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

Sierra reacts immediately, but she’s too slow. Of course she’s too slow. She knows little about Sapphire, but she remembers that Aunt Marie has worked with Sapphire before as a subordinate. Marie already vastly outclasses Sierra; her superior is out of the question.

Still, she tries. Over the course of the past few days, she’s fully recovered her magic. Thanks to the sheer weight of the Titan attacks, she’s already able to use her special skills. Her domains, too, are open to her.

Domain: Balance.

Special skill: Eclipse Devastator.

Special skill: For Every Shadow, There Is A Light.

Light and darkness spiral forward from her hands in equal measure, distorting the fabric of the the air around her.

This is a Category 1 zone. Sierra’s using her full power—the peak of Category 2. She ignores the fact that the backlash is only barely preferable to death and the hundreds—no, thousands—of innocents she’s liable to kill in this single blow.

Her first skill amplifies the second and third.

Her second skill combines the sun’s heat and the moon’s frigidity.

Her third skill creates antimatter.

Mana drains from her body like water from a sieve, and everything shatters.

Adrenaline makes the world seem to slow down as the earth around her evaporates, caught in the radius of an amplified chain reaction—except it’s not adrenaline, she realizes. The world is slowing down. Sierra can think normally, hear her heart pounding in her chest, but the glacial pace with which the area around them is being obliterated is completely at odds with her perception of time.

She realizes soon enough that the rushing blood in her ears is the only sound she can hear.

“Admirable,” a voice cuts through the deafening silence. “There can be none of that, though. I’m sure you understand.”

The scene stops entirely, and Sierra finds that she cannot move. She’s a spectator in her own body.

What little area she’s managed to annihilate in its entirety replaces itself. The scene plays in reverse; light and dark and heat and cold flow into her instead of out, replenishing her magic stores.

And in the midst of it all is Sapphire, walking normally even as the entire world steps backward in time around them.

She exhales, the air distorting in front of her disturbingly beautiful face.

Monster. The thought comes quickly. Evelyn is reticent to share her own struggles, which Sierra can respect, but Sapphire’s name has come up before. It is one of the few that she has little experience with—but what little Evelyn has shared is enough for Sierra to hate this woman.

She remembers a UCC file she was once privy to. The Clearwater file, she heard it referred to as. Sierra never gained enough clearance to access it, nor did she care to.

Now, frozen in a moment with her mind still active, she wishes she’d taken more initiative back then.

“Relax, darling,” Sapphire says as if she’s read Sierra’s mind.

She snaps her fingers, and everything falls back into place, exactly how it was before Sierra attacked. Her skills may as well not have existed.

The half-elf blows out another distorted breath, and this time, it reaches Sierra. The sheer power compacted in that breath alone stuns her. Sapphire’s cloak is so perfect; to Sierra, the half-elf looks like a civilian who barely even engages with their system.

But that breath alone carries the weight of a proto-Titan. A specific one.

One that Sierra knows should be very, very dead.

“Disgusting,” Sapphire declares. “Incomplete. It does, however suit the situation.”

Sierra just stares at her, refusing to react.

“I do not intend to kill you,” Sapphire says. “Come with me.”

Do I have a choice?

As it turns out, Sierra does not. Sapphire’s nails dig into her arm so hard that they draw blood, and her strength overwhelms Sierra’s.

Her stomach churns. This situation is all too familiar.

You’re hurting me. The same thought that ran through her head so many times growing up with her aunt passes her mind once more. It’s been a long, long time since she learned to stay quiet to keep it from getting worse.

“How fortunate that you are here,” Sapphire murmurs as they walk.

The half-elf is using some sort of spatial distortion skill—around them, the streets blur with each passing step. Even the quietest whisper from Sapphire reaches Sierra’s ears, but the sound of the outside world fades into a dull buzz.

Appraise finds nothing. To her senses, Sapphire’s magic may as well not exist.

Sierra remains silent. She has an entire list of choice insults she wants to throw at the woman taking her, but the years have taught her enough. Insulting those who hold immediate, direct power over her has never ended well, and she doubts that will change anytime soon.

She used a Titan. Sapphire activated a reversal so powerful the entire world ticked back in time. Sierra’s stronger than the majority of the human population, but to use a Titan’s strength is on a completely different level. It’s part of why she loves Evelyn.

It’s part of why she knows she can’t even try to fight Sapphire.

“You speak little,” Sapphire says. “The demon girl is more verbose, significantly so. Are you that keen on being a bore?”

“Where are you taking me?” Sierra asks automatically. It’s the most important question on her mind right now. Her communication stones aren’t working, and even if they are, Evelyn isn’t picking up. Assuming Sierra survives this, she needs to warn her partner about what’s happening.

