Name: Nil

  Race: Demon

  Type: Transformed Deviant Soul

  Age: Immortal – 5years, 4months

  Crystal Essence: [Crimson]- Lvl.5— 140.9esq

  [Available Essence Points— 0]

  Strength: 20

  Agility: 56

  Wisdom: 22

  Abilities: [Faithless Absorption], [Faithless Mimicry], [Faithless Essence Amplification]

  [Available Trait Points— 0]

  Traits: [Armoured Form]- Lvl.1, [Greater Cognizance]- Lvl.1, [Psychic Resistance]- Lvl.3, [Quick Mold]- Lvl.1

  Ascension Perks: [Reais Fiend]

  Spells: [Invisibility]- Lvl.1

  Patron: Nil

  [Spell Unlocked!]

  [Invisibility]- Lvl.1

  For a split second the entire pit is silent, as if time itself has stopped. Then the wind rushes back in, and the battle roars with renewed fury.

  The first spell I cast, my very first spell ever, is my most powerful one.

  I’m invisible.

  The [Udele’s] vicious display set everyone on pause, but between Demons the peace can only last so long. Quick on my feet, I’ve already dashed toward the far side of the pit, far away before it can start searching for me—just to be safe.

  Skipping over the flung body of a Demon, I set out to take quick advantage of the definite boon I’ve cashed in. Right in my sights are a plethora of targets. My muscles ripple tensely as I pull back on a swing, a large burst of Essence flooding through them.

  Heavy as an anvil, my fist’s power shoots through the carapace exoskeleton of a Crimson-level [Greier]. The six-legged crawler staggers and stumbles from the rattling blow.

  I don’t a wait another second, the [Greier’s] victim is left weak. Leaping to it, I perform the same sharp burst of Essence and spear through the bleeding [Adar]. Its wide shielded head proves brittle to the strike. For an uncomfortable second my focused hand is stuck in its husk, but I quickly whip it out in time to find a prong-horned Demon charging toward me.

  Another Demon behind me roars at the challenge, rustling off the clinging guts on its long, clawed forelegs.

  Before either of them can trample me, the prong-horned Demon halts, staggering against its own momentum as it startles, its head turned to its stomach. A light purple light begins to crawl over it, enveloping its entire body.

  The other Demon gives up on the fight and starts running away, leaving me and a few interested Demons to watch as the Demon’s entire being succumbs to the light.

  My body tenses as I watch the purple light crawl along the body of the beast, startled yet again in a short span of time. The tingling sensation of the light as it prickles my skin identifies it as mana. The squealing Demon vanishes along with the light before anyone can react to it, and despite the random disintegration of their combatant, none of the Demons are fazed.

  As quick as they’d paused, they resume measuring each other up and attacking one another. Charges are met, acid spat, and lean spikes shot. With the series of unfortunate distractions, the royale picks up in earnest once more, though not before serving me well. Invisible to the eye, I continue to evade the Demons’ sights. I’m free to wait this out under the safety of my magic.

  The dead [Adar] lies beside me, and a pause to eat and transform would be great. I already know what to replicate too: its broad face shields will do nicely.

  The rest of the pit is busy with its own battle, Demons all over the place. There’s death on every side and I get to simply watch, prepare, and pick off whatever is left of the mess.

  Feeling at my [Soul Crystal], I get a rough vibe of how much mana I have left to spend.

  And I can cast the spell two more times if I need to.

  Pleased with myself, I quickly tear into the [Adar], peeling and crushing its armor between my palms before swallowing it whole with a large bite out of its stomach. The residue of Essence in its flesh and the unique quality of the natural shield melts on my tongue, manipulating the Essence within my Crystal to start the transformation.

  The task is much smoother; pulling Essence from the [Soul Crystal] usually has me tugging harder than this. The muscles and skin on my arm stretches, thickens, then hardens as it sticks out an inch further. An extension of my shape bulges with Essence as a working imitation of the [Adar’s] shield. I attribute the quick and smooth work to my higher level and my trait [Quick Mold].

  I’m almost done when something crawling out of the [Adar’s] corpse catches my attention. A pair of red eyes sitting on a heavily armored, tiny head look up at me. With six spread insect legs stabbing into the [Adar’s] flesh for stability, it squeals and nearly drops the gleaming Crimson Crystal trapped in its claws.

  Before the image of a thieving crawler registers in my mind, the little fiend scutters away, burrowing in the earth as it escapes me. What the fuck is—

  My senses blare as a presence looms behind me. I whip around to meet the [Udele’s] frightening eyes. Its curved neck vibrates with a fury I’ve only met in Gerim—except this time I’m brutally attacked.

  Before I can leap out of its reach, the [Udele] lurches out with its feathered arms and slices clean through my ankle and tendons. With a useless limb, I sprawl onto the floor, panic racing through me.

