Demonic Devourer ch. 107

Divinity

Through the chaos, you have achieved a feat beyond the scope of the system. Though you may not yet be a true god, you have taken the first step towards becoming one. The system cannot grant  dominion over that which is beyond its purview, but it can loosen restrictions. System-enforced authority blindness has been removed.

Defiance

Tier: ???

To escape this hell. At great expense, you may open a rift of your own; one that leads not to the primordial void, but the thin layer constructed atop it.

The description is not one that we decide alone. Sierra and I shape the skill, but we are not yet gods. It’s trouble enough holding the untouched power—that which the system calls authority—in one place, let alone shaping it. We define the broad strokes; the system does the rest.

One day, I promise us both, we will be more.

To be more than what we are now. To be more than the system that defines us, than the enemies that hold us back, than the remnants of the dead gods.

For now, though, this is enough.

The skill snaps into place for both of us with sharp, crystal clarity. It places itself in the same group as my proto-Titan skills, interestingly enough. That, of course, begs the question as to why. Are Titans naturally capable of creating their own skills? We know that they function independently of the system, but how much so? This skill doesn’t even have a rarity or a tier, while the others have been listed under “Irrelevant.” Why? Why, why, why?

A question for later. We need to move, and we need to do it soon.

“Evelyn,” Sierra says, her eyes brighter than I’ve ever seen them before. “We did it. We broke through.”

“Not yet we haven’t,” I reply, looking around us. “The skill says that it can only be activated ‘at great expense.’ I don’t know about you, but it sounds like we’re going to need more fuel.”

Sure enough, when I try to activate Defiance for the first time, nothing happens. A great emptiness fills me—a raw, primal hunger that I haven’t felt in a lifetime.

I burn with the need to kill, devour, consume, progress.

“There are still quite a few demon nests alive in this hell,” Sierra says—the understatement of a century. She tilts her head, gesturing grandly. “Shall we?”

#

Alone, it was easy enough to eliminate demonic settlements. One Manifest done with the appropriate amount of preparation or enough Annihilates in a row did the trick.

With Sierra, it’s simplicity itself.

We kill and we kill and we kill and we kill. At first, we take the route that we’ve determined is the least harmful to the integrity of the hell around us. We drag buildings and demon lords into our nullspaces, preserving them in a reality that they cannot break free from.

That most of them cannot break free from, I amend. There are instances where a Category 2 or 3 demon successfully attempts a domain manifestation or the actualization of a concept, but that’s when we allow the esoteric rules of our nullspace to initialize and obliterate them.

Both of our Paths are slowly coming into our own, reflecting the truths we have forged ourselves around. Sierra’s is a tenuous balance between life and death; a self-contradictory space where opposing power matches those caught within them. Mine is more clear-cut.

I am Evelyn Carnelian, and you are not. I advance, I kill, and I protect; but nothing that needs my protection enters my nullspace.

We kill several hundred demons in the first three hours, and I pay enough attention to realize that in the hells, they do count as kills in the eyes of the system. Given that demons aren’t truly dead until they’re killed in the hells, I think I can understand why.

The wounds in reality begin to heal when we massacre the demons around them, but it’s not enough. Even as they close, more demons come pouring out of seemingly nowhere, and despite all the death we inflict, it’s not enough to close them all.

I suspect that the issue is far more widespread—it can’t just have been us using Annihilate over and over again. I think of the angels. Of the UCC. Of the group we caught and killed, of Marie, of Sapphire.

No, it’s not just us.

“I have a theory,” Sierra proposes as I use my Blood Clone to wipe up the few remaining survivors of a small, formerly proud tower that she reduced to rubble. “The system termed the void the ‘primal chaos,’ right? We know that the demons have an unusual relationship to the system. When they truly die, the reality breaks start to close.”

“And then more are born,” I add.

“What if they’re manifestations of that chaos?” she suggests. “Literal physical representatives of the void?”

“Who would be creating them?” I ask. “The system? The system doesn’t even grant them powers. The void itself? As far as I know, it doesn’t have a mind of its own.”

“I don’t know,” Sierra admits. “However, I’ll note that we’ve seen that the system is more than what it seems. It’s… broken gods, I hate to admit it, but it’s not a fundamental truth of reality. It’s constructed more than it isn’t. Is it truly out of the realm of possibility that it also fashioned demons?”

“Maybe,” I say. “It’s an interesting idea. Unless we can actually do anything with it, though…”

“Mm. You’re right,” Sierra says. She flicks a finger, firing off an Obliteration Ray. She no longer needs her magic focus to do so. I wonder if she ever did. “We should return to killing.”

So we do.

Sapphire must be proud, I think with a hint of disgust. In the scant few months I have been alive, I have personally ended the lives of 2981 beings. And we’re well on the way to driving me to double that number.

Soon, however, the easy pickings dry up, and we realize a far more prescient issue.

Even with our movement skills, we just can’t get around fast enough. Though Sersui’s presence no longer intrudes so heavily on this hell as to stop us from even activating our skills, it still manages to muffle them. Personal Telekinesis and Bloodpath worked fantastically when we were fighting Category 0 to 1 humans. Now, in the hells, where it’s an ordeal just to move? Not so much.

I say as much to Sierra as we pick over the remains of a castle that once held a hundred and fifty… souls? Do demons have souls? I’ve used my Wraithfire-Soulblade combination a couple of times when just using my nullspace, but I haven’t bothered checking to see if they’re actually suffering from soul damage.

“You’re right,” she admits, conjuring a seat out of her Storage skill for us to rest on. “Do you think we could… force them to improve?”

“Our movement skills, you mean?” I ask. I consider it for a bit. Since I got my second class, I haven’t actually deliberately trained any of my skills, relying instead on my class. “They are pretty lackluster compared to the rest of what we have.”

