Faria, Edmond heard that name before, that was a somewhat notorious priest who pioneered the study of self-hypnosis, what was he doing in the abyss?

“You...” the old man said, looking at Edmond “You are not from here, are you?

“I’m a one hundred percent corrupted human” Edmond said while pointing both thumbs at himself, “How about you old man, are you corrupted or just another innocent?”

“Both...” the old man said with a very, very faint voice “I...”

“Damn, this is going to be long” Edmond thought to himself, the old man could probably recover enough strength to talk if Edmond spend his one recovery card on him, but every person had the inborn skill to attune to certain magic and only for those ones they could produce cards on a reliable output.

Edmond’s affinity was fire, like forty percent of the population, he had learned to make five basic cards like everyone else but they would require materials he had not at hand, and they would be next to impossible to find on the middle of the abyss.

Hell no, not even that. They were in the outskirts of the abyss, the hillbillies of the demon world had no materials to speak of.

“...and that’s why they threw me here... they... said i could rot with the secrets of the treasure...”

Treasure?

“Was it mostly magic or mostly money?” Edmond asked with interest, it was a given that a treasure would have at least some magic trinkets but a big enough magic treasure would make for a good investment in the years to come.

The old man stopped and looked at Edmond again.

“Why... did you save me?” asked Faria.

“I didn’t, i just killed the imps to eat their souls” said Edmond “You are still dying after i’m done with you.”

“My enemies were from the church... destroy them and you can get the treasure... it’s an armory from the old gods... they called it the Reserves of Spada...”

The artifacts from the old age were useless, but they were still made of magical materials and could be reforged.

“Yeah, sure” Edmond said “help me draw a map and i will kill you cleanly after that.”

Edmond touched the corpse of an imp and realized he could simply eat them that way, without needing to use his mouth, then skinned him and followed the instructions from the old man to made a crude map.

“Say, old man, what is your basic affinity?”

“...fire...”

Too bad, had the old man had an affinity Edmond lacked he could have tried to assimilate a piece of his body, to see if he could increase his basic card production.

Edmond killed the old man with a fang-dagger to his eye and brain, then absorbed his soul.

To his surprise the old man had a powerful soul and there was some magic wrapping around it, Edmond separated the magic and it condensed into the faint outline of a card.

Sensing a chance Edmond used the stored soul energy he had absorbed from the imps and the card became solid, it depicted several chains wrapping around a shining human form.

“What is this? Did the old man had a restricting spell inscribed into his soul?”

“That explains why he got so badly crippled despite having a strong soul.”

Ethereal chains

-Completely restricts the mana regeneration of a human soul

-Non-human souls are not completely restricted

-The caster can change the level of restriction at any given moment

-Can manifest as physical chains to restrict the body as well

Edmond relished the power in his hand, this went beyond a mere dual cheat power, it gave him the ability to recycle some types of cards as long as he had enough soul juice to spend.

Of course, in the surface getting this many souls would be considered a horrible act, but down there it was rather easy.

Edmond absorbed the old man’s soul and discovered to be more... “solid,” a bunch of images rushed into his mind and he focused on the information he received about the treasure.

It matched with the memories.

Why would a human soul grant memories when an imp’s gave nothing?

In an educated guess Edmond assumed this protected a demon from the instincts and vices of the others, or maybe they were specialized on eating humans and other surface dwellers. Maybe both.

Looking down at the corpse Edmond felt the need to take a bite, which he did.

Apparently human meat was delicious for an imp...

A little fatter Edmond continued his journey towards the far away mountains.

*****

Another week, another fire pit, this time they were also ruled by a bigger imp but the other twenty imps were notably burly and a little dumb, the leader had to beat them constantly and ushered them to gather branches to make clubs.

The body of an imp laid next to the boss, who was skinning it to harvest its leather, at his side laid a crude plank of wood... or more precisely several branches tied together into a crude shield. This leader was the only one with a short wooden lance.

A slithering sound was heard and the imps hastily assembled themselves into a formation, which amounted to little more than being huddled back to back with their clubs raised.

