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

An Unnamed Anomalous Fragment

Rin does not know how long it has been since she entered here. Hours, certainly. Sy’s ghost keeps her company, his bound soul speaking to her through his phylactery, but she can tell that the mere act of communication strains him. Until his body is restored—a process which could take months, given their status at the UCC—she will have to feed him mana just to keep some fragment of him conscious. She can’t guarantee it’ll work. She knows the statistics. Less than forty percent of Category 2 operators that have to make use of an emergency phylactery survive.

Why did I chase her? Why, why, why, why am I so stupid?

A dry sob wracks her body, and she clutches herself, fingernails digging into her sides. Rin has long since run out of tears.

She forces herself to stop, not wanting Sy to waste more energy telling her to calm down.

But the shaking doesn’t stop. Her body keeps moving, no matter how focused she is. Rin applies the meditation techniques any Category 1 operator is expected to know by heart, stilling herself, but she’s still quivering.

No—it’s not her that’s moving. It’s the fragment.

“Shit,” she mutters. This fragment is Rin’s. She salvaged it, and the UCC signed off on allowing her to use it as a personal headquarters. Nobody else should know about it.

That means one of two things. Possibly both.

[The fragment is reacting.] Sy’s voice feels weaker in her mind now, and she opens a new stream of mana, feeding the hairpin his soul resides in with another trickle of magic.

“It is,” she says, standing. Rin forces herself to push the grief away. It grows easier to do when the shaking rises to the level of an earthquake.

[Headquarters contact, most likely. Hopefully. There shouldn’t be another one active. Not this soon.]

Rin acknowledges Sy with a nod, then realizes he can’t see her. “I hope so too.”

She taps a vein on the underside of her arm, pushing mana into it. The subdermal communication device activates quickly enough.

As a Category 1 operator—and not a top one, at that—Rin doesn’t have a direct line of contact to anyone at the ever-elusive UCC main headquarters, but she can receive orders this way. The item acts as an interdimensional receiver, allowing her to obtain new objectives in real time no matter how far she is from home base.

Letters spill across her vision, constructing words with painstakingly slow speed.

UCC DISPATCH: CATEGORY 0-2

TO: OPERATORS ASSIGNED TO THE SEVEN KINGDOMS

Rin watches in painful anticipation. The shaking is not subsiding.

When the rest of the words appear, her heart drops.

[Shit.]

Rin can’t help but agree with Sy. She doesn’t even have the heart to tell her to save his words.

This is the worst-case scenario.

TITAN EVENT. SERSUI (SHIFTING SANDS) ACTIVE IN KESSIN, MOVING TOWARDS WHITESTAR. TOP PRIORITY. THOSE CATEGORY 2 AND BELOW MAY CHOOSE TO PARTICIPATE IN S&R/MITIGATION INSTEAD OF SUPPRESSION.

That alone would be enough to chill her to the bone. It’s been less than a week since the last Titan surfaced. At least five times that should pass before the next. The last time there was a gap this short, Rin knows, the Risi Empire fell in a single day.

But that’s not the only message.

TITAN EVENT. UNKNOWN TITAN SIGNATURE ACTIVE IN WHITESTAR.

DEITY EVENT. GOD SIGNATURE SPIKED, THEN LOST. CONCURRENT WITH WHITESTAR TITAN EVENT. CONCURRENT WITH SPIKE IN ANOMALOUS ENERGY. CONCURRENT WITH ANOMALOUS CATEGORY ASCENSION.

After that comes the standard messages about how their continued survival and association with the United Containment Coalition hinged on their participation in suppressing at least one of the three events, but Rin ignores that. Even without the prompting, she’d be going.

She had a bad feeling she knows what that anomaly is.

And she’s not sure if she can bring herself to hate it. Who could, when it’s the Titans that choose to take issue with it?

BE ADVISED: EVENTS APPEAR TO BE CONVERGING.

Rin steps up, inhaling deeply.

I can do this.

[You can do this.]

She flickers out of her fake reality and appears again in the real one.

In moments, she’s gone.

 

Elsewhere

Sapphire Clearwater looks from afar as her favorite experiment begins her very first Category ascension.

Less than two months to advance from Category 0 to 1. The previous record, set half a century ago, was four years.

The experiment is proving fruitful. Demonic influence must have been the key. Sapphire still wishes she could have gotten her hands on an angel or a Titan for this latest set, but successfully capturing one of them is still likely beyond her capabilities.

