Demonic Devourer: First, I Eat the Babies [LitRPG]

All attributes increased by 31.

You have gained 93 stat points.

General Affinity advanced to level 3!

All skills vastly enhanced. List abridged for brevity.

Special skill Carnelian Domain advanced to Silver!

Bronze tier skills have been elevated to level 25 Silver tier.

Silver tier skills have been elevated to Gold.

Gold tier skills have been elevated to Diamond.

Diamond tier skills have increased in level.

 

Skill namechanges are as follows:

Woundweave (Silver) -> Hemorrhage (Gold)

Blood Echo (Silver) -> Blood Clone (Gold)

Misty Mirage (Silver) -> Ethereal Tempest (Gold)

Locate Person (Silver) -> Locate (Gold)

Soulknife (Silver) -> Soulblade (Gold)

 

New skill unlocked: Blood Magic - Blood Sense (Silver)

Skill bank created. Skill bank access will be granted in ??? levels.

 

Anomalous

Requirements: ???

You have broken a fundamental law of the world. System-based analysis skills are significantly less likely to function on you. Furthermore, ___ ___ ___ _____.

 

“I think,” I say, burning with fresh power, “that things have changed.”

“No shit things have changed,” Adrian says, his voice coming out in a harsh whisper. “Fuck me, I don’t even have Appraise on and I can feel the mana coming off you.”

“You do not know how to cloak,” Sierra says. It’s not a question.

“I don’t,” I say, breathing hard.

The sensation isn’t wholly unfamiliar. I’ve been imbued with power before—huge level-ups, my class evolution, the Devouring of the demon tree. This, though, this is like all of that put together and massively amplified. Electric shocks course through my body, my fresh magic power exploding through my veins.

I inhale deeply. Exhale.

“Shit,” Adrian says. “You’re—fuck, my Appraise isn’t working, I can’t read your level.”

“Fifty-one,” Sierra replies, shaking her head. “She will not experience backlash, but an advancement this dramatic with no cloak will draw attention. And—”

The Blue Mage’s eyes widen, and she presses both hands to her mouth.

“Something wrong?” I ask, steadying my breathing.

“Your attributes,” she says. “There must be a mistake. Attributes this high indicate a Category higher than your own. High Category 1, at a bare minimum.”

“Convenient,” I say, clenching and unclenching my right hand.

I feel incredible, as if I’ve combined every single recreational drug under the sun and injected them into myself at once. Not that I have a perfect reference point for those, of course.

“Dangerous,” Sierra says, emphasizing the word. “With an advancement this significant, anyone with a half-decent sense for magic within ten miles will have felt the impact of your growth.”

“There’s something different about this,” Adrian says. “It was twisted, somehow. It reminds of an—“

“An anomaly,” Sierra completes. “Remember, Adrian, we are not the only ones that possess the capability here. The organization has its tendrils everywhere.”

“Fuuuuuuck me,” Adrian says. “Then what do we do?”

“If it’s not a problem yet,” I reply, “It’s not like we have many options. Let’s keep going.”

I don’t want to use too many of my new features yet. I’m confident that I can kill anything in my path, but even with the power coursing through me, the backlash still flickers underneath my skin. It would be supremely awkward to use one of my now-ridiculous skills just for the backlash to tear me apart from the inside.

“Nothing to be done about it, true enough,” Sierra says amicably. She holds up a hand, coalescing blue magic into a familiar marble shape. “I will prepare what I can. Adrian… don’t die.”

“Thanks for the fuckin’ encouragement,” the Warrior mutters. “Shit, Evelyn, you’re kind of scaring me. Can’t you cloak?”

“We established this,” I say. “No. Also, aren’t cloaks used to hide a class or your real Category? That’s what the two of you’ve been using them for, right?”

We’re still walking on the beach, clinging close to the cliff, but our voices are no longer the whispers they were. There’s no point in remaining stealthy when I’ve given the game away, I suppose.

Sierra shakes her head. “Not quite. I would show you, but backlash means I should not even try. Essentially, cloaking means hiding your power, whether that means one of your classes, your Category, your true level, or even your attributes. You may have noticed it with Adrian.”

