I open my eyes to find myself looking into a sharp green stare. For a second, I wonder why Marie’s gaze holds so much concern for me. Before panic and confusion can set in, I register the rest of the body, remembering who else holds the same features.
One of Sierra’s eyes still holds light traces of crackling blue power, while red sparks drift around her green iris in the other. The remnants of her magic surround her. Though I have no skill to detect magic, she radiates a sense of soft power, as if she’s an angel.
No, not an angel. That word carries… the wrong connotation.
“You’re finally awake,” she says, sounding surprisingly peaceful. “Welcome back, my lady.”
My vision is blurry. With my demonic physiology, that shouldn’t be happening. Even if my eyes are damaged enough, Demonic Heritage should’ve brought me back by now.
I blink the blurriness out after a few seconds, and I prop myself up with my arms.
My lower body feels oddly light, and I realize the reason why when I try to stand.
I have no lower body.
The extraneous limbs that I set on fire are also all gone now. My hands come down on brittle, ashen bone that crumbles apart under my weight.
Enough vision returns to me that I finally get to take in my surroundings for the first time.
I’m still in the tree. The fruits of my efforts lie around me. Sunlight streams in through holes I’ve opened, and a neverending stream of black-and-white ash gently falls from the hollow tree above.
Wait, sunlight? When I fought the tree, night had just fallen. Has that much time already passed?
“It’s been ten hours,” Sierra says, answering my unasked question. “Though I wished to move you, your unconscious body resisted. Furthermore, I was otherwise occupied with search and rescue.”
I resisted? Interesting. I sort of expected to have another kind of vision like the ones accompanying my true evolution and the one that wasn’t exactly that.
Instead, all I remember is the last message from the system before I woke up.
Soul not detected. That’s certainly a scary message to pass out to, but it looks like the combination of Demonic Heritage and Soulless have kept me from dying.
My magic is fully restored, too, so I use a minute fraction of it to use Phantom Shape, creating ethereal legs for myself so I can get to my feet. While Shape Self doesn’t let me recreate my own limbs for some unknowable reason, Phantom Shape has no such restriction. With the demon tree’s aura gone, I can weave complex patterns together with no issue.
“You were stable when I found you,” Sierra says, a look of guilt creeping over her face. “I am truly sorry that—“
“It’s not a problem,” I tell her. I’ve been too wrapped up in my thoughts to respond. “I’m alive, and this is where I need to be.”
She nods.
“Forty-one people survived,” Sierra continues. “Forty-four if you count the three of us.”
“Adrian is alive, then,” I say. That surprises me. Though I lacked control over my body when the broken god took over, I distinctly remember distilling Adrian’s cyclone into a devastating ray and firing it back at him.
“Aunt Marie saved his life,” Sierra sighs. “He’ll pay dearly for that.”
“I’m not getting a particularly favorable impression of your aunt,” I tell her honestly. I don’t think I lke Marie even before taking into account the fact that she nearly killed me not twelve hours ago.
“I would be worried if you received a positive one,” she replies. “For what little it is worth, she was instrumental in evacuating the few remaining survivors.”
Forty-one other individuals, huh? I thought more people would make it through the generally weaker demons that the tree spawned into the city around us, but I suppose the people here are weak.
“I see you do not particularly care,” Sierra says. She shrugs. “There are some immediate effects on us, assuming you plan on continuing on working with us.”
“Such as?” I ask, kneeling with my phantom legs and pressing a hand to the “ground” inside the tree. Devour has just advanced, and I’d like to test it on the largest source of soul-restoring demon I have.
“We cannot stay in the Crowned Islands,” Sierra explains. “Adrian and I are both headed towards the Seven Kingdoms.”
That name is familiar to my memories. The Whitestar Kingdom is one of them, and I know that I have an objective to go there and find Sapphire.
I… don’t really want to go. After the events of my failed class evolution, I find myself not liking the idea of dealing with the half-elf again.
Before I make a resolution, though, I close my eyes and activate Devour.
Sierra gasps, and I hear her take a step back.
The skill feels different. At Diamond tier, it’s the single highest-tier skill I have. While going from Bronze to Gold just made the skill more effective, I barely even have to lower my physical body to eat it. Instead, energy surges into me, my hunger to grow manifesting itself in every pore of my body.
