The group of survivors huddled by the ice, weapons in hand, buzzing with anxiety. Their reaction to the return was a predictable wave of concern and shock. The facts were evident; one member dead, Jamie half-frozen, half-dead, and missing a finger, the hulking, scaled, demonic form of Cinder, following David.

  The undead troops Mara had commanded were gone, now just useless puppets with their strings cut. Each of the walking corpses left on guard duty lay motionless on the ground. Deader than dead. A necessary loss.

  The silence shattered.

  “Jamie! Your hand!”

  “What is that? David, what is that thing?”

  “Where’s—what happened to Mara?”

  Questions piled on top of each other. Harris’s composure broke. Henderson stared, mouth open. Corbin’s hand went to his holster, eyes fixed on the demon. David let Jamie spill the beans first. The kid delivered a particularly emotional and teary recount. David offered sparse, grim corroboration when pressed.

  Yes, a second demon. Chained. It got Mara. It was fast. Clean. Unlucky—All true, in a sense. David was technically demonic.

  Rhea pushed past everyone and ran into the temple. She came back a minute later, face blank, eyes trailing tears. One stiff nod—that was all the confirmation anyone needed.

  People turned somber. Harris turned away. Corbin didn’t, just watched David, then Cinder, then David again.

  “And now a demon is yours. Unbelievable. At least it’ll make up for the numbers we lost.” Corbin said quietly, tilting his head at Cinder. “The walk back’ll be more dangerous.”

  The group had seen David subdue and command living and undead enemies before, but a massive demon following his orders was still unexpected. Wrapped in Jamie’s tears and the grim evidence, the story was just believable enough. They absorbed it. Rhea mourned. They stared at Jamie’s blackened stump.

  Throughout it all, David did his best ‘bummed out’ impression. He wondered if he’d get an acting skill. If not, he’d settle for an Emmy award.

  The group moved. The decision was to hunt for another hour, maybe two. They’d had to abandon the warg meat earlier, dragging it away from the ice dome to avoid drawing predators while David was trapped. Now they needed food. The plan was straightforward: secure something to eat, then circle back toward known water sources, hunting anything viable along the way. It was going to be a long and productive day.

  It took them two hours.

  Without Mara’s small guard of undead boosting their numbers, every step required more caution. They moved like a tight, nervous bubble through the oppressive trees.

  They had barely even made it back to the wreckage. It was still about twenty minutes away.

  They were attacked a few more times. The threats were low-level but persistent. A pack of level one and two imps—lean, tall, with long tails and claws that chittered as they scrambled from the underbrush. A pair of level 3 werebeasts, oversized wolfmen walking on their hind legs, armed with jagged swords, ragged claws, and animal fury. Another group of possessed armors, semi-molten ancient plates animated by furious spirits, wielding rusted and slagged weaponry.

  Cinder fought.

  The new demon had no martial arts, no magical skills, not even a basic grasp of how to use the greatsword she carried. Under David’s direct mental guidance—a constant, low-level stream of go here, swing there, turn—she adjusted quickly. She took to battle like something born for it, which, David supposed, she was.

  What the savage demon lacked in skill, she made up for in pure, unrefined violence. And strength—her circulation was… something else. The demon was stalwart, unmovable, and wicked. She brutalized any creature she encountered. An imp lunged at her flank; she backhanded it with a fist like a maroon sledgehammer, caving in its ribcage and sending it crashing into a tree. A werebeast charged; she met it head-on, trading a slash across her scaled thigh for a grip on its throat. She didn’t choke it. She crushed its windpipe with one hand and let it drop, gagging.

  Then she used the sword. Like a massive, weighted cleaver. It saw no resistance.

  Even Theo, Corbin, and Rhea had to pause to watch with mild surprise. It wasn’t elegance. It was demolition.

  David observed, his own spear held ready. He began to understand why the system refused to reward him. Cinder was created with the demonic energy of a level 13 being, at level 0. With circulation, the newly born demon was as strong as David, a byproduct of excess demonic energy. Anything she faced below David’s level, was grossly unprepared.