I think back to Adrian unveiling his level 126 Hydrokinetic class. It caught me completely off guard, and his power seemed to balloon to the point where it had a physically tangible effect on the air.

“I did. It was rather dramatic. Is it a skill?”

“Nah,” Adrian says. He shrivels away into himself when I glance at him, but he’s apparently grown comfortable enough with me to actually speak to me instead of just running away. “That’d be too damn easy, wouldn’t it. You gotta figure it out yourself, the same way that raw mana sense is something that you train yourself, not with the help of the system.”

“It takes time to learn properly,” Sierra says.

“Time that we don’t have,” I reply.

“Be grateful that you don’t need to learn it properly, then,” the Blue Mage says, smiling. “Ready?”

“Oh, this again?” Adrian asks, sighing. “Yeah, good luck, Evelyn. This’ll be irritating.”

“Just a touch,” Sierra says, smiling slightly.

I push my enhanced senses out, though that doesn’t amount to much. Blood Sense is a new skill, and I don’t want to push it too much for fear of the backlash worsening. While Hemokinesis allows me to detect blood in the air, Blood Sense lets me sense what’s inside living beings as well.

Nothing but Adrian, Sierra, and me. That’s good, but the range isn’t that good and we still have a few miles to go. Anything could happen during that time.

“This is the incorrect framework for a proper cloak,” Sierra says, walking and talking and preparing magic at the same time, “But you may think of your magic as air. You live in it. You breathe it. Can you feel it inside you, around you, permeating through everything?”

I close my eyes, feeling for the magic within and without. I’m not entirely sure if the tingling sensation I find is what I’m supposed to be looking for, but I nod.

“Fantastic. You may thus think of your general magical presence as a standard life. To exist with magic means breathing it in and out passively. Now, use a skill. Any minor one will do.”

Sifting through my list of freshly-improved skills reveals a laundry list of powerful magic, most of which I’m worried will be a little too powerful to use as a demonstration. I settle on Locate, which I use to find the gun I have stored in my pack.

“Focus on the magic. This, here, is like taking a deep breath. Feel it course through you as you activate the skill.”

The sensation is faint, but I think I can identify what she’s saying. There’s a hint of a cycle somewhere within me, something that processes magic in and returns a burning location in my mind.

“What you need to do,” Sierra explains, “is the exact opposite. Instead of inhaling deeper, stop breathing.”

I blink, taking that in. “Sorry?”

“Hold your ‘breath,’ so to speak,” she says.

“It’s really godsdamned uncomfortable,” Adrian murmurs, staring at the ground.

That sounds a little counterintuitive, and I’m not sure how I’m actually supposed to manage that, but we have time to try, I suppose.

“Actually holding your breath helps, I’ve heard,” Sierra says. “Again, the goal is not to create a flawless cloak, but to hide your current raw power from the discerning eye of any low-powered passerby.”

It feels utterly stupid to even try, but I inhale, and I hold a breath. At the same time, I reach for the threads of magic within me. That part’s easy—I’ve grown accustomed to doing so over my short life.

It’s much harder to force myself to let go of them.

My first attempt is a resounding failure. Adrian asks if I even tried. The second one doesn’t fare much better.

But by the time human civilization pulls into view again, I’ve figured it out.

“I receive an error in the level when I attempt to Appraise you,” Sierra says approvingly. “That part is surprisingly effective, mind. I can see through a fair few cloaks with little effort.”

That’s probably because of my new Anomalous trait, but I don’t share that for what are hopefully obvious reasons.

“You also don’t feel like you’re going to murder everyone within a mile of you,” Adrian adds. He seems more at ease now, which I take as a sign that the pseudo-cloak is working.

“That’s potentially a negative,” I reply.

I’m not sure why Adrian laughs at that, but I shrug and move on.

In the distance, the train station comes into view. It’s larger and nicer than the ones in the Crowned Islands, but not by much. The real variance comes in the tracks, which are steel and lack slats entirely.

We aren’t the first people to arrive.

“Ah, shit,” Adrian whispers, squinting towards the station. “Those ain’t station workers.”

