Chapter 3: First Blood

Before I was even transported to the next world, I started to contain the demonic power. I didn’t want to be dropped in the middle of a city and kill people by accident. I think I was already getting used to the shifting when I was moved between worlds. I no longer felt like getting sick even as the world twisted around me.

With my ax in hand, I surveyed the new area around me. It looked like a fairly boring forest, not too dense, and some sunlight still hit the ground in places. There were well trodden areas through grass and mud, but there wasn’t a single human footprint.

These were just game trails, I could follow them to water more than likely, and I could find humans around water most of the time. It was a simple plan, last time I tried it I stepped in a trap. This time I was going to be a lot more cautious about traps, as a human, I should be able to spot them better than an animal.

I walked through the forest, breaking twigs, stepping on old decaying leaves that left a wet feeling behind. I was wearing my trusty new army boots… actually, I was still wearing the whole uniform and the badge. I decided to just throw the Team Head badge into the trees, I had no need for it.

There was absolutely nothing but forest so far. I had been wandering for maybe around an hour. I know that wasn’t too long in the grand scheme of things, but if I was following a game trail, I would have certainly found something by now.

It took another two hours and the forest opened up into wide meadow. My ax was now sitting peacefully in the sling on my back. I had yet to encounter anything, there wasn’t even a bug or anything to annoy me. I wasn’t letting my guard down, but I sure wasn’t going to carry that heavy ax with only a single hand all day.

Night was starting to fall on my first day in this world, and I felt like I had absolutely nothing to show for it. I picked a random tree and climbed up in it to sleep for the night. Trees are better than sleeping in sand any day of the week, and I will not take any different opinions on it.

When I woke up to the sound of birds, I was not expecting them to be sitting on the branch beside me. It was like they had no fear of me, shouldn’t birds fear larger creatures, and in particular humans? Maybe I was still really far from a city, or maybe I was near a small village with relatively few people, or maybe they even trained birds.

This was the problem with no information whatsoever. I had nothing to work with when it came to exploring. As soon as I found people, the pieces just fell into place naturally from there, but until then, I was just aimlessly wandering while doing my best to find people.

In this world, I would honestly be happy if I managed to find the other demon before it is too late for me to stop the corruption. I wasn’t looking forward to what happens after I meet the demon; odds are that I will get my ass handed to me on a silver platter. I needed to spend time in a world with strong people to train me, Titan is unreliable.

Titan seems content just sending me around wherever he wants without regard for anything. He taught me what I absolutely needed, but beyond that, I was on my own. Well, I don’t ask all that many questions to be fair. One day I’ll write the shit down I want to ask so I can get a full picture here.

There wasn’t much to think about or look at while I walked randomly along this game trail. I had yet to see anything other than birds. What could possibly even make a game trail like this? Surely, it was animals, but why had I yet to see any?

There was also a pitiful amount of plant variation. It was a single type of tree, a single type of grass and maybe one or two types of flowers back in the meadow. It made me wonder what stage of evolution this planet was going through.

The trees and grass and such didn’t look primitive. The trees looked like modern oak trees, and the grass was long and green, brown when it got too long and dried up. There wasn’t anything, and by the middle of the second day, when the trail ended, I was at a loss.

I would need to find some kind of water, and the grass was looking mighty edible. I was hungry, sue me. Very, very faintly in the distance, I was able to hear running water. Whether it was a stream or full river, I didn’t know, nor did I care. I wanted to quench my thirst.

I finally arrived at the source of the noise. It was a massive waterfall. I had to walk for two hours to actually find it. I was unfortunately at the top, and the water came out of the rockface below me, meaning I was still far from my goal of getting water.

I wasn’t able to see any reasonable way down the cliff. I was going to have to walk along the cliff until I spotted a way down that didn’t involve jumping into water of an unknown depth. I walked, and just kept walking, wondering if I was falling for the sunken cost fallacy as the cliff seemed to get taller and taller.

Thankfully, it seemed to flatten out after another half hour of walking. I was tired and thirsty, not hungry, there was some edible looking grass while I was walking. It tasted like… well, grass. It was a powerful flavor, and I was contemplating trying to catch one of the birds that kept appearing every now and then.

I would have to start a fire but doing so in the middle of a random forest while still not knowing the state of this world was a poor idea, even for me. It might ruin my chances at making peace with whatever civilization was around.

Once I finally made it down the cliff, I started walking back towards the waterfall. It was exciting to finally find something, anything while I was exploring. I was starting to wonder if there were any people here at all. Was I already inside a corruption zone?

