Damon P.O.V

“Wow it’s dark.”

This was all Damon thought about as his soul mindlessly drifted throughout the dark void. He knew he was dead, he remembered it was from a plane crash that caused the whole plane to plunge into a mountain.

All he remembered were the screams.

The yelling.

The terror.

And then silence.

Damon glanced around at the nothingness that surrounded him.

“Would’ya look at that, today we got a lot of nothing with a low chance of a shower of nothingness! Yipee!”

Yeah, he was definitely going crazy.

Damon felt like he was here for an eternity, or maybe he just got here? Who knows.

He raised his hand and looked at it, it was almost completely transparent.

He looked more closely, before it flickered back with color.

He sat (floated?) up suddenly with excitement/

“Wait..I think my body’s starting to WHOOOOAAA”

As Damon was looking in fascination at his reappearing hand, the rest of his body suddenly gained its color back as well. He didn’t have the time to appreciate this new found life, however, because he felt like his body (spirit?) was being torn apart and then rebuilt again.

“AHHHHHHH”

He felt his body twisting and turning like he just got sucked out into the vacuum of space, maybe he looked like spaghetti now?

He closed his eyes as he felt the pain continue down his body and he kept on screaming, and screaming, and screaming before he felt a kick in the shin and stopped.

“You know you can stop screaming now right?”

“Huh?”

Damon didn’t know how long he stood there screaming with his eyes closed like an idiot, but when he opened his eyes again he saw color instead of the darkness he had become so accustomed to. He looked up to see very, VERY weirdly dressed people. Did he go to an Victorian era or something?

The first one of the three “interesting” people was an old man dressed in a long, black trench coat. His shirt on the inside was scarlet red and he wore a pair of shades and a fedora to top the whole look off.

The woman in the middle of the group who told him to stop screaming was the exact opposite of the old man. She was a young lady that had flowing blonde hair and a maroon colored dress. Damon took note of the predatory red pupils that she had as eyes, it was extremely unsettling.

The last one was just a kid. He wore a small suit, fitting for his size, there wasn’t much to say about him other than the fact that he just looked..like a kid. That was it.

“If you’re done looking at us we should just get on with the whole crowning ceremony”

“Huh!?”

The old man already got a large book out from his bag and started to flip through the pages, muttering some type of demonic chant type thing under his breath.

“Wait, Wait, hold up, time out!”

Damon held his hands up in a T position, which caused the old man to stop chanting and the women to look at him pointedly.

“What do you want!? I’m a very busy person, you know!”

Damon looked at her incredulously

“ I just got my ass taken out of a void and plopped here and now you’re doing some kind of ritual? Is this human sacrificing!? What is going on!?”

The woman just sighed and rolled her eyes and the child by their feet giggled.

“You’re right, humans are stupid!”

The woman patted the boys head before smiling

“Yes, yes I know. But we have to use what we can get, Hathaway did say it would find the perfect specimen to take his place after all.”

She then turned back to Damon, her pupils dilated as she looked at him.

“You are the replacement of the 56’th demon lord, Lord Hathaway of the shadows. He unexpectedly died and all of his troops and property were destroyed by others. The only thing I managed to save was his will and transfer note.”

This really didn’t make any sense, what did a demon lord or whatever dying have to do with him?

“So what does this have to do with me?”

“Look down”

Damon looked down for the first time to find himself inside of a pentagram, which was surrounded by candles. He tried to walk out but he instantly face-planted into an invisible barrier,

“OW!”

The woman ignored his stupid attempt to get out.

“You were summoned from this pentagram, which was made to find a soul with the most suitable mindset to take his place. Trust me, it is your honor to take his place”

“Ah hell nah!”

The old man kept on chanting as the boy looked at Damon’s continuous struggling, elbowing and kicking at the invisible barrier to no avail.

“I don’t want to be no demon lord, get me the hell out of here!” (hehe- demon joke. We like to have fun around here)

The old man didn’t even pause in the middle of his outbreak, blue words had started to rise from the book and rearrange themselves in front of him.