Everything became silent as the imps and the unseen monster tried to use sound as their advantage, suddenly, Edmond realized he had screwed up and ran to the side, tangentially to the imp camp and readied his hand which glowed red.

As expected, a large snake as thick as his leg jumped from the dark and tried to bite him, it was obvious the monster would choose to attack the lone imp instead of the group.

The snake changed trajectories and bit Edmond’s other hand, gripping with great force and then coiled around him twice, trying to constrict him. Edmond shoot the fireball at point blank and both imp and snake burned.

Edmond lunged at the ground to use his own weight against the snake and shot a second fireball to the ground, this time with the snake as a mattress to take most of the damage.

The snake flailed in pain and tried to escape but Edmond bit into it and used all of his body to roll himself on the ground and drape the snake around him. Then he bit and bit until the snake died.

At this point the imps had closed in, ready to strike down the winner, Edmond saw it and had no other choice but to waste his Fireball 3 card on them. Most of the imps fell on a single hit, including the leader.

“Stand right there you wimps!” Edward yelled at them.

The four surviving imps fell to the ground and prostrated, two of them badly burn, Edmond eat the souls of the imps and used that power to recover from his wounds, then killed one of the healthy imps with a clean strike of his club to the back of the head.

The other imps ran away but Edmond chased after the other healthy one, who was the only one in condition to run away, it was a short chase and he was killed too.

The wounded imps fell to the ground exhausted and with great effort prostrated again, an unlikely mercy was their only chance.

“Stay there and don’t move, and you will live” Edmond told them and grabbed the snake’s soul.

Regular souls would linger for a moment and then vanish into the reincarnation cycle but in the abyss they could last a while and even be traded, Edmond shaped a snake bone into a sphere and then put the snake soul in there.

Then Edmond assimilated the rest of the snake’s corpse, it had poison but the assimilation ability all demons shared meant they could expel or absorb the venom really quick, and thus all abyss creatures were considered non-poisonous to their inhabitants.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Still, a venom sack would do great in the surface and Edmond assimilated them together with the snake fangs, making his face grow very high cheekbones to accommodate them, this made his eyes look narrower, giving him a snake-like look.

Then the snake muscles and tendons reinforced his own, making him better at grappling even if his endurance decreased a little. Imps were only good at short fights anyway.

As he can only absorb so much material without dragging himself down he gave the rest of the meat to the two imps and ordered them to eat and heal, which they did.

Their bodies changed almost nothing even after absorbing another species, which confirmed Edmond’s suspicion that the regular assimilation ability was rather basic. Unlike himself who got the godly mojo.

“I will brand you now and you will become my followers, don’t resist or i will kill you” Edmond told them, demons were a race that followed strength so they complied. Then Edmond grew his nails into claws and fused them with the imps’ foreheads, their assimilation powers responding to him and they developed two small bumps that could be passed as horns.

More importantly, once their bodies connected Edmond became capable of feeling their energy level and confirmed a suspicion he had.

“Their soul level is zero, while their bodies are strong for an imp.”

Demons could develop physical might by consuming the bodies of other creatures, but their flawed assimilation powers made them require large amounts of nourishment over very long periods of time, which gave rise to the popular idea that demons became stronger with age.

They could also gain magical and intellectual prowess by consuming souls, consuming only flesh or only souls could grow them into powerful specialized combatants but a balance of both resources give more flexible power, even if the costs were almost doubled.

Demons had fewer need for sleep so there was little risk of them teaming up and ambushing him but they had to be tested before considering them trustworthy. Edmond allowed them to consume a single soul each so they were not totally stupid. Hopefully this would allow them to understand the benefits of working under him, and he could always kill them and consume them later if they proved traitorous.

Edmond transformed some imp skin into bulky gloves and went to the pit, and used the energy to make another fireball, then fused it with the snake’s skin and bones to transform it into a fire serpent card.

