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

Chapter 80

The Wastelands, 13:15:14

Equalize works beyond my wildest dreams.

Equalize (Legendary)

Tier: Tourmaline

To move the immovable, you will become unstoppable.

This skill’s duration is inversely proportional to the power you obtain. Equalize’s cooldown is directly proportional to the power you obtain.

Magic floods me. I thought I knew what it means to be overwhelmed (you still don’t). I thought I knew pain (you still don’t). I thought I knew power (you do now).

This is beyond anything I have ever experienced (of course it is). Every cell in my twisted, (perfect) demonic body bursts with power like nothing else. I can’t keep it in. Can’t hold onto it (let go). When I try, it grasps onto me instead (hold or held it is ultimately the same). The skill becomes the marionetter, reducing me to nothing but a puppet (you are no puppet we are one). I let the magic permeate me, become me. Or I become it. I can’t tell (neither and both).

I can see nothing but blood and light and dark and something other, something that whispers to me with promises of power and slaughter and more than anyone can offer on this world. The whispers aren’t entirely unintelligible, but I have the sense that the longer I listen, the more I’ll be able to make them out (you can already hear us).

But I don’t have long (you have enough). Equalize won’t last. Minutes at most. More likely, I have seconds (twelve).

With the amount of magic I can bring to bear (limitless), seconds are more than enough. Even now, my mind is operating at such a speed that not even a single one has passed.

Speed is (necessary) no guarantee of effectivity (stop thinking). I can feel the nigh-infinite power coursing through me (I will guide you), and it doesn’t leave my brain alone. My thoughts grow blurrier by the second (I am you).

There is (brethren) a nascent Titan in my path. I need to (kill) kill (kill) it. Simple (easy) enough (kill).

(you know who I am because you are me)

(there is no boundary we are Evelyn Carnelian and nothing will stop us)

(nothing at all)

(I am your truths)

I let the deluge (in) of power wash me away, and I become infinity.

A (friend) (enemy) (family) (infant) (prey) (predator) Titan stands before me, and I match it.

I don’t know how to control the power that crackles through me and around me (you do) (you always have), so instinct guides my hand. This magic is one I have never handled; the system provides no guidelines, no skills for me to utilize; somehow, it still feels intuitive (of course it does).

In the center of a maelstrom of my own making, I command the chaos and it listens.

“Annihilate,” I whisper softly, and so I do.

Trait earned: Killer V

Requirements: Kill 500 beings that possess levels

280 ticks over to 699.

Inome still lives. I am not finished (never will be).

I continue.

13:15:17

Adrian is rather impressed that he has not died yet. The mere act of existing within the proximity of not one but two Titans makes every molecule in his body want to tear itself from the others.

Okay, he’s told that neither of them are actual Titans, but that doesn’t make that much of a difference. Neither Inome nor… Evelyn, he thinks, though the horrifying spidery being that towers over them like a city in its own right doesn’t seem to have much in common with the admittedly already scary demon girl he’s grown to know and—in some fashion—appreciate. The point is, both of them can kill Adrian just by existing now.

Which, to be fair, might already be happening. Just a second ago, he saw a blur of action as the fight grew too fast for him to follow, and now, everything is slow.

“Damn,” he says, his voice echoing around him.

As has become his custom, he has surrounded himself in water. Normally, this would be no issue, but the swimming pool’s worth of liquid he has is unevenly distributed. A quarter of it is moving a million times faster than the rest. Unfortunately, he is currently submerged within that part.

Adrian is quite sure that he is stuck. He’s tried breaking out physically and through magic to no avail. He can still feel his water outside, but trying to manipulate it is like trying to drag molasses through quicksand.

Special skill: Tsunami. Adrian hasn’t truly understood the power his magic holds until just today. Life-threatening circumstances and the reawakening of a long-dormant desire to win have been a fantastic motivation to learn. Apparently, Tsunami’s ability to flood is not limited to the physical. With sufficient strength, he can drown skills.

“Fat lot of good that does me here,” he says, his words making bubbles in the accelerated water. “Fuck me.”

Titans don’t rely on skills—not in the traditional sense, anyway. Even if they did, Adrian is sure that any dampening he could attempt on this bubble of time would be utterly futile.

