POV: The demon

  He watched from the fake-dead demon-kin, bemused, as Zyz’Ti was resisted then sealed. The souls were powerful enough to obscure his vision from the entire battle, but the gist of it managed to seep through.

  ‘What a peculiarity. I’ve never heard of such a thing. A new kind of domain that can interact with immature Celestial Parasites in this way? Ah, it seems luck is on my side, as that would be quite disastrous if it were to grow, even if it isn’t a threat to me, it will be to others like Zyz’Ti.’

  He’d drawn out the battle, igniting the new Sapient’s battle hunger to accelerate the transformation. While it wasn’t strictly necessary, he really wanted to see the woman tear her former friends apart, a humorous irony.

  Alas, it was not to be. They’d clearly planned around her awakening of the Parasite, and succeeded in their endeavor.

  They wouldn’t live, but they did deprive him of a show.

  The “Dead” demon-kin’s organs were quickly pulled inside, the gash healing over- albeit much slower than it should’ve been.

  He could say what he would about Crimson Rain, but it was a dangerous tool. Only half of the fight was him faking his attempts to survive, but he had been surprised on multiple occasions throughout.

  His puppet stood upon its two scaled legs, looking down on the unconscious duo. Branches of Flow-imbued blood pierced the skin and grew from the Slaughterer’s back, digging into the stone to drag him away while the lizard appeared, mouth wide, beam ready.

  When pure [Incinerate] blasted forward, even Foriatrian dodged.

  He drew back, an aura of Incinerate keeping him at bay. Despite sitting upon the Slaughterer’s back, the man underneath was unharmed, this particular flavor of Dragonfire supposedly harmless to its allies.

  He felt a pulse of Faith go upwards from the Embodiment- a prayer? It mattered not, if the God descended on this avatar, it would die as well.

  Every time he appeared and rushed, a beam would force him away, while the aura of destruction tore at any instant movement abilities. He could see the korgonda wavering, the Skills too new for its soul to have adjusted to the staring yet.

  On the eighth beam, he could see the effort it took for the korgonda to reverse time once more- the next would be its last. A suicide attack it poured every drop of heat into.

  Yet, it had bought enough precious seconds for its prayers to be answered. A Shaman appeared- the only Prime Human of the lot, and he carried another Prime Human with him.

  Justin and Jacob, the new “Leader” of the Shamans and the one who’d resisted the destructive effects of his capillary exhaust of his affinity.

  Unfiltered joy coursed through him. Killing these two would destroy morale. The Slaughterer and Progenitor as well? Some power above saw Foriatrian quite favorably today, but a simple attack would not do.

  He knew from experience that Jacob had the mental speeds of a mundane human, clearly mutating his body towards durability and regeneration- it would do him no good here.

  He lunged towards Jacob, jaw open. No regular attack would kill him, but he would fall nonetheless. The yawning void of darkness within the Tyrant Lizard connected with Foriatrian’s personal palace.

  Whether too shocked or with full faith in Jacob’s durability, the korgonda did not launch its final suicide attack to stop him. Justin, as well, released the man and backed away, a calculating expression on his face- this outcome was discussed and plotted already?

  ‘Foresight users,’ he thought amusedly, ‘Always believing they predict the future, yet utterly blind to the past. This has been attempted before, you daft fool.’

  Jacob appeared in his throne room at the foot of his palace steps, and he flicked his hand, sending an oceanic force of real Phantom Plague.

  Demon-kin could only channel so much. Foriatrian? He was unlimited. Unstoppable.

  His will focused on his puppet once more, confident in Jacob’s destruction. Nothing in existence could survive such an attack.

  Justin was locked down now, his teleportation worthless. Every surviving Shaman would not be enough to kill Foriatrian in his current form. Justin alone? He could toy with this one…

  “Interesting place you got here,” his body heard, and the demon-kin he took control of stuttered, his control flickering.

  Looking down, he saw Justin was… utterly unharmed.

  A frown marred his face.

  Another wave of his hand, and a tide of Phantom Plague bisected Jacob… or should have.

  The man’s clothes and flesh melted- for barely a blink, then he was simply… back.

  There was no regeneration, or effort in it. Jacob himself was seemingly unaware of what had transpired.

  The human studied Foriatrian’s demonic form, pitch black and covered in chitin, two vicious horns atop his head and a body that rippled with muscles. His entire body perpetually stuck in a position that emanated boredom.

  “Those tubes there…” Jacob said, nodding toward the throne of accursed flesh he sat upon and the tangle of connectors linking him to the demon-kin birthing pods that were powered, even now, by his phantom plague.