Fire Serpent 2

-Inflicts fire damage and physical force

-If mobile it can rush across enemies to burn them and smash them

-If immobile it can bind a single foe

-Duration can be extended with other sources of fire

The card got stored inside his gloves and the imps just saw him consuming the energy from the pit, this trick could fool low level demons, but he had to eventually develop some genuine demonic magical abilities to keep his facade.

*****

A month later Edmond arrived at an oasis at the edge of a river.

He had destroyed five more pits and created ten fireball cards and another snake card. They were stored on a deck of leather and bone fashioned out of free-range, organic imps, slaughtered in a guilt –free way.

Well yes, they were killed slowly to allow Edmond to test his power, and their weaknesses, but he felt no guilt over it.

After this much traveling and fighting he gave up on assimilating wood and rock on his body and instead opted for making armor out of imp hides. This had the advantage of sticking out less and being able to take it out to decrease his weight in a hurry.

This latter point became of particular importance as he had to cross his first river.

According to the surface-dwellers the underworld formed when the Demon Gods were felled by the Gods, the Primordial Darkness was imprisoned and the demon gods transformed themselves into rivers of blood to nurture the demons in defiance.

This created a place of infinite darkness filled with rivers of demon god blood of fire capable of burning souls.

The truth was different, the demons had a very crappy ecosystem that relied heavily on sacrifices from above, slowly decomposing whatever fell from the upper pits and absorbing the residual energy of the old god’s corpses that rose from those fire pits.

The “fire rivers” were actually wild energies displaced there by the new gods, who would slowly harvest them and transform them into the card system. This meant the rivers could damage the demons because they were actually imbued with divine power.

The “Primordial Darkness” was the husk of the old world, trapped below a reflection of itself and slowly eroded by the rivers.

According to the memory package of the old gods, those rivers would eventually branch and branch forming a thin net to cover the whole underground, dissolving the demons in the process. This would mark the complete death of the old age and the solidification of the card system, as well as functioning as a net to cover the underworld and prevent things from going in or outside it.

There was another net in the heavens to prevent the souls from escaping the heavens, but the mortals had no need to know.

But the holes left by the divine rivers could also be used the other way around, and the demons became able to be summoned to the surface to execute contracts in exchange for souls, human meat and other sundries.

In a sense demons were soul crafters and mercenaries for hire.

On the long term the constant summoning widened the pathways from which the gods could harvest the wild energies, making their work easier, but also provided the demons with nourishment, increasing the abyss’ lifespan.

This was Edmond’s angle, if he could make the demons into an integral part of the surface societies the divine net would close with the demonic powers inside, and reality would become a mixed mess instead of the orderly divine playground.

To make a country of demons on the surface, to make half demon hybrids and merge them with the civilizations, those were also viable options but the most realistic take was to use demonic powers to create cards as enticing as the ones given by the gods, but easier to access for the lower population.

Make a new currency and flood the market, punch the gods with the power of economics.

After raiding those five pits Edmond’s entourage increased to ten, all of them dumb muscle but they had the obedience hammered into their heads.

The river was at the very outskirts so it was no ticker than a highway but crossing it without a raft would drain every imp of their power, arriving at the other side as a withered, bony husk ready to be eaten by the beasts and demons.

Not only that, but the magical water could eventually destroy most magical items, it was not a question of if their equipment would be destroyed, but a matter of how much power would be lost if they dared to cross by themselves.

For this the demons had devised the hexjumper ships, boats and ships made of demon bone tendon and capable of resisting the wild energy flow of the rivers. They had many other functions but could not be used in such areas of low energy.

To fashion such technology a large, very large amount of demon bodies were required and even Edmond could not produce it by simply growing it, instead they had to accumulate bone the old way.

This was why the brute imps pulled along a bone cart roughly as wide and long as a car, it had some dried meat but the real objective was to transport the bone itself, covered under the imp hides. Spiky bones could be sen protruding on the interior as it was not meant to transport people.

It was not a great disguise as anyone with a little brain would realize the only available materials were bone and wood, but lowly hillbilly imps were not masterminds by any means.

It was not like they were going in stealthily, but he better cultivate good habits on his followers from the get go.