Silver linings and all that, though. Adrian has all the time in the world to find a way out. Water alone is enough for him to subsist, and alongside time, it’s the only thing he has right now.

He wonders if the degradation of his soul will progress at a normal rate in this space. He’d rather not find out.

“I won’t die here,” he promises himself. “I can’t.”

Not when he resolved to live. Not when he’s finally decided to break past the chains he constructed for himself.

Premature Category 2. That’s all he needs to do. Easy enough, right?

The Hydrokinetic chuckles at his silent joke, and he begins to think.

Objective: Impossibilities

Break through a Titan’s skill.

Reward: 50,000 XP. Survival.

It takes him two entire days to reason out a solution. Adrian isn’t sure it’ll work, but if it doesn’t, he can always try something else.

When he first hit Category 1, Adrian unlocked the Flood skill alongside vastly improved Water Magic. His first action, of course, had been an attempt to subdue the ocean. Reaching too far, maybe, but it had been inspired. Adrian missed that kind of casual arrogance.

Then, he hadn’t had the power to bend the ocean to his whims, but he could’ve been a Titan for all that it mattered. What he’d lacked most was understanding.

He couldn’t pretend that he had any deep insights into the nature of life or anything. That kind of philosophical shit was best left to professors, people with their heads too far up their asses, and Sierra. Though the last two were basically the same.

The important part is that he had gained an appreciation for the power of the sea. Adrian had just been too content with falling behind to really make use of it.

Now, though? Now, he had time pressure on multiple fronts, the battle of a lifetime, and a burning desire to improve. Burning was the wrong word for someone who used water, but oh well.

The ocean wasn’t strong, but it wasn’t weak. It just… was. Calling it strong implies that it’s being measured against something. It’s assigning it human traits, and that is the same kind of raw arrogance that had sent Adrian into a hospital bed for the better part of a month.

But that kind of arrogance is necessary. He’d seen sparks of that attitude in Evelyn, and look at her. As large as a Titan now, and fighting another.

Adrian thinks and thinks and thinks, and he ultimately concludes that strong and weak are still the wrong descriptors. Incomplete, if not inaccurate.

If I have to pick a trait for the ocean, the word would be unforgiving.

The sea punishes every mistake, brings those afflicted by hubris to their knees. It can beat against the same cliff over and over again, year after year, century after century, eon after eon, until there is nothing but sand left.

And so Adrian summons what little portion of the sea he can muster here, infusing it with all the magic he has, and he starts his waves beating against the walls of his time distortion.

It does nothing, predictably, but that’s okay. Only the greatest wave can break a wall on its first impact.

Adrian will hold until it is done. Evelyn’s managed to do the same. Why can’t he?

13:15:18

One year in, the wall finally softens.

Objective: Impossibilities [COMPLETE]

A journey to ascension begins with one small impossibility.

50,000 primary XP rewarded!

You have advanced to level 200!

Category 1 -> 2

Initiating ascension…

Adrian skips past all of the text accompanying the ascension. Sierra’s already gotten there. He’s just playing catch-up.

There is only one important factor, and that is his new power. Just like the Category 1 ascension, his body is reforged, further channels carving themselves out within him to enable his newest skill.

His time in the distortion has granted him far more than enough time to plan. There are thousands of butterfly-shaped offshoots, and he bets each of them have some new nasty feature, based on how fast the Titan appears to have advanced.

Mere weeks ago—over a year, from his perspective—this would’ve shaken him.

Now, he has nothing to fear. His plan will fail or it won’t. One way or another, the world will coldly go on.

When Adrian unleashes his domain for the first time, the name does not surprise him.

It does not feel like a triumph. It does not feel like a failure. As with his medium, it simply is.

Domain: The Unforgiving Sea.

The ocean crashes down onto the battlefield.

13:15:19

And it crashes.

13:15:20

And crashes.

13:15:21

And crashes.

Until Adrian hears a voice ring through his head. It doesn’t belong there.

DEMON. STOP. ME. SURRENDER. HELP. ME. HELP. ME.

A much more familiar voice, feminine and pissed, follows. That one also shouldn’t be there, but it relieves the pressure the Titan placed on him.

Die.

Adrian relaxes, refocusing on attacking the Titan. His domain barely affects it, but he can tell that they’re winning.