“Halcyon family,” Sierra adds, a translucent blue circle obscuring one of her eyes. An information-gathering skill? “They’re supposed to be one of the upper-echelon clans in Whitestar. What are they doing here?”

I close my eyes, pushing my Blood Sense out. It’s challenging to do that while also maintaining the “don’t breathe” technique that Sierra’s offered me, but I manage.

“I assume these are not friendly,” I say. “I count twelve. Two dead or dying within.”

Sierra curses quietly. “That would indicate a lack of friendliness, yes. Hold on a second.”

The three of us crouch next to the cliff wall, our dark figures hidden from view. The train station’s still a solid quarter mile off, but a sand dune is all that blocks us from direct line of sight to them. I’m glad nobody’s looking our way.

The Blue Mage snaps her fingers, and one of her marbles bursts. A second later, thick blue lines swirl out into the air, vibrating and carrying the sound of conversation with them.

“…got a train incoming in fifteen,” a thick, accented male voice says. “Check those, too. Remember—you feel anything off, stick ‘em with one of these. You felt that same as the rest of us, yeah? Nobody comes in or out until we capture our prey.”

Are they… are they talking about me?

“I can’t tell levels,” Sierra says. “Not from here, not with only my secondary class.”

“You know I’m useless,” Adrian sighs. “Do we run, then?”

“Hey,” I say, tossing Sierra one of the two communication stones I still possess, “I’m not sure how these work, but they should let you talk to me. Figure it out.”

I stand up, and I start walking across the empty beach.

“Evelyn,” Adrian whispers urgently. “Evelyn, stop.”

“Shh,” Sierra says. “Adrian. Just watch.”

A quarter mile is one thousand three hundred and twenty feet. The exact distance between us and the twelve occupying the station isn’t quite that, but it’s close enough. While there were ruins of long-abandoned villages at irregular points along the sand earlier, the final stretch is totally empty. The station itself is well-lit, illuminating about five hundred feet out from the tracks.

They don’t notice me when I step into the light. I draw lightly on my Stealth skill, holding in my breath as much as I can. It’s… really irritating. Using a skill is like trying to pump oxygen through my body while also not allowing myself to breathe. I can’t use it at anywhere near full power, either. Annoying.

These twelve can’t be very powerful. My Stealth skill is Gold tier now, so of course it’ll be extremely powerful, but I’m barely even using it. Balancing it with this pseudo-cloak technique is too much effort, so it’s at a fraction of the power it should actually be at.

Someone finally notices my existence when I open the door.

It doesn’t even take a visual scan of the station to tell me where people are. Two of the… Sierra called them the Halcyon family, right? There are two Halcyon men flanking the double doors, both of them wielding shotguns. Another four are lounging around on couches, their busy chatter stopping as I enter. The remaining six are hidden behind various doors within the station itself, which is also where the twin bodies lie just out of sight.

“Greetings, traveler,” the man to my right says. I take him in quickly. Grey hair, middle aged. Level 41. More powerful than Noren, who significantly outmatched me when I was alone, but somehow, I don’t feel threatened in the slightest.

“The city’s been under threat, if you haven’t heard,” the one to my left continues. “For the next few days, we need to inspect anyone coming in and out, understand?”

Level 24. Pathetic.

Their uniforms remind me of something from Ravendale. I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is, and sifting through my memories confirms that whatever familiarity I recognize has nothing to do with Sapphire or Marie or any of them, so I don’t care much.

“Sure,” I say, trying to hold my breathing routine. The scent of blood is faint on the air, but I can just barely detect it. There’s something else, though. This place is kind of mildewy and more than a bit dusty. I must have kicked some up when I walked in. “What do you need me to do?”

“Just stand still,” the younger man says, shouldering his shotgun and placing a hand on my shoulder. “Lay down your arms, and there won’t be any trouble.”

As his hands wander over me, the level 24 apparently torn between trying to feel my skin and unsling my rifle, he steps forward and kicks up more dust.

“Evelyn,” Sierra’s voice says, straight into my head. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” I reply, a warm thread of magic pulsing through me from the stone in my pocket. It’s remarkably easy to use. “Give me a—“

Enough dust finally makes it into the air, and I sneeze, losing my concentration.