I open my eyes and realize why Sierra’s surprised.
Devour has manifested itself as a crimson-black storm. Tendrils of magic explode from me, wrapping my body in a dark malicious aura.
“If I didn’t know better,” Sierra says, “I would think that you were the avatar of the tree.”
I draw on Acting to give her a suitably disturbing smile. “I appreciate it.”
She shudders, but she smiles back. “Oh, one more thing.”
Power continues to surge into me through Devour, and though I don’t get an instant notification about an XP gain, warmth begins to return to my frigid core.
The warmth dissipates almost as soon as it comes, swirling around my soul aimlessly. It doesn’t disappear entirely, but it just… sits there. It does nothing of its own.
Right. The notification I received was that my soul was gone, and while consuming the demons helps patch it up, I don’t think it can create something from nothing.
I hope the latent soul energy I’m gathering from the tree is enough to put my system back together. If I have to go another level with it telling me that I’m going to have my progression critically hamstringed because of the state of my soul, I’m going to kill something.
Okay, I’m going to kill something either way, but if my system doesn’t recover, I’m going to be angry while doing it.
“Broken gods,” Sierra whispers. “A Diamond? At level twelve?”
I continue Devouring the tree. On something of this scale, the effect is less of complete annihilation and more of an embrittlement. Around us, the midnight-black wood loses its color, slowly becoming a greyish off-white as power surges into me.
The sensation of so much soul energy flowing into me is ecstasy. I want to stay in this moment forever.
A thunderous strike not quite like Marie’s lightning nearly shakes me out of the skill. I look up, keeping my Diamond Devour going as a hole the size of a small building appears halfway up the tree. An attack has punched clean through it, leaving an entrance and exit wound so big that I’m worried the tree tumbling over.
My own skill’s weakened the integrity of the structure, but that’s not what concerns me. If it falls, I have Bloodpath to evacuate.
No, my worry is about what that attack means. Forty-one survivors, Sierra said, and I don’t remember a single person having a skill that could do something like this.
“Right,” Sierra sighs. “I was supposed to inform you of this. I had hoped that we would be able to evacuate the area before this happened. The hands we’ve been dealt, I suppose.”
“What—“ I pause as another strike lands on the tree. This one clips the edge, so the tree stays standing for the time being. “Who’s attack is this?”
“As part of our agreement with Aunt Marie, we are the designated villains of this story,” Sierra says, exhaling deeply. “Adrian and I, that is. Aunt Marie informed them that we have summoned demons and harnessed their power, and she’s urged them to kill us. You were never mentioned. If you choose to, you may stay here.”
“I’m not staying here,” I reply immediately. As another attack shakes the foundation of the lifeless tree, Devour completes.
Temporary attribute points gained!
Due to soul limitations, you have been restricted to +50 in each attribute.
Time remaining: 1:00
Devour granted +10691 XP!
XP: 12747/1200
Soul not detected.
Excess XP detected.
Excess sufficient.
Initiating correction.
9999 excess XP consumed.
Nascent demonic soul formed.
Where there was swirling warmth in a formless, frigid void just moments ago, there is now a single solid spark of life. In an instant, the wisps of soul energy slam into my recreated soul. The effect is immediate and vast—a spark becomes a candle becomes a bonfire. Sensation returns to every part of me. The tree collected energy from a city’s death, and now I collect energy from it in turn.
You have advanced to level 13!
All stats increased by 1.
You have gained 3 stat points.
You have advanced to level 14!
All stats increased by 1.
You have gained 3 stat points.
Due to your traits and actions, you have gained the Silver-tier skill Divine Resistance.
Due to your traits and actions, every Bronze-tier skill increases its current level by 5 to a maximum of 10.
Due to your traits and actions, every Silver-tier skill increases its current level by 10 to a maximum of 25.
I am overflowing with power. A dark star burns bright within me, begging to be let out. The world feels sharper. More fragile.
I reach my hand up towards the sky as if I can hold the sun in the palm of my hand, and the tree starts to crumble.
