Demonic Devourer ch. 111

You have advanced to level 200. Category 2 achieved.

The pace of the system’s notification is different this time, though the voice is unchanging. It’s as if the intelligence that pervades the system isn’t entirely sure what to make of me.

By reaching Category 2, you have gained the following inherent bonuses:

Access to a Domain(s). Domains are the pinnacle of your power. Domains allow free-flow usage of your power, eliminating mana requirements. Trapping an opponent within a domain will almost certainly spell death for them.

ERROR: ESTABLISHED DOMAIN DETECTED.

ERROR: ESTABLISHED NULLSPACE DETECTED.

ERROR: ERROR. ERROR.

Still nearly paralyzed within the moment, I frown even as I track the angel nuke’s progression towards us. I can feel the searing heat of it across my entire body, and with my blindness to systemless authority removed, I can also feel the hell breaking beneath the force of the blast.

That can’t just be an angel. Even at Category 4, there’s no way a non-Titan monster is capable of breaking a hell on this level. The raw power its death exudes is far greater than anything either of us proto-Titans can put out.

But that’s a question for after we survive this. If we survive this.

Back to what’s important right now, the system can’t process my evolution correctly.

And why should it? From Sierra’s understanding of the system, Category 2 is associated with gaining a domain. I’ve had one of those since Category 0. The system has always treated me differently, and the weight of its own decisions is catching up to it now.

It doesn’t understand what I am anymore, does it?

I’ve spent too long thinking of the system as an inexorable truth of the world that we have to find a way around. Over the course of my short life, it’s become increasingly clear that although the system may hold absolute dominion over the majority of those who exist under it, it’s no more perfect an arbitrator of power than any living being.

If it lives, I can kill it.

Not that I can even make it bleed right now—but treating the system as a living being makes its self-contradictory actions make more sense. If it’s as fallible as the mortals it governs, it’s no wonder that there is territory it cannot cover.

Unfortunately, this conclusion won’t send me away from this detonation.

My ascension is incomplete. When I reached Category 1, I was already starting to break the boundaries of what was supposed to be possible under the system, but I’ve become a Titan and discovered what kind of magic lies beyond it since then. I realize too late that while this doesn’t only mean I can do more—it means that the system can do less.

I reach out with my authority sense once more, and to my surprise, I find that the shape of my power has changed.

Where there once was an overflowing bucket, there is now a roiling lake. My power churns, begging to be free, but there’s so much more of it now, and it’s far more complex.

I look to the angel once more.

We’re running out of time.

But I can feel the parts of my authority that are incomplete. The parts that the system has begun to mold before realizing that it no longer knows how to shape me.

Alright, then. If the system can’t shape me, I’ll do it myself.

Just like I always have.

#

Angelic Tower — Root: The 25th Floor

Objective: Ascend [1/8]

You have become greater, but you are not yet great enough.

Climb higher than anyone has climbed and live to tell the tale. This is a multi-tier objective. Separate rewards will be granted at the 50th, 75th, 100th, 150th, 200th, 300th and 342nd floors.

25th floor reward: 12,500 XP + Gold-tier trait: Remembrance

Hidden Objective: Take what was yours [COMPLETE]

You have manipulated the primal chaos and forced your authority upon it. You have proven yourself worthy of your magic.

Trait earned: Faetouched

Faetouched

You have spoken to a fae and survived using its own ways. A veil lifts upon the world, traveler; you begin to see what is yours.

Remembrance

Those who take the hidden trials of the Towers oft recall naught but the violence they committed and the sacrifices they make. You, though, friend of those who strive to become divinity, will not forget.

Your Hydrokinetic Class advanced from level 215 to level 246!

You have gained 31 stat points.

You have gained 155 skill points.

Adrian imagines himself collapsing under the weight of the system notifications.

Could’ve used you a moment ago, he thinks.

The darkness has faded away now, revealing the chasm around him. Terrifyingly small squares of an off-white marble-like material he can’t identify form themselves into a trail off into the distance, where a glowing door beckons.

At this height in the tower, it makes no physical sense for there to be a bottomless chasm on the 25th floor, but magic is magic. Adrian figures it could be a domain of some sort, but he doesn’t want to bother thinking about it.

