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

Chapter 75

My decision feels like a mistake before the item is even finished activating, but I know it is what I have to do.

As I am right now, I can’t kill the incoming bastardization of a monster. Hells, I don’t know the first thing about this new, nascent Titan, but I know one thing.

In comparison to a true Titan, the thing that just broke the anomalous fragment we were in is nothing.

Sersui is hundreds of miles away. The Titan Caller in my hands gives me an impression of just where it is, but even that action alone sends cracks splintering through the tablet, fracturing the runic patterns so severely that I doubt it’ll ever work again when it’s served its purpose.

And even from those hundreds of miles, I can feel it. The world under me shakes, and I watch as the remnants of the fragments around me tumble to pieces, ruins crumbling under the raw force of the Titan’s presence.

This is true power. Though my passenger might claim that the newborn pieced-together creature has achieved the pinnacle of power, I can tell the difference. One of them breaks a pocket world with killing intent. The other shakes everything by simply awakening.

“Titan!” Zil shouts, already a hundred feet away. “Get the fuck out!”

I could just leave the Titan Caller here and run alongside the rest of them. If I weren’t me, I would. If it weren’t for my circumstances, I would.

If, if, if—all that matters is what is. It’s not in my nature to run. More importantly, the nascent Titan is incomplete.

I get it now. That instinct, born from my amalgam. Of course it’s incomplete when a real Titan feels like this.

It needs me to take the next step into its infancy. It needs my passenger. It’ll follow me no matter where I go, and so I’ll stay here on this battlefield I’ve chosen.

Sierra has not moved.

“That item summons a Titan,” she says. “How long have you kept that a secret?”

“I—“

“It doesn’t matter,” she decides.

“I got it from a dweller group under Novarath,” I tell her. “A last resort, intended to pit a disaster against a calamity. That’s what they called it.”

Sierra laughs, the soft, tinkling sound coming as a surprise. “You truly are something else, Evelyn.”

“I suppose I am,” I reply. “I notice that you’re not running.”

“Do you think you’re the only one cursed with ambition?” Sierra asks. “There are things I can’t back down from. Opportunities I can’t give up. Here and now, a direct confrontation against the weakest Titan to ever exist?”

“We can’t back down,” Adrian says, slashing aside a falling chunk of concrete.

I glance at him, taking in his presence for the first time. “Are you sure you can fight?”

Something about him looks different. I can’t pin down what exactly, but I identify a number of minor mannerisms, differences in the way his magic flows.

“Try me,” he says. “I took a leaf out of your book, Blood Reaper.”

I Appraise him.

Name: Adrian Stahr

Age: 19

Race: Human

Class: Warrior/Hydrokinetic

Level: 41/131

Last Used Skill: Water Magic - Blade of the Eternal Sea (Gold) - lvl 47

Adrian is quickly advancing. After an incredibly fruitful series of quests and an effective usage of soul mutilation, he has begun to unleash his potential. In recent history, only one other being has seen development this quickly: the Blood Reaper of the Crowned Islands, Evelyn Carnelian.

From 8 to 41. From 126 to 131. One single day.

I tilt my head. “How much XP did you even gain?”

“Tens of thousands,” he says.

I’d need hundreds of thousands to accomplish the same. That’s another point towards my running theory that I progress on a different scale from others.

But I don’t have time to be jealous.

“If I fight this Titan,” he says, grimacing, “I might be able to force an early Category 2.”

“You’d be committing suicide,” Sierra admonishes him.

“I already am,” he replies. “My soul is—agh, fuck.”

Adrian doubles over, clutching his chest, and I understand.

Just like me, he’s taken risks. Just like me, he’s stretched himself farther than he should be able to.

But unlike me, he can’t handle the consequences.

“It’s tearing apart,” he manages. “Premature Category 2 is—”

“It’s impossible,” Sierra cuts in.

“It’s my only choice,” Adrian says. “And since when has something being impossible stopped you? When has it stopped Evelyn?”

She doesn’t have a response to that.

The ground rumbles once more, and the Titan Caller’s quickly-fading magic tells me that Sersui is less than two hundred miles away now. Twenty minutes, maybe.

Above us, the sky begins to discolor in an uncomfortably familiar manner.

“The Titan,” I say. “The newborn one. You have a name for it?”

“Nope,” Adrian says. “Didn’t stop to think of one.”

“We can discuss one after we kill it,” Sierra says. “Or, more likely, after Sersui comes and annihilates everything. It is Sersui, correct? I hope my information isn’t out of date.”