I cast Shape Blood, and several thousand gallons of blood rise from the ground around us, exsanguinating every last demon here. Black and crimson fluid flies upward under the force of my will, sealing holes and propping up falling structures.
“Who are we facing?” I manage to say. Each word I utter is a struggle, as if pronouncing the syllables in the wrong order will kill the woman in front of me.
Sierra’s eyes are wide, her jaw hanging slightly open. When she speaks, it’s without any of the refinement that I’ve grown to expect from her. “The Crowned King’s men. Evelyn, what the fuck—“
“Do you mind,” I eke out, “if I kill them?”
She’s barely started to shake her head when I explode upwards, giving in to my impulses.
My body turns to blood as my awareness expands. Within moments, I fill the entirety of the inside of the tree. I control thousands of gallons of blood and I am the blood.
I have taken everything I can from the tree. With barely an effort, I turn the brittle, crumbling bark into ash, turning myself into a titan of spears and explosive power.
The vast magic I have access to right now is temporary. The boosted stats I have—over quadruple what I had earlier—will last for only sixty seconds.
But that’s all I need.
Magic (Power) is currently at 64. Magic (Meta) matches it at 57. At a level this high, I finally understand what the latter attribute means. The first means that any skill I use will carry power that far eclipses anything these people can offer.
The second means that the wording of the spells aren’t restrictions but guidelines.
I use Locate Person, and I twist the skill. Rather than trying to locate a single person, I locate people, period.
I’m bombarded with information, but with my mind currently operating at truly superhuman speeds thanks to the temporary 67 I have in the stat, I can process all of it.
Sierra is in the city. Adrian and Marie are not.
One hundred and seventy-five enemies stand against me.
Unlike the guards I’ve grown used to, these would’ve truly posed a threat to me before today. The lowest-leveled individual here is level 20. The highest is a whopping level 45 in her primary class and 29 in her second. Each one of these could be a Noren, someone that could’ve killed me with barely a thought.
It took me over an hour of planning and a number of lucky chances to take down Noren.
It takes me three seconds to decide on a course of action this time.
I spread myself over the city, expanding my body of blood until I’m a scarlet cloud hovering over the entirety of what once was Ravendale.
From here, I can see why there were so few survivors. The entire city’s collapsed in on itself, revealing chunks of what must’ve been the undercity. In multiple areas, it looks as if the land has simply been upended on itself. Parts of the city fall into the void even as I watch, and open portals to alternate-reality fragments aren’t an uncommon sight.
One hundred and seventy-five men and women are interspersed through the city in squads of three to ten.
Time remaining: 0:49
With such a high Magic (Meta) stat, I can break Paralyzing Bite down into its components. Rather than injecting it via bite, I apply paralyzing poison to my blood.
I rain myself down onto the city.
A Misty Mirage duplicates the entire bloodstorm as I fall, redoubling the force. I avoid the crumbling tree in which Sierra hides, but that turns out to be unnecessary when she blinks out of the range of my Locate Person a second later. Hiding in another dimension? A long-range teleport anchor?
Whatever it is, she’s safe, and I have free reign over the city.
To their credit, the people who were deployed to take Adrian, Sierra, and the demons down aren’t helpless. Around the city, every single squad erects defenses. Forcefields that protect them from my venomous blood, anti-magic measures that vaporize the blood before it hits them, and a dozen other types of effects slow my advance. Some of them just take the blood head-on, the venom not strong enough to work its way through their innate defenses or their armor.
Those who don’t use magical defenses are sorely punished for it when my second attack lands.
For each of the 175 enemies I face, I create four Blood Echos, each of them using Bloodpath to enhance their power. Not an interaction that I can normally do, but I have the power to do it now.
I give each of my seven hundred copies a Soulknife.
And then I pour my Soulpyre over the city.
It’s a bit overkill, especially since I won’t regain the special skill for nine days, but I want to exercise my enhanced power while I have it. My soul is so overloaded by the excess that I gained from the consumption of the tree that even the loss of seven hundred Soulknife usages won’t bring me to a dangerous level of soul damage.
Blood burns. My soul burns.
The city burns.
It catches like dry tinder in a wildfire. My seven hundred copies provide shots of gasoline to make the blaze that much more intense.