“The mortal has found the path,” the voice says amusedly. “And it remembers.”

Farewell, traveler.

Adrian takes a cautious step forward. Once he confirms that the floating steps will hold his weight, he continues forth.

This, he recognizes, is a major step forward. He refuses to dwell on it for too long, because he knows that he’d spiral into either extreme panic or elation, but he thinks on it enough to understand a glimpse of what he’s done.

Adrian used his domain without the system. He remembers using his domain without the system. Magic is… not only performed by that?

Then what does the system do?

“Nope,” he tells himself. “Not going there.”

Before he figures out what to do with this newfound information, he needs to find Kirin. That man is his ticket up—he, too, has systemless skills, and he still has the power of someone a full Category above Adrian.

He wonders if the other operator also has Remembrance.

“Testing, testing, is this thing on?” he says as he carefully jumps from platform to platform, tapping his Communication Stone. “If you can hear me, I cleared the trial on the 25th floor.”

No response. Adrian shrugs and moves on.

As he does, more notifications brush through his vision, like the system is stretching its newly-unlocked muscles. None of them are terribly relevant to him—mostly random objectives he didn’t know he had, giving him a few dozen to a few hundred points of experience that isn’t quite enough to take him to level 247.

He bounces from platform to platform, using his Hydrokinesis to keep himself stable when he nearly falls—and broken gods, he’s glad that his skills are back.

It feels different now, he realizes. Now that he has a new trait and a new understanding of what it means to perform magic, the skill feels rougher around the edges but also more free, like the clamps holding it in place have just been released.

He’s not sure how much he likes the sensation, but this is the right track. It has to be.

Once he’s on stable ground again, just shy of the threshold to the 26th floor, Adrian checks the attributes the system has affixed to him again and distributes his new points. Body (Speed) gets the bulk of it, though he also adds a chunk to Magic (Regen). His mana still hasn’t recovered from the domain usage.

His highest stat is past 150 now. Adrian is pretty proud of that.

As for the skill points… he doesn’t affix those yet. He has a pretty wide array of skills, and he wants to save them until he’s more sure about what he wants to do.

Then he has a thought, and he checks the options for his Warrior class evolution again.

Just as before, there’s the classes his friends share—Relentless Demon from Evelyn and Blue Mage from Sierra. Both useless to him.

That’s not what he’s looking for, of course.

Class: ???

You have gone above and beyond, and you have begun to break through the impossible. Therefore, you now have the choice of sacrificing your Warrior class.

Adrian blinks. He rereads the description. Then he rereads it again.

“You have got to be fucking with me,” he says, not sure who he was addressing. All that work, and he was rewarded with a class that just… eliminated fifty levels of progress? What kind of a deal was that?

He sighs, long and deep. Maybe it’s the sort of thing where the system would offer him more power if he waited longer? That isn’t unheard of, and the few stories that Evelyn was willing to share about her colorful history with the system seemed to point at that.

“While I’m here,” he says out loud, “Do you mind telling me more about the system?”

Adrian knows very, very little about the fae; mostly, he knows that they’re not to be fucked with and that most of them are old as dirt. The one that seems to be running this trial demonstrated knowledge of the system. Maybe he can learn something here?

“Traveler, you have taken only your first step into the waters of the framework that binds,” the pervasive voice said. It sounded amused, which was an utterly terrifying sound coming from a fae. “Seek ever higher in the spire and refine your purpose to be singular. You will learn no more from this Blessed One.”

Adrian bites back a curse. “Thank you, Blessed One.”

He waits at the threshold alone, thinking while he waits for Kirin.

The fae refuses to respond to him any more no matter how much he tries to poke and prod at it, so he turns its words over again and again instead.

Refine your purpose to be singular. Adrian felt the power in the word purpose, and he knows that meant something significant.

What did the fae mean? What purpose does Adrian have? He is already acting single-mindedly, wasn’t he? He wants Sierra and Evelyn back, and to do that, he needs power.

The fae has already demonstrated a frightening amount of knowledge, so he figures it knows his desire.