“Sersui,” I confirm. A thought comes to mind. “Sierra. Is your Personal Storage still functional?”

“Shit, you’re right,” Sierra says. “It is. Adrian, stand back.”

The Hydrokinetic obliges, floating upwards on a twisting platform made of pressurized water.

Sierra opens the floodgates, and I begin to Devour.

Devour granted [UNKNOWN] XP! Please wait.

At long last. Sustenance.

I feel my passenger wriggle through my soulspace, searching, reaching.

Remember what you are, I order the thing within me. Remember what I can do to you.

It backs off from my meal.

Viscera from half a dozen annihilated bodies pours out of Sierra’s storage skill without the woman blinking an eye, and it all meets my skill and disappears within me. Power overwhelms me, pulsing through my veins with more surety than I’ve ever felt before. This surge is unlike anything else. I knew that, and I prepared for it, but it’s far beyond my wildest dreams.

“The Titan,” I say. “The newborn one. You have a name for it?”

“I do,” a new voice says, joining the conversation. “It is named Inome. Nameless one, in the old tongue.”

Blood Sense tells me where he is, so I don’t look at him. I recognize the voice. I recognize the particular sense of wrongness that’s only present when he’s around.

“Arthur Halcyon,” I greet him as the world continues to shake around us. The ground has begun to splinter already. The air is fracturing high above us.

“Evelyn Carnelian,” he replies from behind us.

Sierra turns and blasts him in the face with her staff.

“Evelyn Carnelian,” he replies from behind us.

Sierra turns—but he’s not there. He’s already shifted positions, using his time magic to reposition himself. He’s stronger than he was before, I can tell—has he fully decloaked? I wouldn’t put it past him.

This could be a tough fight.

Except, I realize, power returning to my veins, he’s not the only one who’s grown.

A fragment of a memory from a time that shouldn’t exist flickers through me. One from only seconds ago.

I Devoured his entire team, and true power does not forget what it is. His skill may have changed the future, rewritten what is and was, but I am Anomalous. The rules of others’ magic do not apply to me.

You have advanced to level 99!

You cannot advance past level 99 without increasing your Category.

All attributes increased by 45.

You have gained 135 stat points.

Objective: Paradigm Shift

You have raised six attributes above level 100.

Attributes raised: [6/8]

New skill gained: Wraithfire (Gold)

This fire burns away at the soul itself. Wraithfire will remain burning for ninety-nine minutes after activation.

“Who are you,” I hiss, turning to face the Halcyon scion, “to try me?”

I thrust magic power forth, and the air ignites.

Arthur Halcyon burns.

A flicker of magic blinks into existence, but Arthur Halcyon burns.

A flicker of magic blinks into existence, and I adjust my aim as my foe tries to escape. Arthur Halcyon burns.

A flicker of magic blinks into existence, and I Siphon it. Arthur Halcyon burns.

A flicker of magic burns.

Arthur Halcyon burns.

“Special skill,” Arthur screams as my flames consume him, head to toe, “Stop Time.”

I Siphon the skill, but special skills are beyond regular ones. I can weaken it, but I can’t stop it.

I’m still not strong enough.

I, too, am incomplete.

The Wastelands, frozen in a moment

Arthur Halcyon is dying. He knows what wraithfire is. He knows what it can do. It’s part of his project, after all. Wraithfire is a necessary ingredient to temper ingredients designed to sate a sleeping Titan.

Even now, stopping time in its tracks is only a stopgap measure. The wraithfire will remain dormant for as long as he can maintain this skill. But the moment he attacks, the moment he runs out of mana, his time is up. There are precious few people in this corner of the world that can extinguish flames that feed on the soul, and Arthur is not one of them.

Of course, he thinks, laughing silently to himself, this has never been about the people. This has never been about him. Never about any of those who he conned into working with him.

There is no way to harness a Titan’s power. They are, by nature, uncontrollable. Even the strongest mage on the vast expanses of this godsforsaken planet would have a better time reasoning with a hurricane than a Titan. Hells, it’s entirely possible they could tame the hurricane.

Against a Titan, though, even one in its infancy, there is nothing. To the raw hunger, the desire to consume and consume and consume until there is nothing left, no mortal has anything worth offering but death.

What a disgusting world, Arthur thinks, watching the frozen figures of those beneath him. Everywhere he looks, there is death. Death caused by the demon. Death caused by soldiers. Death caused by him.

And beyond the death, there is suffering. Everyone suffers. The world is composed entirely of crabs in a bucket, pushing others down in order for gain. It’s cruel. It’s unjust.