A rainbow flame dances over the city, igniting it in mere seconds. Blues intense enough to outshine the midday sky, reds and yellows that match the sun in their intensity, and pure black that sucks the light from around it.
I don’t need enhanced senses to hear the screaming.
Fifteen seconds have passed.
Time remaining: 0:34
In the first five seconds after my Soulpyre blazes down from the sky, one hundred and thirty-one people die.
Trait earned: Killer III
Requirements: Kill 50 beings that possess levels.
Trait earned: Killer IV
Requirements: Kill 100 beings that possess levels
In the next five, thirty-four more perish.
Unlike Wraithfire, Soulpyre bends to my will, so I avoid it as I drop my body down from the sky, coalescing myself back into an almost-humanoid form once more.
Those who still survive must have resistances or even immunities to wraithfire and their ilk, but that’s no barrier to me.
When I touch down on the ground, clearing the flames from my landing spot, a dozen skills come flying my way.
I Siphon them all, and I send them right back.
I become a blur of blood, disappearing and reappearing next to each of the remaining living souls. I Siphon their skills. I Devour their protection.
It takes me eight seconds to kill nine people. My Soulpyre claims each of their corpses, igniting their souls and all their worldly equipment before the previous body even hits the ground.
Time remaining: 0:16
With my time running out, I use Locate Person to find the last living person in this city.
Name: Jayce Bard
Age: 35
Race: Elf
Class: Survivor
Level: 27
Last used skill: Wraithfire Immunity
I dismiss the rest of his status sheet, choosing instead to land in front of him.
He’s not anywhere close to the highest-leveled person out of his comrades. I’m surprised he’s lived this long.
“B-back away!” he shouts as I appear in front of him. “S-stop! Please!”
I melt into a puddle of blood. A blink of an eye later, I remanifest myself directly behind him.
“Hello, Jayce,” I whisper.
He wheels around, falling on his ass in the process. His eyes are wide with fear. “Who are you?”
Time remaining: 0:11
“I get that question a lot,” I say. “Why don’t you figure it out yourself?”
I step forward and sink a knife into his gut, sliding it through steel armor like it’s butter.
Jayce Bard screams, and then blue light surrounds him and he disappears.
Fifty-three seconds have passed, and I am the last living being in Ravendale.
With my remaining seven seconds, I spread myself wide, searching for Sierra.
My enhanced Locate Person finds her three miles away from Ravendale. I use the final second of the boost from the tree to teleport myself there, using a particularly twisted, powerful version of Bloodpath and Shape Blood to shimmy my way to her as a single drop of blood.
I reform inside a tavern, much to the surprise of its current patrons.
“Sierra,” I greet the mage. “Adrian.”
Power leaks out of me like a sieve, the temporary effects of my Diamond-tier Devour finally wearing off. I feel lesser for it immediately, but it’s tempered by the fact that I know that one day, I’ll be able to do this again.
“Evelyn,” Sierra says.
Adrian lets out a low whistle. “Gods asunder, how the fuck do you exist? I felt that from here!”
“Can I get you ladies something?” the barkeep asks, apparently totally unphased by my sudden appearance.
I cock my head, drawing on Acting to find an appropriate response.
“Your worst ale,” I request. “Put it on their tab.”
“Coming right up, miss,” the barkeep says.
Sierra raises an eyebrow. “You’re coming with us, then? To the Seven Kingdoms?”
“I sure fucking hope so,” the Warrior and lately water mage mutters. “Don’t kill me, please.”
I consider it. My previous statement was a combination of instinct and Acting, but I want to confirm what I feel.
What I felt just now, the ecstasy of power… that’s not something I’ll get frequently in the Crowned Islands. It’s pretty clear that this kind of demonic invasion just isn’t something that happens.
It was short notice, but I’m sure the Crowned King sent a force of his best men, and they lasted less than sixty seconds against me.
I’m not going to be able to grow if those are the strongest opponents I have to face.
As much as I’m growing to dislike Sapphire and Marie, I can’t help but agree with one of their statements.
Adversity has built my power, and there’s none of that left for me here.
The entire world is out there just waiting for me to devour it, and I’m happy to oblige.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I think I will.”
