Rieren wasn’t really able to lift her head up. Something about the way she had transformed had locked her gaze upon her reflection.

Divine Resilience couldn’t have worked correctly. After all, if she was supposed to have regenerated from her wounds, she would have formed normal human skin. Pale, slightly leathery, smooth. And she had regenerated properly from her wounds before, even when she had been a monster through and through.

After all, that was how she had come out of the Abyss as Rieren, not as some grotesque demon that the Abyss’s core had malformed her into.

Yet, it had failed her. For some reason—no, she knew the reason, it had to be those threads from the Aetherian—her perk had failed to overcome the corrupted Essence. And now the corruption ran rampant.

New Achievement!

First monstrous transformation attained. Your attempt to gain might knows no bounds at all. You will sacrifice even your humanity, whether you wish it or not, to overcome every barrier to ultimate strength. Nothing will keep you from the peak of power.

Rewards

* 1 Level

* 1 Skill point

* 10 Credits

* 1 Class Evolution point: [Divine Bladereaver > Arisen Bladebane]

A class evolution? Rieren stared at the notification. She had never planned on a class evolution in this timeline. After all, her very first achievement here had allowed her to restart this entire timeline with the peak class she had attained in her previous life.

It was the sole reason why her skills were so powerful, why she could take on monsters and opponents who were far, far stronger than her on paper. Her skills and her perk allowed her to keep pace with enemies who would have torn her apart this time last time.

Why would she ever care to evolve her already perfect class?

She was tempted to see if she could check the potential changes the class evolution would perform, but first, her eyes were drawn to her reflection. Arisen… the achievement had said.

Her scalp and hair had reformed, but into a strange, silvery-gold consistency that was not at all hers. She had horns ringing her head. Of course. How else would the world know she was now a monster. Her face had gone from pale to a patchwork of black veined with cracks of gold. It was spreading too. Even as she watched, the ashen consistency spread past her nose and over her lips.

How was this possible? She hadn’t accepted the class evolution yet. Had to be the threads the Aetherian had attacked her with.

Rieren got a demonstration of it soon. When she peeled off a patch of her demonic skin, Divine Resilience quickly healed her back and covered up the wound with regular, pale skin. And then corruption arrived a second later to turn it black-and-gold.

But Rieren was pulled from her focused gaze upon her own transformation by the arrival of more monsters.

“…never have her—” someone was yelling before being rudely cut short.

Another Aetherian had appeared, shooting at them like golden meteor.

Moments ago, Rieren would have acted. She would have used her sword to try and deflect away the monster’s charge, teach it a little lesson about trying to make flashy entrances into active battlefields. Now, all she could do was stare.

At least her companions were smart enough to yell warnings and dash away to safety.

The meteoric Aetherian landed in the exact kind of explosion Rieren had expected. She was blasted in the face with rocks flying like shrapnel, dust clogging her nostrils and airway, and all her Domain water flying off.

Rieren coughed. She tried to rise. Her body felt fine despite the battle and the mental tumult. If anything, she felt stronger than before. Was this the benefit of the corrupted Essence or her class evolution? Her mind was still trying to catch up. All her priorities, all her goals, all of them lay in ruins. These monsters need to pay. She had to get to her friends. She had to—

“Welcome, destroyer.”

The words didn’t come from one source. All the monsters that had gathered all of a sudden around Rieren were greeting her at once, like she was the honoured guest at the Abyssal and Aetherian Banquet or some such nonsense.

A quick look through the crowd proved that the monsters were all rather strong. At least as powerful as the B-grade Blightmane, with some closer to the strange, ash-and-golden-thread Aetherian’s level of power. Closer to A-Grade if not there exactly. In other words, Rieren was certainly not taking all of them together at once.

Which turned impossible, for the ground disappeared from beneath her and she was swallowed up by a Fellserpent.

One moment, Rieren was standing upon solid ground, trying to contemplate her next action. It had faintly sounded like her friends hadn’t been so horrified by her transformation to forsake her entirely. They hadn’t learned to trust each other for one incident to destroy everything they had built together.

But fat chance of her fighting through these insane monsters. Her footing no longer had anything to rest upon. Instead, gigantic jaws burst out on either side of her and snapped close.

How had she not even felt that creature approaching from underground? The earth should have shaken as the Fellserpent neared. It must have come in during the battle itself, preventing anyone from sensing it.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Rieren fell deep into the monster’s dark guts. There was absolutely no light to see anything by. She could feel the Fellserpent’s wet innards all around her as she bounced off its flesh deeper inwards, her ears stuffed with the earth-grinding noise outside the monster’s body. It was digging. Retreating away from the battlefield and taking her along with it.

The only reason Rieren didn’t gag at the stench was because of her earlier experience with the Blightmane. That monster’s mouth had held a similar stench.

Though, in that case, the odour hadn’t been pressing in from every direction upon her whole being.

The pain was immediate. It wasn’t just the Fellserpent’s saliva trying to erode her skin right off her flesh. Something was wrong with her spirit entirely. It was as though her soul was trying to tear itself out of her body, turning sensations distant, yet all too sharp and concentrated at the same time. Focused entirely on her growing agony.

Her situation wasn’t helping, certainly. The deeper Rieren went into the monster’s guts, the more she was assailed. The stench making her want to claw her nose off, its innards pressing in from all sides, the frothing, disgusting liquids that were trying to dissolve her whole, the lightless murk where she saw nothing at all.

Except, she did see a little bit. She couldn’t keep her eyes open for long, in fear of the Fellserpent’s acidic fluids dissolving them, but still. Her vision—her new­, monstrous vision, not the regular human ones she no possessed longer —could see shapes without the need for illumination. Handy.

