Demonic Devourer ch. 102

UCC Site 9 - “Diving Point 1”

“What a beautiful day,” Marie says, stretching indulgently. “Is anybody not ready?”

She has long since progressed past the point where that sort of gesture affects her body on a level beyond the aesthetic, but when she has time, she treasures the practice of seeming human.

Yes, the muscle fibers only extend because she wills them to, and the acidic burn is supplied entirely by a flex of her dominion over the concept of lightning, but to even the most suspecting observers, Marie Jade looks entirely like the mundane being she was four centuries ago.

“No” choruses up from thirty-nine voices. Eight of those voices are her own. At peak capacity, Marie can fashion over a hundred simulacrums, but condensing them condenses their power, too. There is no number more significant when dealing with demons than 9. Marie fancies herself a woman of science; the science of demons, she knows, is not so terribly different from numerology.

As such, nine Maries are the ideal number.

“To all of you, I pose one question,” Marie says, her beatific smile dropping away as she replaces one mask for another. “Are you worthless?”

This time, the chorus is louder.

The only person that doesn’t respond to the makeshift battlecry is the blonde half-elf who is neither blonde nor a half-elf.

Sapphire Clearwater meets Marie’s eyes and quirks the edge of her lips up ever so slightly.

Marie does not shiver, for she has control over every minute facet of her body, but she is tempted to.

Of the thirty surviving scientists who created the runaway experiment now known to this organization as PT-32—alongside, incidentally, PT-33, who Marie is ostensibly related to—Sapphire is the only one that Marie has reason to fear.

Everyone else is a known variable. Even the eldest is only Category 4, and even then he is still a hundred years younger than her. Marie is the only one of this delinquent Coalition group who even remembers the era of the warring empires and the brutal peace that followed—except, perhaps, Sapphire.

That woman knows more than she should. Marie is more than aware that Sapphire is more closely linked to the Titans than she could ever even hope to be, but she has been unable to ascertain the true depths of her power.

So far, she has determined the following:

1. Sapphire is neither human nor elf, and quite possibly never has been.

2. Appraise physically does not work on her, which Marie holds a number of increasingly concerning theories about.

Most importantly:

3. Sapphire—occasionally known as Overseer Clearwater or as top-priority existential threat Clearwater, depending on her mood—exerts an antimemetic effect powerful enough to bypass Marie’s defenses. Marie learned this when her personal checks for inconsistencies in her past turned up a dozen files full of research into Clearwater, the dead gods, the hells, and the Titans, each of them followed with a warning signed in blood: You will not proceed further. S.

At this point, Marie has mentally classified Sapphire as someone on the level of the Titans. Nobody else would be able to eliminate her will entirely.

It concerns her. It has been many centuries since Marie was not entirely in control of the situation; now, it feels as if she dances to Sapphire’s tune.

There is nothing that can be done about it. Marie will simply do as she always does.

To the system, there is nothing more important than power.

And Marie’s latest experiments are proof of that.

She still is not entirely sure how to react to the fact that the spawn of one of her various cloning projects has managed to breach the proto-Titan barrier before her, but for the time being she has settled on pride.

Of course, said pride is tempered by the fact that she is going to permanently kill her and the Carnelian girl. As well as the knowledge that of the thirty actual people in this squad preparing to dive, it is eminently possible that only Sapphire and Marie will survive.

The rest are bait, after all. After so long studying the ways of the world, Marie has a more intimate knowledge of the system than most. She has known since the first time she laid eyes on the vicious, furious Evelyn Carnelian that the demonic girl has an objective to end those who have wronged her.

She will be unable to resist the temptation. Marie designed her that way. And once all that latent power is torn from the other scientists, killed from them, Evelyn will absorb it. She will increase her conceptual weight until the system itself decides that killing her will grant another her powers.

Marie Jade intends on being that killer.

“Then dive,” Marie says belatedly, addressing the room with her arms spread as if she intended to delay for so long.

