“This is so unfair,” Bell grumbled as she pushed her arms out to steady herself against the violent waves. “We already killed this thing once, why should we have to do it again?”

“Kraken sighted off the forward bow cap’in,” Panda shouted as he hung off the railing.

“Enough with the goddamned pirate jokes already!” Sally shouted from her position behind the wheel.

She spun it wildly and I braced myself as the ship turned at a sharp angle, narrowly avoiding the kraken’s lashing tentacles.

“Sink the ship!” Clive’s voice rang out across the air, “but don’t kill the prophet, we need him alive!”

“This guy is seriously starting to piss me off!” I shouted to be heard above the roaring waves and the obnoxious zealot.

Summoning my bow I nocked and arrow and charged a full powered soul shot. Thanks to my upgraded arrows, I could add even more soul power into each shot now, though it would badly drain my stamina bar.

With a crack, the arrow loosed from my bow, splitting an oncoming wave in two. It sliced through one, two, three tentacles before impacting the front of the kraken with a shockwave that forced the ship backwards at an alarming angle.

GWAAAG.

The kraken screamed a high-pitched cry as the arrow blasted a nasty-looking hole through its partially rotted skin.

Acid dripped from the wound in thick green globs of congealed blood and viscera as the skin began to melt from the inside... again.

“Why did it scream?” Bell asked, “I didn’t think zombies felt pain.”

“They don’t,” replied Panda calmly, “but they do feel frustration.”

Despite the gaping wound and severed tentacles, the kraken did not tarry. It still had four remaining limbs with which to attack us and it used all of them to slap the deck of the ship simultaneously.

I dived to the side, taking Bell with me, as slimy, rotting flesh began to wrap around our newly repaired ship.

Sally is not going to be happy.

“Motherfucker!” She growled from her position at the wheel.

I knew it.

The catonid jumped from her position above the rest of us, flipping as she unsheathed her huge, black sword. With a double handed grip she came crashing down on the main body of the kraken, slicing it almost entirely in two.

“At least she had enough sense not to do that on the deck tentacles,” Panda said as the ship rocked with the force of vicious waves.

Almost out of stamina, I did the best I could and summoned my one remaining dagger. With as much strength as I could muster, I stabbed the acidic weapon into the closest tentacle and ran to the other side of the ship, dragging the blade through the partially rotted skin.

The bubbling acid left in my wake made short work of the few remaining muscle fibres and the tentacle involuntarily unwound itself from the hull.

One down, three to go, I thought.

My stamina was almost completely drained, but we were slowly forcing the kraken back into the ocean. It might not have been killable, but it couldn’t heal either. The only way to get rid of it was through dismemberment.

Bell sprang into action, pulling out one of her newly pilfered scrolls.

“Fire touch,” she said as she began dancing around the two remaining tentacles and… is she high fiving them?

Each place she patted left a burning handprint emblazoned on the peeling, putrid flesh. Within moments the skin began to burn away like cigarette paper until there was nothing but large piles of ash littering the ship.

With the ship’s hull secured, I turned to watch as Sally began a speedy flash of constant sword strokes which shredded the main body.

She’d slice it from one angle, then jump off the body to come down at another angle for a second cut. It was like a special move in a Finaly Fantasy game. It was epic. She repeated that many times in quick succession as black and red aura emanated from her muscular body.

It wasn’t as strong or blindingly bright as Clive’s aura, but she was certainly a force to be reckoned with in her own right.

With a final slash, the catonid landed deftly back on the ship covered in black ink and smelling like a fish market as she cooly sheathed her sword. Pieces of the kraken pebble dashed into the water behind her as the guts and viscera that clung to her violet hair dripped onto the deck with a gross wet sound.

“Are we safe now?” Panda asked, appearing from behind a wooden crate and drenched from head to toe, “are we safe?”

“There is only one path to salvation for you, dear prophet,” Clive’s voice echoed all around us.

“This guy just doesn’t know when to quit does he?” Bell said exasperatedly.

