Grim grunted, that last punch and wiped out a solid two demons just by itself, shattering both of his gauntlets. While most of the fuckers here were weak, the two he had just fought were magnitudes above and beyond what he had expected to fight here.
“Any luck connecting with the System?” he asked internally.
That was concerning.
The System was everywhere. Had infected everything, placing it all under the control of the one who was in charge of it.
Snarling he got back to his feet, shocking the two fuckers that were in front of him.
“Enough,” he snarled.
The brightly clad fucker in the skin tight suit smiled at him. The sheer fucking audacity.
“Do you surrender? I promise we will give you a beautiful concrete cell and ceremonial cuffs,” he said. The dead looking bitch that had slapped him into the ground simply stared and said nothing.
Grim took a step backwards and raised a hand. This would use most of his stored Mana, something this world apparently didn’t have much if any of. He converted the Mana to Miasma and summoned a green and black ball of pure death.
The undead looking fuckers eyes widened, almost as if he recognized what Grim was doing. But it was too late, he shattered the ball spraying motes of the deadly necrotic energy everywhere.
Everyone present shielded their eyes, having no idea what his ability had just done. They would soon find out however, and it wouldn’t end prettily. Raising every dead body around him, however, would result in a large enough distraction to escape.
“Cloaking, now!” he subvocalized to Bagdana, the demon who managed his armor and was centered in his helmet.
“Just get us the fuck out of here!” he ordered.
As everyone was turned away, the light bent around him and solidified containing his heat signature and the sound of his bodies natural processes. Like a heartbeat. He would, for the next several minutes at least, be all but undetectable. And while he would like nothing better than to murder the fuckers around him he needed to recover.
Between the sudden attacks on this side, and transiting the violently strange portal itself, he was low on nearly every energy type. As he floated away through the air, much to the cries of annoyance from the villains and heroes below him, he searched out for anything that gave off a magical signature.
And found exactly nothing.
“Fuck. Theres nothing here. Literally nothing,” he raged. “Bag, cast a net as wide as you can and see if you cant find anything I can use to recharge. Anything magical. Doesn’t matter.”
There was about eight seconds of hesitation from the demon before it responded.
“A new kind of energy? Where the fuck did that portal send us?” he wondered.
A prism of light slammed into his back, throwing him out of the sky and in between two buildings. The efficient, cheap construction of the bricked façade immediately told him that this was a developed world. Thank the Demonic Princes. That meant there would most likely be some kind of tech he could leverage if magic wasn’t an option.
He slammed into the paved alley way, leaving a cratered skin mark where he tore through the asphalt. He wasn’t hurt by such an attack, but it told him couple things. First, someone could track him in stealth mod. Second, someone could fucking track him in stealth mode.
Standing up, and rather annoyed, he turned to see a blonde haired woman in a skin tight silver and grey suit and… a man made of sand.
“I…,” he pointed at Sandman. “What are you?” he wondered aloud.
The two heroes looked at one another before turning back to him. “I’m a human?” the sand being responded confused.
“Pretty sure you’re like, made of sand or something,” Grim pointed out. “That’s hardly human. Are you like, an Aelif or a spirit or something? Maybe an elemental?”
The two heroes looked confused at the terminology he was throwing their way. “You have no idea what I’m talking about do you,” he grunted, to which both heroes shrugged. “Whatever. So, who fights first?” Grim asked, cracking his knuckles.
The sandy guy held out his hands placatingly. “Whoah, woah there friend. We aren’t here to fight,” he said slowly.
“Great way of showing it, you shot me out of the fucking sky,” he quipped.
The woman took a small step forward, “I apologize. I did not mean to harm you. I had no way of getting your attention or getting you to stop. Please, we-“
A screech from above them caused Grim to look up. Three men with paint all over their bodies and knives leapt off the rooftop towards him.
“Ambush eh? My fault for getting drawn in I suppose,” he muttered.
Stolen novel; please report.
The two heroes looked fearful and stepped back, realizing that things had just gone sideways on them. But Grim wasn’t worried. These three were weak. Summoning one of his last remaining Shedim, he form a pitch black obsidian blade. With a quick swing he bisected the trio in mid air, splattering their entrails across the alleyway in a visceral display of violence.
Turning back to the heroes, he realized the woman had turned and vomited onto the ground. The sand being looked equally as queasy, and for a moment Grim wondered if he would throw up like a normal human or if it would be gravel or something.
“Hey, sand guy, if you throw up is it gravel or like, normal vomit and stuff?” he asked, unable to contain his curiosity.
The being looked at him in disgust, “It’s Sandman, and have you no remorse you just took three lives? Does that mean nothing to you?”
He was about to respond when Bag punched into the conversation mentally.
Grim blinked at that. “Ah… what?” he said aloud.
“Morals, don’t you have any?” repeated Sandman, obviously not understanding that Grim wasn’t speaking to him.
Rather than replying he turned to the three bodies, shocking the hero with his unwillingness to even speak to him.
“So… how do I go about this?” he asked Bag, a bit lost.
“Souls? Dad taught us how to use those. If that’s the only thing here that we have, then so be it,” he replied.