I open my eyes to find myself looking into a sharp green stare. For a second, I wonder why Marie’s gaze holds so much concern for me. Before panic and confusion can set in, I register the rest of the body, remembering who else holds the same features.
One of Sierra’s eyes still holds light traces of crackling blue power, while red sparks drift around her green iris in the other. The remnants of her magic surround her. Though I have no skill to detect magic, she radiates a sense of soft power, as if she’s an angel.
No, not an angel. That word carries… the wrong connotation.
“You’re finally awake,” she says, sounding surprisingly peaceful. “Welcome back, my lady.”
My vision is blurry. With my demonic physiology, that shouldn’t be happening. Even if my eyes are damaged enough, Demonic Heritage should’ve brought me back by now.
I blink the blurriness out after a few seconds, and I prop myself up with my arms.
My lower body feels oddly light, and I realize the reason why when I try to stand.
I have no lower body.
The extraneous limbs that I set on fire are also all gone now. My hands come down on brittle, ashen bone that crumbles apart under my weight.
Enough vision returns to me that I finally get to take in my surroundings for the first time.
I’m still in the tree. The fruits of my efforts lie around me. Sunlight streams in through holes I’ve opened, and a neverending stream of black-and-white ash gently falls from the hollow tree above.
Wait, sunlight? When I fought the tree, night had just fallen. Has that much time already passed?
“It’s been ten hours,” Sierra says, answering my unasked question. “Though I wished to move you, your unconscious body resisted. Furthermore, I was otherwise occupied with search and rescue.”
I resisted? Interesting. I sort of expected to have another kind of vision like the ones accompanying my true evolution and the one that wasn’t exactly that.
Instead, all I remember is the last message from the system before I woke up.
Soul not detected. That’s certainly a scary message to pass out to, but it looks like the combination of Demonic Heritage and Soulless have kept me from dying.
My magic is fully restored, too, so I use a minute fraction of it to use Phantom Shape, creating ethereal legs for myself so I can get to my feet. While Shape Self doesn’t let me recreate my own limbs for some unknowable reason, Phantom Shape has no such restriction. With the demon tree’s aura gone, I can weave complex patterns together with no issue.
“You were stable when I found you,” Sierra says, a look of guilt creeping over her face. “I am truly sorry that—“
“It’s not a problem,” I tell her. I’ve been too wrapped up in my thoughts to respond. “I’m alive, and this is where I need to be.”
She nods.
“Forty-one people survived,” Sierra continues. “Forty-four if you count the three of us.”
“Adrian is alive, then,” I say. That surprises me. Though I lacked control over my body when the broken god took over, I distinctly remember distilling Adrian’s cyclone into a devastating ray and firing it back at him.
“Aunt Marie saved his life,” Sierra sighs. “He’ll pay dearly for that.”
“I’m not getting a particularly favorable impression of your aunt,” I tell her honestly. I don’t think I lke Marie even before taking into account the fact that she nearly killed me not twelve hours ago.
“I would be worried if you received a positive one,” she replies. “For what little it is worth, she was instrumental in evacuating the few remaining survivors.”
Forty-one other individuals, huh? I thought more people would make it through the generally weaker demons that the tree spawned into the city around us, but I suppose the people here are weak.
“I see you do not particularly care,” Sierra says. She shrugs. “There are some immediate effects on us, assuming you plan on continuing on working with us.”
“Such as?” I ask, kneeling with my phantom legs and pressing a hand to the “ground” inside the tree. Devour has just advanced, and I’d like to test it on the largest source of soul-restoring demon I have.
“We cannot stay in the Crowned Islands,” Sierra explains. “Adrian and I are both headed towards the Seven Kingdoms.”
That name is familiar to my memories. The Whitestar Kingdom is one of them, and I know that I have an objective to go there and find Sapphire.
I… don’t really want to go. After the events of my failed class evolution, I find myself not liking the idea of dealing with the half-elf again.
Before I make a resolution, though, I close my eyes and activate Devour.
Sierra gasps, and I hear her take a step back.
The skill feels different. At Diamond tier, it’s the single highest-tier skill I have. While going from Bronze to Gold just made the skill more effective, I barely even have to lower my physical body to eat it. Instead, energy surges into me, my hunger to grow manifesting itself in every pore of my body.