  He felt a faint, dry flash of satisfaction. The investment was paying off. What an excellent piece of equipment she was turning out to be.

  Now that he was level 13, David couldn't really level from level 1 and 2 creatures anymore. He’d probably have to kill dozens of them. Or maybe killing dozens would do nothing at all. He supposed it made sense. If you could capture a bunch of level ones, you could just kill them every hour to farm levels indefinitely, growing overpowered without a fleck of danger.

  Actually… that gave David an idea. Something to try out.

  They finally tested the cursed weapons from the abyssal priest. The golden, mana-infused spear, axe, and sword had been sitting in their gear, untouched except by Rhea and Mia’s telekinesis. No one wanted to hold them.

  They used the imps. They’d break a leg, bind the creatures with ice and cloth, and then Rhea and Mia would puppet them with Telekinetic Tug. It was a grisly sort of marionette show. The place had changed them. A week ago, someone would have protested. Now, after the gore and the constant threats, their old-world ethics felt like something they’d left in the wreckage of the plane.

  Mia hesitated for a second, faltering.

  “It’s… I—I think… it’s… It’s us or them,” Mia finally said, the confession itself almost bringing her to tears, as if she couldn’t believe what she was saying. Then, seconds later, her brow furrowed in concentration as she forced an imp’s arm to grip the axe haft. “They’ve been trying to kill us since we got here.”

  “Half of us are missing,” someone muttered from the back. “Consider it payback.”

  Wow, look at them go, David mentally observed, who would’ve thought. He guessed a literal hell would do that to anyone.

  At first, nothing happened. The imp just struggled against the telekinetic grip.

  Theo watched, chewing his lip. “Maybe you need to channel mana into it? Like… activate it? Like in the movies back on Earth. A binding, or a trigger. Or a bond or something.”

  David stepped forward. He wasn’t about to touch the things. Instead, he focused on the imp’s thrumming, panicked soul. He pushed a sliver of his own demonic energy through the creature, into the weapon, and severed the connection before it could solidify. He wasn’t trying to get cursed. From the outside, it probably looked like he was doing some kind of holy man blessing. The thought was genuinely funny to him. David Carter, exorcist-at-large.

  The imp’s body jerked. Then it moved.

  The change was immediate. The level 1 imp, previously weak and spindly, suddenly bulged with wiry muscle. Its strength spiked by maybe fifty, a hundred percent. David’s eyes tracked the numbers he couldn’t see but could sense in the creature’s suddenly intense aura. Interesting.

  They made it fight a bound warg pup.

  The axe, when it bit, left a cut that refused to seal. The blood kept flowing, a dark, steady trickle that worsened as the pup thrashed. The sword was worse. It drank. Blood from its wounds flowed up the blade like it was sipping through a straw. With every drink, the sword grew a little sharper, a little longer, and the imp’s movements became a blur of frenzied speed.

  The spear was the strangest. Its outline rippled, distorting the air around it like a heat haze. It was hard to look at, hard to track. The imp hurled it at a tree. The weapon punched through the bark, quivered, and then shot back through the air, slapping into the imp’s waiting palm with a wet smack.

  Even Rhea, usually unflappable, let out a sharp breath. “Okay.”

  They killed the test subjects and stared at the three weapons lying on the moss, gleaming and innocent.

  The discussion was tense. David wanted the spear. It paired with his Battle Sense in a way that felt brutally obvious. If he could see a second ahead, and his opponent couldn’t even see his weapon properly? That wasn't a fight. That was surgery. David liked unfair.

  In the end, cooler heads prevailed. They decided to wait until they were back at the relative safety of the wreckage camp, or had carved out a truly defensible spot, before anyone volunteered as the first human test subject. The curses had to have a cost. The imps hadn't shown any negatives apart from going overboard with power, but that didn't mean the price wasn't there, waiting.

  As the group packed up, David eyed the spear. And the other two weapons. He planned to get a closer look at their curses, to see what his aspect would tell him when he finally studied them in the right way.

  When he was ready, he would allocate the most useful ones to his most loyal minions.

