Demonic Devourer ch. 105

Angelic Tower — Root: The 24th Floor

“The twenty-fifth floor is different,” Kirin explains as they walk up the steps. “While the tenth and twentieth floors both individually represent paradigm shifts, the twenty-fifth is the first of what we call challenge floors.”

“I’ve heard of that,” Adrian says. “Nobody from the Category 1 groups I was with wanted to even try anything above the twentieth, so I don’t have great information about it.”

“Newbies,” Kirin snorts. “Any operator worth their salt does a tower climb at some point in their life. I was a full-time climber for a decade, you know?”

“Checks out,” Adrian says. “So what should we expect? Why are we slowing down?”

“Unlike a traditional floor, you can’t just blitz the floor bosses and smash through the ceiling.” Kirin sounds a little miffed. Adrian supposes that’s fair, given that they’ve definitely not been trekking through the tower as intended.

“A challenge, you said,” Adrian repeats. “We have to get assessed, or something? Or is it more a trial sort of deal?”

“The second one. What the trial is depends on too many factors for me to count—which tower we’re climbing, our levels, the time of year, the time of day, and so forth. There are any number of trials that can appear to us, but there’s one constant that will stop us. You, specifically.”

“And that is?”

Welcome to the 25th floor, traveler.

“Shit,” Kirin mutters. “I should’ve known. The tower spirits love their dramatic timing.”

During the duration of your trial, your system will be disabled.

“And there it is.”

Adrian freezes. Then, instinctively, he tries to use a skill. Hydrokinesis.

Except it’s not there. He remembers what it feels like to use his skill, and he remembers using it, but there’s a missing connection that’s been severed. It’s like he’s trying to shake someone’s hand without realizing that both of them are missing their arms from the elbow down.

His magic isn’t there.

That’s not possible, is his first thought, but he knows there are skills and domains that can suppress others. This is just one of those, isn’t it?

They’re not even on the floor yet. They’re still in the stairwell, a long, dark, winding structure that is definitely larger than the outside.

Is it a domain big enough to expand to the stairwell, too? Adrian wonders.

“It’s not a domain, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Kirin says. Adrian startles. “No, I’m not reading your mind. Nothing I own can do that. It’s just that everyone who enters a challenge floor for the first time asks the same question.”

“I’ll try to be less predictable in the future, then,” Adrian says. He takes a good look at his fellow operator. “You still have your weapons. If the system is disabled, do those still work?”

“Some of them.” Kirin shows him two swords. First, the Angel’s Vengeance, followed by an unbalanced double-bladed weapon that Adrian’s Identify Weapon says is—shit. That skill isn’t working right now. “The Angel’s Vengeance here has inherent properties, while Misfortune’s Blade is system-assisted. So the angel weapon works, but no the other one.”

He puts the latter sword away behind his back, and it disappears.

Adrian’s confusion deepens. “The system’s disabled. How are you still able to use that skill, uh…”

“The system calls it Hammerspace,” Kirin supplies. “You were asking how to break through your limits, weren’t you?”

“I was. I thought we pretty conclusively decided you weren’t going to be able to help with that.” Though Adrian wasn’t expecting this kind of display.

“At the very least, I can help you get to my level,” Kirin says. “There are many paths to Category 3, but I believe the one I chose is one of the best.”

“And your path is… learning to work without the system?”

“Not exactly, but close enough. I can’t just teach you how to do it, but together, we can set you on that path too. It is, in my opinion, one of the few paths to true power.”

That line of thinking is scarily close to actual lines of thought Adrian has gone down before. The Titans don’t make heavy use of the system, do they? He never saw Inome using skills, at least.

“Then teach me,” Adrian says.

Kirin nods seriously. “Hopefully, we’ll have—“

Your trial will begin in 5 seconds.

“Oh, come on,” Adrian complains, and then they’re thrust from darkness into light.

“Learn by doing, then,” Kirin says, angel wing in hand. “Let’s see how well you learn, genius boy.”