Evelyn Carnelian. She rolls the name over her tongue. Sapphire likes it. A chosen name, just like her own.

The demon girl is far more than a demon now. Sapphire looks away from her Sight Beyond Sight, returning to the here and now.

“Hey, Blue,” says Alessandra, one of the few skyfolk in Sapphire’s inner circle. Anomalous, just like the rest of them. “Spotted another one of your pets from the Crowned Islands lab. Looks like he’s closing in on the double Titan fuckfest.”

“Is he?” Sapphire asks, smiling serenely. She sips at the cup of seaflower tea Alessandra presents her, then readjusts her skill. “This ought to be interesting.”

There is every chance this is where her latest experiment ends. Every time she’s tried in the last two centuries, it has been a Titan that brings a premature end to it. It’s no true loss to Sapphire—if everything goes wrong, she can simply start again.

If nothing else, this ought to be interesting.

 

The Wastelands, a distance away

He has still yet to choose a name.

The lab that created him called him RI1—Resistance Infusion 1. He does not know this. He likely never will. The tube he was buried alive in floats through empty space, shattered into a trillion pieces by two UCC operators.

The system calls him ???, the Adaptor.

In the Crowned Islands, they call him the Second Killer.

He does not care. Labels do not matter to him. All that matters is his continued survival. All that matters is that he kills everyone standing in his path.

Objective: Two of a Kind

There is only one other surviving experiment from your birthplace. Find it and eliminate it.

Distance: 3.7 miles

The second objective the system has granted him continues to taunt him. A flickering visage of a red-eyed female dances in front of his eyes. He can feel power in the distance where she is. Overwhelming power, the kind that may still be able to slip through his defenses.

He speeds up. Finding anything that he hasn’t Adapted to already is a rarity. This is the first time he has sensed power this potent.

The Adaptor’s objective updates in front of his eyes even as he runs, his overtuned body attributes propelling him.

Objective update!

Evelyn Carnelian, your target, is ascending to Category 1.

Unlike his target, the Adaptor does not have dozens of people fused together in his soul to advise him. Categories are meaningless to him.

All he wants is something that can hurt him. Something that can break him down so he can build himself up once more and kill it.

He draws closer just as the source of power spikes.

There is no way he can tell that it’s a Titan entering reality, but he can feel the sheer magnitude.

The unnamed experiment smiles too wide and closes the distance.

 

The Wastelands, here and now

My ascension is not as fast as my class evolutions. Not even close. Even the broken one compressed years down into the matter of minutes, while my first lasted only a split second.

I can see the world around me slow, but the rate at which it happens is significantly less than what it is before—two seconds pass here for every second outside, maybe less.

And unlike before, I’m not whisked away into the alternate reality where the being I once thought was the idealization of my self was. It tries to impose itself on my mind and the space around me, but it only half-succeeds. My vision flickers. In one instant, I see an endless void that is beginning to come apart at the seams. In the next, I watch the inverse, reality breaking to reveal nothing but darkness in the sky above us.

The Titan is coming.

The shape that my passenger chooses to take is deformed. Not-Evelyn’s face is half missing, and rather than the proper anatomy behind the areas that have been removed, there is simply nothing. Her body is simply gone in places. She looks more pitiful than lethal, now.

No, not she. It.

“You are a parasite,” I tell the thing that my passenger once was. “You are already dead.”

It crumbles away in the still air, the darkness around it shaking as the integrity of its false vacuum collapses. I continue Devouring it, eliminating the last of the corpse.

Category 1 slams into me like a freight train. Energy courses through me, so much at once that it almost paralyzes me. The heady rush is intoxicating, and the false construct fades away in instants. A weight I didn’t know existed lifts itself from my shoulders, and then the system speaks to me.

Its voice is different. Easier to understand. Smoother. The sound of its whispers in my mind are on the edge of familiarity.

You have advanced to level 100!

Category 1 achieved!

A second scale shimmers in the sky, then a third. Cracks spread further through the sky. I don’t have long to parse this.

By reaching Category 1, you have gained the following inherent bonuses:

(Increased) Access to Special Skills. These are far more powerful than regular skills, but come with cooldowns. You may now reduce or eliminate the cooldowns through self-actualization, combat against a worthy opponent, or in lieu of gaining XP.

Cloaking. With effort, you are now capable of hiding your true power.

Access to a secondary class. You have not yet been assigned a secondary class. Would you like to begin class selection?

