"Move, you bitch!" A marine shouted as he pushed a woman forward. Behind them, the great gates of justice were closing.

The woman, Linda, didn't say anything as she kept walking forward. If she were to rate the Marine's prisoner's treatment, it would be null/10. Not only had she been handcuffed with sea stone, 'beaten up' several times and not given an ounce of food, but once, a Marine had been perverted enough to try and rape her. He thought that since nobody else was around, he could do whatever he wanted, but turns out, since nobody was around at the time, Linda could also do whatever she wanted.

It didn't take long for a boat to arrive and pick her up. In less than a day of traveling, she was in Impel Down.

Surprisingly, Magellan, the prison's warden, was there to greet her. After he and the Marines exchanged a couple words, his men took her and dragged her into the prison.

Inside of Magellan's office, she had been forced to her knees as Magellan listed her crimes. "Mass murder of 8 islands, attack on a world government ship, resisted arrest, led a pirate ship... Level 4 it is. Send her to the Baptization." 

"Baptization?" Linda wondered a bit, but 20 minutes later, she realized what they meant, as she had been hanged on a rope and was slowly being lowered into a giant pot of boiling blood. 

She forced down her instincts to escape as she was put into the extremely hot blood, and as she suspected, other than a lot of discomforts, she didn't feel anything. Her natural barrier hadn't been destroyed by the sea stone.

After she was dragged back up, she was stripped of all her clothes and given new ones. Supposedly, this process should have been shameful, but Linda's snarky in-your-face attitude made the guards the ashamed ones. They tried to remove the demon mask she had been wearing for a long time now, but they couldn't do it. 

Linda had basically morphed the mask into a part of her face, and although she could remove it at will, others couldn't. Either they decapitated her, or the mask stayed. Luckily they wanted her to suffer before dying.

 As they were walking across bridges with pits of fire beneath them that seemed endless, Linda suddenly stopped.

"Move! Move!" The guard behind her shouted as he slammed his rifle into her back. Instead of answering, Linda took a deep breath before doing a quick spin, kicking the guard behind her hard enough to break his spine. 

Seeing this, the other guards aimed at her and prepared to open fire, but before they could do so, Linda sprinted towards the edge of the bridge, and in an assassin creed style, jumped down.

The boiling air cut into her as she fell. For a couple dozen seconds, the fall seemed endless. During the time, she ripped off one of her hands and slipped the handcuff off, reattached her arm and then did the same for the other. Naturally, this process hurt like a bitch.

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Eventually, she was able to land. She couldn't see due to the searing flames and smoke everywhere, but luckily, she could hold her breath for over 4 hours, so she was fine for now. However, even her barrier struggled to resist the terrifying temperature of the flames.

"Alright... What do I do now?" Linda was honestly unprepared. Although she had a general idea of what to do (eat, get stronk, eat, get stronker...), she didn't know how to accomplish it. 

She sighed in exasperation. "I'm getting too old for this..." 

Suddenly, Linda's eyes widened into saucers. She hadn't really thought about it, but this body was still human. Although she could heal, what about old age?

She was currently in her prime or at least close. However, what about in 20 years? 30? What would become of her?

As she thought of this, her thoughts kept getting more and more depressed. She had experienced first-hand the corruption and ignorance the people of this world lived in. Although she had done things that, back in her world, would have deemed her a demon, monster, in this world, she was just another powerful criminal. 

She wanted to change that. Her plan of becoming the absolute dictator that needed to exist for this world to unite required that she be so strong that none can oppose her. However, if she dies before she could become so strong, wouldn't that be pointless?

"Immortality... I didn't want to think about it, but I think there's a way." She whispered to herself. She sighed. When she received her absorption powers from the System, she had been taught several techniques. One of which had the ability to make her immortal, but it did not come without its costs.

She would have to give up her humanity. Although she had done terrible things, Linda was still human at heart. That was why she had cared enough for her crew to be willing to take such a big risk like coming to Impel Down.

As she walked through the walls of fire, Linda kept pondering. Finally, she found a somewhat cooler spot in this hell and quickly got to work.

In less than 2 hours, she had dug a burrow deep into the stone of Impel Down. She was between the fourth and fifth levels, the heat of the fourth level canceled the fifth's freezing cold, making it a rather comfortable place.

After she finished digging her little oasis, Linda sat down in a corner and simply closed her eyes. She had decided.

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It didn't take long for Magellan to notice something strange. Prisoner's kept disappearing one after the other. Sometimes, they would disappear from the first floor, sometimes from the third, sometimes from the fifth. It seemed completely random, and he couldn't wrap his head around it.

"Shit! Why are you people so useless?" Magellan roared at the beast wardens, all of whom trembled before their boss and master. 

"Ugh. I can't deal with this right now. Whatever, they're just prisoners. There might be a disease spreading or something, I don't care. Send in the rifling squad." Magellan basically gave up as he gave the orders. The marines had been on him for a while now, trying to get him to take a position within the marines.

As Magellan dealt with his own conflicts, within the depths of the fourth hell...

A group of around 50 prisoners was dragging massive wood logs down a bridge surrounded by flames on both sides. Behind them, guards followed them with rifles ready. 

"Move, you scum. Move those logs like your life depends on it!" The captain of the guards shouted. 

As the group traveled indefinitely, the administration panicked as all mushi-mushis in the area suddenly stopped working without any apparent reason. 

Meanwhile, something lurked beneath, hiding in the roasting flames. Waiting for its next target to pass by, so it could continue to feed and provide much-needed energy for the transformation that its main body was going through.