#

The Ninth Circle

With every passing minute, my understanding of what the system is shifts. Which isn’t saying much, since the amount of genuine knowledge I have about it is roughly limited to my few experiences with it, which are nothing close to normal.

The only certainty the two of us have is that the system that we’ve taken for granted for so long is less certain than we thought it was.

That’s less of an issue for me to process than it is for Sierra. For me, the system has always been at least a little odd. For a while after I was born, it was alright, but then I went and damaged my soul with wraithfire and then an old, broken god took residence within me. My system’s not been the same since.

For Sierra, though, she’s spent her entire nineteen years of life with a system that has functioned normally. Though the influence my amalgam has on me has rapidly faded as my power ballooned, I still find myself drawing on its memories to better contextualize sapient behavior.

The longer you spend thinking you know everything there is to know about anything—whether that’s another person’s belief or the nature of the system that governs magic—the harder it is to realize you’ve been wrong.

As things are, though, she seems to be adjusting fairly well.

“This is so incredibly odd,” she murmurs, running her hand across a thread of broken space where the sand has given way for the void. Sierra’s nowhere near as attuned to the void as I am, but she can manage brief contact with it just fine. Not. System. Then. What.

The pulse of undirected magic that sparks between us is as fleeting as ever, but the spark is growing. Now that we’ve identified what causes it, it’s just a matter of repeating it until it grows.

Both of us reach out for that spark, trying to seize hold of it. Once I feel Sierra’s grasp on it, I let go, relinquishing it to her. I’m much better at breaking limits, but Sierra actually understands magic on a level that I can’t manage. Sapphire’s Excise has left me without the requisite knowledge to fool around with that, so to her it goes.

She breathes in deep, and I still my entire body, allowing her to focus. The thread of what we think is Titan magic elongates as Sierra inhales deeply. My fellow proto-Titan holds onto it for as long as she can, applying some shaping element to it that I have to admit I don’t understand, and formulates a portion of it into a projectile.

The systemless magic spreads forth from her fingers, running into the crack of void large enough to put an arm through, and it yawns wider. Reality splinters outward from the break, further distortions spiderwebbing outwards—and then just as suddenly, the process reverses itself as the second half of Sierra’s experiment hits it, closing the edges of the wound upon the hell until it’s barely large enough to stick a finger in.

“Wow,” I say, squeezing Sierra’s hand. I’m not exactly sure why this is gesture is common specifically amongst human and skyfolk, but I want her to feel comforted so I do what my skills and false memories tell me works. “What did you do?”

She furrows her brow, an expression that fights with the beaming smile on her face. It’s kind of adorable, I think.

“I’m not entirely sure,” she says. “These are untested waters, you know? I tried to incorporate what I felt of the void into that magic, but it’s like having a third arm that I never knew about before. I don’t know how to use it.”

I Shapeshift a third arm from my back and wave it around for a bit before retracting it back into my body. “Seems to be fine for me.”

“Oh, you get what I mean,” Sierra says, punching me lightly. “It’s a new sense. Even with skills like Mana Manipulation, I have a guideline to work with. I know what I’m doing. Whatever this magic is, it isn’t even unfiltered mana. Unfiltered mana has a certain feel to it, and I’ve worked with it loads before. This is entirely uncharted territory.”

“I can barely affect it,” I admit. “It’s so odd.”

“You were created to work within the bounds of the system,” Sierra says. “It makes sense.”

“I’m not entirely sure about that,” I say. “Sapphire was the lead on creating me, right?”

“Mhm.”

“Somehow, I get the feeling that she knows about the system’s inner workings. She’s different. I can feel it. I… feelings are really all I can go off of, here.”

My Antimemetic Resistance is on the cusp of reaching Diamond tier, which means that I have impressions of Sapphire trying multiple times to offer me… something. I don’t know what that something is. Can’t know what it is. Whatever Sapphire’s antimemetic powers are, they trounce my resistance enough that all I have are vague feelings.

“It’s transparently obvious that she’s no regular half-elf,” Sierra says. “We can’t exactly get help from her, though. Even if we could, I don’t think we’d want to.”