“Dive. Dive. Dive.” The automated voice blares from the speakers around them as the ritual to enter the hells initiates. “Dive. Dive. Dive.”

Marie stretches again, uncaring of the stares she receives. The day of reckoning is at hand. The last decade of work has led to this, and though she could try it again, there has never before been a resource as powerful as Evelyn Carnelian.

Power is everything to the system, and to Marie, there are only a scant few mysteries this world holds for her.

One of those is a question that has pursued her ever since she was a girl. One greater than any other.

If the gods were broken once, and the system is the closest they have to a god, then the system can be too.

So how am I going to shatter it?

The ritual completes, disrupting the already-thin barrier between reality and hell, and they dive.

#

Angelic Tower — Root

Apart from the voice, Adrian’s class evolution begins in a disappointingly standard fashion. He experiences a brief vision of the key moments leading up to the current state of his self—waking from the lab for the first time, watching his Hexed friends die one by one, resolving to become more, following through on that—but this is not terribly unusual to him. When he first evolved from the basic Mage to Water Mage, it was the same.

That said, this clearly isn’t just a normal evolution. How can it be? The… system—at least, Adrian thinks it’s the system—talked to him. That just doesn’t happen.

Eventually, when he’s done reliving all his greatest traumas and triumphs, Adrian is more bored than anything else. He spends more than enough time in his own mind during his waking life. A few more nightmares won’t harm him any.

At long last, they come to a stop and Adrian’s perception speeds up again to match reality. With it comes options.

Class: Blue Mage

The Blue Mage inherits his power from those around him. Gain power from those you have fought, loved, or even touched.

This class cannot be selected.

He doesn’t even read the rest of the class description.

“Shit,” he says.

Kirin arches an eyebrow. “Is something wrong?”

Class: Relentless Demon

The Relentless Demon has thrown himself at impossibility over and over and over far past the point of insanity. He will never stop.

This class cannot be selected.

“The system,” Adrian says, struggling to articulate the issue. “It’s offering me my friends’ classes, but I can’t pick them.”

“That is concerning," Kirin says in a mild manner that tells Adrian that it is obviously more than just concerning. “The system is intelligent, of course, but to this extent?”

“I don’t know, man,” Adrian says. “I never learned any of this. Never had the time to.”

“Are you going to pick either of them?” Kirin asks.

“Like I said, I can’t,” Adrian says. “Like, it straight up tells me I can’t select them. They’re just.. There.”

Kirin clicks his tongue, then tilts his head. “Okay. You might be more valuable than I thought."

“Valuable?” Adrian asks. “That’s the only reason you’re keeping me here?”

The senior operator just looks at him. Adrian interprets that as an are you serious, which he’s gotten painfully good at recognizing.

“Fair,” Adrian concedes.

Class: ???

You have gone above and beyond, but you have not yet done the impossible. Do so and break through, just like the others.

This class cannot be selected.

You cannot evolve your class before this class opens.

“Hey, uh, Kirin?” Adrian asks. “This is going to be a bit of a problem.”

That, he thinks, or the greatest opportunity I’ve ever seen.

#

The Ninth Circle

The hell is growing less stable.

It has been three days since I leveled up to 29 and received Annihilate, and we control seven different keystones comprising an area larger than that of Ravendale. Sierra’s Titan abilities aren’t quite as powerful as mine, so she has five of them.

The two I have are Categories 1 and 2—a Keep and a Stronghold, according to the system. We haven’t found any above Category 3 yet, and I’m not sure whether that’s because we’re not powerful enough yet or because this hell just happens to be lower power.

That means that while I am in the correct area, I gain access to the special skill Dessicate or the domain Scorching Dunes. Both of them aren’t as good as what I can do with Annihilate or even Carnelian Domain, which I’m fairly sure by now isn’t a proper domain (though nothing about me is proper), but their cost to me is minimal.

Proto-Titan has only advanced by one level, but thanks to the hundreds of deaths I have consumed—I’m up to 2521 now, which earns me Killer VII as a trait—Divine Demon is at level 131. It still levels slower than I’d like thanks to the relatively weak enemies we face, but I won’t turn down the addition to my attributes.

