I stopped scaring the local wildlife and took to the skies in the wings of my favorite bird for long-distance travel. Stupid eldritch power. I'll consider it a Perk worth twenty Attribute points, a whooping amount, and leave it at that.
But I couldn't. The Perk was marked as [Unique]. That was odd enough to make my mind wander back to it as I flew north and west, toward a familiar place where I once died saving the world. Some Perks have very few users. The [Ultra-rare] ones, less than a handful, most often only one person. What makes a Perk unique isn't the number of users that have it, but how many people may have it. Since that shit was [Unique], nobody else could get it. If the Perk becomes available again once the bearer of an [Unique] dies and their souls get recycled by the Gods, I had no idea.
For me, that was irrelevant. That perk was mine and mine alone. Forever.
Forever. Adyra's words stung me again. She thought immortality was a curse. For all the power I had, I was denied the ability to forget. But my life wasn't just grief. I had happy moments, victorious moments, dull moments. I remembered them all. But grief is such a strong emotion it overwhelms everything. I wish I had my {Pinnacle of...} Perks back. I also remember Lakerta's unbreakable will.
I shifted to the ethereal world and went as fast as I dared. The land beneath me blurred as I went as fast as a jet fighter. What took me weeks running as a jaguar, I now reached in a couple of hours. I shifted back to the real world.
The explosion of the Second Demon Lord changed the landscape. By sheer luck, geography, or divine intervention, a mountain range that divided the continent in two blocked the power of the explosion on just one side of the continent. On the other side, a huge lake, no, a gulf hid the site of our battle underneath the water that naturally gathered there over the centuries.
But the devastation reached for hundreds of kilometers. Screw physics, this blast was as much metaphysical as material. The very energy of the land was drained. The lifeforce of the world hid under a huge rocky scab hundreds of meters thick. A true scar upon the face of the planet. There was no vegetation. Only demons and monsters roaming freely on the corrupted land. It was a bleak sight. I could only shudder as I imagined what would've happened if the Demon Lord had reached that city and drained the souls living therein.
My music rang with a bird's voice. {Force Javelins} rained and {Radiation Walls} sprung on the monsters below. The exp was negligible. But so was the Energy drain. As I flew slowly, I left a strip of land clear of these vile creatures as they vanished into my item box. The sun rose in the east and started its speedy journey along the firmament. As the days only lasted for three hours, the sun traveled faster than normal to make do with its limited time.
I killed. Hundreds. Thousands. The monsters' levels were below one hundred for the vast majority of them. Even though they seemed low, I knew that for the surface people, they were overwhelmingly strong.
The sunset and I kept flying in my vain journey of destruction. It didn't matter but I kept on killing. The monsters probably replenished fast enough to cover the kills I was causing and more. But could I stop? My heart clamored for their lives.
Yes, it wasn't an irrelevant effort. I found a bigger one, level 139. This was the kind of monster that took centuries to grow. Killing it drained my resources but it was a deed worth doing.
On the second day, I shifted to the ethereal world to rest. What a mistake. Where the parallel dimension was empty in other, safer areas, this one was crawling with more monstrosities. Deformed monsters apparently made by Frankenstein and Dr. Moreau's lovechild that studied under Clive Barker. A patchwork of different and sometimes unrecognizable, with glowing runes and sigils and glyphs all over their body.
My appearance, or more likely, the fact I could create openings to the dimension they wanted to go to, sent them into a frenzy. Jets of organic matter, the magic of all sorts, most of them made of corruption and darkness, even solid projectiles like spines and blades of chitin, all of this flew toward me.
I dodged what I could and defended against the rest with {Force Barriers}.
"Time to kill motherfuckerly," I said with my best Samuel L. Jackson impersonation.
I shapeshifted into a dire ankylosaurus and dropped from the sky, landing with a land tremor. Then I let all kinds of shit loose.
> Royal Aura
>
> Manastorm
>
> Eldritch Presence
>
> Ice Elemental
>
> Cold Aura
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
And all that with the [Demon Slayer III] damaging their Attribute values with each damage tick from my AOE.
The weaker demons just fell down on the ground and whimpered until they died. Royal Aura sapped forty-five of their Attribute Points, then Eldritch Presence drained more according to the formula:
> (90+168 - Creature Level) * MAX(0, 100 - Creature Ego) / 100
Any creature with an Ego score over 100 would be immune to the sapping effects of {Eldritch Presence}. That is if none of the other two abilities reducing Attributes didn't knock it under one hundred.
Spoiler Alert, Ego was the hardest Attribute to raise, hands down. Too bad it was the key to really owning oneself and shrugging the influence of others.