I nod my head in agreeement. “How much longer do you think we have?”

“Three, maybe four days?”

“I don’t know how much progress I can make on controlling the systemless magic,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Sierra replies. “Actually, I have an idea. Not a very safe one, but I can’t say anything we’re doing here is exactly safe.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” I say, grinning. “What is it?”

She lays it out, and I listen.

Her plan relies on two key pieces of information. First: our nullspaces failed when outside of our own environment. Second: Del’s assertion that the hells are reflections of reality.

“If what he’s saying is true—which, to be fair, is an exceedingly important if—then I don’t think this is Sersui’s actual nullspace. That would explain why the Titan itself isn’t reacting to the cracks in reality.”

“It might be,” I point out. “We have no communication with the surface. We have no way of knowing, do we?”

“That’s true,” she admits. “At this point, much of what I have to go on is guesswork.”

“Continue,” I say. “Guesswork is better than nothing, which is about what I have.”

“We do know that Sersui hasn’t come to deal with reality breaking,” she says. “I posit that if we destabilize the hell enough, you will be able to Manifest outside of the areas we control.”

“I… think I follow,” I say. “Why is that relevant, though?”

“Because I think I can make something that’ll break us out of this hell,” Sierra says, her eyes gleaming. “And it’s going to need a lot of fuel.”

#

The plan is simple. All I need to do is what I do best.

The Ninth Circle is large, but my mobility is as good as it’s ever been.

“Be back soon,” I tell Sierra. “You know how to find me.”

I shoot off, infusing my Bloodpath with my Titan power.

This much, I muse, still feels like second nature. The process of enhancing my paths with Titan magic is easy. That kind of power feels similar in concept to the demonic side, which I was born with.

Speaking of demons, I have a whole lot of them to kill.

Ideally, I’d like the kill everything in this hell, but even I’m not so arrogant to think that I can clear thousands of miles of Titan-affected space in a matter of few days, even with Annihilate and Manifest working overtime.

Only Manifest, I correct myself. Annihilate isn’t nearly as affected by Sersui’s influence as my nullspace itself, but it also accelerates the decline of the hell with every usage.

Also, as the name suggests, it tends to annihilate those I use it on, and Sierra wants the fuel dead and intact, not split into their component molecules and scattered across the void.

That makes it a bit harder, but I know I can manage.

Even with the reality degrading around us, our keystones protect us against the ravages of Sersui’s nullspace-shadow, and I feel it the instant I break out. The sand wears away at me, preventing me from using Restore Self, and the air is so dry that it would suck my body moisture away if I didn’t have perfect control over it.

It takes me half an hour to find the first new stronghold; a fortress, population 99. This one, I note, is not populated solely by demons. As I use my Appraise on every creature I can detect with my Blood Sense, I realize that there are angels here too. Unlike the demons, which are anomalous enough to throw off Appraise even at Gold tier, the angels are incredibly easy to identify. 981 and 1771, respectively—not threats at all.

It takes me forty-five seconds to kill them all. Forty of those seconds are spent trying to ensure that the Manifest that encompasses the entire structure won’t instantly obliterate everything within.

Against me, the residents of the Ninth Circle don’t even stand a chance. The angels attempt to activate domains, while the demons shift forms wildly, trying to use their anomalous properties to survive the onslaught of power.

None of it works. They don’t all die at once, but as they do, the world shifts. I take in the sensation, spreading my newfound Titan senses out to the hell around us to grasp what exactly is happening, and I sense reality start to repair itself—then fracture further as I slay 981, boiling its body from the inside out.

I get on Devouring a couple of the demons, nourishing myself in preparation for the next one, and that’s when the realization hits me.

Revelation, I send to Sierra. Returning.

Excitement, comes the reply.

I’m not sure if I’m right, and I don’t know if it’ll even get us out of here, but I think I might’ve just learned a truth about the world that even my amalgam never knew.

Eat shit and die, Sapphire, I think. If you want to stop me from remembering the reality of our world, then I’ll learn it myself.

And I’ll break it all.

Every last piece.