Winning against a Titan. He almost wants to laugh.

13:15:22

The ground erupts.

Be quiet.

13:15:23

It happens suddenly. Too suddenly.

In an instant, the water is gone. Not evaporated, not dispersed—no. Gone, as if it was never there to begin with.

The speed with which it happens baffles Adrian’s enhanced mind. It’s faster than even Evelyn can react.

So he doesn’t have enough time to realize that when he believed the power of a Titan would not be enough to subdue the ocean, he was wrong.

The ocean does not stop, Adrian’s unconscious mind reasons, and so he continues to attempt to exert his domain of influence over the land around him.

He gets the slightest hint of a sensation that he remembers indicates damage to the soul before his attempt to contest a Titan’s influence with his own shatters.

Moments later, his soul follows, splintering into the void.

Adrian’s world fades away. In those final moments before he falls, his eardrums burst, the sound of the new Titan’s roars far exceeding what a human can handle.

A beam brighter than the sun itself overtakes him, and then the sound stops. Everything stops.

Miles above, a magical skyship the size of an apple seed records the loss of his soul.

Adrian Stahr — dead, it reports.

13:54:01

When his eyes open again, there is darkness and blood and screaming and he is burning alive. He looks around, searching for anything he recognizes. He’s on his back, he realizes, but he can’t get up. He can’t move. There is nothing for him but pain and the emptiness.

And, somehow, the faint scent of the sea.

“Fuck,” Adrian croaks. “Did I get sent to a hell?”

“Wow,” Evelyn Carnelian says. “I was wrong.”

13:54:07

I stare at the burnt, soulless body that should be a corpse.

“How?” I ask Sierra. “What did he do?”

“Adrian,” she says. “Check your status.”

He does.

“New—new trait,” Adrian croaks. “Soulless.”

My eyes widen. The system rewarded me with that trait when I refused to bend to Wraithfire in the undercity beneath Ravendale.

I… genuinely did not think Adrian had it in him to do the same. The amount of will and magic that took was breathtaking.

“Credit where it’s due,” I say. “I’m impressed you survived.”

He coughs. “Gonna ask again. Are we… in a hell?”

“That’s a good question,” I sigh. “The important part is that we’re alive. I wasn’t entirely in my own mind there at the end.”

(you were)

Not this again.

(I am not a god I am the part of you that you refuse to listen to I am the part of you that is more)

(look at what you have become)

As much as I want to complain, this isn’t another passenger. I know what one feels like now. I know how it feels to kill one.

This is not that.

“I can tell you that there are around seven hundred dead bodies floating in this realm around us,” Sierra says. “Give or take a few.”

(and one living)

Instinct tells me to check the area around us, and though my magic has never been this tapped out, I activate my Blood Sense. Much of the area is just packed with blood (that you spilled from others), but one chunk of it is moving.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I grouse. “We have incoming. Three thousand feet.”

“Adrian can’t fight,” Sierra says immediately. “This is your domain, isn’t it?”

“Something like it,” I reply. “But I can’t control it.”

(you can)

(open your eyes)

Once again, instinct guides me, and I open my status sheet for the first time since arriving here.

(you made the rules)

It’s blank.

(you can break them)

I order it to show me what I am.

When the voice falls silent, it feels final. Whatever that actualized instinct was, it is no longer speaking. Possibly forever. Given my luck, definitely not that long.

“Oh, holy shit,” I say.

The system floods into me all at once, as if just being here was cutting off access to key parts of it. I’ve broken down a dam somehow. A dozen completed objectives scroll past, one after the other, but I ignore all of them for a handful of crucial notifications.

Hidden Objective: Underdog [COMPLETE]

You have noticeably contributed to the death of a being 4 Categories higher than you.

Reward: [UNKNOWN] XP

Objective: Eat the (Titan) baby [COMPLETE]

500,000 XP rewarded!

Warning: due to your ascension, you may no longer view how much XP you have.

XP automatically diverted to secondary class.

Your secondary class has been automatically selected!

“What is it?” Sierra asks.

I manifest my system in the air with an act of will, showing her.

Adrian croaks out a painful-sounding cough, forcing himself into a sitting position. “Always have to do me one better, huh?”

Sierra pales. “Broken gods.”