Rieren cursed herself. Was she actually appreciating that she had turned into a monster? Again?

Her heart spasmed, overtaking all the other sensations as her soul narrowed on the most major feeling on her body. Agony like heated needles pressing out from within her scoured her whole body. Rieren was tempted to scream, but it would only be muffled by the fleshy insides of her captor.

But even as the pain started to get overwhelming, she began to recognize the situation. Not the agony itself. While it wasn’t new, it wasn’t necessarily the main signifier of her troubles.

No, it was the mire her soul had fallen into that Rieren realized she was suffering from a heart demon.

She tried to shake her head, though that only made her mew hair catch on the fleshy walls at her sides. A heart demon? Now? She couldn’t be suffering from something so serious in the middle of an Abyss-cursed tournament of all things.

Focus. She had to focus. Getting lost in the sensation and the panic of the moment was only going to be deleterious. Breathe. But breathe what? The stomach acid of the Fellserpent trying to digest her while she was alive?

That was when Rieren grasped she hadn’t been breathing for a while now.

The realization made the heart demon issue even worse. Her soul untethered from her body even further, no longer recognizing the vessel it was bound to. A rejection of the flesh itself. A crisis of identity that went beyond simple acknowledgment by the self, that exceeded the bounds of acceptance that one could muster in the moment.

That was what truly embodied a heart demon. There was a reason it was called a demon. The issue approximated almost literally what Rieren was going through at the moment—an integral change arising from a crisis, the birth of a demon within oneself that one had to excise.

Except, in Rieren’s case, she was a demon. An Abyss-cursed monster, quite literally.

In the world beyond the prison of a Fellserpent’s innards, cultivators needed to work to get rid of heart demons. It took patience, grit, self-reflection, and most importantly, the ability to dig within oneself and rediscover the truth of one’s identity.

That was going to be a little hard for Rieren. Stuck inside an enormous monster’s guts, she really didn’t have time or energy to spare for a heart demon right now.

That was it. The pain wasn’t going to kill her. Yet. Rieren had some time in her hands to get out of the monster. Though, she would still have to hurry and break free so she could deal with the heart demon before it did kill her.

Rieren struggled in her position a little bit. Nothing but pain and constriction all around her. Walls smothering, the lack of air stifling, the effluent eating away at her.

She was losing herself, piece by piece from within and without.

All right, she really did need to hurry. Thankfully, since her new body didn’t exactly need to subsist on air, she had one clear way of freeing herself. Rieren summoned her Domain and held nothing of it back.

The water burst free and forced itself out into all directions. Well, all directions that were available. From the dim shapes Rieren could make out—she could now see better thanks to no longer needing to worry about the burning liquid around her –she caught the Fellserpent’s bell bulging.

More water was forcing itself through either ends of its stomach, washing away more of its acidic fluids. Her paths had been cleared up. Now, to exit.

The monster wasn’t staying still, of course. Its motion had turned erratic. Rieren was certain it was attempting to thrash around and disgorge the water filling it up from within, though that was going to be difficult underground. She decided she could ponder later where in the world it had been attempting to carry her in the first place.

Yes, carry. Rieren was pretty the certain the monsters wouldn’t go to such lengths to turn her into one of them only for one stray Fellserpent to kill her.

Rieren let her summoned water carry her away. Now, if only she had her sword, she could cut her way out of the Fellserpent. It sadly wasn’t going to be that easy. For, even if she had a blade, slicing open the monster’s sides would only reveal an impermeable tunnel.

Unless, of course, she stopped this foolishness and exited elsewhere.

She let herself fall deeper into the monster’s guts. The water carried her onwards. Thankfully, she was never under too much constricting trouble. What few Credits she still had went to buying a basic sword from the System Shop, with which she could then cut her way forward when things got too tight.

Clearly, the Fellserpent felt its passenger’s unruly actions. It had begun to roar. The sound was muffled, but in an even stranger manner. Within the monster, the noise should still have been loud, but Rieren suspected they were deep underground, where the earth itself was dampening the noise.

Things turned darker, smaller, more constricted. Rieren had been in monstrous guts often enough that claustrophobia had little effect on her now.

She didn’t have to worry about breathing. This monstrous form didn’t have such mortal limits. Nor did she need worry about being dissolved by the Fellserpent’s gut acid, not when her body was protecting her against it. Well, reviving her was more accurate. Every bit if her that got dissolved was soon healed back up by Divine Resilience.

After what felt like a little too long, with the monster’s agony-riddled roars plunging into her ears unceasingly, she finally tore her way out of the Fellserpent’s rear.

An undignified exit, but ah well. It wasn’t as if filth had any meaning for her in this state.

The monster had died by the time Rieren had broken free. She had already torn apart its interior far too much. That it had survived as long as it had was a testament to the toughness of Fellserpents.

Now, onto other problems.

Clutching her heart tightly, she stepped forward. This heart demon… she had to find a way to free herself from it.

Despite the freedom she had gained, she found no real relief. Her spirit continued to tear itself piece by piece from her body. She wasn’t free, yet. Anything but. Curse those monsters to the depths of the Abyss and back. They had forced this on her.

There was no light here as well. They were too deep underground. Her new Arisen eyes could make out the boundaries within darkness, which was enough for her to get going. Still, Rieren wished for some light anyway. All it took was summoning her Essence. It taxed her strained spirit, but the result was interesting.

There was the light blue of it as there always was when she concentrated it enough. But with it, there came two more colours now. Strands of black and gold ran through the blue, riotous and chaotic, unbound by any proper form or following any singular direction. Divine and Abyss-Aspected Essences. So the achievement wasn’t simply picking a moniker.

She was an Arisen in truth.