  “...They look awfully fragile.”

  Foriatrian did not deign him with an answer, truly confused by this outcome. He did not even consider it as a possibility.

  The moment Jacob’s foot came down upon the first stair though, he knew he needed this situation to be handled delicately.

  The longer a demon did not move, the more Phantom Plague they could channel- it was a defense to ensure they could not simply be chained up or locked away. Foriatrian had intentionally chained himself to his throne in order to boost his lethality. He could not risk being forced to move his body, but if Jacob successfully severed him from the birthing pods, he would have no choice.

  He could not allow this.

  Eyes wide open, a beam of darkness tore into Jacob’s body, melting and decaying him, while the man kept appearing again, unharmed. Every nanosecond, he was scoured, and by the next, he was unharmed.

  He took another step towards Foriatrian.

  By now, Jacob was feeling the pain. The agony of destruction, the torture of his demise… yet he persisted, taking a third step. Foriatrian could see the pained expression upon his face, but he did not cry out; he did not scream, he only moved.

  Foriatrian called out to all his guardians, all his demon-kin. The fronts could be given, if only it meant this man was expelled from his lands.

  The concentrated blast of Phantom Plague slid off his form, unable to obliterate him fully while he moved closer in his unceasing march. Foriatrian destroyed the stairs beneath him, but the air carried him all the same.

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  This was the first time he was somewhat regretful that Phantom Plague was the only thing he could use, no tricks in his toolset. The affinity was all he had.

  At least, until his generals began to appear.

  Breaking through the windows and walls at his command, hissing monsters and corrupt giants with all manner of abilities rained down on Jacob, an utterly blinding display to every other existence.

  Kinetic force tried to push him back and shattered at his chest, Pair and Tether tried to redirect him somewhere far away but the links simply snapped.

  Space, Void, Cosmic, Fabric, Time, Destruction, Manipulation, Earth, Assimilation, Undoing, Authority, Sapience, Darkness… even Knowledge, Tracking, and Farming were tried; everything fell on him.

  And nothing happened.

  Phantom Plague, in its purest form, was the only thing that could even remotely deal visible damage, yet it wasn’t enough.

  Ten steps away, and Foriatrian could feel only rage, his hatred and sadism feeding into his affinity that grew stronger with every second but was helpless before this… this thing.

  Jacob paused in front of Foriatrian, still frozen on his throne, and shot a wink at him.

  Two steps into the air carried Jacob eye-level with the demon, and Foriatrian sneered venomously at him.

  Something glinted in the back of Jacob’s eyes, and he placed a firm hand on Foriatrian’s shoulder. “I don’t like causing harm…” he started, “But after everything I’ve seen, after all the people I’ve watched you kill, all the Gem Dwellers that sacrificed themselves to save their families…

  “I think I’m going to enjoy this.”

  His arm swung to the side, and Foriatrian boiled with rage as he felt his body be cleaved in half, his supernatural durability not so much as slowing Jacob’s arm.

  Disconnected from his infrastructure, the birthing pods ceased their production. For the first time in four hundred years, the number of demon-kin stagnated.

  The Foriatrian’s upper half fell towards the ground, and he lost his four-century-long bonus wither away.

  “HOW DARE YOU?!” He roared, his bottom half regenerating with a squelch. He landed on his own clawed feet.

  Despite having accomplished a feat of utter impossibility, Jacob’s attention was already turning away, ignoring the demon he’d already been told was immortal. Damage could be dealt to him, but it would never stay. He would always return.

  He’d done that exclusively to annoy Foriatrian… to draw his attention away from the Gem Dwellers and the Tyrant Lizard he, even now, split his mind to control.

  It worked.

  Discarding his puppet, the demon-kin, went unconscious and was, presumably, killed almost instantly, but Foriatrian did not care. He was blinded by his hatred for this insect before him.

  Even if he was unable to channel the same amount of Phantom Plague, the majority of his power was no longer being siphoned to maintain the birthing pods.

  He flew up into the air wielding a hurricane of destruction, casting its at Jacob and watching him melt- yet still never tripping.

  Seeing they were no longer needed, nor wanted, the demon-kin fled as Foriatrian threw every tool in his repertoire at Jacob. Pure constant beams, bursts of incineration, destroying the fabric holding him, even going as far as to shamefully bodyslam him: anything to stop or even delay his march.

  Yet Jacob never flinched. Even with his face twisting as his nerves were flayed, he overcame it with the determination to split a mountain- and the moment he reached the first of the tubes, he did.

  Each was almost indestructible, only all-powerful forces such as the Champion’s Incinderation or a Titan’s fury capable of leaving even a scratch, but nothing applied to this one.