“And now, with the Demon Lord Vampiress Elvira here to stand witness, the new 56th demon lord is crowned!”

“AHHHHHH!”

The invisible barrier around Damon closed in on him, making him feel like him getting pulled from the void all over again, just instead of getting pulled apart he was getting folded in on himself. This led to plenty more screaming.

His skull felt like it was cracking open, two symmetrical points on his head were protruding upwards, revealing slightly bent scarlet red horns.

At this moment, the barrier around him shattered like glass and fell to the floor, with Damon falling as well since he was leaning on it for support after it felt like someone cracked his skull with a jackhammer.

“Alright then, you have fun with your broken dungeon. This was just a favor for my old friend. Ciao human, or should I say, demon lord”

The three figures started to let out a black smog before three bats flew through the smoke and out of the window.

Damon couldn’t really do much since he was still on the grown from all the pain, so he said the only thing that came to mind.

“Man, this sucks”

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“Okay, we’ve got to calm down”

Damon finally felt the pain from his head go away as he rubbed his newly grown horns. Everything happened so fast, for some reason he suddenly got pulled from the darkness back into the light, but then experienced head splitting pain so bad that he just wanted to head back into the darkness and curl up in a ball.

He could finally step out of that pentagram without having a barrier around him. He moved his body around and stretched, getting used to the feeling of having an actual body again instead of an incorporeal body.

He looked to his left at the window that the “bats” had left out of. What he thought was previously just an open window was actually partially shattered.

“Holy crap, this place is literally in the dumps.”

The more he looked around the room, the more he realised how bad it was. The floorboards had cracks and holes in them, while dust had accumulated to an incredible extent in many parts of the room.

The room itself looked like a study of some sort, it had bookshelves to the left and right of a large desk that had a variety of quill pens. However, most of the books had been attacked by moth’s whilst the wood had been attacked by rats and mice, most of it was unusable.

“Wait, the old man dropped this”

Damon had surveyed the room before focusing on the large book on the ground right where the group of individuals had just stood. It was open, showing a letter that was stuck in the middle of the pages.

“The hell is this?”

Damon plucked the letter from the page and ripped the seal off before taking out the letter. The moment the page left the envelope, glowing blue words started to pop out of the page and circle around him.

“Not this again, do I look like a Dragonborn or something!? He’s up there with the Grey-Beards!”

He swatted at the glowing words, which did absolutely nothing. They finally stopped circling, which had made Damon extremely dizzy, and merged into him.

He stumbled a bit before getting his bearings, he noticed a word written using the glowing letters were in front of him.

MENU

“Menu? HOLY-”

The moment he said menu, a huge blue screen popped up right in front of him without warning.

MENU STATS SHOP TERRITORY TROOPS

"Christ!"

Damon was startled by the sudden screen in front of him, before he calmed down.

"Alright Damon, don't worry. All the time you spent reading isekai manga has led up to this point!"

Damon leaned forwards and apprehensively pressed the STATS

STATUS

Name: Damon Maxis Level: 1

Species: Demon (Former Human) Rank: S

Title(s): 56th Demon Lord Fatigue: 0

Health [50/50]

[/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////]

MP [20/20]

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Strength: 10 (+2) Vitality:10(+2)

Agility:10(+2) Sense:10(+2)

Intelligence:10(+1) Points available: 5

Effects Active:

Stress - Individual is extremely stressed. -10% intelligence

Demon Lord's Aura - The power of a demon lord courses through your veins, +20% to all base stats

Inventory

- T-Shirt -Backpack (5/50)

- Shorts -Hathaway's book of transfer (used)

- Sneakers

Damon scratched his head

"Well, I'm definitely a demon lord but what the hell do I do now?"

Damon was still trying to take all of it in, just like any sane human- err demon - being. However, no matter how much he tugged the horns would not come off at all. He was stuck like this.

Damon swiped at the screen showing all of his stats, making the entire screen disappear.

He could still feel his heart racing rapidly, this wasn't exactly a good situation but Damon would be lying if he wasn't excited for something like this. He wasn't ashamed of his high school weeb past in all honesty.

He shook his head, trying to put all the negative thoughts behind him.

