Demonic Devourer ch. 106

The hell is degrading at a different speed than it was before. I observe it carefully as I blitz back towards Sierra, and I conclude that overall, the stronghold I eliminated is degrading slower than the area around it. It’s not by much—killing the angels seems to have accelerated the process even after the death of the demons began to restore the world—but it’s slowed.

What that actually means for us is for Sierra to figure out, not me, but I have guesses.

We are closer to the void now than we ever have been before, and it’s obvious by now that the system works differently here. Right now, it’s barely working at all.

Yes, my skills still work, and yes, Devour still grants me XP, but I’m not getting new skills with my levels, nor is my proto-Titan class moving.

As always, the demons I Appraise are outside the purview of the system, and so are the reality tears that lead directly to the starless void beyond.

I have a lot to discuss.

#

“Killing demons restores the stability of the hell,” I tell Sierra. “The angels that came to assassinate us aren’t the only ones, either. Killing them breaks the world further. I think whatever’s happening with this hell has something to do with the system, because that hasn’t been working properly at all since we got here.”

Sierra takes that in, then nods. “Makes sense to me. We can assume that the Titans are capable of co-opting the system, correct? I… wait, I don’t know why—shit. Antimemetics?”

“Antimemetics,” I confirm. “Sapphire’s influence. I agree, though. Even if the Titan speech takes place outside of the system, it manifests itself within it. That impression you have is because Sapphire hijacked the system during a level-up to offer some kind of communication that she hasn’t allowed us to remember.”

And she’s done it again, I don’t add. Both Sierra and I are intelligent enough to surmise that if Sapphire can do it once, she’s definitely capable of doing it again, and my Antimemetic Resistance is strong enough to confirm it. There’s clearly nothing we can do to prepare for it, since we haven’t made any dents in her ability to hit us, so there’s no point wasting resources on her when we still have a hell to jump from.

“Right,” Sierra says, frowning. She purses her lips when she does her I’m thinking frown. It’s… attention-getting? A quirk? Cute? Finding the right word for the emotions it sparks in me is difficult. “I would love to have a proper laboratory and research team for this.”

“I think we killed them,” I say. “Do you want to try piecing Del back together and asking him?”

“I spent some time doing exactly that while you were out,” she says. “I’m reasonably convinced that there’s nothing useful he can tell us. We know that we need to exit without the system, and that’s about it. Angels and demons are a different question entirely.”

“They might not be,” I press. Ever since Sapphire removed a sizable portion of my amalgam, I’ve had to rely on a lot more guesswork for this kind of thing. I’m not used to asking and answering questions like this—for most of my admittedly short life, I’ve either already had the answer thanks to my birth or I’ve been able to kill my way to a point where the answer no longer matters. “Demons are anomalies, aren’t they?”

“Demon and anomaly are functionally different terms for the same things,” Sierra says. “The terminology’s somewhat confusing, because we do have distinct words for demon and anomaly on base reality, but the difference is mostly academic. Demon is both the entire species and a specific subset of them.”

I nod. “Then there’s non-demon anomalies that are… still demons?”

“It’s a little murky, no thanks to Coalition scholars,” Sierra grumps. “Demons are natives of hell. They can take forms that match that of living beings or inanimate ones or impossible objects or what have you.

“Once they surface, they are considered anomalies, as they do not have access to the system, nor are they as affected by system-related skills. The UCC tends to use the term demon to refer to those that resemble naturally occurring animals and possess a certain magical marker, while the term anomaly is usually used to refer to those that manifest other traits outside of the hells. Demons are still all anomalies, though.”

“Except, apparently, you and me,” I say. “We both have Demonic Heritage. I even have Anomalous. But we both have access to the system. Also, don’t the demon lords we kill here have access to the system? I seem to recall the first one I killed having a domain.”

“Again, murky,” Sierra says. “I wish I knew more about the hells. That’s something that doesn’t neatly slide into what I know about anomalies, which I can tell you more about—some of them do surface with the system in various degrees of intactness, but they still don’t interact with it the same way.”

