Hunger. That was the first thing it knew. A hunger so strong, and deep that it burned itself into its blood; into its very being. And before it knew, the hunger had grown to such a point that it had evolved into a basic instinct to devour. Devour. That was another new concept for it. To devour though, it needed to kill. Yet it was too weak to do so. And so, it remained weak, and hungry. It was so hungry, that if it could, it would have devoured even itself. But it did not have the energy to do even kill itself. Thus, it could only lay trapped within its cage of perpetual darkness, waiting for the day of its freedom to come.
That day never came. And so, it roared into the darkness of its cage, expressing its unwillingness, its helplessness, and its indignation, only to end up devouring the thick substance it was trapped in. In the next moment, a strange wave spread through its body, satiating its hunger, and giving it strength. And from that strength, came its hope. So, from that day forth, it began devouring the strange substance it was part of, for it was the only path to its survival. Devouring. That was the path of its strength.
However, by devouring, it was not only its strength that grew, but so did its urges, thumping with its heart, demanding it to kill, and devour. But how could it devour? How could it kill? Or rather, whom could it kill? Trapped within cage of darkness, its body had grown so large, that it did not even have enough space to move around in the cage, let alone find a prey. Thus, it could only lay there, in one position, waiting, hoping, for its freedom to come. It never did.
Why? Why was the Origin so unfair? If all that it had in its fate was to sit trapped in a cage, then why was it even born? Was it going to die before even being able to kill one prey? Was it going to die before being able have a taste of devouring? No. It refused to remain trapped in a cage. It refused to die such a meaningless death. So what if freedom did not come its way? All it had to do was to take freedom for itself. To carve its own path of survival.
Before all that though, it had to prepare itself. To seek its freedom, to break its cage, it had to be at its very best. Thus, instead of acting recklessly, and wasting its strength, it began to devour the rest of the strange substance it was trapped in. From its mouth, from its skin, from every part, every pore of its body, it greedily devoured all that was in its dark world. Except for itself, of course.
Only when nothing else remained in the cage, did it begin gathering its strength, before breaking through the barriers of its world. It was hard, and took all of its strength, leaving it hungry, and weak once again, but for the first time in its life, it tasted the lights of—there were no lights. Only darkness. It was just that it had changed its cage from a smaller one, to a slightly larger one.
But that did not matter. At the very least, it would not have to go hungry anymore. After all, it was no longer alone. It could not see them, but it could feel them in the distance, making all kinds of noises. Foolish. Not that it complained. The more stupid its prey would be, the easier it would be to devour them. And the sooner it devoured all its prey, the sooner it would gain the strength to break through its cage once again.
It did not matter if there was an even bigger cage out there or not. The moment that it had broken through its cage, an instinct had been burned into its blood, forcing it to seek breaking through its cages, until one day, it would finally return to the Origin. For the moment though, it had to satiate its hunger first. An innate hunger that came from within the core of its being, directing it to eat the very cage that had kept it entrapped for… it did not know how long. But that did not matter.
It was finally free. After eating the shards of its cage, it had finally gained its freedom. And with that freedom, the first thing it did was to devour all the other cages that were there beside the remains of its own cage. If there were others in those cages like it, then… it needed to kill them. That was what its blood demanded from it. Kill. Devour. Thus began its life, on a note of slaughter.
A perfectly normal way of starting its life. Slaughter was the true essence of life after all. Slaughter, and Devour. That was just how things had been, and how things were supposed to be for all eternity to come. Yet, things did not go as it had anticipated. Many, many kills, and devouring later, when it had grown strong enough to carve out its own territory, a beast had come to its place, and dragged it away from its territory, from its home, only to throw it in some barren, and dilapidated place.
It could not understand what was going on. It did not even dare to try and understand what was happening. Or resist the actions of the beast. The beast… it was too terrifying. It was too strong. A mere prey… Everything in the world, other than itself, was its prey. So, how could a mere prey be so strong? How could a prey make it tremble, and cower in fear, and humiliation?
Fear. That was the first time that it had experienced fear. And it wished to never experience it again. Of course, it also wished to never see the terrifying beast again. At least not until it was strong enough to deal with the beast itself. That would take quite a long while though. So, for the moment, it just wished to quickly raise its strength, and return back to the territory it had marked for itself. Thus, looking for opportunities to return to its territory, it roamed around the place it had been put in, looking for new preys to kill, and devour.