“If only there was a Titan power that could enable us to do the same.” Sierra sighs, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. “That said, I think that the same process we used to forge a skill can be modified to force one to improve.”

“How so?” I ask.

“The experience,” she says. “How many deaths have we acquired so far?”

“Just under four hundred on my end,” I say. “So around seven or eight hundred overall?”

“Right. Normally, the energy released from their deaths—their experience—gets recycled by the system. For me, Adrian, and essentially the entire world, it’s placed into objectives. That’s how most of us increase our level, with a rarified few who gain small amounts of XP when they slaughter their foes.”

“Like me.”

“Yes, except your Devour works like nothing I’ve ever seen,” she says, poking me on the shoulder. “You absorb nearly the entirety of a person’s experience. Their soul, their health, their skills, everything.”

“I do,” I say. “Though it looks like I need a lot more than everyone else does just to level up.”

“Even so, you progress faster. You advance faster. And most importantly, that energy is captured. For a brief moment, it is free; not processed by the system within you nor the system without.”

It clicks. “You think we can redirect the flow.”

“Yes,” Sierra says. “I think we can break through the barriers on our skills. I think that we can use this to fuel our Defiance.”

“Would you like to try?” I ask. “We have little enough time left. We may as well begin our attempts to escape. I would much rather start now than realize our plans aren’t working as the hell finishes dissolving.”

“Sure thing,” Sierra says, snapping her fingers. She continues speaking even as the bodies of slain demons rain from the skies around us, deposited straight from her nullspace or her Storage. “I do have to wonder. If the hells are the shadows of reality, does breaking this affect Sersui?”

“I doubt it,” I say. “I feel like if it did, we would’ve noticed by now. We know that the Titans are capable of hijacking the system. It hasn’t threatened us, tried to kill us—well, other than that first time—or even spoken to us in any way.”

“Good point,” she says. “Alright. Bodies are ready. Do you want to deposit yours, too?”

“One second,” I say. “Manifest.”

Saying the skill name out loud is completely unnecessary, but the process of growing beyond the boundaries Sapphire set for me includes finding that which I can claim for myself. The sensation of power that comes with actualizing the skill I’m using? That, I can enjoy.

The bodies I created are significantly less intact now than the one that Sierra deposits. Our nullspaces, after all, act like our domains, only taken to an extreme extent. Hers is Balance; mine is Carnelian, and one of us has always been more violent than the others.

Still, even if they’ve been reduced to blood and disparate scraps of flesh, there’s enough of them for me to gain some XP yet.

This is the single largest collection of bodies I’ve ever seen. I want to taste it. Need it.

“Are you ready?” Sierra asks, linking hands and souls with me.

“Am I ever not?”

I begin to Devour.

This time, when I use the skill, I finally understand what the Divinity trait does. “Removal of authority blindness” sounds like nothing until I start to reduce shreds of bodies into raw experience and I see.

Sierra gasps in surprise, and I know she sees it to. It’s not just power, not quite—it’s something more. I can’t articulate what that strange sensation that accompanies the experience is, but it’s only familiar because of Defiance.

It’s more than just the raw, systemless magic—of course it is. This, too, has been defined by the system. But it’s not just mana, either. It is, quite literally, experience. The sum of everything the demons have done in their lives. As it flows into me, I see vision after vision of this hell; once in a while, I sense visions of the surface world.

Redirecting, Sierra says, and she uses her control over the spark of authority that she sheds from that to expand it, reshaping it, and absorbing.

When the experience starts to flow into me, it’s lesser. I still progress my power, but it’s not nearly the same as it was.

“It’s working,” I say. “I think.”

My level ticks up slower than it should, but I can feel the burgeoning mass of power that Sierra’s growing, and that’s our true end goal here. It grows, condenses, grows again, condenses again.

I watch her as she concentrates, sweat beading down her heart-shaped face as she does what nobody like her has ever done before. Though the appeal of physical beauty may be lost on me, the pure hunger in her eyes isn’t.

“Come on…” she urges. She’s not talking to me, I realize. She’s looking straight at me, but she doesn’t see me. “Come ON!”

And I do my best to help her. These are not impossible odds, so my Relentless trait does nothing, but we are attempting to break the system, and it has given me the tools for that.

I am Anomalous, and I do everything I can to fly beyond the constraints of the system. I Devour the last demonic body, and I don’t stop. I refuse to stop until Sierra does, and right now?

Right now, I fully believe she will never stop.

There’s no more demons to Devour, so I bring out the angels. Those provide a different flavor to the burning authority, and Sierra winces as she shapes it.

And still, she continues fighting.

My level ticks up and up and up. The result of the sacrifice grows thicker and thicker and thicker.

“Still not enough,” Sierra says, expression ablaze with determination. “Give me more. Give me more.”

I have nothing more to give her—except, maybe, I do. I remember what I broke to bring Sierra with me. I remember Devouring the system itself.

A flash of memory from only days ago flickers through me—Sersui, rising to laugh in the face of our efforts—and I push it aside.

Fuck all of them.

And so I start Devouring the ninth hell, reflection of Sersui’s nullspace.

Sierra takes the eclectic mixture in stride, and my level keeps on increasing.

Your Divine Demon class has advanced to level 200!

Total stat points gained: 150

50 points have been added to each attribute.

No new skills can be gained.

You are on the edge of ascension once again.

Sierra cries out—I can’t tell if it’s in triumph or pain—and then she activates Defiance.

“Do it now!” she shouts. “Hit it!”

I join her.

Together, we rip a hole in the hells, and together, we cross the threshold.

We leave a dying world behind us.

#

Elsewhere

“Hmm,” one who exists beyond the gate says, sensing the ripple in the fabric of reality. “A flower has bloomed.”