“Titans don’t interact with the system the same way,” I say. “I don’t think Inome had a level. I doubt the others do, either. Just a Category. Are Titans considered anomalies, then?”

“Yes, actually,” Sierra says. “They are. We are, I should say. You’ve never had anything approaching a normal relationship to the system, have you?”

I consider that. At first thought, I want to say that I have, that it was all normal up until that first broken class evolution, but it never was, was it? The system has always pushed me in ways that I have never seen it do to others. I was born with an objective to eat babies, and unless Sapphire introduced a deity into my soul without me notifcing sometime after I was born, I’ve always had dead divinity attached to me, shifting the system.

“I haven’t,” I say, thinking of that first class evolution—four straight days of dying again and again until I earned Relentless Demon; of the second one, where I sat and watched for nearly nineteen years; of my passenger, stealing my body through an evolution. “But aren’t you more normal? Are you saying you’ve become an anomaly?”

“I would assume so,” she replies. “So far as I know, nobody else can talk like—“ This. “—outside the system.”

Agreement, I signal back.

“Back to the point, then,” Sierra prompts. “Angels and demons and anomalies, you said.”

“Yes, right,” I say, trying to gather my thoughts. Why is this so hard? There’s some humor in the fact that I would much prefer a fight to the death than scientific research, but it’s the reality of the situation. Killing things is easy. Creating is… less so. “If we need to function outside of the system, and demons exist outside of the system, then can’t we use them?”

“Ideally, yes,” Sierra says. “Hm. I have a few potential theories. Do you have—“

I Manifest my nullspace just long enough to deposit seventy-nine demon corpses and two ex-angels around us.

“—Okay. Can you maybe put them somewhere else?”

Oh. Right. We’re still indoors, technically, though the difference between “out” and “in” is a lot less distinct when there are regions of nonexistence slicing straight through the middle.

“Whoops,” I say, activating Descent and shunting them back in.

“This is good, though,” Sierra tells me. “Let’s see what we can do with it.”

#

It proves to be more irritating than I thought to place the corpses. From the moment I start, I realize that I’ve already lost a handful of demons to the void. Our “home base” of sorts is set up near the same place we entered the hells in, and this area has seen Annihilate after Annihilate tear through it.

Eventually, though, we do manage to get them situated in a roughly organized manner in an empty chunk of sand, using Sierra’s forcefields to prevent the already-weakened nullspace-reflection from affecting the corpses.

“Alright,” Sierra says with a huff, finishing the pale blue field around us. “You’ve already killed these, so it’s quite likely that we’re doing this for nothing, but…”

“It’s worth a try,” I say. “I can try to capture them next time, though that’ll be a little harder.”

“We’ll see,” she says, floating over to a corpse of a demon that faintly resembles an elephant. “There’s nothing I can take from this demon’s body, but we can use it as a test case. Can you break the hell around it?”

Technically a bad idea, but it’s not like a single Annihilate is going to accelerate this hell’s collapse that much.

I force my nullspace’s power into the space of a beam and smash the ground apart next to the demon’s body. It’s a small usage of the power, and I cut it off quickly, but it still leaves the air feeling bloody and broken and wrong. A wound in the world remains in the aftermath.

“Fantastic,” Sierra says, and then she activates a skill that glows with the unfiltered power of the sun, obliterating the remains of the demon.

Nothing changes.

“Well, that’s that,” she muses, but she doesn’t sound anywhere close to giving up. Quite the opposite, in fact. “May I try with an angel?”

“Can’t hurt more than my Annihilate did,” I say. “Use the less powerful one. I’d like to keep the larger one for its skills.”

Sierra acknowledges me with a nod. “I’m going to try something different this time.”

Incorporation, she signals, and I understand.

For the angel, she draws the piece of unstructured, systemless magic that the communication creates and sends it pulsing into her attack. I can’t tell what, if anything, it does, but the angel evaporates nonetheless.

Again, there is no difference in the wound.

Sierra sighs. “We may have to find live samples. It may be that the destruction of their living soul is what matters for reality integrity.”

“That’s unfortunate,” I say with a sigh. “I’ll clear these up, then go try to find some living samples. Have you made much progress with the systemless magic?”