  If the curse wasn’t too bad, maybe Jamie, the twirp, would get one.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  There were more were-beast attacks. The creatures were fast and left no openings. Relentless. They moved like the "Impossible" rating was a challenge they personally upheld. Then, followed by a larger, possessed werebeast corpse, a warlock emerged, its permanent shield shimmering, fire wreathing its hands.

  The thing died almost instantly. It was dead in four seconds.

  Jamie's ice slammed into the shield, first a solid cage, a sphere trapping the thing inside its shield, then massive, offensive spikes from all sides, like an iron maiden, weakening the shield from all sides. Corbin's halberd struck a precise, shattering blow at the same moment. As Corbins blow cleaved the ice, Rhea's telekinetic javelin took it in the head.

  It didn’t even get to use its fire.

  The final creature didn’t stand a chance. Jamie's ice—a massive, brutal lance from above—slammed into it. Corbin's halberd hooked a leg at the exact moment of impact. Rhea's telekinetic javelin took it in the mouth as it fell. The coordination was seamless, a gruesome piece of hyper-efficiency.

  David watched the afterimage of the violence fade, as Corbin clean his blade. A dry, internal voice remarked, Hold on. Have these guys been training without me? Is there a group chat I don't know about?

  He felt the hot, sharp pinch of jealousy in his gut. It was pure, petty want. He loved his niche. Demonic corruption was a good, versatile toolset. But he wanted more.

  The hot, petty want in his chest had a shopping list now. He wanted Jamie's ice. He wanted Rhea's distant sight. He wanted to reach out and punch something without closing the distance himself. That halberd’s pinpoint accuracy. Chloe's ally healing would be a solid force multiplier, he noted, cataloging the utility. Theo's deflection skill would turn me into a complete monster. He’d even take that fast guy—what was his name, the one who bolted into the forest—wherever the hell he was now—his skill. Just once, could the universe slide a useful skill my way without me having to stitch it together from nothing?

  The tools themselves; a sharper, brighter set he saw in someone else's hands. Mine too, he thought, the greed a small, bright coal in his gut. All of it. David saw that fuller arsenal and wanted every piece of it for himself.

  Jamie was fake humble, which annoyed David. The kid was practically glowing after the warlock kill, trying to play it cool and failing. He’d examine a patch of frost he’d left on a tree and say, “Whoa, that got way bigger than I meant,” with this aw-shucks tone that didn’t hide his glee. He was performing.

  Corbin was openly smug. Which was even more annoying. The Air Marshal didn’t bother with a performance. He wore an openly satisfied expression. He’d polish a speck off his halberd blade, catch David’s eye, and give a slight, knowing nod, as if they were two masters appreciating each other’s craft. David wasn’t appreciating anything.

  David made himself feel better by working. He leveled up Cinder by having her execute a crippled werebeast. He studied her status screen, watched her Demonic Energy Mastery skill tick upward. He trained his own Demonic Energy Manipulation, mimicking his pet-demoness’s, circulating the corrosive energy through his pathways until the action was beyond mindless, grinding out another sliver of progress.

  [Demonic Energy Mastery Lvl 6 → Demonic Energy Mastery Lvl 7]

  He tried to convince himself that this made up for the fact that everyone else could do cool magic shit that he could not. Look at this, he’d think, observing Cinder’s savage efficiency. I have a personal hit-demoness. I have a skill that melts souls. That’s a solid toolset.

  He ‘tried’ to convince himself.

  He was pretty sure portal magic wasn’t inherently demonic. The abyssal priest he’d stepped on and killed said there were many kinds of dungeons, many kinds of magic. He figured the logic followed: if demonic energy could corrupt anything, and it could create corrupted portal magic, then surely it could create other things. Ice. Telekinesis. Pinpoint halberd accuracy.

  It was a nice thought. He felt like a caveman who’d just made a really good, really dangerous stick of fire, staring up at the night sky and wondering how the hell to build a rocket ship.

  With Mara’s undead gone, their numbers had taken a hit. David could, in theory, enthrall another creature. He hadn’t met anything worthwhile yet, and he wasn’t willing to waste a thrall slot on a useless shambler, living or dead.