Annihilate, on the other hand, has proven to be frustrating to level. Since the first angel incursion, there have been a handful more invaders, but the same conceptual barrier that prevents me and Sierra from exiting the hell must also be preventing actual powerful beings from breaking in.

I have, of course, kept count. Sixteen angels—ranging from 613 to 1072—have tried their hand at attacking us.

Their deaths have fueled my skill to level 4, which given their power is utterly pathetic. Then again, I’m sure that the relative lack of risk that each fight presents to me thanks to Annihilate has something to do with that.

The skill itself is a marvel to watch. It splits reality apart like a microcosm of Manifest, except Manifest is a brief imposition while this is a scar. Annihilate rends my enemies apart, and when it is done, the hell remains rent.

I can feel it every time we emerge from the regions we’ve conquered. It reminds me of the irresistible pull of the void; reality is fracturing, and what lays beyond is a vast nothingness, brought to the door primarily by my efforts.

“I wonder if this is affecting Sersui,” I wonder out loud as I finish Devouring Angel 918. Poor thing. It’s the first one that tried to run. A jet-black thread of the hell simply does not exist anymore.

“I don’t know,” Sierra freely admits by my side. “Given your description of the Paths you were offered, this does seem to be Sersui’s nullspace, but…”

“But we’re alive, and so are all the weak demons here?” I offer.

“Yes, precisely.” Sierra frowns. “We may be strong enough to withstand it, but I refuse to believe that a Titan’s nullspace is only this lethal. Ours are stronger.”

“You think it’s something else, then,” I say.

“It could be,” Sierra replies. “Does it matter?”

That’s a fair ask. She knows as well as I do that our only hope of escape is by ascending through the hells, and speculation doesn’t necessarily help with that.

Well, it could. There’s always the chance that we stumble on a yet-unknown facet of the hells, which, given our unique disposition, isn’t entirely impossible.

“Do you think it matters?” I ask instead, measuring my words to make them more invitin. Now that I’ve recognized that yes, I do feel emotion, and yes, I do care for Sierra, I try Acting more like it.

Sierra’s eyes sparkle, and I know my efforts have borne fruit.

“Perhaps it doesn’t matter,” she says, “but the question is so interesting. If we genuinely are in a Titan’s nullspace, then does our nullspace exist in here somewhere? If we aren’t, then why is it so similar? Is it a natural effect? Do the hells mirror the world above?“

I could listen to her talk all day, I think.

“Most importantly,” Sierra says, “is the question of whether breaking a hell can lead us to the next one.”

“You think we can?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says again. “When has that ever stopped you?”

I open my mouth, then close it. She’s not wrong.

“I’m thinking,” she says, “that if I—“

She’s interrupted by a warp in space that both of us feel. By now, we’ve learned the sensation. As proto-Titans, we both have senses beyond our initial five.

The six people that dive towards us from above, however, are different. They’re not angels. Not demons.

“Helldivers,” Sierra warns, recognizing them before me. “They’re Coalition. Careful.”

I Appraise them all, amplifying it massively so that it works through the thousands of feet separating us, and I raise an eyebrow in surprise.

I recognize these names. Even though it feels like half a lifetime ago, I recognize them.

Each of these six helldivers are part of the team that created me.

The smile that creeps across my face is involuntary, bitter, and dangerous.

Sierra sighs. “I assume those six are dead, then.”

“Not quite,” I say, preparing myself. This is an opportunity. Something’s been bugging me, some question that I know stems from the memories Sapphire stole from me. This is a chance to get some of them back.

These six aren’t dead yet, but they’re all absolutely fucked. They just don’t know it yet.

I close my eyes and take to the skies, ready to spread the word.

___

Author's notes: Sorry about the slower release schedule. School starting has been a kick in the teeth. I'll be at DragonCon this coming week, but I hope I can pump a couple out. Enjoy!