Then it must mean something else, he concludes, dearly wishing he’d spent more time researching fae before his entire world went to shit.

Purpose. What else could it mean? Drive, will, desire—no, those were all too similar. What else had infused the words with the same power that purpose had? That could be a clue.

Adrian thinks over his memories, recalling the sensations that the fae’s last message to him sparked.

Unfortunately, he can’t remember anything from before the fight, but maybe he doesn’t have to.

Purpose resonates on the same frequency that the framework that binds does. While that phrase is cryptic too, Adrian isn’t an idiot. He can guess from context.

“Refine your purpose,” he mutters to himself. “Refine your framework. Make your system singular.”

That sends a chill up his spine.

Does the fae know the option he’s just been presented?

Adrian is about to evaluate its words for the dozenth time when the world begins to shake around him.

#

The Eighth Circle, collapsing; frozen in a moment

I don’t know if I can stop an explosion of this power. At my current stage, it’s not even worth trying. The radiant light will scour my magic from the vaporizing blood ocean just as easily as it will atomize our flesh.

Trying to merely overpower it is suicide. I don’t have time to completely rewire us and try to find a way to create an exit with Defiance.

Right now, all I can hope to do is flee.

I shape myself where the system refuses to. Although it does not know what to grant me from my second Category, it shoves power into me, overloading my body until its authority spills over and floods outwards.

That flood is mine, and I reach out and take it for myself, not even entirely sure what I’m doing except that I need to run.

Of all the myriad skills I’ve developed, I’ve always leaned towards attacking. Mobility has only been useful as a means to the end of violence, so the one skill I do have is pathetically slow in the face of this angel.

But I can sense that skill. Bloodpath, Gold tier, acquired as Bloodstep all the way back in the Underground Site where I was created. I can feel the shape of the power; I can sense how it’s affixed to me.

This is no time for subtlety. My skin begins to crack under the radiant pressure of the light, even in this fraction of a fraction of a moment, and I start to shovel power in.

Even when I do it as fast as I can, it’s like trying to fit an ocean through a straw. There’s so much new authority granted to me just for advancing Categories that I can’t hope to expend all of it.

That steady trickle, though, is more than the skill has ever received, and I recall the framework that binds the skills together. I draw on my eidetic memory, carving power into the form I need it to act in, and my skill flowers.

Bloodpath (Gold) has advanced to Bloodstream (Diamond)!

Become a disparate, disconnected entity, capable of infecting any source of blood and spreading yourself through it. Lasts as long as your mana does.

Bloodstream (Diamond) has advanced to Bloodstream (Tourmaline)!

You are every blood cell around you. You can now teleport and reform through any body of blood within a mile of you.

Bloodstream (Tourmaline) advanced to Crimson Storm (Sapphire)!

Blood is your element. When this skill is active, you control all blood within a nine-mile radius. You and those you bring into the eye of the storm cannot die until the last drop has been annihilated or this skill fails.

I’m still holding Sierra, and the final form of my formerly humble Bloodstep can take her with me with effort. With a 393 in Magic (Meta), it’s simplicity itself.

There’s nothing around us but blood.

I activate Crimson Storm for the first time, and the drain on my pool of magic is immediate and harsh, mana greedily flowing into the unbalanced monster I’ve created.

I reach to become part of the blood ocean—and a presence intrudes into my mind.

Information floods me, but I disregard everything irrelevant.

Hyen. Titan of the Blood Ocean.

This may be a shadow, but the Blood Ocean is yet my domain.

With a Sapphire tier skill, even the authority of a Titan struggles against mine.

And I still have 100 attribute points remaining. I put each and every one of them into Magic (Power), and for the first time, I feel the will of a Titan fall in the path of another.

Not today, I hiss back.

Sierra and I turn to blood zero point three milliseconds before the angel’s death tears us apart.

Then, there’s nothing but light.

#

Angelic Tower — Root: The 25th Floor

“Shit!” Adrian shouts as his entire world tilts. It’s only with a sudden jet of hardened water that he’s able to keep himself from sliding into the abyss beside him.

The shaking does not subside for a matter of minutes. Thirty seconds in, the scraps of light that Adrian navigates by flicker, brighten, and then blink out completely. His magic shifts, and he finds himself struggling to hold onto the reins.