  Still, there were a lot of them. The team took advantage of the numbers they had. Using Rhea’s Distant Gaze, they avoided larger groups, or at least they tried their best to, not willing to risk unnecessary injury. A couple of ambushes still got through. The rest of the time, they intentionally targeted smaller groups. David, his two monstrous thralls, Rhea, Jamie, Corbin, Evans, Theo, and the remaining weaklings beat the living hell out of clusters of juvenile wargs, lesser imps, and the occasional lone or pair of living armor.

  David kept the Heretic’s Shackle fragments to himself, unwilling to expose what the chains were capable of. No point showing all his cards.

  Instead, they beat the creatures down or disabled them. They tied the dazed things up with scavenged strips of cloth and leather. Then Jamie sealed the deal, wrapping the creatures in bundles of thick, binding ice. The group power-leveled, taking turns executing the beaten and bound enemies. It was efficient. Safe.

  David watched a level 3 imp twitch as Harris brought his weapon down on its head. He watched Henderson gain a level from finishing off a warg pup. He watched Henderson’s eyes go distant with a level-up notification. This, is not how we survive the dungeon, he thought. We’re not getting harder to break. A cold, practical calculation clicked into place in the back of his mind.

  He stopped everyone.

  “We’re getting more stats,” David said. His voice was flat, factual. “Sure. More levels. But we’re not getting stronger.”

  Jamie paused, an ice dagger half-formed in his hand. “What? Of course we are. My ice is way bigger than yesterday.”

  “Your ice is bigger. You’re not,” David said. “This strategy is good for a boost. It’s poison for the long run. Not everything in this world is going to be lower level than us. We’ve already seen that. A lot. Power-leveling gets us taller, but the first real threat that doesn’t lie down and let us tie it up is still going to kill us. We need to actually fight these things. For real. Take turns. One on one. Or two on one. Two on one is better. We make sure nobody dies. You need to learn how to fight. How to not die when something fights back.”

  The reaction was immediate. Harris stared, his boardroom composure slipping into open disbelief. “You want us to spar with these monsters? That’s insane.”

  Henderson looked at his hands, then at a tied-up imp gnashing its teeth. “We have a system that works.”

  Chloe went pale. “I’m a healer. I don’t… I can’t do that.”

  Even Rhea’s clinical demeanor tightened. Her lips pressed into a thin line. “It’s too dangerous. We can’t afford to get hurt for practice.”

  Evans shook his head. “I have to side with them on this one, David. It’s too dangerous.”

  David looked at them. How generous of you, he thought. All of you, so willing to stay soft and die later so we don’t have an awkward afternoon now.

  Surprisingly, Corbin was the one who broke the stalemate. He leaned on his halberd, his gaze sweeping the group. “He’s not wrong.” His voice was low, gravelly. “That ogre that teleported into our camp isn’t out there waiting for us to catch up. It’s leagues ahead. You think it’s going to let you tie it down and take turns?” He looked at Rhea, then Evans. “The first thing we can’t ambush kills everyone.”

  Rhea held Corbin’s stare. She was quiet for a few seconds, her gaze shifting to the bound creatures, then to the forest around them. “Fine,” she said, the word clipped. “But we pick the ones that can’t kill us in one hit. And we stop at the first serious injury. No pushing it.”

  Evans let out a slow breath. “Okay. Controlled fights. We watch each other’s backs.”

  One by one, with a lot of miserable sighs and a few hissed complaints, the others agreed. They were kicking and screaming on the inside, some of them on the outside too.

  David watched them gear themselves up, faces drawn with fear and resentment. Welcome to the impossible difficulty, he mused, the thought a dry spark in the dark of his own head. The part where it gets impossible.

  David let them start with two on one fights. Or sometimes one on one, if the creature was a warg. He had Rhea, the marshals, even Jamie and the healer standing ready to jump in if someone was about to get their head taken off.

  The fights were messy. Chloe, the healer, went first. She swung her mace like she was trying to kill a particularly aggressive pi?ata. She finally put down a limping imp after five wild swings, then immediately looked like she was going to throw up. Harris fought with a spear he’d scavenged. He moved like he was in a fencing club, all careful steps and measured pokes, until a juvenile warg bowled him over and he started screaming and stabbing it in the neck until it stopped moving.

