Don was kneeling in dark, sucking mud, and he was crying.

"Please," He begged "Please don't"

All that came out was a horrible growling and spitting noise. It was a noise that only served to egg Hendrix on. To the cheering of his former community, Don was stabbed yet again. The spear, already slick with black blood plunged down at the demon, at the heretic.

The ravenous crowd hurled insults, clods of dirt, and rocks at the Demon. They were hungry for justice, and their champion obliged them. Hendrix put a sandal-clad foot on Don's shoulder and pushed him down as he tugged his spear free. He continued stabbing at the prone demon, the crowd cheering with every blow. Don's screams were completely drowned out by their raucous approval. Overhead, the spear gleamed red in the light of a setting sun and the sky was strewn with ragged, bloody strips of cloud, castoffs from the growing thunderhead in the distance. Finally, thankfully, Don died.

It was a short-lived respite. Don tumbled out of a dark portal and fell back into the mud. Mud that was made from a mix of fertile soil and buckets upon buckets of Don's lifeblood. The horrible ordeal repeated itself. Don pleaded, Hendrix ignored and then killed him to the glee of the roaring crowd. Fury and exaltation warred for territory on Hendrix's face. When Don died a third time and he was certain he couldn't take any more of this unending torture, the vision abruptly ended.

He was standing in the desolated patch of jungle again, staring up into the night sky.

"Don! Don!" Cel stopped shouting in his ear when Don finally moved. He put a hand to his face and swayed woozily. His body was still riddled with puncture wounds and he was having trouble remembering which fight they belonged to.

"Wha- what was that?" he stammered.

"What was what? You just stopped moving all of a sudden."

"I saw, no, I remembered something. It was so vivid though, so horrible." Don shuddered as the memory flashed through his head again. Then he remembered what he had been doing just before the vision gripped him and looked down between his feet. Hendrix was gone!

"Where-" He began, frantically looking around himself.

"Calm down." Cel said while soothing him with the feelings of safety "They're a little tied up at the moment." She pointed to a pile of bodies. They were hardly recognizable as such. Each of the centurions was cocooned in so many vines and brambles that only their faces were visible. Hendrix was snoring a little but the rest were awake, and they were staring at Don in horror.

He looked every bit the unstable, dangerous heretic they had been told he was. After defying a direct order, he actually attacked them! After he had dispatched their whole group with the help of unseen horrors, he transformed a large patch of the jungle into ash before he froze, looking to the stars. Then he started conversing with thin air in that grating dialect of his.

Worse yet, they were captured. They had boldly explored the jungle trusting in the arbiters gift of 'respawning'. They never considered the possibility that they would be unable to return. Now that the seven-foot-tall slab of muscle and blasphemy was staring back at them, their toes curled in fear. They couldn't do much more than wriggle against their bonds, looking like squirming caterpillars before a hungry bird.

Don's eyes were locked on Hendrix. His fists clenched involuntarily. Ash puffed into the air as he stepped forward. Then he stopped himself. He wanted nothing more to stomp on his face until his foot hit the ground behind it, but Hendrix was tied up and sedated. He wasn't a threat at the moment. What he had done was unforgivable but killing him would just send him back to the arbiter, it would be the same as untying him and letting him walk away.

"Are you okay Don?" Cel asked, concern evident through their link "You look, scary."

Don whirled on his companion.

"Why did you let the ColoColo fight? I told you specifically not to do that! They could have died!"

"I didn't," Cel protested, "at first... That initial attack was all Kat's idea. You're the one who put him in charge of the others!"

"And then what happened?" Demanded Don

"And then I helped them pick their openings to attack. If it wasn't for me, they would have swarmed to your defense and lots of them would have died!"

Don fumed but he had to admit, aside from Dak, none of the ColoColo were put in significant danger.

"Dak!" He shouted, making the prisoners flinch. The ColoColo in question peeked out from behind a barren tree.

"Why did you stay on that soldier longer than you had to?" Dak flinched back behind the tree, hiding from Don's outrage before sneaking back around and squeaking his answer in a small voice.

"I got stuck... My fangs wouldn't come out of their second skin..." He looked properly chastened and Don felt bad venting at him for such an honest mistake. Luckily Hendrix was stirring so Don had someone who deserved a little venting.