I open my eyes and realize why Sierra’s surprised.
Devour has manifested itself as a crimson-black storm. Tendrils of magic explode from me, wrapping my body in a dark malicious aura.
“If I didn’t know better,” Sierra says, “I would think that you were the avatar of the tree.”
I draw on Acting to give her a suitably disturbing smile. “I appreciate it.”
She shudders, but she smiles back. “Oh, one more thing.”
Power continues to surge into me through Devour, and though I don’t get an instant notification about an XP gain, warmth begins to return to my frigid core.
The warmth dissipates almost as soon as it comes, swirling around my soul aimlessly. It doesn’t disappear entirely, but it just… sits there. It does nothing of its own.
Right. The notification I received was that my soul was gone, and while consuming the demons helps patch it up, I don’t think it can create something from nothing.
I hope the latent soul energy I’m gathering from the tree is enough to put my system back together. If I have to go another level with it telling me that I’m going to have my progression critically hamstringed because of the state of my soul, I’m going to kill something.
Okay, I’m going to kill something either way, but if my system doesn’t recover, I’m going to be angry while doing it.
“Broken gods,” Sierra whispers. “A Diamond? At level twelve?”
I continue Devouring the tree. On something of this scale, the effect is less of complete annihilation and more of an embrittlement. Around us, the midnight-black wood loses its color, slowly becoming a greyish off-white as power surges into me.
The sensation of so much soul energy flowing into me is ecstasy. I want to stay in this moment forever.
A thunderous strike not quite like Marie’s lightning nearly shakes me out of the skill. I look up, keeping my Diamond Devour going as a hole the size of a small building appears halfway up the tree. An attack has punched clean through it, leaving an entrance and exit wound so big that I’m worried the tree tumbling over.
My own skill’s weakened the integrity of the structure, but that’s not what concerns me. If it falls, I have Bloodpath to evacuate.
No, my worry is about what that attack means. Forty-one survivors, Sierra said, and I don’t remember a single person having a skill that could do something like this.
“Right,” Sierra sighs. “I was supposed to inform you of this. I had hoped that we would be able to evacuate the area before this happened. The hands we’ve been dealt, I suppose.”
“What—“ I pause as another strike lands on the tree. This one clips the edge, so the tree stays standing for the time being. “Who’s attack is this?”
“As part of our agreement with Aunt Marie, we are the designated villains of this story,” Sierra says, exhaling deeply. “Adrian and I, that is. Aunt Marie informed them that we have summoned demons and harnessed their power, and she’s urged them to kill us. You were never mentioned. If you choose to, you may stay here.”
“I’m not staying here,” I reply immediately. As another attack shakes the foundation of the lifeless tree, Devour completes.
Temporary attribute points gained!
Due to soul limitations, you have been restricted to +50 in each attribute.
Time remaining: 1:00
Devour granted +10691 XP!
XP: 12747/1200
Soul not detected.
Excess XP detected.
Excess sufficient.
Initiating correction.
9999 excess XP consumed.
Nascent demonic soul formed.
Where there was swirling warmth in a formless, frigid void just moments ago, there is now a single solid spark of life. In an instant, the wisps of soul energy slam into my recreated soul. The effect is immediate and vast—a spark becomes a candle becomes a bonfire. Sensation returns to every part of me. The tree collected energy from a city’s death, and now I collect energy from it in turn.
You have advanced to level 13!
All stats increased by 1.
You have gained 3 stat points.
You have advanced to level 14!
All stats increased by 1.
You have gained 3 stat points.
Due to your traits and actions, you have gained the Silver-tier skill Divine Resistance.
Due to your traits and actions, every Bronze-tier skill increases its current level by 5 to a maximum of 10.
Due to your traits and actions, every Silver-tier skill increases its current level by 10 to a maximum of 25.
I am overflowing with power. A dark star burns bright within me, begging to be let out. The world feels sharper. More fragile.
I reach my hand up towards the sky as if I can hold the sun in the palm of my hand, and the tree starts to crumble.