“Ah, she speaks,” Sapphire says, grinning too wide. “You, my dear friend, are two of a kind. Probability Project 447. Hex, it was called?”

“You have access to Coalition files,” Sierra says flatly. “I suppose I should not be surprised. Yes. The seventh initiate.”

She files the tidbit of information away for potential later use. If there’s a UCC file on Sapphire Clearwater that Sierra does not have access to, it is certainly a threat assessment, a containment record, or an experiment log. Sierra suspects it is not the latter.

That means two. One: Sapphire has connections within the Coalition. Sierra knows this is true; Aunt Marie is an upper-echelon UCC researcher, and Sapphire controlled her. Two: Sapphire is capable of siphoning information from the UCC.

“Of course I do,” Sapphire says, as if accessing the inner workings of the highest-security organization on the planet is an everyday task for her. “That is a despairingly boring story, sadly. We are not here to discuss my capabilities, but yours.”

Keep her talking. She seems less immediately dangerous now, like a lioness curled up within her den rather than one circling, ready to pounce.

“You said we were here to discuss my future. What did you mean? And where are we going?”

“Here,” Sapphire declares, as if that makes any sense.

She stops abruptly, crossing her middle finger over her index with her free hand, and the blurred surroundings restore themselves to normal.

They stand in the ruins of a modest village. Sierra doesn’t recognize their surroundings at all. This place must have been in an unfortunately vulnerable spot, because the ground is barely damaged. One of Sersui’s aftershocks collapsed half of the huts here, and it looks like nobody has stuck around. Rotting carcasses dot the ground here and there. Sierra wrinkles her nose.

Sapphire lets go of her arm, leaving five crescent-shaped cuts that well with blood even as the half-elf strides across a fallen fence, heedlessly stepping straight through a corpse’s ribcage. Gore splatters the ground, but not a drop of it lands on Sapphire.

“Where are we?” Sierra asks again. “And what are you doing?”

“A quaint little town whose name I cannot remember,” Sapphire says, languidly stretching. “As for what…”

She reaches out into the air in an way that Sierra’s mimicked a hundred times before. To Sierra’s trained eyes, Sapphire isn’t even using mana, but she knows that the other woman has to be using it. There’s no other way for a living being to access a storage space. Excluding angels, demons, and Titans, of course, but those are inherently special cases.

Sapphire retrieves what looks to be a simple slip of hard paper and throws it at Sierra.

The oddly childish movement throws Sierra off, but her reflexes are fast enough to catch it.

“Read it,” Sapphire orders. “Analyze it.”

Sierra complies.

The rectangular paper is the size of her palm. Red text is engraved into it, intricate lettering that covers one side of it. The other side is empty.

She pauses. Sierra knows a lot of languages, and this is none of them.

It’s not Common, High Common, Elven, adventurer colloquial, Dweller, skyspeak, or even angelic. What does that leave?

Translate, she tries. The skill is a fresh one from her Blue Mage side, meant to be used in order to better understand skills from people with vastly different classes from hers, but in theory…

It works. The characters rearrange themselves in her view, spelling out letters in the Common she’s most used to. Translate works slowly thanks to its low level, but she starts to piece together a word, character by character.

E… V… E…

A chill runs up her spine.

Evelyn.

C… A…

She stops, already knowing what she’ll find.

“Appraise,” she whispers.

 

Death Prayer — “Evelyn Carnelian”

Category: Irrelevant

Tier: Irrelevant

Triggers when burnt. Triggers when mana is passed into it. Triggers when broken.

On trigger: Evelyn Carnelian dies. The target’s soul will be sent to the deepest accessible hell.

 

Her hands shake, but she forces them to still. If she’s reading this right, even shaking might be too dangerous.

How… how did Sapphire get this?

“With enough power, a little blood can go a long, long way,” Sapphire says, as if reading her mind. At this point, Sierra wouldn’t be surprised if she was.

“You are two of a kind,” the half-elf continues. “One other from your experiment remains. The demon girl, too, is two of a kind. You may have seen her counterpart.”

“I have,” Sierra says, remembering. “The resistance experiment.”

She curses silently as she realizes where this is going.

“RI1, the Adaptor,” Sapphire says. “It never chose a name. Such a shame. Tonight, there will be one of its kind. Whether that is Carnelian or the Adaptor is up to you. I have ensured he is aware of what that paper in your hands does, fear not. By a stroke of providence, he happens to have escaped a certain nullspace on a warpath that will pass through this city.”

“Fuck you,” Sierra says, covering her mouth a second later. It slipped out.

Sapphire’s laugh is like wind chimes. “Should you choose, you could make your Adrian two of a kind as well.”