Sometimes a fire pit would open next to the rivers and the energies of both old and new gods would mix, creating a zone rich in magic that attracted beasts and demons alike, this were called oasis and this explosion of life provided the demons with enough bone to craft their hexjumpers.

The oasis in question was two by two meters, In this oasis a single tree grew, it was not a fruit tree nor a medicinal one, just a regular pine tree. It was two meters tall and green grass formed a soft carpet underneath.

It was not much for a surface dweller, but by abyss standards it was something extremely desirable.

Two large imps ruled this oasis, they had clubs made from actual wood and a muscled body more streamlined than the burly imps. Thirty or so imps gathered around, looking at them in envy and resignation.

Edmond had seen Little Shop Of Horrors and learned the moral of the story: when destroying your enemies for personal profit make sure your allies don’t reap more benefits than you, or they will outgrow you and destroy you.

All demons knew this lesson and thats why the local bosses hogged all the souls for themselves, not only it would give them access to magic but the demons who only eat demon meat would always be brutes, strong but relatively easy to control.

The ones with a steady diet of meat with a side of souls would be like athletes with access to racial magic, depending on the percentage of souls, and those who only eat souls would be scrawny but powerful magicians.

That’s why all the imps collected by Edmond were brutes, but he had allowed them a couple souls each to make them capable of coordinated attacks. They were not exactly intelligent but at the very least they were not too stupid.

When Edmond and his gang arrived at the oasis they say the large imps distributing pine needles to their underlings, who eat them with glee. Their sticky texture and fragrant flavor a gigantic upgrade compared to demon meat.

The bosses, who had already ranked up were not just large imps, but noticeable bigger by half a body and muscled like a certain Arnold Somanyletters. After rewarding their followers they lazed on the grass, enjoying the soft texture and chewing on its mild, grassy flavour.

A barely built ship could be seen leaning on the pine, it was little more than half a boat but if completed would be enough for the two of them... and the eaten bodies near the oasis meant they were not really interested in crossing over. Why would they travel to an area of bigger dangers when they already were the top dogs and could eat grass every week?

Edmond’s plan was simply to charge ahead and let the followers on both sides kill each other while he used his magic to finish off the leaders. After all, he could not take many of them with him and would rather avoid having the imps see him culling their numbers, for it would foment disobedience later on.

And thus the battle began, Edmond took a staff made of bone spine with a skull on the top, it did nothing but it would serve to hide his cards, making him look like a regular demon magician. And truth be told, to have his fireballs being shot from a skull was lit as fuck.

The first fireball impacted one of the leaders and the explosion send him tumbling away but got back on his feet with onyl superficial marks. His slouched posture meant the force of the blast had hurt him more than the fire.

“Good enough” Edmond said to himself “I can work with that.”

The second leader jumped to his feet and charged at Edmond, who ran to take cover behind the bone cart.

The second leader saw that and jumped at him with incredible power, reaching three meters high. Once he landed he would cover the distance between them in a single swoop.

The first leader ordered his minions to charge while Edmond’s imps advanced armed with spiky bone maces.

On the middle of the second leader’s jump Edward shoot a fireball, not at him but above him. The impact send the second leader crashing down into the cart and the bone spikes dug into his flesh.

Edmond unleashed a fire serpent and had it crush down into the second leader, hurting him with the bone spikes even more and restraining him, while Edmond used a big mace to crack his skull.

When the first leader saw his ally dying so quickly he turned tail and ran away, but a couple more fireballs killed him. Then Edmond used four more fireballs to hurt the enemy imps and break their... formation?

To break their mob, the imps saw themselves overwhelmed and assumed he was a ranked up magician and kneeled.

Seven of his brutes survived, a rather large number as Edmond had expected five.

Edmond eat the souls of the two leaders and assimilated one of their bodies. This much power finally made him capable of ranking up.

“I will only take ten followers to the other side of the river” Edmond told the defeatedimps “kill each other and the three remaining can follow me.”

The imps did so and fought in a very crude way more reminiscent of animals until only three remained. He would have to devise a proper training regime and more complex weapons that spiky clubs.