The level 24 pauses, one hand on my waist, and his eyes widen.

“Arthur!” his grey-haired partner says. “Back!”

I sigh. “I suppose we’re doing this, then.”

The backlash has faded enough for me to be confident using my skills, at least a few of them. I have a lot of upgrades, and I’d like to try as many of them as I can.

“Evelyn, we see you,” Sierra says. “Adrian says, and I quote, ‘do not fuck up.’”

I close my eyes. As the level 41 brings his shotgun around, I act.

Hemorrhage. Formerly Woundweave and Woundshape before that, it now works on blood that’s inside people. I’m sure there are some that’ll be able to resist it.

The grey-haired man is not one of them. As I watch, pulling on magic as easily as I breathe, his brain explodes out through his eyes.

Hemokinesis. It’s Gold tier now, and it’s easier than ever to use as a weapon. Even as the older Halcyon tumbles to the ground, I shape his brainmatter-coated blood into a scythe, decapitating the man still touching me in an instant.

Finally, I unsling the rifle, collecting both souls to charge it.

Abyssal Echo is a Diamond tier skill now, but I don’t want to annihilate everybody in this room at the same time. Doing so will mean I can’t test the rest of my skills, and I don’t want that. Thankfully, my enhanced Demonic Affinity means that I can easily modulate the skill.

The ten living men and women in the station with me crumple to their feet, screaming.

Ah, whoops. Maybe a little too much power on that one.

I retract the skill almost immediately. Even at a quarter power, its fresh upgrade to Diamond makes it extremely magic-intensive. It consumes a lot to use it.

And even at a quarter power, it’s extremely effective. The four people I can see are all dazed as shit—oh. Three of them are dazed. The fourth one doesn’t get up.

That’s a shame. I think that means I destroyed his soul. I can’t Devour him anymore.

“Broken gods,” I hear Sierra whisper. I don’t think she meant to say that.

Ethereal Tempest. The Misty Blade I stole from a low-level UCC guard has come a long way. It began as a lowly alternative to my knife. Now, white fog explodes out from me, filling the room in moments.

Knifefighting. At Gold tier, my prediction skill is extremely enhanced, but more importantly, I can control the knife within a limited radius of my hand. With Ethereal Tempest, I fill the room with magical slashing blades with a single knife, more than quintupling the power of a single blow.

Of the three that attempt to stand to face me, only one makes it all the way. One of them dies before she can even get to her feet, her throat slit. The other one falls apart when she tries to fire her gun, a misty strike separating her from groin to head.

The last one, to his credit, manages to get a shot off. Despite the mist of my skill, it’s surprisingly accurate. A dozen pellets pierce straight through my gut, and the way they burn inside me tells me that the ammunition is magical.

Unfortunately for him, Restore Self is at Gold tier as well, and though I can still only use it once every three hours, healing myself from a shotgun blast is light work.

As the mist dissipates, I put the Soulshard Rifle up to my shoulder.

“Nice shot,” I tell the man, squeezing the trigger. With my freshly re-earned Firearms now at level 25 in Silver tier, I can’t miss.

I take his soul to recharge my gun. At the same time, I activate my second-oldest skill.

Devour. Now at Diamond, it can easily absorb corpses without me even having to come close to physically eating them. Black and red power washes out over the dead men and women around me, and the four who still have consumable souls dissolve away under my skill, bringing me up a couple thousand XP.

I saunter towards the closed doors.

Before I can get there, the entire wall crumples in on itself. According to my Gold tier Appraise, someone’s handling a massive chunk of metal with Electromagnetism.

I tilt my head, and I Siphon the magic away. Before the wall can come flying at me, the magic manipulating it stops.

At Gold tier, Bloodpath essentially enables me to disassemble myself. So long as a few drops of blood remain in this form, I should be able to pull myself together. I follow my Blood Sense, identifying each person remaining.

I use Soulblade to kill three of them, creating a proper spear. It’s actually worse for me to fight with the elongated blade than it was with the knife, but the extra reach will be appreciated, and it’s possible I could get a skill that involves spearfighting down the line.

