Lucas awoke bound to what felt like a small wooden chair – the air around him was musty and thin and he was pretty sure that he had to be underneath a sewage drain as the room smelt primarily of manure. He couldn’t really hear anyone or anything else in the room with him, nor could he see anyone, so he concluded that the man that Steven had taken him to must have kidnapped him somehow.
Lucas knew he was far calmer than the average 8-year-old had any right to be given the situation but a combination of his newly cold heart and familiarity with cruel situations made this all seem a bit… ridiculous. Lucas had spent what had felt like an eternity enduring the most unimaginable pain in his cultivation space thanks to that damn hex, so did that old demon really think putting him in a dingy little cell would frighten him into complying?
“You know, you should really be thanking me instead of cursing me inside that little head of yours.” A familiar voice spoke from the darkness around him, but presumably thanks to some kind of magic Lucas had a hard time exactly pinpointing which direction it had originated.
“Why should I thank you?” Lucas asked in his broken form of the Imperium’s common tongue.
“You’re over 50% metamorphosed, and yet you wander the streets so boldly – has the coldness to everything truly seeped so far into your soul that now you simply do not care whether you live or die?” The man retorted with a hint of smugness that succeeded in making Lucas feel lesser as well as angry, but Lucas contained his rage as he finally absorbed what the man had said.
“Wait 50% metamorphosed?! But I thought that happened only once your demonic core grew too powerful for your human form to handle, and I’m not even halfway to being as powerful as that!” Lucas exclaimed, panic in his heart – Jergras had told him about what happened as one got closer to full metamorphosis, but he hadn’t connected the dots with his own symptoms but now everything was starting to make horrifying amounts of sense.
Cavernous laughter was all he got in return for a few long minutes, until eventually the voice spoke again, and the words the man spoke made Lucas start to think that Jergras might not have been as forthcoming as he had seemed.
“That is true only for regular seedlings, but you are far from regular, child. Your talent for demonic cultivation is a one in a millennia big deal it seems. But this, like most things related to the system, is a double-edged sword as you probably have no doubt figured out.” The man replied casually as if what he was saying was somehow supposed to have been incredibly obvious.
Lucas suspected the man realised he was oblivious to what the man was implying as the man sighed in a theatrical manner, before saying, “Whilst you do grow more powerful at an incredibly enhanced rate compared to the average sucker, the downside for you right now is that your immature human child body is unable to properly execute the full benefits inherent to your level of talent – hence your body has your system catapulting you straight towards metamorphosis.”
It took a few minutes of stewing in total silence until Lucas finally absorbed the man’s words and then connected them with what Jergras had said previously. Lucas recalled the demon telling him that he was a pretty rare talent in terms of his demonic cultivation, but the demon had definitely understated the case if what the man was saying was true. This revelation shook the trust that he had almost implicitly placed in the demon to guide him through the realms of demonic cultivation and the revelation that the demon who’d inducted him into this life intentionally might not have told him the full truth made Lucas start to doubt everything and everyone that he’d ever spoken to.
“Why should I trust you?” Lucas asked, the words feeling foreign to his tongue.
The room suddenly illuminated, and the demonic barkeep’s form was revealed, sitting right in front of him – probably only a metre or so away from Lucas. Lucas rotated his head and looked around the room and it seemed that they were in a basement or cellar of some kind. Instantly Lucas wondered where the overbearing scent of excrement was coming from. Then he realised, he really didn’t want to know.
“Trust is every fool’s doom, child. You’d do well not to trust anyone. I’m only giving you as much as I am because I think with enough information and leeway you will be more likely to… spice up this boring ass assignment.” The man said coldly, before gesturing to Lucas – causing a sudden burst of dense demonic qi to course throughout his body.
Lucas writhed and struggled against the iron-clad manacles that bound him to the chair as the cursed energy was almost too much for his small body to handle. Then, it stopped, and Lucas was once again able to sit still – though now he was gasping for breath as his body tried to recover.
“My skill will temporarily slow down your progress towards metamorphosis and mask your demonic presence from those who might wish you harm. Though, of course, in return for this… gift… I expect a service from you in return.” The man said in a lecturing tone – explaining his actions.
Lucas looked at the other demonic cultivator like the man was insane, before saying hesitantly, “What do you want?”
The other man’s smile grew before he said, “I only need to know the basic rundown of your dearest grandfather’s status page and his plans for the next few months. Simple stuff really.”
It was clear that the man in front of him expected Lucas to freak out at this request, make an appeal to how terrible it would be to sell out family, and or hysterically ask for further details as to why exactly the man wanted to know about his grandfather’s status page, but Lucas simply sat in silence and pondered this request.
Lucas was not yet fully cut off from his human emotions, but they were significantly dulled by the many demonic transformations his mind and body had undergone already in preparation for his eventual full metamorphosis, so deciding whether or not to give information to the man in front of him was to be decided purely by a logical assessment of his possibilities within his head.
The assessment was finalised pretty quickly, he either told the man what he knew or he died, and the only thing that he had consistently been able to feel since waking up had been the fear of death. So, he would tell the man what he knew. But before he could speak, the man interrupted him.
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“Not now, you’ll pay this favour back to me at a later date of my choosing.”
Lucas simply nodded before asking a question that now bothered him, “Why did you do all of this binding me up if all you were going to do is give me useful information and strong-arm me into telling you what I know about my grandpa?”
The demonic cultivator’s face turned deadly serious, before instantly shifting to a hysterical expression, then changing for a final time and resting on a completely cold and neutral expression before telepathically speaking into his head, freaking him out a lot, “Elder Demonic Cultivators like me are not like you seedlings who have barely tipped their toes into the endless font of the power to be claimed through our collective worship of the Demonic God.