  How can it see me?

  I crawl some distance away and even trip one of the fighting Demons to its death. I turn. Searching my senses, I still feel that my spell is active, and the Demons I’ve crawled past don’t bother me. If I’m still invisible, then how...

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  Glancing back the [Udele] stands, still heaving and panting. Whoever its enemies were after the [Kahri], they didn’t go down without a fight. But they still went down, and that fact, as well as the [Udele’s] brutal show of dominance, has killed the idea of anyone going after it, especially not with everyone else being a significant threat to life.

  So now it roams, unbothered and free to pick off weaklings and steal kills as it pleases—and now it’s after me. Narrowing my eyes at it, I notice something... it can’t see me. It caws and snaps its head around: sniffing me out.

  Fuck!

  There’s more to the sense that’s guiding it toward me, even after I’ve raised a veil between the light and myself. It reaches out and I sense the distortion in mana around it as it steps forward, first way off to the left, where it bumps and snaps the neck of a stray Demon, and then closer, narrower. As though being fed instructions on my exact location.

  Magic, I curse with a groan, thinking of Fanacle and Hargoil. Of course it’d have magic. Is that why he took me there first? So I’d at least stand even with everyone?

  Whatever Hargoil’s intentions were, I’d have preferred it if he gave me warning first. With all the chaos, the scattering corpses, the crawlers, and the vanishing purple light, I’ve gotten lax. Invisible or not, there’s always danger in this place.

  The Udele takes another step, this time with its talons digging into the ground. A growl rumbles from its throat as it steps forward again. The Demon is quickly sniffing me out, and the longer I stand here the closer it gets. I retreat further into the chaos, my [Invisibility] letting me weave through the weaker Demons.

  If they can’t sniff me out like it can, they’re less important.

  With little to no one daring to go after the [Udele], the fact is the mob will kill themselves long before they rally together and take it down. If that’s the case, then taking my invisibility into the equation... this royale won’t end until one of us kills the other.

  The [Udele] must’ve realized this as well, perhaps long before me, or it could just be killing everything slightly in its reach like it continues to do, biting into the neck of a Demon as it does now. The poor sap latched in its beak squeals, its wing fluttering wildy in pointless flails.

  My attention on the [Udele’s] next meal is drawn away as my feet bump into something. I’m all the way over on the edge of the pit now, where somehow all the corpses and body parts are tucked aside—the culprits none other than the crawlers unleashed in the pit, hard at work picking Crystals off the dead and setting them to the side.

  Got to make a good show of it, I sneer at the Demon at my feet, crawling over to the next pile of corpses. A runaway, eh?

  And a familiar one too. The crawling Demon has the same idea I do—hide. The Demon is familiar looking, a [Khozuik], the same type of Demon as Gerim. The spikes on its back are shorter, much so. It has the same clawed paws with a forest of quills sticking out of the little pores on the front.

  A good weapon.

  I’m well aware of the precious time I’m wasting by hiding. I’ll have to go on the offensive eventually, but there’s no reason I can’t hide and attack.

  Launching at the cowardly [Khozuik], it literally never sees me coming. My arm spears through its chest and it shrieks, a cry that dies instantly as my hand cuts off its air. It spasms, clawing at my arm as I yank it out and slam it down into the ground.

  That was easy.

  [Crimson Soul Crystal]- Lvl. 4(8esq)

  [Absorb] [Destroy]

  I do neither, letting it drop to the floor in favor of the fistful of [Khozuik] flesh. I don’t want to find out what comes for rule breakers in the pit; besides, it would only draw attention.

  The [Khozuik’s] flesh is chewy, string-like, and very salty. I don’t mind, the surge of foreign Essence mixes with mine and my right hand begins transforming into a crude copy.

  Even with the new [Traits], there are some things that remain a hurdle. I’ll manage.

  I’m not nearly done with my preparations either. I skirt over to a further pile of corpses as the [Udele’s] rampage approaches me. For the moment I’m granted a reprieve; it’s shifted its focus to ending everyone else in sight.

  Go ahead, keep fighting and tire yourself out, you fucking ugly bird, I seethe inwardly, pushing all my focus into molding my hand into the best replica of the [Khozuik’s] quill-ridden paw. It’s a tougher task than I thought: my attention is split between maintaining the mimicry of the [Adar’s] shield on my left arm and creating a new mimicry.

  Should I... no time.

  I let the transformed shield collapse back into my left arm and my current transformation speeds up, improving. With Invisibility and the quills I shouldn’t have any reason to get close enough to warrant a shield. No point in having it drag behind me then.

