Demonic Devourer ch. 112

Name: Evelyn Carnelian

Age: 19

Race: ???

Class: Divine Demon/Titan

Level: 200/Irrelevant

Location: The Seventh Circle

I rise, and Sierra rises with me.

Never before have I been so powerful. It feels as if I have been experiencing this world with both eyes closed and both ears shut until this point, and I have finally taken the next step and allowed myself to see.

Sierra’s final bit of meddling has imbued me with power that I cannot yet even comprehend. She has begun to do the same to herself, I realize: the two of us now understand that which the system provides us on a level that nobody else can.

No, I amend, not nobody. Sapphire, Sersui, Scintilla, Hyen—the other Titans surely possess this kind of heady power too.

Before I can take a closer look at it, though, we arrive in the Seventh Circle.

Our arrival is not unceremonious. The gap in reality I slip through to take us in closes slowly, and even as we rematerialize into our humanoid forms, the hell we’ve escaped collapses fully.

I sense it collapse, and I feel it in a very different way from how I did in the Ninth Circle. This time, rather than a sense of impending dread and the call of the primordial chaos behind, I sense the intricacies of the failing reality in much the same way I can sense hot blood pulsing within Sierra’s veins. It’s just comprehensible in a way that it never has been before.

I could spend all day examining every new facet of my overflowing power, but first, I have a fresh hell to deal with.

This time, unlike the last, the system provides me the information I need to know about this place.

The Seventh Circle - The Burning Sky

The divine shadow of Ardael, the Titan of the Burning Sky. There is no breathable air within this hell. Fire does not extinguish within this hell. All gas is perpetually aflame within this hell.

I startle, remembering how Sierra nearly drowned in the Blood Ocean, but it turns out that I have no cause to worry.

Because around us, the air remains. I am the eighteenth Titan, and though I may be the weakest of the Titans, this hell is no true Titan. It is the shadow it casts, and I am more.

Ninety-nine feet away from me, the Seventh Circle burns, but around me, the eternal is temporary and the unbreathable is lifegiving. Impossibilities, because that’s what I am.

“Broken gods,” Sierra whispers. “You did it.”

“You did it,” I point out. “If you’re able to do this for me, you must be on the edge of ascension as well.”

“I am,” she says, “but I’m not quite there. I used the extant authority from the system’s inability to process your ascension to Category 2. I’m not quite at Category 3 yet, and I fear that I lack the anomalous properties needed to break the system’s perceptions enough to allow me to do the same.”

I nod. “Then for now, it’s just me.”

Sierra leans over and kisses me lightly. “And that’s more than enough.”

The Seventh Circle, just like the Eighth, is three-dimensional. The Ninth was easy enough to navigate, but the Burning Sky is just that—a burning sky. There’s thin layers of disparate earth here and there, but there’s no one true ground that I can easily walk on.

Not that I need to. Crimson Storm doesn’t need to be on all the way for me to utilize it as a movement skill, and the sudden leap in power means I have more than enough to keep it running at a low rate, keeping the two of us afloat with the hundreds of thousands of gallons of blood I brought through the hell with us.

Defiance isn’t ready to be used again—not yet. It was tough enough to break through the hells when our conceptual weight was limited to Sierra and I being proto-Titans. Endling made it worse, yes, but that trait still applies to me now, and now I’m a fully-fledged Titan.

I’m still a few steps away from being able to go toe-to-toe with something like Scintilla or Sapphire, but I’m much closer to them than I am to any mortal.

Hopefully, gathering enough fuel will be enough for us to break through the hell once more. If that fails, then I may have to break the hell to pieces and open my eyes once more, finding the slits in reality that allowed me to slide between the Eighth and Seventh Circles.

That new magic wasn’t a skill. Of the experiences I’ve had, I think shifting hells this time felt less like Defiance and more like crossing the threshold of the gate back in a certain temple. Then, my system told me that it was the remnant of a nullspace, and that was why it was so odd, but now I am far more familiar with the art, and I can confidently say that it was not a nullspace that made the gate so odd.

I make a mental note—once we escape the hells, a prospect that is looking less like a possibility and more like a surety, I plan to find the other fae. Adrian said something about the Towers holding them, didn’t he? Maybe I can find them there.

“Hey, Evelyn,” Sierra says, pointing. “Look.”

I look in the direction she points at, seeing nothing, but then I look with senses beyond sight, and I see what she means.

The angel nuke wasn’t just intended to take us out. Or maybe it was, and this is a knock-on effect, but I doubt that an angel as powerful as 191 simply decided to blow itself up on the Eighth Circle just to see us dead when it may have been able to do the same just by fighting.

When that final attack landed, it wasn’t just us it was targeting. The hell beneath us has collapsed entirely, and though we weren’t in the Eighth Circle for long enough to bear witness to the spillover effects of whatever my continued Annihilates did to the Ninth, it’s clear that the hells are connected enough that the angel’s detonation is spreading into our hell.

Already, the hell of the Burning Sky is destabilizing.

“It’s going to be a race against time again, then,” I say.

“It’ll be much easier this time, I wager,” Sierra replies. “We have enough time to make final preparations before we begin to clear the life from this hell, too.”