“It’s not magic, not exactly,” Sierra says. “It is less akin to mana itself than the… concept, maybe? That’s a good word. It is more like the concept of mana control rather than actual control over it. It’s hard to define because unlike all the magic we’re used to performing, it’s not defined. I’d call it authority, dominion, rule, power, any number of things—just not magic or mana.”

“I understand.” I absolutely do not understand. Then again, understanding isn’t my job. Killing things is. “How’s that, then?”

“I can create it on my own now, and I can shape it, kind of. The main roadblock I’m encountering is that while I can shape the raw substance of it, I cannot coax it to do much. I have been attempting adding it to skills, which you witnessed, but that’s had mixed results at best. For now, all I can do is try.”

“If Del could figure it out, you can,” I say. “Give me an hour. I’ll see if I can bring some live demons back. No promise on the angels.”

There are seventy-four bodies remaining; seventy-three demons and one angel. None of them come close to the amount of power I have, but that should be a pretty hefty boost to my Divine Demon class.

With my Titan magic assisting my demonic side, Devour is incredibly wide range. Whereas I used to have to physically eat any enemies that got in my way, I can now rain magic down across a square mile, inhaling their essence as I do.

Your Divine Demon class leveled up to level 150!

15 stat points gained.

5 points have been added to each attribute.

No new skills can be gained.

You’re getting closer.

Sierra and I both startle at the message. Is Sapphire’s voice in there? I can’t tell. From the look on Sierra’s face, neither can she.

Temporary skills gained.

View list?

“Hold on,” Sierra says suddenly. “Stop using your skill.”

I stop, cocking my head. “I’m not done yet. What’s wrong?”

“Now that I have my skills set up to process the level of integrity this hell maintains, I can feel the micro-fluctuations better. You just changed something there. Devour again, just a little?” Her voice is bright and chipper, belying the failure of her previous experiment.

What is she detecting? Now that I have so much more power and kill so many enemies, Devour doesn’t process my victims quickly at all. These days, I gain experience, then gain the temporary skills, and she noticed something at the latter point. I rarely use the temporary skills I gain, even though Devour grants me even demonic skills. My own are simply much more powerful.

Wait. Didn’t we just talk about how demons don’t have access to the system? How am I getting their skills?

I think I might know why Sierra’s excited over this.

So I Devour again, taking only from the demons. The angel may actually possess a skill of use, and I’d like to preserve it for later, when we need it. And we will need it. If existing for this long has taught me anything, it’s that we will never be free from danger.

Potential, Sierra chirps excitedly, wincing in pain. She’s overstretching herself. Pulling deeper into her well of power than she should.

Which means that she’s found something. Sierra isn’t stupid. She wouldn’t hurt herself for no gain.

She takes that spark of systemless power and feeds it to me. I can’t see it, and I can barely sense it, but the moment it collides with me and becomes part of me, the spark explodes into open flame.

If regular demons don’t have skills, then the system is creating them when I Devour.

And we can steal that.

Power like nothing I’ve ever processed surges through my veins, Hissing its way through my soul. This is uncharted territory for me and my amalgam; even with pieces taken away, I’m certain that the amalgam wouldn’t be able to help me here.

Sierra hugs me from behind even as I continue Devouring the mess of demon corpses, and her will joins mine, bonded souls acting as one.

Though our wills may be equally as strong, she knows this better than me, and so I let her guide me as we force the unfiltered power into something more.

If the system isn’t here to provide it direction, we will.

We feed it our desire to escape. The necessity of it. We feed it the sensation of tearing reality to shreds; of being trapped in a world that we have broken for ourselves. We feed it hope, fear, despair, and freedom.

Nothing will stop us. Not Titans, not Sapphire, not the system.

Undefined behavior detected.

New skill unlocked: UNKNOWN

UNKNOWN.

…

Hidden Objective: From Zero, Create One [COMPLETE]

You have manipulated the primal chaos and forced your authority upon it. You have defied the broken gods; you have defied the system. You have generated a new skill from the chaos.

Trait earned: Divinity

Special skill created.

And together, we name it Defiance.