“Be careful guys,” I warned, looking around for signs of the necromancer’s location. “He’s hit the level cap.”

“And here we are, all warn down from fighting his monstrosities,” Sally groaned, unsheathing up her sword once more with a weary look to her reddened face.

I felt something in the air and looked up in time to see the decrepit, grey elder lich land gracefully on the deck of our ship. His skin wrapped tightly around his skeleton and his golden robes looked freshly laundered as they hung loosely from his body.

“I told you that you wouldn’t escape from me,” he said, his voice filling the back of my mind as he spoke. “The sacrifice must be made. The prophet will deliver us from evil and into the arms of our lord.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“You are certifiably insane,” I replied, but in the back of my mind I knew we had no chance of beating this guy. He was just too powerful and we were all low on… everything.

“Into the arms of your lord?” Bell repeated slowly, “I think this guy just wants a hug, who hurt you?”

“He has a face even a mother wouldn’t love,” Sally added, “no wonder he’s so starved of human contact, he’s probably never had any.”

“ENOUGH!” Clive shouted, throwing his left arm out to the side regally. “I shall listen to this folly no longer.”

My dragon’s eye reacted quicker than my mind, forcing my body to automatically dive to the ground. I pulled out my trump card scales of the apex predator which summoned dragon scale armour across my body, but I was too slow.

An ephemeral line of pure, purple aura cut through the air like a sharpened blade. The skin on my stomach ripped open and my scales dropped to the ground like little pellets as my health dropped instantly into the red.

He must have been toying with me earlier, I thought as my body crumpled to the ground.

With no way to heal, I’d be a goner if he attacked again. Hell, I might be a goner anyway. Without meditation or potions, it was very possible that I was going to bleed out.

With great effort, I managed to move my head to the side where I saw Bell lying face down in a pool of blood. Sally crouched next to her, her sword had been sliced in two and she bore a deep cut across her chest.

Her cat-like reflexes must have allowed her to attempt to block, but even with her strength it was no use.

We were all going to die.

Son of a lich.

I had to think of something. In my weakened state I doubted that even my soul power could kill this guy, at least not without ending me in the process.

There had to be another way. I was not going to die like this. Not here, not at the hands of… that.

“See?” Clive said, spreading his arms out wide. “I have power gifted to me by the system. All shall prostate themselves before our mighty lord…”

That was when it came to me. I did have one more ace up my sleeve, though its effects could be catastrophic.

It’s not like I have much of a choice, I thought.

Jumping into my inventory, I equipped the chaos seed.

Chaos Seed

Summon a chaos demon for 60 seconds.

Results may vary.

It happened instantly.

The moment the seed left my inventory a solid beam of blackness, darker than the abyss, shot upwards in a cylinder just in front of me, cutting off Clive’s sermon.

“What did you do?” Sally gasped, her dark blue eyes casting a horrified look at me.

The cylinder of darkness expanded until the entire ship was shaded. With the ability granted to me from my dragon’s eye, I was almost blinded from the sheer power that radiated from the beam.

“You cut him off mid villain monologue,” Bell said and then coughed as something, probably blood, splattered my leg.

“I skipped the cutscene,” I replied with a shrug, not that she’d be able to see it in the darkness.

With a flash, the black cylinder disappeared leaving a hole in the dark grey clouds that had covered the sky. The night was dark, lit only by the stars above. All the wind from the sea had vanished and the waters were eerily calm.

I looked around, but there didn’t seem to be anything there. Clive stared upwards at something, the sky? All I saw was darkness and stars.

Wasn’t the seed supposed to summon a demon?

“H-how?” Clive stuttered, stumbling backwards and falling onto the deck. “How are you here?”

I looked around, still failing to see anything other than the pitch-black night. Was my demon invisible?

“Necromancer!” A deep, rumbling voice declared, shaking the ship as pieces of wood chipped from the decking due to the sheer power of the voice. “How dare you steal from me!”

“I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head.