The change to my special skills are more than welcome, but cloaking is useless in this state. A secondary class right now could come in handy, so I select it.

Around me, the world fades away—and then the new world I’m in breaks, replaced by an endless wall of shimmering rainbow scales.

Warning: Titan obstruction. Class selection is not currently possible.

The Titan emerges, and it’s not alone. While its progress is still inexorable, its speed has not increased. Instead, the broken sky fills with color as scintillating butterflies that look as if they were carved of the finest, sharpest glass and brought to life populate it, flying out from the Titan.

Offshoots, my mind fills in. They’re pieces of the Titan, exemplifying the characteristic that the Titan embodies.

This nameless one shouldn’t have an identity yet. It is still but a baby.

And yet it blots out the sky with the butterflies, forming artificial dark clouds above us.

Clouds that are moving toward us.

Toward me.

“Shit,” Adrian curses. “Evelyn?”

“She’s advancing,” Sierra says. “Hold. This timing not optimal. We can buy her some of the time she needs. Be ready to kill the offshoots.”

“You got it,” Adrian replies. I’m only half paying attention to my surroundings, my senses focused on the torrent of power within me, but I still catch the tail end of the sentence. “Special skill: Tsunami.”

“Special skill,” Sierra adds on, her Red Mage class flaring to life once more, “For Every Shadow, There Is A Light.”

I don’t stop to think about whether she’ll suffer backlash again. I don’t stop to witness Adrian’s power.

The nascent Titan is almost entirely in our reality now, and the world will not stop shaking.

Killing intent emerges from it even as Adrian floods the desert around us and Sierra combines darkness and radiance in a devastating attack of opposites, crushing me. Between the power within, trying to push out, and the power without, trying to push in, I can’t breathe. I can only stand there as my new Category begs to be used and one of the strongest beings on this planet tries to crush me with its will alone.

Anger flashes through me. Again and again and again, I have been forced to fight against beings stronger than me by orders of magnitude. Sapphire. Noren. Rin and Simon. Alexus. Callen. Now, the Titan.

Unacceptable.

What use is power if I can’t use it?

The steaming magic beneath my skin boils over, and my anger crystallizes.

I can stand my ground.

Even though Sierra, Adrian, and a few others I don’t care to recognize fight the butterfly-like offshoots, I can see it’s fruitless. There’s simply too many of them, and each of them drag holes in reality with every flap of their wings, inviting their progenitor into the world with them. They ignore those killing them, diving down towards me, its true target, but their attacks are deadly even when unaimed. As I watch, a faint figure falls from the sky, skills winking out.

I cannot deny the bonds between my allies and myself, but I don’t want protection. I don’t want someone else to win my fights for me.

I am so fucking done with rolling over and losing.

Magic erupts out of me alongside my anger, shaped by every burning feeling I suffer through right now, and I aim it straight up at the darkening sky. At the thousands of offshoots that precede the being that wants to devour me whole.

“You’re not getting me that easily,” I growl. “I will be the Last One Standing.”

Special skill unlocked: Last One Standing (Legendary)

Tier: Bronze

You have finally broken the first barrier to your ultimate ascension. Nothing has succeeded in ending your path. For one minute, you wield the power of everything that has failed to stop you.

The skill creates skills that require more mana than anything I’ve ever attempted before, and my newly amplified magic power feeds into them greedily, searching for outlets to kill.

Omniscient Domain failed to keep me pinned down, and now it provides me perfect information of every last offshoot above me, all four thousand, six hundred and forty-five of them.

Starfall Barrage broke against my domain, but the offshoots have no such power.

Pressure Amplification Domain nearly killed me before I could act against it, and I ratchet its power up as far as it will go, flattening fragile offshoots into flat, shattered glassy flesh.

Silence humiliated me, but it failed to end me. It will not fail to do so against my opponents now.

Skill after skill after skill after skill pours out through me. Some of them lack names—demonic or anomalous techniques lack definitions by the system. I spawn spores that spawn demons. I burn them with Wraithfire.

Every last attack I wield is something that has failed to kill me.

Nobody else can survive what I have.

By the end of the minute, reality still shakes, but the sky is crystal-clear. Not a single butterfly remains.

I turn my attention to my true foe.

Witnessed. Demon.

The Titan’s translucent body stretches across the Wastelands, two hundred feet tall and at least thrice that in length.

Come. Feed. Me.

“There’s more of that where that came from,” I say. “You’ll find I don’t go down so easy.”

I rise to meet its challenge.