Sierra looks at the paper in her hands. Can she store it away? Put it in her Personal Space? Instinct tells her no. Placing it in an extradimensional space involves passing a hint of mana into it, which will trigger it.

That means she’s going to have to protect it.

Objective: Keep what’s yours

An enemy knows you hold an item of immeasurable worth. Eliminate it before it can take it and ruin everything.

Reward: 10,000 secondary XP

Distance: 6 miles

Only six miles? She has no time at all to prepare.

Two hundred feet above them, space warps, and Sierra’s stomach drops. She reaches out into her Personal Space, withdrawing her amplification staff, but it’s not RI1 that appears from the dark blue hexagonal distortion above them.

“CLEARWATER!” Operator Kirin Uten roars.

A bright white lance of divine light spears straight from the sky, splitting the air apart with a thunderous screech. For once, Sierra is actually able to catch the description of an attack, feel the power in the air.

Kirin’s weapon of choice is the Angel’s Vengeance, a Category 3 spear built from a fallen angel’s wing.

It cleaves through Sapphire like a hot knife through butter and solidifies, impaling her and pinning the half-elf to the ground. There’s shockingly little blood, though Sierra can see angelic light eating away at Sapphire’s body. The half-elf’s flesh regenerates almost as fast as it disintegrates. Almost.

Kirin lands next to Sapphire with a massive crash, leaving a shallow impact crater where he drops. He draws a knife so black it seems to darken its surroundings, throws it through Sapphire’s skull, and turns to Sierra.

Category Four.

“Broken fucking gods,” he says. “I tracked you. Caught the faintest hint of the Clearwater signature. Now get out of here, before—“

“She has the time Titan’s power,” Sierra blubbers out, somehow finding the salient piece of information despite the sudden overload she’s being forced to take in. “You need to finish her—“

“Very well done,” Sapphire says from the ground. “An angelic attack followed by a blade that severs the metaphysical concept of life. Category 3 and 4, respectively, if I counted correctly.”

Kirin shouts a warning, shoving Sierra back. She gasps, almost dropping the Death Prayer that holds Evelyn’s life on a piece of paper, but she catches it with a quick Forcefield. She readjusts her flight with Personal Telekinesis, keeping her from slamming into a wall and breaking it.

Sierra doesn’t know if this item will actually do what it promises, but she refuses to take any chances. Once Kirin finishes fighting Sapphire, she can ask him to help her solve it—

“What a bother,” the half-elf enunciates calmly. She’s still lying on the ground, looking like a living pincushion.

The magic items piercing her flesh are potent enough to bury a nation, but Sapphire just lies there.

“Get back, Sierra,” Kirin warns. “Get ready to run.”

“The pieces are set,” Sapphire says, talking over the operator. “You will know what to do. Remember, Sierra. It is not only your life at stake.”

And then the world tilts, knocking Sierra’s soul off balance. She drops to a knee, the air knocked out of her by an invisible force. She has to spend a few moments blinking the spots out of her eyes.

Sapphire is gone. The weapons within her are gone. The dirt she lay on is unmarred.

Kirin stands empty-handed. For a brief second, Sierra thinks it’s going to be okay. Sapphire’s plans are in motion, but with someone as powerful as Kirin on their side, they can figure out a way to defeat them. Find a way to protect Evelyn and keep the resistance experiment from finding them or contain it.

And then Kirin stumbles. He almost drops to one knee. Catches himself. Takes a bracing step forward—

Pop. He disappears like a soap bubble pierced by a needle.

Sierra isn’t powerful enough to discern if he’s alive or simply gone. She doesn’t know which one is worse.

Objective: Keep what’s yours

An enemy knows you hold an item of immeasurable worth. Eliminate it before it can take it and ruin everything.

Reward: 10,000 secondary XP

Distance: 1 mile

 

She turns, enhancing her vision with Farsight. On the horizon, a six-legged creature that might’ve been human once dashes across the desert, practically soaring across the sands towards her.

The Death Prayer is warm in her hands, and Sierra takes one more glance at it.

New text has appeared on the empty side. This time, Sierra’s Translate tells her what it says almost immediately.

Adversity sculpts excellence.

- Sapphire

“Fuck you,” Sierra whispers to the paper. Pure hate fills her veins, an old ice-cold friend coursing through her body. “I will tear down everything you stand for.”

She turns towards the oncoming monster and readies herself for battle.

We fight on my rules.

“Domain: Balance.”

You will not take Evelyn from me.

“Special skill: For Every Shadow, There Is A Light.”

Fuck you all.

New special skill unlocked.

She doesn’t even know what it does, but it feels right. Sierra activates it without question, knowing this is what she has to do.

“Special skill: Wrath Of A Peaceful Soul.”