“Look… up,” Sally replied, the terror in her voice apparent. I’d never heard her speak so shakily before.

I cast my gaze upwards once again but there was only darkness, and stars. Why couldn’t I see it?

“There’s nothing there, it’s just the sky,” I said.

“That’s not the sky…” Sally breathed.

I focused on the starry sky and, to my surprise, a notification appeared.

You have discovered a demon lord:

Asmodeus

Asmodeus is the demon of lust, and no that doesn’t mean he spends his night scouring Pornhub.

His lust is far more unquenchable than that. He desires all things. In his eyes, everything that ever was, is or will be belongs to him.

He’s a bit of a prick to be honest.

Best not piss him off though, he’s pretty strong.

I read through the notification and that was when it dawned on me.

I wasn’t staring at the starry sky.

No, I was staring at a demon’s massive caboose.

“The souls of the dead are rightfully mine!” Asmodeus proclaimed, causing the mast to crack as his powerful voice boomed.

He’s going to destroy the ship… with his voice.

“I-I’m sorry,” Clive stuttered feebly, “I was using the power the system gifted me-”

“Fuck the system!” He said and Clive rolled backwards as if caught in a strong gale, “there are none more powerful than I. None!”

“You dare to blaspheme against our mighty lord!” Clive shouted, forgetting his stutter as his zealous tendencies took over, “he who grants life, power and the abilities which we all-”

Before he could finish, a hand the size of a building reached down and the sky above me flexed. It seemed the stars were just a feature of the demon’s skin as his hand was also littered with tiny glowing lights.

Asmodeus plucked Clive from the ship’s deck, by his head, with his thumb and forefinger. Then he moved his middle finger back and flicked the necromancer far away. All that could be heard was a thin scream in the distance as specks of grey blood splashed the demon’s massive hand.

“Puny lich,” he said in a satisfied boom before reaching across to wipe his hand on the main sail. It looked like a tissue next to his meaty palm.

I stared at his gargantuan figure.

Unable to move, I absently wondered what would happen next. The notification on the chaos seed said that he would only manifest for sixty seconds, but it was hard to get a good grasp of time, all things considered.

To the side of me Bell groaned lightly, seemingly flickering in and out of consciousness, and Sally stared dumbstruck at the behemoth I’d unwittingly unleashed upon us.

“Now then,” Asmodeus said, though I still couldn’t see his face, “which one of you had the audacity to summon me?”

I stared blankly at the demon’s behind as, almost in unison, Panda, Sally and even the semi-conscious Bell pointed at me.

Thanks guys, great teamwork, I thought, so loyal…

“You?” Asmodeus bellowed, “a mere phase three, have the audacity to summon one such as I?”

“We needed help with the lich,” I answered, unsure of what else to say.

“Well I suppose you got it,” he replied, seeming to consider his words for a moment before continuing. “I guess that means your soul is mine now.”

My blood ran cold.

The sheer flippancy of his words sent a shiver down my spine. I’d just seen him flick Clive god knows how far away. It was easy for him. I didn’t know power that vast even existed in this world. He must have been stronger than the self-proclaimed gods, and those guys were insanely strong from what I’d heard.

If he wanted my soul, there was nothing I could do to stop him.

His building sized palm moved towards me at an odd angle and the same thumb and forefinger that had vanquished our enemy, reached for my tiny, mortal body.

POOF.

Just like that, he disappeared and the grey clouds that had covered our ship reappeared over them as if nothing had happened.

The timer must have run out.

I breathed out as sweat dripped from the tip of my nose.

“Well that was a close one,” Panda said flippantly, “might wanna read the terms and conditions before summoning a demon lord next time though, those guys can be real asshats.”

I tried to stand but was forced back down as my gut wound began to reopen. The blood must have congealed.

I guess I’m staying put for a while.

That was when I noticed something sitting off to the side of me.

A small, glimmering egg. It was jet black with tiny little lights twinkling around it.

Reaching out unsteadily, I picked it up.