"I need to focus on surviving, I don't even know what's going on right now other than the fact that I'm in a different world."

He glanced at the books lining the shelves. Even though some of them had been chewed through by god knows what some of them, especially the hard cover books, were still perfectly intact and readable.

Damon extended his arm out to reach for one of the books, this one had a maroon cover with golden title fonts. This one was on the top shelf, making him wade through the dust and reach for it but before he could get to it, someone...else grabbed it.

"AHHHH!"

The chalky white hand of a skeleton was clenched around the book as the hollow eyes of it looked at him blankly.

"When did you come in here!?"

The skeleton tilted it's head at the question, before pointing a bony hand towards the wooden door that led to the room which was very clearly wide open.

It held the book with two hands before holding it in front of him to present it to Damon to take, which Damon took with some confusion and uncertainty

"uhh...thanks?"

The skeleton bowed before attempting to leave the room again.

"WAIT!"

The skeleton paused before turning around and facing him once again.

"Alright, I know for a fact this works in the manga's so here goes! Analyze!"

[Analyze]

STATUS

Name: N/A Level: 5

Species: Skeleton (Summoned) Rank:D

Description

A normal raised skeleton that was brought out of the ground and back to life. They are generally weak and are used for the bulk of many necromancers armies in place of wisps and zombies because of their numbers.

Summoner: Hathaway

Owner: Hathaway Damon

Health [20/20]

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MP [0/0]

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Strength: 5 Vitality:3 Agility:6 Sense:6 Intelligence:2

Effects Active:

The Lord's Domain- As long as it was not killed by a magic attack and it was killed in the Demon Lord's territory, it will rise the next day to serve it's master once again

"Wait, I own you?"

Clack

"Well, I'll be damned."

If Damon was being truthful, it was a big relief that he owned a skeleton instead of a zombie. Two reasons, the first was that Damon didn't like zombies in general, but the second, was the terrible stench that would probably come from rotten flesh.

"So, what exactly do you do here?"

The skeleton put its hands to the side and did a mock movement of sweeping with a broom.

"Ohhh, cleaning is it?"

Clack

The skeleton obviously couldn't speak. The obvious reason being it lacked any...vocal cords so to speak. Wait, then how is it moving around without any muscles? That's not how biology... actually I don't think we should think too deeply into this.

"Anyways, thanks for the help. If you don't have anything else to do, can you stay here and keep me company? It's kind of depressing by myself."

It was sort of embarrassing and weird to ask a moving skeleton to accompany him but you take what you can get.

The skeleton nodded again before sitting on one of the bitten-out chairs, which would usually break if not for the skeleton's light weight since it lacked, y'know, flesh. Damon flipped the book that he was holding open to see its title.

THE ICE QUEENS PALACE

Damon furrowed his brows at this

"Is this a novel?"

He flipped it open to read the story, he really didn't have anything better to do. The skeleton watched him flip through the pages avidly, in all honesty this story was written exactly like a Japanese Light Novel, which meant it was perfect for Damon to pass the time with.

"-and the spear's of the ice queen finally vanquished the marauders, taking back their kingdom"

As Damon said the last words of the book, he may not have realised but snow flakes started to drift onto the chairs and tables , making the skeleton glance up before leaning over and tapping Damon on the shoulder.

Damon looked up from his book

"What is it?"

The skeleton pointed upwards, which Damon looked at to see the falling snowflakes just starting to cease.

"huh that's weird, does this book have some 5D magic that makes it super realistic?"

Acquired Spell [Frozen Spears lvl.1]

"Okay, this is WAY too realistic!"

Clack

The skeleton clacked its jaw in agreement, although clacking jaws could mean many things since that was the only sound it could make.

Damion looked outside to see the sun pouring in, which meant chow time. Except, he had no food at all.

"NOOOOOOOO!"

And that's chapter 1 written in a day. I'll be honest, I could have gotten this done much faster but I was still learning how to use the tables, I think I did them justice though (My webnovel audience excluded because webnovel doesn't like tables)

anyways, see you guys probably tomorrow.

W.O.V