He persists, because that’s what he must do. It’s what anyone in his situation should be able to do, he thinks. Even as Hydrokinesis grows harder to hold on to, he stays there. Jess would have. Beaumont would have. If Sierra or Evelyn were here, they wouldn’t even struggle.

Even ensconced in his watery sphere, Adrian can feel the shaking. It’s not a physical sensation, because he feels it in his core even after he manages to activate Fluid Form, which removes much of his sense of balance.

When it finally stops, the light returns, bringing the platforms back with it. Suddenly, Adrian’s skills restore themself to full power—and it’s only as the system flickers back on into his vision that he realizes that it was off in the first place.

So that’s why he was struggling.

“Traveler,” the Blessed One running the trial says. For the first time, it doesn’t sound like it’s in control. “A fragment of the world’s shadow has been shattered. The hells reflect their damage upon the surface. Fly, run, and climb, traveler. You know not of the gravity of the fall of the foundation.”

Adrian struggles to pull himself together, his pitiful mana reserves nearly exhausted.

“Hold on,” he says. “You’re saying the hells are breaking?”

That’s the best guess he has at the meaning of the fae’s statement. He wishes that fae were less fond of speaking in riddles.

“Climb, traveler.”

It said that the damage is being reflected upon the surface, he thinks. A moment later, he realizes, Sierra and Evelyn.

If he takes what the fae says to be true, whatever’s happening in the hells is so significant that it’s affecting even the tower, which itself is a layer or two removed from proper reality, how are they faring?

That, of course, assuming that the fae isn’t lying. With no access to anything outside the tower, Adrian can only guess. He doesn’t see a reason for something that’s basically a tower entity lying to him, but it pays to be wary.

“Remain within the trial at your own peril, traveler,” the Blessed One says.

Adrian curses. “Kirin still isn’t out.”

“This challenge and that of the traveler’s companion are not one and the same,” it intones. “You will not find your companion here, traveler.”

“You couldn’t have told me that earlier?”

The fae’s only response is a laugh.

Adrian doesn’t waste another second. He passes through the threshold.

#

The Eighth Circle, moments from total collapse

Less than a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a second in, the angel’s death annihilates a square mile of blood. I redirect all of my magic into Crimson Storm, pouring every piece of myself into my newly developed skill. There’s still an ocean of unbound authority waiting for me to use it, but for now, I have to survive.

For the time being, Sierra and I are one, both of our consciousnesses infusing the Titan’s shadow around us. She realizes what’s happening a fraction of a second after I do, and though her response is slower than mine, she pours her own magic in too, assisting with the Sapphire-tier skill.

The entirety of my focus is directed on the skill, and in the instants where we flee from the oncoming scouring devastation, I learn that Crimson Storm lives up to its tier. My speed is practically unlimited while there’s more blood to ‘infect,’ and so even at the absurd pace of detonation, we easily outspeed the angel strike.

It also grants me hemokinesis on a scale that the actual Hemokinesis skill doesn’t come close to. As we flee, we finally start to encounter the demons that we were missing earlier. They exist in pockets within the blood, hiding out in sparse communities. When I pass through them, I simply become part of their blood and tear them apart from the inside out. Their deaths fuel me, and rather than break them apart for experience, I take every piece of their magic and feed it into mine, providing me the extra reserves I need to keep Crimson Storm running.

I am a devouring storm of blood, and nothing can stop me.

Except, of course, for the angel behind us.

We travel hundreds of miles in the blink of an eye, and though Sierra and I outpace the explosion, it’s not slowing down either.

While my magic is being replenished by the demons I slaughter, it’s not coming fast enough. Crimson Storm is a Sapphire tier skill, and it consumes more of my power than all of my other skills combined.

The explosion isn’t slowing down, and the raw devastation it inflicts upon the fabric of this hell is far beyond anything Sierra or I managed in the Ninth Circle. There’s no time for cracks to spiderweb out from the attack simply because of its raw speed—but everything it touches vanishes into the void, obliterated.

I need to start using the rest of my authority, and I need to do it fast.