“Right,” I say. “I still have a lot of unbound authority, correct?”

“You do,” she says. “Can you shape it yourself, or would you like me to again?”

I test my perception. At first, I thought the ERROR magic affinity that I received was something to do with manipulating systemless magic, but evidently, it isn’t. That makes sense, I suppose—the system can’t govern that which exists beyond it.

So, I’m stuck with what I have already, but the knowledge I’ve gained is more than enough.

“I have a lot of spare power,” I say, testing the waters of my existence. “Do you think you could sap some?”

“Me?” Sierra asks, surprised. “If you allowed me to, perhaps I could. But why?”

It goes against everything the EV experiment is supposed to stand for, but I left EV3 behind the first night I saw Sierra sleeping and didn’t kill her.

“You need to increase your Mind (Speed),” I say. “We work best together, and that’s only truly possible on instantaneous timescales if you and I perceive reality the same way.”

“That’s true,” Sierra says, her lips quirking upwards. “So, I have to match a Mind (Speed) of… gods above, 219?”

“You should see the rest of my attributes,” I say. Divine Demon still possesses many of the same characteristics as Relentless Demon, and the eight free attribute points every level have added up across two hundred levels. “I will leave myself open. Take what you need.”

Just as I did before, I give her full reign over my authority. This time, though, I don’t just sit there and wait for her to take action.

After all, I have skills I need to advance, too.

It feels as if the best thing to do right now is to create skills outside the context of the system, but that’s extremely costly, and there’s no guarantee I can create a skill that will work as well as what I already have. More importantly, it’ll be expensive. Defiance requires so much mana that even Sierra and I put together can’t manage casting it without a massive sacrifice.

But I have dozens of other skills I can improve—and importantly, I know how to grow them. I can’t fully follow what Sierra did to bring me over the threshold from proto-Titan to Titan, but advancing my own skills?

That, I can do. Now that I know what it feels like to take one skill to the peak of its power, I know I can do it again.

There is the question of which skills I should be doing it on, though—even though the botched Category ascension has granted me a massive load of authority, I used a sizeable chunk of it to get Bloodpath to become Crimson Storm, and Sierra used another mass to activate my path.

Speaking of the path—I think I have more to do before I fully come into my power. I flex my nullspace, and it flashes into existence around us.

I understand now why Descent, Manifest, and Annihilate are all at an Irrelevant level of progression.

As a true Titan, I no longer need them.

But my nullspace isn’t properly defined. Even with my limited senses, I can tell that the shape of the path is undefined. It’s no more than a much more powerful Carnelian Domain right now, and though that might be enough against the residents of this hell, it’s nowhere near enough to defeat the other Titans.

If I want to reach the peak of power, that’s who I need to defeat.

Even if I didn’t, I promised Sapphire that she would die by my hands.

“You’ve decided to advance,” Sierra says. “Are you trying your skills? Your Divine Demon class? The nullspace?”

She sees the same things I do, then.

“Skills first,” I say. “It would be utterly embarrassing to set the framework to kill a Titan and then fall to one of its minions because I ran out of magic. I want the flexibility that my skills provide.”

My soon to be fellow Titan chuckles even as she manipulates my authority deftly, weaving it into her own soul. “True enough. What are you thinking of progressing?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I reply. “Ideally, it would be skills that my nullspace will not cover.”

As it stands, my nullspace involves perfect control over blood, divine, and demonic magic, just like my domain. Since I’ve been granted the twin titles of Titan of the Broken Hell and Titan of the Paradox, I imagine that I’ll have a similar divine and demonic contrast in the final nullspace. Impossibilities abound.

“You may be thinking about this the wrong way,” Sierra says. “In the end, your nullspace will be the strongest weapon in your arsenal. I doubt you will ever have a reason not to draw on it. The primary issue behind a nullspace is the amount of power it takes from you to use it.”

While I try to formulate a reply, I sense reality splinter beside us. A foundation cracks, and I have to use Crimson Storm to evacuate us a dozen miles away before the entire chunk of the hell we were just in simply falls away, revealing the void beneath.

“That angel’s death was far more powerful than a last stand has any right to be,” Sierra comments. “Its aftereffects are going to shake the hells further.”

“That can’t be good for the world above,” I say.

“From what little I know,” she says, frowning, “It will not be.”

“That’s tomorrow’s problem.”

“Tomorrow’s problem,” she agrees. “As we were saying before, though—I would advise you advance the skills that are important to you. Do not think with your nullspace in mind. Follow your heart.”

I think on that, then shrug. “Alright. Let’s see what we have.”

First and foremost, I want to advance the entirety of my Blood Magic. The overarching skill is interesting in that it isn’t the same kind of authority that wraps the individual skills—it’s less of a single powerful aspect of myself that sticks out, but a frame that collates them. One of the skills it oversees—Crimson Storm—already breaks the mold, extending far beyond the others.

Adding to the frame, I find, affects all of them except the skill already at the peak of progression.

So I add more, and I feed the skill until it cannot be fed anymore.