We are entities who’ve lived hundreds of lives, killed almost tens of times that many people, and wield a power that few would ever dare dream of. Eventually, being a pure savage becomes boring and we tend to pick up certain… tastes as it were, and I’ve personally always enjoyed inciting certain emotions in people and feasting on them for glorious sustenance.”
Lucas didn’t know what to say in response – the words both seemed both too bold and sincere to be a lie, yet after today’s revelations Lucas’ ability to trust others was severely diminished. Then, another question struck him.
“Where’s Steven?!”
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The dead outnumbered the living on the road to the nearest city. The corpses of men, women, and children were strewn in a checker pattern-esque formation along the paved strip of land. Recently dried blood painted the once-grey pavement crimson red, and amputated appendages were being feasted upon by all of the small creatures and monsters that lived in the nearby area.
Amidst it all was a single woman, Amanda. She had retaken control over her newly regenerated body only once the slaughter had been complete and every person within a 1km had died. It seemed her demonic side had realised the impossibility of fighting against the local monster population, so had decided to pick on easier, and thus more lucrative, targets instead.
Despite the fact that she knew that the demonic side of her had just done something absolutely unforgivable, Amanda felt little to no guilt in her heart. Why would she feel guilty? She hadn’t been in her right mind, so it hadn’t been really her doing all the slaughtering – even if she had benefited from it more than anyone else. Plus, these were people who belonged to the nation that had obliterated hundreds of millions of people back on Earth – so this could just be considered a slight bit of payback.
Excuses and justifications for her abhorrent deeds came quick and fast, and she spent no time at all thinking them over before placidly accepting them. She was not the same person she had been back in that forest. She was different. She was better. She was strong and those who she had killed had not been, so what right did they have to exist – especially when their continued existence meant her life might end? At the end of the day, this was just the way of the multiverse – a reality that didn’t trouble her one bit in her current state.
Amanda groaned as she looked at her system prompts and to her displeasure, discovered that she had not yet gotten back to her former strength in terms of cultivation.
You have reached the 2nd step of the [Lesser Devil] realm!
---
You have reached the 4th Step of the [Core Devil] realm!
Total Reward: N/A
Amanda had guessed that she would probably not receive any extra stat points by regaining her cultivation, but having the system confirm that she wouldn’t benefit at all from the process of restarting her cultivation made her more than a little pissed off at the system as a whole.
Dismissing the remainder of the system prompts, Amanda began walking away from the site of her massacre – not wanting to stay in the same area for too long as she doubted that her being accused of killing dozens of ‘innocents’ would make the search for her any less persistent. Just thinking about those that were hunting her made her question where they had been whilst she had been slaughtering people, had that hydra monster killed them for her?
That would be convenient she thought to herself. Perhaps her luck was in the process of changing for the better – heaven knows how much she wanted that to be the case after the last few months of unadulterated suffering.
The sound of trees crashing to the ground all around her made her second guess her hopes, and she quickly adopted a clumsy and ill-conceived defensive posture almost immediately. Amanda feared that it might be some kind of monster similar to the hydra she had encountered prior, but as seconds turned into minutes and no monster appeared – she almost let down her guard.
Then he appeared. Death, ashen blade gripped loosely in his right hand, his golden yellow eyes peering right at her, and its sunken decrepit skin seemed to actively shy away from the light of the sun as though if light were to touch it the world would burn. Despite the entity's ominous look, Amanda felt no fear rising up from within her, in fact, she felt overwhelmingly relieved upon seeing this clear-as-day demonic cultivator appear before her rather than some damn Imperium elite looking to end her life.
Amanda bore the entity’s unyielding glare for a few minutes before she finally spoke up, her voice filled with undeserved confidence, “Who are you?”
The reaper looked at her expressionless for a moment – then she realised that this entity likely had no idea what she had just said, not speaking English due to the fact this person had probably never seen an Earthling before. Then, she heard a voice literally speak directly to her soul, each word was in a language she’d never heard before but that didn’t matter. Not only did each word seem to have a strange ethereal kind of sense to her, but the power that was imbued into each syllable informed her that whoever this reaper was – he was strong.
“You are an intriguing one, sister of the path." The voice that was far too feminine to be a man's voice said, sounding almost impressed.
Amanda looked at what she now suspected had to be a female demonic cultivator of some kind with some confusion, "The path?" She spoke aloud.
"Ahh, a seedling, that explains the sloppiness." The voice of the female cultivator replied in a motherly-esque tone. Then, the female reaper seemed to bend space and time around her for a split second - instantly appearing a few mere inches from Amanda's face.
"I must ask because I am curious, why did you kill the children?" The woman asked, but Amanda had no answer so remained silent.
The voice continued, clearly looking for an answer that Amanda just didn't feel able to give, "I can approximate to a certain extent your true progression along the path of demonic cultivation and your current level of inner corruption, but never before have I encountered a seedling who so happily torn apart a whole family of innocents barely a few months on the path towards true demonic power. Were you always a bit on the violent side or are you just learning this about yourself now?"
Amanda felt cornered. Just a few moments ago she had thought that encountering this person was superior to having to face off against some Imperium guard, but now that she was being confronted with what she did only a few minutes ago she realised that facing down open hostility would have been better for her than this.
"You don't know do you?!" The demonic cultivator said in disbelief before she began hysterically laughing.
"Oh, you're too good, seedling."
"Anyway, it was good meeting you, junior sister. I hope you find whatever it is that you're looking for." The woman said, before turning away.
Suddenly, Amanda found a strange voice swelling inside of her, she tried to hold it back but her resistance didn't last long and soon she was pleading with her full throat, "Please help me walk this path!"