So, I split my attention. Half of my mind remains focused on sending our existence through the blood ocean even as the hell falls apart around us, and the other begins to work on the ocean of power the system hasn’t managed to affix to me.

And as I start, I feel another presence with me, guiding my hand. She’s not nearly as fast as me, but she doesn’t need to be to understand more than I do.

Sierra.

Determination, she signals, and I mirror the sentiment.

We will escape this hell.

#

Angelic Tower — Root: The 26th Floor

Once he’s on the 26th floor, finding Kirin is easy. The other operator locates him via the Communication Stone and whatever item or skill the Relic Hunter happens to have on him—Adrian doesn’t ask, and Kirin doesn’t provide an answer.

Convincing him is a different story.

“You won’t survive a ten-floor jump, let alone twenty-four,” Kirin says. “By the fiftieth floor, Category 2 monsters are commonplace. It’ll be a challenge for you to get through one of those, and there isn’t only going to be one.”

“I need to go through another trial,” Adrian replies. “The fae gave me important information.”

Kirin gives him a sidelong glance. “You remember your trial?”

“I have a trait. Didn’t you feel the world shaking?”

“I did,” Kirin says grimly. “I don’t remember the trial, but I remember that.”

“The fae mentioned something about the hells being damaged,” Adrian says. “Didn’t you say that—“

“Shit,” Kirin says, cutting him off. “If that’s true, then they must have followed through on their contingency.”

“They’re going to be in trouble,” Adrian says. “Our timetable is moving up. If we want to affect anything, we need to hurry.”

“You’re not going to survive the fiftieth floor as you are,” Kirin argues.

To be completely honest, Adrian isn’t sure about this either. He doesn’t know if the fae is telling him the truth; he doesn’t know why he’s able to disconnect himself from the system; he doesn’t know, if selecting the ??? class evolution will do anything positive for him; he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know.

Any normal person would play it safe here, but Adrian knows he can’t be normal if he wants to come out of this alive.

“Then I’ll need to become more than I am,” he says, and he selects the final class evolution with crossed fingers.

Class evolution selected.

Warrior -> ??? -> None

Friend of Titans and recaller of our kind, you have learned how to manipulate the power that we bound.

Future fae-friend, traveler, Adrian, accept our gift of singular purpose. Remember what lies in wait. Find us.

Stop the original Titan.

Adrian winces at the unfamiliarly harsh voice of the system, then again at the words.

And then again when his newly awakened senses tell him that part of him is being ripped away, torn from his soul, broken gods it hurt IT HURT—

Then, a fleeting instant later, a rush of power.

The ocean floods into him, and he welcomes it.

Warrior authority redirected.

Soul and memory profile complete.

Experience requirements adjusted.

Experience requirements met.

Affinity requirements met.

Soul alignment met.

Singularity met.

You have advanced to level 250 260 275 296 300!

Category 2 -> 3

Initiating ascension…

Singularity actualized: The Ocean’s Waves

#

The Eighth Circle, broken

We shape authority, reshape it, and reshape it again. Even though we operate in milliseconds, the process feels slow, methodical.

This is not something we can afford to fail on.

Sierra’s mind is slower than mine, but her intent guides me. Though neither of us have a blueprint to work with, we create our own. We brought our Defiance into this world out of nothing, and we build the skill up to work within it.

Unlike Crimson Storm, Defiance never fit within the framework of the system. There was no framework enforcing itself to guide the skill—hells, its rarity is marked as ??? within the system.

It’s nigh-impossible to shape it, and we’re rapidly running out of room within the hell. Though this may be the reflection of the Blood Ocean, no ocean is truly bottomless. I can sense the edge of this plane approaching us. It’s a region where we stand a better chance at breaking through, but I can’t use Defiance and Crimson Storm at the same time, and the moment I drop Crimson Storm, we’re dead.

Everything else in this hell is already dead. They just don’t know it yet.

So instead of trying to upgrade the skill, we feed it, pouring my systemless authority into it. Sierra’s firm instructions show me how to widen the amount of power I can affix to a single skill, and it balloons outwards, unbalancing my.