He stomped over to the paladin and jerked him into the air, cocoon and all. The paladin woke the rest of the way very quickly when Don slammed Hendrix against a nearby tree and pinned him there.

"Why are you hunting for me? Why do you all hate me so much? Why can't you just leave me alone!" He demanded, shaking the man and repeatedly slamming him against the trunk, kicking up a cloud of ash in the process. Hendrix wheezed as he tried to get some air back in his lungs but he didn't answer. Of course he didn't, he couldn't understand Don. Don growled at his own stupidity before Dropping Hendrix and snapping a branch off of the tree overhead. It was brittle, not at all like the flexible branches he was used to.

He used the branch to spell out the word 'why' in the inch-deep ashfall. There was just enough starlight filtering through the bare branches for it to be visible. Once he lifted Hendrix so he could see his sign, he got the idea. That didn't mean he was any more cooperative.

"Rust you Heretic. I don't have to answer any of your questions!"

"You owe me more than answers." Don growled, "You owe me blood!"

Don pushed the man back against the tree and used his [low kick] intentionally for the first time. Even though the movements felt off, his leg connected solidly with the bundle of thorns, vines, and paladin. He caught him in the stomach and with the tree at his back, the sloppy attack was devastating. Hendrix doubled over as best he could while bound and landed face first in the ash, scattering Don's question. When he finished hacking and wheezing he glared at Don defiantly.

"Your every action proves the righteousness of our mission!"

Don glared at the hateful man but dropped his line of questioning. It wasn't getting him anywhere and if he kept going, he might just kill the Paladin. It was far too soon for that. 

"What are you planning on doing with them?" Cel asked

"Plan? You think I planned for any of this?" Don said a little more shrilly than intended.

"Well, you have to do something, and soon. That paladin's mana will regenerate before the night is out. We can't trust a few vines to hold him when that happens."

"As much as I'd like to, killing him won't solve the problem." Don growled. Cel was taken aback

"Since when are you the killing type?" She asked

"Since I remembered the way this servant of the Arbiter killed me again and again for no reason other than entertainment!"

"You remembered part of that?" Cel asked, her sudden happiness was not a good fit for the situation

"You knew about it?" Don accused

"Of course I did, You're the only one with amnesia here, remember?"

"Then why didn't you warn me about the danger these centurions posed?"

"I told you I couldn't give away too many hints. Just check your Quest screen."

Don was reluctant to do as she asked but when he pulled up his quest screen he was confronted with something new.

Active Quests:

Who am I? 1% Alchemist's Apprentice 99% There's no place like home 0%

His amnesia-related quest had made the slightest amount of progress. When he focused on it, he found out why.

Who am I? You have remembered how terribly you were treated while under the centurions' care.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

Take your revenge by defeating each of them in combat.

Current Progress: 1/100

He had never been so eager to comply with a quest before. While reliving his ordeal, Don had focused almost entirely on Hendrix, but there was a whole line of spearmen behind him, eagerly awaiting their turn to inflict a measure of vengeance on the demon. One thing was off, however.

"Why did I only get credit for defeating one centurion?" Don asked while looking at the pile of enemy soldiers.

"You only defeated Hendrix. The rest were taken out by the ColoColo."

Don supposed that made sense. He hadn't even touched the one Dak got stuck on. If he was going to progress this quest to 5% completion, he would have to untie the soldiers and take them on. This time, it would be a fair fight. One on one, and no weapons.

Cel urged Don to check his notifications before he began. He nearly ignored her, he wanted to hurt these people. They came looking for trouble, and they had found it. The cascade of notifications nearly distracted Don from the grim task ahead of him.

+1 EXP (x4) New Form: Circle Steps: incomplete (0.5%) +12 EXP

Level up! Congratulations!

You have progressed to Level 1 +1 STR +1 WIS +5 Free Attribute Points

Seven attribute points all at once! That was huge! It was just the beginning though.

Demonic exclusive trait unlocked: Masochistic Taking over 666 damage without resisting while level 0 has caused you to acquire a taste for pain.

-1% damage threshold per character level.