  Mia fought with her floating, telekinetically controlled sword. Now she had two, one normal, the other, cursed and golden. Both blades darted around her like an angry metal hornets. She’d stand ten feet back, frowning in concentration, while the swords zipped and sliced two imps apart. She always went for the legs first. Or the neck. It was efficient. It was also kind of creepy. It must have felt like fighting an invisible warrior made of pure air.

  Theo was a surprise. Of course, he had an oversized greatsword, but his real skill was his Deflection. A warg would lunge, Theo would get his blade in the way at the last second, and the thing would just… bounce. It wouldn’t just block the attack; it sent the warg stumbling back, confused and off-balance. Theo would then step in and bring the greatsword down. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked every time. Useful, David noted. Annoyingly useful.

  Jamie was the team’s tank, which mostly meant he was the loudest thing on the field. He didn’t dodge. He’d throw up a wall of ice several inches thick and take the hit. The ice would crack, Jamie would get shoved back a step, and he’d whoop like it was the coolest thing that had ever happened to anyone. Then he’d flash-freeze the creature’s feet to the ground and rain spikes of ice from above, turning it into a pincushion. The second imp jumped, anticipating it, and Jamie swatted it out of the sky with a well placed wall of ice. Then he flash froze its feet and rained frozen hell from above. It was a good trick. It was also predictable. David was sure that unless he expanded his repertoire, the kid would get himself killed with it eventually.

  Chloe earned her keep. Once or twice, someone would’ve bled out without her healing. Harris took a warg’s canine through his lung during a surprise pack ambush. He was on the ground, making a wet, gasping sound, blood bubbling at his lips. Chloe was there in three seconds, her hands glowing a soft golden green on his chest. Thirty seconds later, Harris was sitting up, pale and shaking, with nothing but a nasty pink scar. She saved his life. She still looked terrified the whole time.

  But to David, it was all a backdrop.

  His pet-Demoness, Cinder, practiced. She was already Level 6. David gave her strict mental orders to incapacitate at least one creature between levels, not to kill. She followed them. She’d use the flat of her demonbone greatsword to break or sweep legs. She’d slam a scaled fist into a creature’s sternum hard enough to drop it, but not hard enough to pulp its heart. The whole time, David could feel a low, simmering yearning through the thrall bond. She enjoyed the violence, but she really wished she had orders to just kill everything. David got the distinct impression she was daydreaming about turning the entire forest—and maybe everyone in the group besides himself, Corbin, and the hobgoblin elite—into a red smear, all for his glory. Like some kind of sacrifice in his honor. Sheesh, he thought, watching her snap a juvenile warg’s hind leg with a casual kick. Such an eager employee. Might need to have a talk about work-life balance.

  Even the cat, the sentient Scottish Fold, joined in. David watched it. It would dart in during a fight, a gray blur, and savage an ankle or leap onto a creature’s back to claw at its eyes before zipping away. It really liked eating warg flesh. After a fight, it would drag a piece of meat off like a trophy. David couldn’t sense any changes in it. But he could swear the thing was getting faster. Faster than a cat should be. Its claws left deeper gashes than they should. Its small size made it a problem nothing could quite solve. Huh, David thought.

  The cat caught him looking. It stared back, a string of gristle hanging from its mouth. Then it dropped the meat, trotted over, and butted its head against David’s shin, attracted by his magic field, which he kept close at the moment. The cat circled once, twice, and then leapt neatly into his lap. It didn’t settle there. It climbed up his chest, tiny claws pricking through his shirt, and shoved its face into the hollow of his throat, right where his demonic energy felt the warmest and densest as it circulated. A low, rumbling purr started up, vibrating against his collarbone.

  David sat very still. The cat was a small, warm, purring weight soaking up the corrosive energy that could rot a demon’s soul. Of course, he thought, the observation dry and flat in his mind. The murder monster from Earth likes the murder vibes. Makes perfect sense. He slowly lifted a hand and gave the space between its ears a careful scratch. The purr intensified.