The ice dinosaur I was shapeshifted as walked slowly as the hordes of creatures swarmed in my direction, heedless of the danger. They crumbled as they entered the range of my abilities and I only had to smash the ones strong enough to resist somehow with the massive tail of the ankylosaurus. One in every thousand, by my estimate. As the monsters died, nothing was left behind but their sickly ichor. I kept the souls from escaping to wherever they wanted to go and the bodies went to the item box automatically.
As I walked and killed with the passive AOE effects, I had time to think. The monsters spawned here in the Ethereal until they got strong enough or lucky enough to find a passage to the material world. It meant the ethereal world might be the conduit to other places if they arrived here.
The number of things dying was so great I looked behind my spiky carapace to see that the sea of creatures was only less densely populated behind me. These monsters were way faster than an herbivore dinosaur, even one on steroids like me. The gap I left behind me only allowed the creatures to run faster as they weren't trampling one another.
They kept moving and slowing down as the auras killed them. Since their HP pools were linked to their Endurance, they died faster than they should. Sometimes the paralyzed ones were pushed forward by the mob coming in from behind but it was both appalling and amazing to see how I could kill them almost effortlessly.
It was a matter of time until it happened. I accumulated the 1.4 trillion Exp I needed to level up.
> You reached Eldritch Muse (5-fused, ultra-rare+++) level 4.
>
> You gained 1 Magic and 1 Charisma.
>
> You gained 1 Endurance
>
> You gained 1 Dexterity and 1 Soul.
>
> You gained 1 Luck
>
> You gained 1 Class Perk.
>
> You gained 13 base HP and 35 base Energy.
>
> Ultimate Surpasser granted you 1 Attribute Points.
I stopped in the middle of nowhere to check my Class Perks list. The demons were still dying like an avalanche. There were several terrible things I could do to those affected by my {Eldritch Presence}. Right now, I didn't want any of these. What I needed was an IFF. Something that could get this terrible aura to play nice with my friends. After several minutes of browsing the list, I found something acceptable.
> Arcane Gift (ultra-rare): You have the power to grant a tiny fragment of yourself by touching a creature. You can choose to exclude these creatures from your area of effect abilities, and you always know the direction to the creature, unless it is protected from divination. While the creature holds your fragment it gains 10,000 maximum MP while you lose the same amount. You need to touch the creature to retrieve the fragment.
While it wasn't a direct upgrade to {Eldritch Presence}, it was a way to make people I wanted immune to it. The tracking feature was just icing on the cake. In fact, making them immune to my effects was also a secondary feature. Granting ten thousand HP or MP to someone at a low level could change their lives. They would have more reserves to train their magic with, for example. Although they wouldn't have extra regeneration so they would need to rely on potions. Win some, lose some.
I kept walking and killing. There was literally no end to the stream of creatures. A tsunami of mid to low-level demonic abominations. I finally decided it was useless to walk around. I just laid down and curled around my own body to rest. If it's all the same and I have no destination, why bother?
I raised a dome of Force inside a dome of Radiation magic around me just to be on the safe side.
Then I went to sleep.
----------------------------------------
Belkrephon, 5th rank Demon
----------------------------------------
The dimensional gauntlet stretched and rebounded, causing backlash through the spell and breaking his concentration. Belkrephon cursed as he studied the planar boundary. It was stronger than before.
"What is happening? Why is it growing stronger?"
He was in the ethereal plane bordering the planet they tried time and again to invade. They'd actually created a stable pathway for the lesser ones to cross through but recent events had the Gods of that world strengthening said boundary. He'd been tasked to break it open again.
For an eternal demon, recent events meant the last few decades.
The demons pouring through the conduit and gathering in this dimension should help weaken it. They were throwing thousands upon tens of thousands out of their infinite legions on the problem, each one of them creating a minor distortion on the world and eventually collating into something that could shatter the gauntlet.
Now the gradient was inverted. The gauntlet grew steadily stronger.
He turned to his lieutenants, "Send the flying scouts. Find what is going on!"
It was no use to spend his magic. Already the System Core presiding over the planet gave him a Status sheet and levels. Already his soul was bound to the demon Core that formed in his body. He hated these kinds of worlds. The power of the System was a borrowed one. Worse, they had to give up some of their power to condense these Cores. Instead of growing stronger, Belkrephon was weaker than before he arrived here.
Only if they actually reached the material dimension would they be able to harvest souls. Even then, they needed to come back with these souls and have the Core dismantled to absorb the power back and then some.
It was bothersome, but demons would go to any lengths for power. Compared to the other forms of getting stronger, invading and harvesting foreign planets was one of the best.
He waited for a few days until one of the pesky 7th rank demons returned.
"There's a creature. A land dragon made of ice, or an ice elemental in the shape of a land dragon that's killing the demon spawn that approaches it. It seems to be sleeping, sir."
Belkrephon cursed. "Isolate the area. Don't let the mindless demons attack this dragon. I'm going to take care of this personally."