Three remaining.

These ones feel different from the rest. More powerful. Appraise confirms it—they’re on the higher end of Category 0. Just hours ago, it would’ve been unthinkable to take even one of them on.

It won’t matter.

The first one summons a blizzard, dropping the temperature around her to absolute zero. As I watch, even the air itself freezes as her skill turns everything around her into fragile, breaking ice.

I kneel, finding a rock on the ground, and I throw it at her. Her skill freezes it in midair, and it shatters harmlessly against her rapidly-forming ice armor.

My Diamond tier Smite is much more harmful. When the light clears, nothing is left but steaming ash.

The next one sees me before I come, and a dozen knives slice straight into me before I can even react.

Shapeshift allows me to create external bones, armoring my throat before he can deal a potentially lethal strike. Though he’s hit vital areas, all he’s done is fuel my Hemokinesis.

I send a shower of blood flying out from me, so densely packed that even his speed can’t avoid it without running far away. I suppose he doesn’t even realize it’s a danger to him.

Soulrend separates his soul from his body when a sharpened droplet manages to make contact with his face.

The last man speaks, and I feel my will twisting as his skill worms its way into my mind—

I will not allow that.

And neither will I.

I stare him down as I use Devour, stripping away his skin, then his blood, then his muscle, his bones, and his clothes. Everything.

“That felt good,” I murmur, stretching as I begin to consume the corpses.

Sierra and Adrian finally arrive about a minute later. Adrian has a terrified look about him, one that very much resembles the one he had the first time I threatened him back on the first train we were on.

The Blue Mage’s jaw drops.

“Sierra, Adrian,” I greet the pair. “Let’s take that train, shall we?”

 

Current stats:

Name: Evelyn Carnelian

Age: 19

Race: ???

Class: Divine Demon

Level: 51

XP: 9542/10200

Kill Count: 247

Available Stat Points: 93

 

Traits:

Demonic Heritage

Enhanced Blood Affinity

Kinslayer II

Killer IV

Free Bird

Relentless

Soulless

Merciless

Voidtouched

Godsmarked

Heretic

 

Magic Affinities:

General - 2

Blood - 3

Divine - 3

Demonic - 3

 

Special Skills:

Soulpyre (Diamond)

Carnelian Domain (Silver)

 

Skills:

Appraise (Gold) - lvl 1

Devour (Diamond) - lvl 20

Blood Magic (Gold) - lvl 1

> Hemokinesis (Gold) - lvl 2

> Hemorrhage (Gold) - lvl 2

> Blood Clone (Gold) - lvl 5

> Bloodpath (Gold) - lvl 15

> Shapeshift (Gold) - lvl 1

> Blood Sense (Silver) - lvl 3

Knifefighting (Gold) - lvl 15

Stealth (Gold) - lvl 1

Acting (Gold) - lvl 1

Imitation (Gold) - lvl 1

Siphon (Diamond) - lvl 20

Ethereal Tempest (Gold) - lvl 5

Phantom Shape (Gold) - lvl 1

Locate (Gold) - lvl 1

Soulblade (Gold) - lvl 1

Restore Self (Gold) - lvl 1

Smite (Diamond) - lvl 1

Soulrend (Diamond) - lvl 1

Radiant Aura (Gold) - lvl 5

Firearms (Silver) - lvl 25

Abyssal Echo (Diamond) - lvl 1

 

Resistances:

Enhanced Pain Resistance (Gold) - lvl 40

Poison Resistance (Bronze) - lvl 9

Enhanced Blade Resistance (Silver) - lvl 25

Enhanced Demonic Resistance (Silver) - lvl 25

Enhanced Fire Resistance (Gold) - lvl 25

Enhanced Wraithfire Resistance (Diamond) - lvl 25

Enhanced Divine Resistance (Gold) - lvl 40

Enhanced Antimemetic Resistance (Gold) - lvl 6

 

Attributes:

Magic (Power) - 57

Magic (Regen) - 49

Magic (Meta) - 44

Body (Speed) - 56

Body (Strength) - 51

Body (Durability) - 48

Mind (Speed) - 54

Mind (Resistance) - 45