  He walked straight through, crunches and cracks resounding as the formation stuttered to a stop.

  Foriatrian screamed in outrage, blindly stabbing and ripping at Jacob’s body, tearing out gouges of flesh that were always replaced a second later as the man ran through the tubes, destroying all of them. Centuries upon centuries of careful work and maintenance vanishing before his very eyes

  He did what he could to salvage the resources poured in, but Jacob followed the tubes, dragging his hands out as far as they would go to destroy things along the way, and quickly found the birthing pods.

  Foriatrian could not move them fast enough, the process a long, arduous thing, and could only resign himself as Jacob’s trail of destruction carried him through these as well. He briefly took comfort in that this was only one of the birthing hubs, but even that was stolen from him as Jacob followed the trail back to his throne, then went down another route to repeat the process.

  Everything he’d built to punish the inhabitants of this world could not save him from this miniature calamity.

  ‘They still haven’t learned!’ he screamed mentally, ‘they haven’t been put in their places yet! They haven’t changed!’

  His original captors still lived, even today. The people that pushed him into this, that made him and…

  That made him the demon he was.

  He paused his incessant destruction to re-align his plans. Very soon, the numbers in his army would dwindle. He would make a different, less effective variant of the birthing pods that could be moved, but he would still have his army.

  With Jacob on the playing field now, he would need new strategies, but not necessarily worse ones. He’d simply need to take the war front himself.

  He turned around, ready to leave this toddler to his fit, when another presence descended.

  ‘Ah, I’d forgotten you,’ he found himself thinking such an impossible thought.

  The Champion had arrived.

  Without his direct moderation, the guardian had turned enough of the suppressing army to ash that he could appear here now to investigate what caused Foriatrian so much trouble. Seeing Jacob’s path, The Champion didn’t so much as grin before reaching out and trying to lift Jacob into the air- meeting only failure.

  Foriatrian and The Champion paused at the ease of Jacob’s resistance, but he tried again.

  Now with Foriatrian.

  The demon found himself plunging towards Jacob, thrown like a child. His horns entered Jacob’s stomach, and the man looked down to find a demon sticking out of him.

  Foriatrian thrashed, but The Champion held him in place long enough for Jacob to grab his head, crushing it like a watermelon.

  The Champion used that lapse, and the opening in Jacob’s stomach, to force the majority of Foriatrian into Jacob’s flesh.

  This time, when Foriatrian’s body regenerated, it struggled to find space as it bulged outwards. Jacob always returned to the same position with limitless durability, while Foriatrian found himself screaming in fear as he was… sealed.

  He knew this position to be in. it was the very same one Lox’Okrin suffered. The long-dead race of beings with flesh uniquely suited towards resisting Okrin’s magic, shaped into his coffin.

  He burned his path, suffering from wounds that the affinity would struggle to heal, exploding out of Jacob’s body and fleeing as quickly as he could.

  The Champion had to physically carry Jacob, chasing after him and grabbing at Foriatrian’s body with his divine right, but the fear pushed Foriatrian on.

  He wasn’t ready, not for a threat like this.

  The game of cat and mouse occurred faster than Jacob could even perceive, but explosive destruction was left in their wake; mountains flattened, valleys collapsed, ancient forests were burned to the last. The System itself soon receded from the demon’s continent, even the indirect warmth from The Champion’s [Incinerate] breaking it down.

  Draconian claws pinned him to the ground, and another attempt was almost made, but the army of demon-kin surrounding the sun had grown too close.

  The Champion was out of time.

  Throwing Jacob far, far away, The Champion disappeared, and Foriatrian growled as he slammed his fist into the earth.

  He became a demon because he wanted power, to never feel helpless again. He gave up everything in the pursuit of that singular goal…

  So why? Why was it that one man of mysterious origin, one man from beyond the quarantine, held more power than him?

  What gave Jacob the grit to keep going, despite the torture?

  What sacrifices had he made to attain such a level of invincibility?

  He shivered to imagine the trials required to reach such heights, and the steel will of that entity that had no doubt long surpassed his humanity.

  * * *

  POV: Jacob

  Slamming into the earth, a plume of dust was kicked up from his second crash landing from the stars.

  Sitting in the crater for a moment to regain his bearings, he only rested for a few seconds before Justin appeared above him then, seeing his wave, flickered again with Thadria at his side.

  She smiled at him and bounced happily down, picking him up and pulling him into a hug.

  Giving her a squeeze back, he still couldn’t be sure if saving three different planets made him worthy for such a lovely woman.