The week long wait was boring but not uneventful. Mom took me and Lilian to a tailor who makes most of the clothes and armor for the church. She's an elderly lady with grey hair in a bundle, very wrinkly face showing many years of experience and wearing a long plain dress. She specializes in using demon hide, which frightens me to no end. What was even more surprising was that she was a foreigners.
Steph: “Now don’t look at her like that you two she is nice.”
???: “What’s with all the tension?”
Steph: “Sorry Sophie we taught them to be wary of most foreigners since many cause more trouble they haven't interacted with many.”
Sophie: “Oh i get it. I kind of agree with your teachings, i myself don’t trust many of the people there as well. To many people trying to get something out of everyone.”
Baal: “Is it really that bad in your world.”
Sophie: “Its not that its bad its that with so many people living in our world there are few jobs so its more of a fight for money to survive then anything. Most people who come to this world and think of only gaining money are like that because they sell the items they discover for money of our world to survive.”
Lilian: “I'm glad i was born in our world then it seems safer here then.”
Sophie: “I think so as well much more freedom here but i don't know if it might last that long. There are many ambitious ones among us that want to be rulers. Though they don’t say it out loud they are probably planning behind the scenes.”
Steph: “We should stop before we traumatized them. We came here to make personal gear for these two.”
Mom pulled out the large stack of imp hide. I pulled out the high imp skin as well. She examined them and when she saw the high imp skin her eyes grew wind a bit.
Sophie: “Wy how rare, its been awhile since I've seen a high imp skin in a novice’s loot pile, these can make excellent boot and gloves.”
Steph: “Yes well can you make a pair of each for both of them from that skin as well as armor.”
Sophia: “The imp skins are normal quality at best after processing it i can get them as high as great quality it will provide the usual protection from demon magic.”
Steph: “Could you enchant it to grow with the user. They will be with them for a while so i worry about them outgrowing it.”
Sophie: “Ok I'll see to it but that will actually cost a bit.”
Baal: “Dont you do all the paladins cloths?”
Sophie: “Ya but its a cobtract to make just the clothes. Enchantments are extra and need pay but an enchantment like that only cost 1 gold coin.”
Lilian: “I figured it was that much we can pay. Also can you mak casual clothes with any extra skins.”
Sophie: “Yep i know how hard it is to find kids clothes so dont worry your in good hands. Also this list is for a few friends that you kids can trust. Their all foreigners but all good people.”
Baal/Lilian: “Thank you.”
Sophie: “Ahhh their so cute. They remind me of my grandkids when they were that age.”
We couldn't help but blush at the elderly woman which caused her to react even more. Mom could only smile as she saw us reacting positively towards a foreigner she considers a good friend.
We soon leave the tailors shop and return to train more. Mom has been worried after i returned all beat up like last time.
2 days later the armor arrived from Sophie. Though the original hides were red what we got was white armor. Dyes can do wonders no matter the material. Not a single spot remained red but that didn’t stop sophie from making my cloths a bit...evil.
Baal: “They do my cloth look like its made for a demon.”
Lilian: “Cause you are one idiot.”
Steph: “Don’t say that Lilian. I told her about you ability to transform. She was amazed such young kids learned such high ranked abilities.”
Unlike Lilians cloths which looked like regular human armor though all white.
( https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f8/4b/c6/f84bc6b20938fac3539af612c97b8882.jpg)
My armor had a bit of a barbaric feel to it. Most of the armor was made like that, all but the gloves. They look like demon hands and even had metal nails which could be used as weapons.
( http://www.nonacaso.net/wp/wp-content/gallery/my-supereroes-portrait-spawn/mano_02.jpg)( http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/328/4/a/full_leather_armor_with_slats_by_artisansdazure-d33jw1m.jpg just imagine these two white)
I couldn't help worry about using all of this since it made me look more like a bandit with white armor then a novice paladin.
Steph: “Don’t worry Baal all novice get a unique design each which we leave up to sophie to decide so your will be just another of her creations.”
I give her a wary smile and go put the armor on and go train with it to get used to them.
Underworld, Demon Lords castle 3rd POV
In the underworld Lucifer was looking with disgust at a beat up bloody both of a man.
Lucifer: “You’re a pathetic demon Rachet. You gained nobility after raising to the ranks of royal demon and you have the gut to face me the only Divine Demon in this world. Looking at you disgusts me. Men put him in the dungeon we will exile him in 2 months when the portal has gathered enough mana. Lets drop him in some lowly dungeon with higher demons so he can feed them.”
The demon queen and her children just looked at the man without a hint of remorse that could be seen but in her heart the queen could be more worried.