Don wasn't in love with this trait, but he wasn't about to brush off anything that could take the edge off getting skewered. What would happen when he surpassed level 50 though? Would he start feeling pleasure from damage instead of pain? That seemed to be what the trait implied. Luckily, that was still a long way off as his pain threshold was only reduced to 49% at the moment.

Demonic exclusive ability unlocked: Dark-Vision Spending over 66.6% of your time in complete or near-complete darkness while level 0 has caused your soul to partially fuse with darkness.

Effect: You can perceive darkness within your area of influence

Cost: 1 MP / minute

This didn't make too much sense to Don. What did it mean that his soul was fused with darkness? How did you perceive darkness? It was just the absence of light. Don moved on to the final notification.

A synergy between one of your skills and your demonic nature had manifested a new ability!

Soul Harvest Upon leveling, souls within your area of influence will be torn from their vessels and absorbed.

Absorbed souls provide healing and steals [character level]% of their current experience.

Only affects souls with a level less than half of your character level.

Don looked at the circle of ash around him and at the perfectly spherical border of leaves where his area of influence ended. He hadn't gained any health or experience from turning a 20-meter wide section of jungle into ash. This ability seemed like nothing but a curse. Would he start absorbing the souls of his ColoColo in the next few levels? Would he have to make sure to be away from anything important when leveling up in the future?

When he put these questions to Cel even she had no answers for him.

"No one has ever wasted a profession slot on herbalism after unlocking a Demonic character before." She explained, "I have no idea how this ability works. It's pretty awesome though!"

"Cel, what is awesome about destroying everything around me both involuntarily and indiscriminately?"

"Because depending on how many enemies you can be near when you level, you could stand to gain a ton of experience! You would have to outlevel them first but if you can get a head start, this ability could let you keep them from leveling up while your level skyrockets. It's like the perfect weapon against the Centurions if you can deploy it right! Besides, we don't know that it's indiscriminate." She protested before adding "But there isn't really any safe way to test that huh?"

"No there isn't," Don sighed "I'll just have to be careful in the future and you will have to listen to me. I don't want the ColoColo following me against orders again only to have their souls torn from their bodies. That can't be healthy." Don gestured pointedly at the desolation around them.

"Fine, fine. Of course, you would unlock such an epic ability and only see it as a problem. What else would I expect? let's get to the really fun part! Allocating your Attributes!"

"That's the fun part?" Don asked

"Maybe addictive is a better word. What do you think you want to spend them on?"

Don had been thinking about this for a while. Cel already informed him that he would get a bonus point of Strength and Wisdom every level thanks to his demonic nature but the five free points were up to him to allocate.

"Agility seems like the obvious choice," Don started "The faster I am, the less I have to fear from those apes."

"Not a bad idea," Cel admitted "But pure agility probably isn't going to help as much as you think. Agility affects your top speed, but you need strength for acceleration. With your Strength and Constitution so close, you won't be able to dodge any faster if you just dump your points into agility."

Don nodded as he listened.

"Don't just build your attributes to suit your current opponents either. You are going to have a lot of different types of enemies to fight in the future, not to mention these Centurions. Speed is great, but it's not going to cut it against an army."

That gave Don pause. He remembered how weak he felt when his attributes were out of balance before. He would have to consider carefully to avoid similar problems. Still, if he didn't defeat the apes, he couldn't worry about other enemies. There would be plenty of other levels and attribute points in the future. He decided to bet on Cel's advice. It had kept him safe from the centurions so far and he only now understood just how important was. He could always rebalance his attributes later on. He dropped four of his points into Strength bringing it up to 25. That was a satisfyingly round number so he dropped his last point into Agility before checking the results.

Name: Donovan Shepard

Race: Demon

Title: Chieftan (ColoColo)

Traits: Beastly Whirlwind, Hardened & Relentless, Enlightened, Nimble, Masochistic Pet: Fairy (Soul Bound) Level: 1 (9/200 EXP)

STR: 25   CON: 20   INT: 16   DEX: 20 AGI: 21 + 1 END: 20 WIS: 21  

HP: 19/100 MP: 80/80 SP: 100/100

Active Effects:

Tired I: -5% mental attributes (INT 15 / WIS 20)

Hungry I: -10% SP Regeneration Professions:

Alchemist: Initiate 10

Herbalist: Initiate 8

Monk: Initiate 1