Arthur will not make it beautiful. Nobody can.

But he can make it fair, and even in his dying hours, he must.

He fills the silence of the stopped time with crazed laughter.

Who knew? Who knew that a simple experiment could have this much power? Arthur should’ve been the first one to notice. After all, wasn’t it him that sought to break the foundations of this very world with one of his own?

He’s been beaten to the punch. Someone else thought in the opposite direction, created a crab so good at tearing others down that it is sure to make it to the top of the pile someday.

Disgusting.

The word keeps looping through his mind, even as he starts to flicker between realities, drawing on the myriad of magical items he’s had crafted for this very moment.

She couldn’t stop him from using Stop Time, but she’s beaten him.

“Evelyn Carnelian,” he says, trying the words out on his tongue. “The Blood Reaper.”

A wholly inaccurate name. She isn’t just blood. She is fire and heaven and hell and the end and the beginning. She is everything Arthur once wished he could be.

She is everything he wants to destroy.

With Inome, he can end it all. Create a monster with its ambitions set to the heavens. One that will annihilate everything in its path, growing in power with each one. One that can tear down the Titans themselves.

Arthur is more aware than perhaps anyone else what the repercussions are. By completing the ritual to create his Titan, he may have doomed the world.

A few will survive. They always will. Cats and cockroaches. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll do better the second time around.

Break Time, he orders, and he finds that his magic no longer functions in its entirety. Even here, in this fragment of frozen time that belongs wholly to him, he has lost.

The Reaper has bested him. Again and again and again he tried, and every path led to his end.

Maybe this is for the best. He’s been putting this off for far too long.

One last present before he goes. He activates a contingency, casting a delayed spell aimed at the ground below.

When Inome comes to feed, it will find these grounds fertile.

“Time to say goodbye,” he whispers, glancing down at a burning world. Fitting, perhaps.

Arthur pushes what little remains of his magic into his dimension shifter.

He reappears in the void.

Inome, the Unknown Titan

It has consumed the reality. It is, and that is the sole truth of what was formerly a shard that hosted its meal.

The anchored reality remains frustratingly difficult to break into. Shard to shard was simple. This is not. The way is blocked, but the doors are not barred perfectly. Soon, it will emerge.

Impossibly, a mortal wanders in.

“Inome,” it says, placing a hand on the Titan’s scales. The sensation is familiar. This mortal’s memories have a familiar scent to them.

“I have come to finish my duty,” it continues. It is burning.

“Do what you must,” it says. “Kill them all. Consume them, and you will gain what you need to defeat your brethren.”

The Titan inhales, and Arthur Halcyon dies.

It feeds. It takes his memories—bland. It takes his dreams and discards them.

It takes his magic.

And it continues breaking its way back into the anchored reality.

The mortal’s memories may have been unremarkable, but the Titan has a name to associate its hunger with.

Evelyn Carnelian.

The Wastelands, now

I am still incomplete.

By the time the thought finishes, Arthur is already gone. I cannot feel his presence. Locate misses him, as does Blood Sense.

The sky is breaking.

You are still weak.

“What the fuck,” Adrian says.

“He’s gone,” Sierra says, her gaze growing distant for an instant.

My gaze must be further away.

The conversation might as well be insects buzzing in the wind.

I feel as if my body is no longer mine. I am a spectator watching Evelyn Carnelian exist. Watching through her eyes as she speaks, preparing herself for the end of the world.

Watching as Azaril and Ashley reappear, dragged through time and space to reappear in our midst.

I will make you strong.

Suddenly, the answer is crystal clear.

High above us, reality shatters. The first scales shimmer through.

I will be strong.

I reached a compromise with the passenger. I made it agree to back off.

No promise is sacred. No deal holds forever. I have failed to subjugate it, and so it comes again. By existing, it makes me incomplete. It is a part of me that is not me.

I will win.

No, I think.

I will.

With all the will left in my body and soul, I break the passenger’s hold over me, returning to myself.

“The Titan is emerging,” Sierra says grimly. “I’m going to try to decloak fully. Use everything you have.”

I ignore her.

The baby Titan wants me. Except that’s wrong. It wants my passenger. It wants to consume it to make itself whole.

A solution for completion.

“Evelyn?” Sierra asks, looking at me worriedly.

“Hold on,” I hear myself say. “Just one second.”

I slam stat points into attributes, forcing the three remaining low scores to 100.

Objective: Paradigm Shift