I cast Shape Blood, and several thousand gallons of blood rise from the ground around us, exsanguinating every last demon here. Black and crimson fluid flies upward under the force of my will, sealing holes and propping up falling structures.
“Who are we facing?” I manage to say. Each word I utter is a struggle, as if pronouncing the syllables in the wrong order will kill the woman in front of me.
Sierra’s eyes are wide, her jaw hanging slightly open. When she speaks, it’s without any of the refinement that I’ve grown to expect from her. “The Crowned King’s men. Evelyn, what the fuck—“
“Do you mind,” I eke out, “if I kill them?”
She’s barely started to shake her head when I explode upwards, giving in to my impulses.
My body turns to blood as my awareness expands. Within moments, I fill the entirety of the inside of the tree. I control thousands of gallons of blood and I am the blood.
I have taken everything I can from the tree. With barely an effort, I turn the brittle, crumbling bark into ash, turning myself into a titan of spears and explosive power.
The vast magic I have access to right now is temporary. The boosted stats I have—over quadruple what I had earlier—will last for only sixty seconds.
But that’s all I need.
Magic (Power) is currently at 64. Magic (Meta) matches it at 57. At a level this high, I finally understand what the latter attribute means. The first means that any skill I use will carry power that far eclipses anything these people can offer.
The second means that the wording of the spells aren’t restrictions but guidelines.
I use Locate Person, and I twist the skill. Rather than trying to locate a single person, I locate people, period.
I’m bombarded with information, but with my mind currently operating at truly superhuman speeds thanks to the temporary 67 I have in the stat, I can process all of it.
Sierra is in the city. Adrian and Marie are not.
One hundred and seventy-five enemies stand against me.
Unlike the guards I’ve grown used to, these would’ve truly posed a threat to me before today. The lowest-leveled individual here is level 20. The highest is a whopping level 45 in her primary class and 29 in her second. Each one of these could be a Noren, someone that could’ve killed me with barely a thought.
It took me over an hour of planning and a number of lucky chances to take down Noren.
It takes me three seconds to decide on a course of action this time.
I spread myself over the city, expanding my body of blood until I’m a scarlet cloud hovering over the entirety of what once was Ravendale.
From here, I can see why there were so few survivors. The entire city’s collapsed in on itself, revealing chunks of what must’ve been the undercity. In multiple areas, it looks as if the land has simply been upended on itself. Parts of the city fall into the void even as I watch, and open portals to alternate-reality fragments aren’t an uncommon sight.
One hundred and seventy-five men and women are interspersed through the city in squads of three to ten.
Time remaining: 0:49
With such a high Magic (Meta) stat, I can break Paralyzing Bite down into its components. Rather than injecting it via bite, I apply paralyzing poison to my blood.
I rain myself down onto the city.
A Misty Mirage duplicates the entire bloodstorm as I fall, redoubling the force. I avoid the crumbling tree in which Sierra hides, but that turns out to be unnecessary when she blinks out of the range of my Locate Person a second later. Hiding in another dimension? A long-range teleport anchor?
Whatever it is, she’s safe, and I have free reign over the city.
To their credit, the people who were deployed to take Adrian, Sierra, and the demons down aren’t helpless. Around the city, every single squad erects defenses. Forcefields that protect them from my venomous blood, anti-magic measures that vaporize the blood before it hits them, and a dozen other types of effects slow my advance. Some of them just take the blood head-on, the venom not strong enough to work its way through their innate defenses or their armor.
Those who don’t use magical defenses are sorely punished for it when my second attack lands.
For each of the 175 enemies I face, I create four Blood Echos, each of them using Bloodpath to enhance their power. Not an interaction that I can normally do, but I have the power to do it now.
I give each of my seven hundred copies a Soulknife.
And then I pour my Soulpyre over the city.
It’s a bit overkill, especially since I won’t regain the special skill for nine days, but I want to exercise my enhanced power while I have it. My soul is so overloaded by the excess that I gained from the consumption of the tree that even the loss of seven hundred Soulknife usages won’t bring me to a dangerous level of soul damage.
Blood burns. My soul burns.
The city burns.
It catches like dry tinder in a wildfire. My seven hundred copies provide shots of gasoline to make the blaze that much more intense.
