Background chapter: asmodeus

I was born a greater imp, and managed to get lucky enough during my life for two evolutions, into a greater devil. I was a chef in my last life, that’s all I remember about it. I was born too two wild greater imps, and was captured to be used as a slave when I was only a week old, it was while I was a slave that I evolved into a devil.

My first week of this life was pretty standard, kill things to eat. That was pretty much it. it was while I was out hunting with some other imps of my generation that we got ambushed by a group of slavers. After that I never saw the other imps again.

After a month of training in the basics of reading, magic, and household chores I was sold to an old nekotar who wanted some help around the house. After a few months in her service she discovered my talent with magic, and took up educating me in many forms of magic. I was fascinated by magic, desireing to learn as much about it as I could.

During this time I evolved into a devil, which greatly excited me. I could feel mana pulsing through me where as an imp it was a best a trickle. Naturally I did something stupid, I tried to cast a spell using as much mana as I could, and it backfired, I lost consentraion and so I lost control of the mana which them exploaded out at various points of my body. Luckily I had managed to move most of the mana to my skin so the damage wasn’t life threatening, but having all of your skin and some of the muscle underneath ripped of of your body all at once is increadibly exrutaiting. The old nekotar, after hearing the explosion, found me lying still in a puddle of my own blood, I had fainted due to the pain.

A week of treatment latter and I was back on my feet,  although now I was no longer allowed to practice magic on my own.

As the years went by I could tell that my master was getting older, she started to lose track of things and had trouble seeing. Eventually she was completely bedridden, no magic she could get a hold of could cure old age. The average nekotar lives around 150 years old, she was approaching the end of her second century. A week after her two hundred and first birthday the slave colar around my neck shattered, which only happens when the master dies, or sets a slave free. At that moment I sat down and cried.

The next morning I found her dead in her bed, with a smile on her face. What she was think as she approached the end of her life I will never know, but I burned her body, along with her house. It was what she asked me to do only a month before.

I decided to start working as a freelance mage, basicly people pay me to do things with magic that they either can’t do or don’t want to do. It wasn’t the most stable or enjoyable work, but it allowed me to eat and occasionally do something fun. One day I was just fed up with this type of life and decided to join the military.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The first couple months were difficult, to say the least. I had never worked so hard in my life, at night I barely made it to my bunk before I would pass out, every morning I woke up all of my muscles ached until I streached them out, when I got a day off I I didn’t even wake up. After a while I got used to It however, the exercises that before were agony distilled were now a comfortable warm up.

After three months I saw my first battle, a small dungeon dive. The necromancer in charge of support got himself killed on the second floor, and the captain in charge of our group of recruits wouldn’t let us retreat, so we had to press forward. The dungeon only had five floors, it was a young one that had been tamed only a month before, so it shouldn’t have been too difficult, assuming we had a necromancer.

Almost as soon as the necromancer died most of the undead he was supporting started to die off, but the ones that didn’t got more powerful. At the time I didn’t understand what was going on but now I do, when a necromancer dies one of two things happen to his undead, they rot or they don’t. when they rot all of the mana that supports their life leaves their body, the necromancer is no longer present to seal it in and replace it. when they don’t rot they can absorb the mana being released from the other undead very easily, it is something natural undead do to stay alive but because of where it comes from these undead can absorb it much easier. But enough of that tanget.

We had to fight off both the powered up undead and the dungeon’s creatures, we didn’t have many casualties but we did have many injuries. Roughly a third were uncapable of fighting, but they couldn’t leave. We had to either beat the dungeon or die, if we left early we would be chased off of this continent.

The dive that was supposed to take us all of two days took us two weeks, and we lost a little more than half of our numbers, a total of fifty people died. When the man in charge of training recruits recived the report, he just sighed. We had all passed the test, with flying colors in fact.

That night no one was celebrating, everyone had lost a friends, some reletives, one man even lost his twin sister, he killed himself within the week. The next day I was transferred over to the front lines to do grunt work, the same stuff all new recruits do before they prove themselves.

We were currently at war with our neighboring country, had been for decades. I had to take part in semi-frequent raids on our neighbor, as well as defend against their attacks. During this time I met the love of my life, a succubus named Lilith.

We fought together, side by side. We had a sort of competition going on between the two of us, who could kill more during a raid, the loser bought the winner drinks. On our days off we would meet up and go dungeon diving or go out to dinner at a local restraint.

I truly enjoyed the time I spent with her, but as you know it didn’t last. I won’t go into how she died, you already know what I know, but that is enough for now, perhaps you’ll hear the rest of the story latter, perhaps not.

Background chapter: asmodeus