Lia: Another one exiled. I hope this doesn't cause trouble later on with the upper world. Ever since we exiled that baby Lucifer hasn't killed a single enemy only exiled them. Does he think the kid survived and wants to kill him.
Though she didn't show it she was really worried about her husband. Since they exiled their child 2 and a half year a ago Lucifer has gotten paranoid and has exiled demons that attacked us instead of killing them like normal.
Lia watched as the young royal demon Rachet was dragged away leaving a trail of his blood where he passed. She feared that she would eventually need to cast a sleep spell on her husband and invade his mind to find out what is making him paranoid. She has asked him many times but he has only given her a black stare as a response. The same for her other kids he doesn't speak with us about his problem which worries all of us, i hope he doesn't do something reckless enough to make a new great war.
Valeria POV
Sitting on a coach of clouds I made in my pocket dimension, I watch over the young children of the mortal world. It is quite entertaining to see a few of the more unique children play around. Besides the mortal world, I have also been keeping an eye on the demon lord in the underworld. He has increased the number of exiles he has made by a large margin, enough to catch my and all of the lesser gods attention since many are protectors of small groups of people.
Ares, a very young god of war, has recently been very angry with so many demons attacking his followers. It pissed him off enough to search around his followers and look at the fate of many unborn children to see their possible futures. He found one that interested him, a child that had a fate to be a promising warrior. He liked the child and blessed him while he was still in his mother. He was planning to have the child fight as his champion *sigh* what a troublesome lesser god, with this kind of blessing the boy can real ranks of hero, though the kid would be an interesting rival for Baal and Lilian later on.
Looking back into the demon lord’s throne room where he sat. He spat out ridicule to a young royal demon who had challenged him to a duel unlike most demons that just outright attack.
Valeria: “The personality of that demon is that of a refined noble and a great commander. If he will be exiled in a dungeon then I can't find a better teacher for my little demon prince. I have two months to hack into their magic circle and move the location to the chamber of the dungeon Baal will be in next month. Considering the lesson they want to pass, the training done during that time and how many trained paladins their will be that can easily do this dungeon. The exile could appear while they are in the boss room. Good time for work fufufu.”
Baal POV
At the end of the week the paladins and trainees were gathered. In all 200 trainees and 100 trained paladins will be going to the dungeon. It will take another 3 weeks to reach it since we will be going by horse and caravan. In the group the youngest beside me and Lilian were orphans that the church took in who are around 10 at their youngest and 15 at the oldest they number about 50 of the trainees the rest are children who want to devote their lives to protecting the people of the world from evil. I asked them once, “what would you do if you met demon that wasn’t evil” their responses made me frown, “what are you talking about, demons are evil by nature” “there is no none evil demons so all need to be destroyed”. Both me Lilian and many older paladin frowned deeply towards the novice and commander Hugh who was leading the expedition made sure to “educate” them after hearing what they said. I evaded them after that since it started to feel strange being around them.
The ride was really boring. We had about 50 carriages, 20 are for food and supplies, 10 for materials for repairs and the last 20 are large carriage made like a small room with several hammock for sleeping on the road. These are for the guards that stay up on night shift. It got too boring for me riding a horse so i left it with one of the paladins and went practicing my flying skills with Lilian. We also had the job to keep look out since we had a better view than the rest. When me and Lilian first summoned our wings we scared the other novice to no end. They seem to have realized why i asked the questions about demons after they saw my wings.
At the end of the month we finally reached visual distance of the dungeon. Unlike the Imp dungeon which was a large cave this one wasnt so simple like that. The dungeons name was known as Galton's Castle, it was once a fort belonging to a powerful lord under an ancestor to the king of our country but it was lost after a group of brute demons led by their leader suddenly appeared in the castle and killed everyone. With the presence of so many high level demons for such a long time the place soon became a dungeon and low class demons began to find their way to this world through the now fragile rip in space.
There are 3 known kinds of dungeons. A monster dungeon is a dungeon where a creature natural to our realm, The mortal realm, it appears when a high level monster, example a powerful ogre or minotaur, takes up resides in a cave, city, castle, etc. Over time his power which seeps from his body starts strengthening the fabrics of space in the area he lives and soon this power crystallizes and forms a dungeon heart. This heart is a large crystal which radiates mana, these crystals cause an opening in space which creates low class monsters with no intelligence. Many species appear and for their own food chain and grow in the dungeon but they will all attack to protect the boss of the dungeon by instinct. Demons do the same because demon monsters require the masma in the dungeon. Masma is basicly the demon bosses power after it has seeped from his body demon monsters feed off this to survive.