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Yet, when the first prey that it found happened to be similar to the beast that had humiliated its majesty, and had displaced it from its territory, it could not help feeling a burst of confusion, anxiety, and even dread. It was only when it saw how weak this beast was, that its fears were swallowed by the tingling sensations of excitement, travelling all the way from its tongue to its tail. Coupled with its inner urges… All that mattered to it was to kill the beast in front of it, and devour it. Its road to vengeance would start at this—
How dare the beast dodge its attack, it thought. It was the beast’s own fortune for it to be killed, and be devoured. Still, raging as it was, it did not lose itself in its anger. From the earlier movements of the beast, it could tell that it was a tough prey. Thus, baring its fangs at the beast, it gathered its energy, and concentrated it into its eyes. Almost immediately, it felt something drain from its body, but that did not matter. In the next moment, its eyes began shining in a brilliant green light, trying to drag the beast in front of it into a different world. A world that that belonged solely to it. A world, where it reigned supreme. A world, from where only the stronger of the two would come out. A world, where—
Before it could drag the beast into its own ‘Devouring World’, the beast seemed to have predicted that it would attack in such a way, and had already prepared for it. The moment that its eyes began shining brighter than before, the beast in front of it used its own ability, shooting two thin lights from its palm. Unfortunately, to use its own ability, it had come too close to the beast. The attack of the beast was far too fast to dodge at such a close distance, allowing the two thin lights to sink directly into its head.
Pain. So much pain. It had never felt so much pain. It was… Fire. Claws. Claws of fire. They ripped apart its head. They made it scream. They brought it to its deat—
It was not dead. It was in pain, but it was not dead. Neither was it injured. At least not on the surface. Fortunately, the attack of the beast was not too strong. But that only made it even more angry, and frantic. The beast… how dare it. It could not rest assured until it had killed the beast, and—no. It would not kill the beast. It would devour the beast directly, while it was still alive.
Having made up its mind, it chased after the beast, as the beast ran into the distance. What was the beast trying to do? Running was useless. It had the beast’s smell. Was the beast trying to injure it using the sharp rocks on the ground? That was useless as well. Just mere rocks were not enough to even break its skin. In any case, it was already almost upon the beast. And it looked like the beast knew it as well, finally giving up running, stopping right in front of a bunch of plants, and flowers.
Since the beast had already given up, how could it let the chance go? Baring its fang, it rushed towards the beast, intending to wrap its body around the beast first. Of course, the beast still resisted. That was how things were. No one could give up their lives without a final resistance. But it was useless. The beast did manage to deflect its attacks, using the momentum from its body to redirect it into the path of plants behind itself, but that much was not enough to defeat it. For years, it had fought, and killed. For years, it had devoured. How could it let a mere small beast, with such weak strength, escape from its grasp? Hissing in annoyance, it rearranged its body, and—
Intense pain, much greater than the pain in its head, shot through its body, as the plants that it had crashed into pierced its body with their roots, and branches. How could the plants be this strong? Plants were supposed to be weakest of the creatures, even weaker than the beast in front of it. How could the plants hurt its body? How could they—
No, no, no, no! They were tearing its body. They were devouring its body, bit by bit. They were… No! It could not die. It had not completed its revenge yet. It had not paid the beast back for its humiliation. And it had just gained its territory. It had not reached the peak of its strength. It had not killed enough. It had not devoured enough. Weak. Too weak. It was too weak.
No. It was not weak. It refused to be weak. And so, using all its strength, it thrashed against the plants, or at least tried to, while trying to bring the plants into its ‘Devouring World’. All in vain. In the end, it could only let out its cry of indignation, as it glared at the hateful beast with its last breath. At that moment, it had already lost all other thoughts, and intentions. In its mind, there was only one thing that it wished to do. Kill.
It absolutely must kill that beast, it thought. Even if it could not devour it, it had to kill it. Only when it would kill that beast, would it be able to regain its peace. Only when…
Gaining peace through killing his enemies… That was something that Alnea could agree on. But that did not mean that he liked killing. Rather, except for Oren Beasts, he had never even killed anyone. If the situation demanded though, he would not shy away from killing his enemies. Holding back against his enemies would be stupid. If the world would be cruel to him, he would be even more cruel to the world. As long as his Heart, and conscience were Clear, then everything would be alright. As long as he had the people he loved, then everything would be alright.
Or at least, that was what he believed. That was his path. A direction to focus his conviction on. Coincidentally, guarding his Heart with his beliefs, and Serenity was also the only way for fighting against the malice, and the grudges of the Dark Devouring Snake. It was not his first time dealing with the effects of the Rotting Blood Essence though, so it did not take him much time, or effort, to wash away the last traces of the Beast’s consciousness from his Spirit, and body.
What followed next, was the usual cool, and refreshing sensation, slightly similar to what the chains of his Oaths usually brought to him, spreading through his Spirit, that helped him recover his Spirit Power. Unlike the previous days though, the refreshing sensation did not stop at just helping him recover his Spirit Power, but also pushed his Spirit Power past its peak, helping him step into the False Rank.