A rainbow flame dances over the city, igniting it in mere seconds. Blues intense enough to outshine the midday sky, reds and yellows that match the sun in their intensity, and pure black that sucks the light from around it.
I don’t need enhanced senses to hear the screaming.
Fifteen seconds have passed.
Time remaining: 0:34
In the first five seconds after my Soulpyre blazes down from the sky, one hundred and thirty-one people die.
Trait earned: Killer III
Requirements: Kill 50 beings that possess levels.
Trait earned: Killer IV
Requirements: Kill 100 beings that possess levels
In the next five, thirty-four more perish.
Unlike Wraithfire, Soulpyre bends to my will, so I avoid it as I drop my body down from the sky, coalescing myself back into an almost-humanoid form once more.
Those who still survive must have resistances or even immunities to wraithfire and their ilk, but that’s no barrier to me.
When I touch down on the ground, clearing the flames from my landing spot, a dozen skills come flying my way.
I Siphon them all, and I send them right back.
I become a blur of blood, disappearing and reappearing next to each of the remaining living souls. I Siphon their skills. I Devour their protection.
It takes me eight seconds to kill nine people. My Soulpyre claims each of their corpses, igniting their souls and all their worldly equipment before the previous body even hits the ground.
Time remaining: 0:16
With my time running out, I use Locate Person to find the last living person in this city.
Name: Jayce Bard
Age: 35
Race: Elf
Class: Survivor
Level: 27
Last used skill: Wraithfire Immunity
I dismiss the rest of his status sheet, choosing instead to land in front of him.
He’s not anywhere close to the highest-leveled person out of his comrades. I’m surprised he’s lived this long.
“B-back away!” he shouts as I appear in front of him. “S-stop! Please!”
I melt into a puddle of blood. A blink of an eye later, I remanifest myself directly behind him.
“Hello, Jayce,” I whisper.
He wheels around, falling on his ass in the process. His eyes are wide with fear. “Who are you?”
Time remaining: 0:11
“I get that question a lot,” I say. “Why don’t you figure it out yourself?”
I step forward and sink a knife into his gut, sliding it through steel armor like it’s butter.
Jayce Bard screams, and then blue light surrounds him and he disappears.
Fifty-three seconds have passed, and I am the last living being in Ravendale.
With my remaining seven seconds, I spread myself wide, searching for Sierra.
My enhanced Locate Person finds her three miles away from Ravendale. I use the final second of the boost from the tree to teleport myself there, using a particularly twisted, powerful version of Bloodpath and Shape Blood to shimmy my way to her as a single drop of blood.
I reform inside a tavern, much to the surprise of its current patrons.
“Sierra,” I greet the mage. “Adrian.”
Power leaks out of me like a sieve, the temporary effects of my Diamond-tier Devour finally wearing off. I feel lesser for it immediately, but it’s tempered by the fact that I know that one day, I’ll be able to do this again.
“Evelyn,” Sierra says.
Adrian lets out a low whistle. “Gods asunder, how the fuck do you exist? I felt that from here!”
“Can I get you ladies something?” the barkeep asks, apparently totally unphased by my sudden appearance.
I cock my head, drawing on Acting to find an appropriate response.
“Your worst ale,” I request. “Put it on their tab.”
“Coming right up, miss,” the barkeep says.
Sierra raises an eyebrow. “You’re coming with us, then? To the Seven Kingdoms?”
“I sure fucking hope so,” the Warrior and lately water mage mutters. “Don’t kill me, please.”
I consider it. My previous statement was a combination of instinct and Acting, but I want to confirm what I feel.
What I felt just now, the ecstasy of power… that’s not something I’ll get frequently in the Crowned Islands. It’s pretty clear that this kind of demonic invasion just isn’t something that happens.
It was short notice, but I’m sure the Crowned King sent a force of his best men, and they lasted less than sixty seconds against me.
I’m not going to be able to grow if those are the strongest opponents I have to face.
As much as I’m growing to dislike Sapphire and Marie, I can’t help but agree with one of their statements.
Adversity has built my power, and there’s none of that left for me here.
The entire world is out there just waiting for me to devour it, and I’m happy to oblige.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I think I will.”