Using souls as energy was… distasteful. The energy conversion rate was fantastic, but it often came with the lingering thoughts and feelings of the recently deceased. Powerful feelings and regrets could also seep through, requiring time to sift out and dispose of from the psyche. If the being devouring the soul didn’t… they could go mad.
Grim held out his hand and absorbed the remnant souls that were beginning to dissipate. Realizing he had waited just a tad too long, the resulting energy was just under half of what he could have gotten. Regardless, he now had souls to use as fuel for any abilities or spells he needed.
Solid. He had almost three times the energy he had prior. That gave him some buffer. But if the souls here were that potent, even small ones such as those, he would need a way to store more energy. Much more energy. Particularly if he wanted to get the hell out of this universe.
The woman in the suit had stood back up and was looking confused, but the Sandman had a look of absolute disgust and fear on his face.
“Abomination!” he screamed, raising his hands and pouring flame down the alley way.
Grim summoned a minor shield to deflect the attack. Fire was not overly harmful to him, but in his weakened state he could afford any more damage to the armor until he could reforge it. The thing that surprised him most, however, was that he felt none of the prime energies infused into the attack. This guy was using magic… without using magic.
“Gerald stop! What are you doing,” yelled the blond hero to her compatriot. “Stop! We need to talk to him!”
But Sandman was having none of it, “Solaria this thing is evil!” he yelled over the flames. “He just ate those men’s souls! This… this thing makes Death look like a child,” he whispered. “We cant let him live. He needs to die!”
“Blah, blah, blah,” Grim said as the fire attack petered out. “You cant fucking hurt me. But you have now fucking annoyed me. First an ambush then a surprise attack? I don’t know much about this universe yet, but aren’t you supposed to be the good guys?”
Grim acknowledged him, then blurred forward and slammed into Sandman. The attack scattered Sandman all over the floor. Then he turned to the woman who was staring at him in abject terror.
“Well hello there!” he said, smiling. The helmets faceplate over the front presented a terrible visage of a gaping, toothed maw. Courtesy of Bag, of course. Solaria did the only thing that she could when face with so many terrifying, horrible truths at once then being present the face of a literal Demon.
She fainted.
Grim frowned. “Well… fuck. I wanted information out of her, but I guess I will just kill her and take her energy as well. Couldn’t hurt.”
Blinking in surprise, Grim turned to see a partially reformed body. Only this time it was made of the asphalt they were standing on.
“Now that is a cool ability,” he said. Then he punched the forming body into rubble with the hilt of his blade. Seeing that Sandman was, once again, in pieces over the situation he dismissed the blade back into the armor. He couldn’t afford to lose any of his remaining Shedim. Those he wouldn’t be able to create here, and he only had four left.
Picking up Solaria, he wrapped the invisible field around them. This time, instead of using light he used gravity. Warping space around them to ensure that no trace of them was able to escape from the bubble. Taking off into the sky, he remained close to the rooftops. While he was sure nothing would be able to get through this version of his invisibility, he knew next to nothing of the world or the abilities that these empowered humans were using.
Caution was the letter of the day.
He flew over the city, noting that it was massive. There had to be ten to twenty million people living here, easily. It stretched over and around mountains, around the curve of the ocean, and well out into the land mass that it was on. The architecture was varied, from old gothic style buildings to gleaming modern skyscrapers. He also took note that the fighting had been centered around what looked to be some kind of prison island with a large suspension bridge leading out to it.
Further into the city was much calmer, and showed few if any signs of fighting. There were even people out and about. He would, however, need a place to hole up in. On planets with modern developments, he often utilized the industrial districts. There were often a plethora of abandoned warehouses that would make excellent temporary bases to work out of.
Taking a risk, he used the gravity cloaking to lighten his weight, launching him far into the sky. Finding an ideal location for a staging base in societies such as this one, one with somewhat modern technology, was always a challenge. Often times buildings were owner, tracked, and required all sorts of permits to be made habitable or usable. And often times were restricted harshly to one use or another.
However large industrial sprawls often had so many industrial locations and warehouses that there were plenty of abandoned spots to coopt into a temporary space. As he looked around the sprawling city, he noticed that it spread far further afield that he initially expected. He only just began to see the suburbs break up into farm land in the distance as the mountains led down into farmland and plains. There had to be fifty to eighty million people living in the city. And that may be conservative.
Shaking his head, he looked around quickly. Spotting several large sprawls, one near the mountains, one by the expansive ocean, and a third much further north in what looked to be some kind of sandy tundra, Grim quickly chose the seaport.
A seaport would be active, a good place to pilfer goods on the regular, and have crime he could pick off. He had a funny feeling that killing heroes for energy would rapidly make him a larger target for the do gooder enforcers. He glanced at the unconscious woman in his arms. Well… larger than he already was, that is.
He lowered his height and rapidly began moving towards the industrial port. He could make out massive ships, cargo vessels that easily dwarfed anything he had seen on any other Earth. This spoke of several things to him already. Commerce was alive and well in this world, and the seas were either very clam, very predictable, or had few to any threats on them. Possibly a combination of all three.
He took note of several smaller, faster miliary vessels as well. Getting their attention would be detrimental, as government anything would love to make a study of him. It had happened before.
With that in mind, he began his search for a broken place to make his own. It didn’t take long.