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
The second and third are demon and celestial dungeons. Like you might have guessed they are dungeons where demons and celestial monsters natural to the upper and underworld appear but unlike monster dungeons who strengthen the fabrics of space these dungeons weak the fabrics of space within the dungeon which allow a rift to open between the two realms. For demon dungeons the masma gathers and forms the crystals normally under the dungeon or in a throne room if it a castle. The dungeon hearts of these places are considered more valuable the monster ones as they have much more power to them and less common.
The fort that was the dungeon was large. It was like a city really, on the outer part of the dungeon, which is only the castle, there was a small village of low class sentient demons. We made camp just outside of the town and went inside. I was with Commander Hugh as we walked towards the town.
Hugh: “Hey Baal, can you do me a favor?”
Baal: “What?”
Hugh: “This town is a passive town of demons but they are still wary of humans especially us paladins. Could you enter in your demon form. If they see a demon among us they may think differently about us.”
Baal: “hmm ok thats fine. I’ll also bring Kitsu and Rook since they are demon races as well.”
Before we got to close i imagined myself as a demon and activated my transformation ability. As it activated a small ring of black smoke surrounded me as my body changed. My wings sprang out, I felt my muscles get denser and my arms bit longer. My head felt like it was splitting as long horns dug its way out of my head. My teeth i felt turn into fangs, my hands i felt grew claws similar to my glove and my feet if could feel had grown and was larger with 5 claw like fingers and one large nail in the back of the feet in the heel. When the smoke clear i appeared as a High Imp with black armor.
The paladins and trainees around me just stared wide eyed at my ability to transform.
Baal: “Wha!! my armor turned black!”
My voice was much deeper now and sounded more like an adults voice.
Hugh: *facepalm* “Sophie did it again.”
Lilian: “What do you mean?”
Hugh: “If you have a unique ability and you tell her, she will always make the clothes a bit more unique. Yours seem to react to your full demon form and turns black to make you look more menacing, it probably also has buffs for demon race as well.”
Baal: “Wow she is amazing no wonder the church relays on her so much. We should go, what do we need to get anyway?”
Hugh: “Mainly information about the current boss. This expedition happens every year which is the time it takes for low rank demons to grow in the dungeon and one of them to become demon leader. Also do you know the ranking system of demons?”
We shook our heads as did a few other novice around us.
Hugh: “Ok then let me explain.”
It goes like this the demons and angels are broken up like this. They all start as low ranked monsters and if they are lucky they will eventually become sentient. It starts as Lower demon, then Higher Demon, Royal Demon and finally Divine Demon. Angels are Fallen Angel, Angel, Lesser God and Last is Greater God. Each rank has three forms normally, a lesser form which is like a newborn, such as lesser imp in my case. A normal form, Imp, which is common among all of the race and a top tier from which is High Imp at this moment. After that i rank up to higher demon, at this point it's considered more an evolution because the same beings of the same race can turn into completely different creatures.
Hugh: “Does everyone understand the ranking system of the God and Demon worlds.”
Everyone nodded.
Hugh: “Good now Baal since you have the best chance of getting info try your best we all need to figure out the current bosses race, the demon of this dungeon is normally always the first form of royal demon. That is the main reason Bishop Slade is with us today because royal demons are one of the hardest demons to beat.”
Trainee: “Commander is there currently a Divine Demon.”
Slade: “There is, the demon lord of the underworld Lucifer is a Divine Demon. Just so you know he is a demon on par if not stronger then a greater god since he can fight equally against a few of them at once. We are very lucky that only exiled demons appear in our world because if demons could freely come and go then we would still be in a great war between the gods and demons.”
Everyone shuttered hearing the power of the demon lord. Everyone but me, it gave me motivation. My eyes were burning with determination...and rage. I didn’t know what the rage was for. I knew i was exiled from there and he was my own father but i have never felt anger towards him until now.
We soon head into town. The demons inside werent as we expected they were all human like except for small horns and tails and some with long claws growing. A few had green or black skin while other had red or blue skin. The commander explained that the color of the skin represents the strongest affinity of a demon. My skin was red like any imp but the color was still off from normal ones. It was much lighter than the deep red the other imps had which was probably thanks to having higher light affinity. (its at -5% now)
The village looked like any other human village with stores for weapons, armor, potions, inns, magic store, general store.
Looking around i also saw that there weren’t many adventurers so i asked why.
Hugh: “The dungeon here is considered a high level dungeon thanks to the boss. Though foreigners have been around for at least 50 years, (1:4 RL to Game world 12.5 years) besides high level guilds few people have actually been able to complete high level dungeons like this one.”