I seize onto it. Manipulating authority without a system is about intent as much as it is action, and the two of us have a single, shining purpose here.

The power I’m pouring into it still isn’t enough, though. I can feel the skill opening up, blossoming into a flower entirely unlike anything else I have, but it won’t activate without a sufficient fuel source, and I’m using literally all my mana just to keep us alive right now.

We need to do the impossible. We’ve always had to do the impossible.

Sierra’s soul brushes against mine, laden with information, and I pause for the briefest of instants, losing us dozens of miles of progress.

I… can’t comprehend what she wants to do. Her framing is far more complex than mine, and she wants to stop guiding me and take over instead.

A leap of faith, her soul whispers to mine.

I nearly pause again, but remember not to doom us a subjective instant before another nation’s worth of blood is annihilated.

I am Evelyn Carnelian, I think, and I advance, no matter the cost.

Today, here and now, the cost is to trust in another.

Trust is not something I was created to have.

If I let her into my soul, let Sierra’s hands mold me, she could kill me. She could change me forever. She could make me her slave.

The amalgam that I was programmed with bristles at the very thought, but my heart and mind are in agreement.

I relinquish my authority to her, ignoring the screaming in my soul.

#

For a frozen eternity, there is pain.

#

Sierra

She swims in a sea of Evelyn’s memories, and she remembers. She remembers the paths offered to her. Remembers how they would all make her a proto-Titan with no choice but to be a shadow of something greater.

She remembers Evelyn rejecting them all.

What, she muses, makes a Titan path? That question has plagued her ever since she dropped into a hell alongside the woman she loves.

In the end, she decides, it is a combination of factors.

One: it reflects a location. The Nameless Sea, the Shifting Sands, the Blood Ocean, the Forgotten Realm.

Two: it reflects a truth. The ocean takes, unforgiving; the sands bury and burn; the blood drowns; the forgotten forget.

A location. This one is simple. A circle of hell, home of demons, broken by a dying angel.

A truth. This one is not. What truth binds them? What truth lies at Sierra’s core? Evelyn’s?

After life and death together, Sierra thinks she knows.

Sierra. Her life is built on balance and contradiction alike. She gives to take, and takes to give. She is intensely loyal but can be fiercely indifferent. Her magic is black and white, life and death, order and chaos.

Evelyn. A girl who has defied what is possible and survived against all odds. A Category 0 with the power to forge a domain. A demonic angel. One who is built to trust nobody, but has allowed Sierra into her vulnerable soul.

Again and again, they have defied the world. Sierra’s magic rests on a precarious edge of balance. Evelyn’s has overcome impossibility.

The hells reflect that. Sierra realized this after interrogatting Del; she lives and breathes balance. Every action has its reaction, and the hells are a reaction to the world above.

Evelyn breaks the cycle. She always has. Here and now, the angel’s corpse does the same.

They are not so different, Sierra and Evelyn, and Sierra prays to the the only god she truly trusts that her understanding is sufficient.

I can do this, she tells herself, and she pours everything she is into her authority.

The system granted Evelyn power, but failed to direct it.

Sierra takes the reins.

We will escape this hell, she thinks.

#

Evelyn

It happens less than a quarter of a millisecond before we hit the edge of the hell.

My Category ascension completes, and its direction shatters my wildest expectations.

ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.

ERR—alternative instructions enabled.

Category 2 achieved!

By reaching Category 2, you gain the following inherent bonuses what is yours now and forever:

Path of the Broken Hell

A hell does not break. A reflection does not disappear.

And yet, in this moment, it has. An existence that is a constant of the world, removed: now, all that remains is the primordial void.

The primordial void, and the paradox that resides within. You, Titan of the Paradox, survive.

You have gained the Demonic magic affinity at 9th level.

You have gained the Divine magic affinity at 9th level.

You have gained the ERROR magic affinity at 9th level.

Thank you, Sierra, I think.

I open my eyes, and we step into the Seventh Circle.

#

Elsewhere

The original fae looks beyond the veil, and for the first time, it smiles, for the one that may end its original foe has finally awakened.

_____

Author's note: Oooh boy. This one's long! Hope you enjoyed. As always, feedback is appreciated.