  With the transformation done, I switch my focus to the last bit of preparation before I head in to face the hounding Demons when a voice pierces through the wall in my head. “You’re very lucky. Hide as long as you want, bu—”

  “Shut up.” I cut off Hargoil’s grating voice once more. With so many things to focus on with Essence, I’m slipping up in major areas. Gritting my teeth, I pull on my mana once more and quickly chant, “Wekt. Wekt. Wekt. Wekt.”

  Chanting the Key under my breath is sufficient enough to renew the spell before it expires. I take a breath and ready myself. All my advantages in place, I launch back into the fray. Except, with all the time I’ve spent behind piles of corpses, the pit is nearly cleaned out. Only the [Udele], a one-armed [Lardoa], and a trio of flying [Cuileag] remain.

  I let myself grin as the advantage of the spell becomes obvious. They’re all tired—aggressive and strong, sure, but tired nonetheless. I recall experiencing a similar exhaustion when I fought against the three Demons who greeted me in the desert months ago. It’s the only kind of exhaustion Demons experience, the blatant lack of spendable Essence.

  Every one of them has some terrible injury or another. The [Udele] being the exception, but the multitudes of scratches and gashes across its feathered chest and face tally up. The [Lardoa] experiences perhaps the worst handicap, and when the stalemate breaks I’m sure it’ll be the first to go down—a thought that gladdens me, It’s easy to envision the one-armed Demon as Hargoil instead; they’re from the same armored beetle species.

  Did Calridian create you too?

  I don’t let the thought expand past that as the [Cuileags] buzz up and around each other. The trio seem to have come to some sort of agreement to kill everyone who isn’t them before fighting for the win themselves. Only two of the yellow-colored bugs have legs, and the last has a good chunk of their torso ripped off.

  Never mind, it’s going down first. And I’m the one killing it.

  When three long quills erupt from the sides of my right arm, the air fills with a hiss and I see the yellow insect turn toward me. It isn’t given the chance to attack or even react to my attack, but its acute sense of danger catches me off guard. For a split moment I hesitate, but that’s all the time the others need to start moving.

  The [Udele] dashes ahead, seeking me out with a single whiff of the air. It’d been picking up on my scent since the stalemate begun no doubt. In a knee-jerk reaction, I somehow manage to evade both the charging [Udele] and the one-armed [Lardoa’s] javelin strike on it. Having no disillusions, the [Lardoa] stabs clean through the [Udele’s] stomach. No longer unscathed, the [Udele] screeches its feathered arms, flailing in panic before bringing them together in a fist—a fist that breaks into the [Lardoa’s] hard carapace-armored body.

  Cracks stream throughout and brim with blood, but the [Lardoa] isn’t down for the count yet. In a last stand, it summons many spikes through its body, an effect I’m sure costs its remaining Essence. The [Udele] shrieks before smacking the body away, huffing, barely repairing its wounds with Essence.

  Now’s my chance!

  The [Lardoa] is done for, and the two [Cuileags] remaining have broken the truce between themselves. Typical of Demons. I’m left with the weakened version of the terror behind that savage display. Do I even need [Invisibility] anymore?

  No. Not the time to get cocky. An attack can come out of nowhere, this isn’t over.

  The [Udele] pants, heaving with stomping steps, its weight too heavy to carry. It’s exhausted but somehow still powering through. My senses tingle again at its use of mana. Whatever spell it’s casting allows it to meet my eyes as though my invisibility were gone.

  But it isn’t.

  “Alright, fuck you.”

  I get off my feet, dashing at it. I set my attention on its eyes. Its eyes track me slowly as I dash from place to place, but it has a short lag between each dash. And that’s where I strike.

  Fueling the comparatively bountiful amounts of Essence into my arm, I launch out a flurry of quills at it. Rather than back away—run—it does the opposite. With what I recognize well to be a desperate last stand ,the [Udele] springs itself toward me, tanking my quills by sacrificing its feathered arms. It succeeds.

  With its remaining hands it snaps at me, catching my neck and pulling me into the air. But its face is already filled with quills. Shouldn’t have come so close.

  Dead, it drops me, and I huff. On the other side the [Cuileags] have almost decided who I’m going to kill next, but I don’t let them—I want this over. Going the extra mile to dash and boost my jump with a flood of Essence, spending just as much straining the mimicry to produce the absurd amount of quills, I set out on the vulnerable Demons.

  It’s over before they know it. When I land I disperse the spell—with little time left on the clock. With all eyes on me, the telepathic blockers I put up shatter— he combined assault of all the telepathic Demons doesn’t give me a chance to put up a fight.

  “Lord Crimson!”

  “Lord Crimson!”

  “Lord Crimson! Lord Crimson! Lord Crimson!”

  The chanting goes on and on and on, crippling my mind to the point that struggling against it becomes futile. And so I let it all in.

  “I am the Lord Crimson!”