Baal: “What level do they normally have to be.”
Hugh: “You’ve heard of guilds right.”
I nod.
Hugh: “Well a guild must have an average of at least 300 people over level 350 to reach the bosses room and at least level 450 to fight with the boss. Put simply only elite guilds can actually fight in this dungeon and most elite guilds are far passed this point so they don’t bother fighting these dungeons.”
Trainee: “Is that why we come here?”
Hugh: “Yes Brutes are called that because they are very aggressive and if left alone wills start attacking nearby human villages.”
Baal: “I see well I’ll go check around.”
I left and started to look around. I could see the eyes of the demon residents were looking towards me and the paladin. I walked around and found a tavern and walked in. As i entered the eyes of the people in their turned towards me. I walked up to the bartender who was a human skinned man with small thumb sized horns and pointy ears and snake like eyes.
Baal: “Hello”
Bartender: “What can i do for you.”
Baal: “I was wondering if your or anyone in here could tell me about the castle lord.”
The bartenders eyes raised.
Bartender: what do you want to know about that Brute.
Baal: “Well I’m with the paladins who came to train in the dungeon.”
I heard of few chuckles.
Bartender: “Hmm its that time of year again hmm”
He mumbled.
Baal: “excuse me?”
Bartender: “Oh nothing really well the lord is a royal rank demon known as an Oni. He is a larger Brute that is normally red or blue in skin color depending on his affinity and he is human in body shape but at least 3-4 meters tall with very long horns thanks to their mana reserve. Their main weapons are normally a large iron club which i would avoid at all cost because it can easily kill a trainee like you even with your royal blood.”
(https://yokaihigh.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/oni1.jpg)
Baal: “Thanks anything else i should know?”
Random customer: “Ya kid dont get hit by the brutes it hurts like hell.”
This made everyone in the room laugh. They told me brutes are smaller versions of the Oni and are just over 2 meters and carry wooden clubs which they wield with ease and can kill a powerful monster easily by themselves.
After talking for a while in the tavern I left satisfied and returned to camp only to find lots of laughing paladins, many depressed trainees and one cheerful Lilian. I returned to human form since i was almost out of mana.
Baal: “What”s going on, why are they depressed.”
Lilian: “Hahaha most of them mistreated a demon while acting all high and mighty thinking of them like the bad ones and were then insulted by all the others and didn’t learn anything hahahahah. Did you find out anything.
Baal: ya i went to the tavern and talked with the people in there they told me a lot about the boss and even the brutes a bit.”
Lilian: “I learned a bit out the boss. Supposed to be some muscle brain extra large brute that is just a little smarter then the idiots in the lower levels.”
Hugh: “Hahaha should have guessed you two would find out about him.”
Baal: “This was used to teach us a lesson wasn’t it.”
Hugh: “Of course ever trainee needs to know how to act to all types of people and not just the ones the public thinks are the “good races”. I hope you brats learned your lesson after experiencing this.”
Depressed trainee: “Yes~ Sir~!”
Hugh: “Good now get some food cooking and after eating get to sleep we are going to split up the teams in the morning and we will enter the dungeon tomorrow now get going.”
Everyone started to move around and soon many campfires started to light up all over the place and soon the smell of cooked meat and veggies started to come from the fires. To our surprise the Paladins in our circle were all great cooks.
Paladins: “You learn how to cook quite fast when you are always out in the field. You kids also need to learn or you will be useless in the dungeon later on. Here have this its a book on plants. It will tell you may effects they may have when cooked and how to properly prepare the herbs and such. We will teach you kids how to make real high class meals without having to pay too much to those fancy restaurants that give you tiny meals for outrageous prices.”
Top of the castle 3rd POV
A big red gorilla like man stood at the edge of the balcony holding a spiked metal club in his right hand while looking done into the plains next to the castle.
Demon: “GRRR so they finally came GRR.”
BOOM
He lift the club and slammed it down in anger seeing the paladins surrounding his castle.
Demon: “I trained too hard to just die like all the other leaders.”
He looked at the demon in his throne room. She was much slimmer than him and half his size. She was the demon that managed the other lesser demons and trained them.
Demon: “Get the trolls stationed on the lower floors and all the Brutes on the fifth floor and above. Release all the demon beasts as well I won’t go down without a fight.”
She bowed and left without a word.
The demon boss just looked down while snarling at the camp outside before walking back inside to prepare.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Well here is the next chapter
Please continue with the ideas they can always inspire new ones from myself and many can be used in the story as well
Feedback would be great.