other sources of power. Especially those that would counter Gabri'El. The problem was that Frei had poor intelligence on the types of abilities angels possessed, but he planned to do some testing to know more as soon as he would have more souls.

"Aren't we already?"

"I do not feel like being a murderer. It is not pragmatic anyway. Just imagine what will happen if others start to notice that you slaughter whatever and gain power whenever you do. That will invite more trouble than its worth, or do you want to become the next target of extermination missions of every holy order there is?" Nitarja's eyes squinted and she pointed at another wolf that had just appeared nearby, alerting Frei that he had yet another target.

"Probably not, I hope that Gabri'El is really as incompetent as I think, because something tells me that he won't let the little blackmail slide if I meet him." Frei's elongated nails that vampires commonly used as natural weapons moved through the air and another set of black lights flew through the forest, cutting into wood, vegetation and fur, making another creature yelp in fear before it died.

"Yes! Finally another one!" Frei cheered, but in the next second, his face distorted with confusion when he looked at his new gain.

Frei Galgani - [HellSpawn]

[Infernopedia]

[Teleportation] - no locations available

[Souls] - 1 affinity-plant 4 affinity-none

[Re-roll Evolution]

[SoulForge] - Reforge abilities by burning souls into them.

[DemonForge] - Forge a new demon body using souls.

[HellForge] - Infuse souls into inanimate materials creating artifacts of unique properties.

"Damn, it will not be so easy." Frei realized that the Fabled Universe stripped any extra souls from anyone who entered apart from their own, which meant that there was a lot of types of souls in circulation. There was not way to guess what types of souls Gabri'El would get his hands on.

  After looking carefully at the corpse, they found that the last wolf they had killed had moss on his snout and its fur was in many ways reminiscent of grass. It was clear that the type of soul used to spawn the creature influenced its appearance and probably even its abilities. Before, Frei had thought that it was just the natural variety of monsters and the developers of the game had a really wild imagination, but now he realized that the reason was that there were multiple types of souls.

"This is weird, does that mean even people have different types of souls? Never seen a plant guy yet." Frei snickered,

"That is probably because the cycle had not yet fully started, people are born, not spawned." Nitarja's comment made him look like an idiot in front of the whole forest.

Frei could almost feel all the trees laughing at him!

"Alright, you should be right with that one." He scratched at the back of his neck.

Out of the blue, Nitarja hooked her hand behind his neck and turned his head to face her own while her fingers played with his hair.

"Frei, I really do not want to do this!" She spoke with urgency in her voice. "I get it, it is necessary to place out lives before the lives of others, but the scale we are talking about here is ridiculous!"

She opened her mouth to continue, but no words came out, she had to make a pause to collect her thoughts first.

"Let's say we manage to collect some souls and Gabri'El collects some as well, based on what you have said, he does not care about lives at all meaning we will be racing for kills with a total psychopath. How long before we will be forced to kill amass? How many will be enough? Ten a day? A hundred? What if he starts destroying whole cities, ten thousand a day? A hundred thousand? I cannot do this! There has to be another way!" She looked at him determined not to pay the sky high price of their plan, a price of countless innocent lives.

"Another way." Frei whispered and kept thinking about any kind of asymmetrical response that would prevent the future that Nitarja had just laid out before him.

"The only other way is to get rid of him before he gets strong. We would have to hunt him down fast, starting now." Frei said seriously, knowing what his proposal implied. "As two vampires, we would have to quickly infiltrate the holy city of angels and kill him, burn his body and extinguish his ghost to ensure his permanent demise, then we could take our time to complete the mission Sammael forced on us uncontested."

Frei glanced in the direction of the bastion of light in this world and snorted.

"We will probably die that way, it is almost impossible. We would need an item that conceals our presence against all detection magic that had to exist there, that is surely not something easy to get, such an item might not even exist,"

"And what if the right way is to die?" Nitarja looked at his profile with mad light in her eyes.

"What?!" Frei's eyes widened, was Nitarja going insane?

"When he tries to get many souls, what is the first thing he will think about? Inevitably, a raid against undead. If we manage to get a list of angels participating in raids on undead, or participate in the biggest ones, there is a solid chance that we will meet him outside of the city." Nitarja looked at him with sparkles in her eyes.

"That . .. might be a plan." Frei still looked in the direction of the city of angels that could be seen as a bright dot of light on top of a tall mountain far in the distance. "Wait, will we die?"

"Of course not silly, we are undead already!" Nitarja tried to look smart, but Frei did not think that her conjecture was true.

"I do not think you have it right. It might not be even important that we are vampires from the point of the undead mechanic." Nitarja tilted her head and Frei elaborated.

"When you die, you become a ghost that can possess some stuff nearby to become undead or possess your original corpse to resurrect. Vampires being undead is probably just a tag." Frei shrugged his shoulders.

"Just a tag?" She repeated, dumbfounded.

"Yeah! I am sure it works like that." Frei nodded several times, but she did not seem persuaded.

"Or you are just too full of yourself."

"Full indeed, that might be true, I might need to release it." He reached for her chest with his hand, but she simply slapped his hand away.

"Pervert." She snorted, thinking about how to tease him herself.

"You are one to talk, don't you remember how you . . ." He turned away and looked for another wolf, not intent of following on his joke with action that it implied.

"Keep us on track, this is a serious matter. Let's say you are right, but the undead angels are fighting should still be friendly to us no matter how exactly dying works." Nitarja simply followed behind him, she herself would gain nothing by slaughtering the wolves.

"The last group I have met felt that way. By the way, it is possible that every high level monster will possesses a soul. That way we might be able to stick to the original plan." Frei proposed, but she seemed to had already made up her mind.

"Even so, I don't think that it is a good idea to give Gabri'El more time and let him grow too strong. Let's go in the direction of Tyr'Adriael." She swished her tail and glanced in the direction of the mountains.

"And since when are you the one calling the shots?" Frei smiled with his back turned to Nitarja, looking for more prey.

"Since I am a woman and you have a dick, It should be clear to you who is controlled by what." Suddenly, she grabbed him firmly from behind and he flinched, missing his current target.

Where was the tender girl that fell in love with him some time ago? He had a feeling that something was about to go terribly wrong.