Blood Magic (Gold) advanced to Blood Magic (Sapphire)!

You have reached the pinnacle of blood magic. There is no magus alive that can challenge your superiority over the field of blood.

Blood Magic - Hemokinesis (Gold) advanced to Blood Magic - Hemokinesis (Sapphire)!

You have absolute control over all loose blood within 999 miles of your current location.

Blood Magic - Hemorrhage (Gold) advanced to Blood Magic - Eviscerate (Sapphire)!

Control the blood of living beings within 9 miles of yourself. At a range of 9 feet or less, you can make even a god bleed.

Instead of advancing Blood Clone further, I tear the skill from its foundation just like I did to Relentless, using it to feed the rest of my skills. Follow your heart, Sierra said. Though I think that a Sapphire-tier cloning skill could be useful, the Gold-level clone already had intelligence that was not mine. I do not want to unleash an uncontrolled copy of myself.

Blood Magic - Shapeshift (Gold) advanced to Blood Magic - Trueshift (Sapphire)!

You can change your form at will. You may Trueshift into a creature as small as 9 atoms or as large as 999 feet.

Blood Magic - Blood Sense (Gold) advanced to Blood Magic - Blood Sense (Sapphire)!

When you activate this skill, you may sense all the blood that is or was, living or dying. Current range: 9,999 miles.

I still have plenty of authority left over, though not enough to boost more than a couple of the skills I have remaining. I decide against taking Stealth, Acting, Imitation, and Antimemetic Cloak to Sapphire, because I have no illusions on how those will work against enemies of true power, and those are the only ones I care about now. Wraithfire and Corrupt don’t get a boost, either for the same reason. Firearms can’t go past Gold, and neither can Knifefighting; neither of those are necessary at this stage of my existence.

That leaves Restore Self, Abyssal Echo, Ethereal Tempest, Appraise, Radiant Aura, Smite, Soulrend, and, of course, Devour.

I think I can manage one or two more skills before I’m fresh out of authority to twist and abuse, so I need to pick carefully.

Restore Self - no. I kill enough people that Devour serves my purpose better, since I steal their vitality for mine.

Abyssal Echo or Ethereal Tempest are also out, since I’m pretty sure my raw presence outperforms Abyssal Echo and the latter skill doesn’t scale all the way up to Sapphire. Radiant Aura has the same issue.

I spend some time thinking on whether I want to scale up Appraise—but I decide against that, too. The primary benefit of Appraise is giving me more information, but the scope of what I want to know about the world extends past what the system can offer me.

That leaves Smite, Soulrend, and Devour.

I think I can work with this.

Taking all three of these skills to Sapphire tier costs too much, but I don’t need to take Smite and Soulrend separately.

They are, after all, two sides of the same coin, just like me. I received them when I defied what was meant to be possible—when I took divinity into my demonic body. They were my first taste of real power.

Though I learned them separately, their fate has always been to be one.

I merge them together, breaking the frame that holds them together and letting the divine swirl together with the demonic, and I forge their flame anew.

Smite and Soulrend have been consumed!

New skill unlocked: Soulsmite

Tier: Diamond

Tear your opponent’s souls from their body, reducing their ability to recover, then embody the power of the heavens and strike with a focused blast of radiant energy upon a single enemy with a devastating blow. Stuns the target.

Now this, I can formulate into something greater.

Soulsmite (Diamond) advanced to Heaven and Hell (Sapphire)!

As an angelic demon, you break the bounds of what is possible, and you break your foes. This skill can be triggered when you connect an attack with a target or at distances under 999 feet. If the target possesses a soul and is not immune to both divine and demonic magic, tear its soul to shreds and return it to the primordial void.

If the target does not possess a soul, it dies.

And with that, I have just enough to amplify one final skill.

Devour wasn’t my first skill, but it’s the one that’s been the most important to me. It is the skill I have used the most. It is the skill that defines me.

Shaping it feels like embracing an old friend.

Devour (Diamond) advanced to Devour (Sapphire)!

You are the only one in this world to possess this skill.

Evelyn Carnelian, there is a truth to you that you have never acknowledged, but has been with you since the beginning.

You advance.

You kill.

You protect.

You devour.

I close my eyes, reveling in the surge of power that blasts through me.

The world fractures around us more, and it isn’t until after I’ve taken Sierra and I away from the vicinity of the reality breaks that I realize that it’s not only the aftereffects of the Eighth Circle’s collapse that’s blasting through the burning Seventh.

I… recognize some of the presences that have arrived.

Forty-four souls crack their way into the Seventh Circle of hell.

Locate: Sapphire Clearwater.

Not here.

Disappointing.

But as I run through the other names that it could possibly be, a smile slowly forms on my lips.

Twenty-one names. Twenty-one researchers.

Locate: Marie Jade.

An hour ago, this may have been an even match. I have no doubt that Marie is at the top of her field—I can’t Appraise her from here, but I remember how much more powerful she was than me when we met.

Now, though?

Now, my grin turns feral.

I have so much to show them.

I am the eighteenth Titan, and one day, the world will break before me.

Today, I’m content with forty-four souls.

“Here we go,” Sierra says.