Feeling around a little bit didn’t give me that odd feeling that only comes from corruption, so I figured it was safe enough, so why haven’t I found anything yet? I might be getting a little screwed over here. There might not be any civilization here on this planet, and I was now going to work under that assumption.

Fire and bird were on the table again. I think if I sleep in a tree and wake up beside a bird, I will catch it. I would gladly eat something that wasn’t grass. Sure, it felt like it filled me up, but I’m sure my body could only take it for so long.

After drinking water, I decided I was going to take an early night. Rest up so I could do my best to find the demon that was supposedly here. In theory, the other demon shouldn’t be too far away from me. There’s no way that Titan would start me off in the worst possible scenario.

…

I am abruptly awoken by the feeling of a demon. It was nearby alright, I looked down from the tree I was in and saw the glint of something walking by in the darkness. This world appeared to have a moon as well, and the light from it was enough for me to see in, even through the canopy of leaves. Though, the moon was much larger than the one Earth had.

The other demon had no idea I was here and was probably after the same water I was. It was a perfect scenario. I just had to wait until they were focused on something else, then I would go in for the kill. They’ll never know what hit them if I cut off their head.

Once they are closer to the waterfall, I carefully climb down the tree, making absolutely no sound. Rather, nothing that could be heard over the powerful sounds of the massive waterfall that was nearby. The other demon was still walking towards the water.

I minimized the amount of time I spent visible to the other demon. I was kind of hoping this demon would be monologuing as well, just to make my job all that much easier. Unfortunately, it seemed like they were smart enough to at least keep their thoughts to themselves.

Once the demon bent over to fill what I can only assume was a water bottle, I closed in with my ax. The Demon’s long golden hair obscured my view of their neck, but I wasn’t going to hesitate any longer. I swung down as hard as I could towards their neck.

The Demon quickly shifts their posture and uses a metal gauntlet to block my ax from the handle, they avoided the blade. We had a bit of a staring match as the Demon quickly backs off and makes distance. I didn’t give them time and approached again.

I swung low at their legs, hoping to land a cheap hit in the cover of darkness, but once their eyes started to glow, I knew I might be in a bit of trouble. My attack is easily blocked, and the Demon goes in for an attack of their own. I pull my ax back and manage to block it, only to get sucker punched by their now free hand. God, I wish I had my second arm still.

As I back off to give myself time to catch my breath, the Demon uses the same tactic and doesn’t let me rest. The go for a punch to my head which I easily duck under only for the demon to continue their momentum into a low kick at my vulnerable and bent legs.

I brink my ax down, braced against my leg to receive their kick, only for them to be wearing a metal shin guard that my weapon doesn’t pierce, only slightly dent. As the spark from the collision fly, I’m hit by a punch to the side of my head while I wasn’t paying attention.

As my vision spins, I’m reminded that Demons are not easy targets. I should have prepared a lot more than I did, set traps, a proper ambush, instead I went in like an idiot. Pushing on, I block a few more attacks while my vision clears.

“Who are you and why are you here?” The Demon asks in a deep voice while breathing deep. They didn’t seem tired, but they were working hard.

“Would you believe me if I said I just became a demon and have no idea what I’m doing?” I tried to use this chance to gather myself. We were just a few steps from each other, combat could start again at any moment if either of us decided to do so.

“Not a chance. You’re clearly a Demon, just like me. Just give this world to me and you can live on yet.” The Demon tries to bargain with me. It made me wonder, did I have more of a chance than I thought I did ow winning this fight?

“Figured. I have a job to do here, you can keep the world, just leave me to my business and we’ll stop fighting.” I countered, it was a bluff, and my job actively involved stopping this Demon from doing anything like corruption.

Without saying anything else, the Demon lunges for me while winding up a punch with his left hand. I move to block it, only to notice too late that his right hand was going to be the one hitting me, and it hits me in my stomach. Sure, there was leather armor there, but how much is that really going to do to stop a metal gauntlet.

Not much it would seem as I spilled the contents of my stomach and was forced to exhale. It hurt more than I was expecting, I was still upright, but just barely. It seemed we were done with words, and even though I didn’t like it, I was going to have to retreat somehow, I couldn’t win this fight like this.

I had kept my demonic aura hidden this whole fight, and unless this guy had some way to track me, legging it was my best bet. I went for what looked like a heavy attack, and as the Demon went to block it, I shifted myself into an all out run behind the Demon.

I didn’t look back, but I heard the Demon swear loudly as I kept running. Once I made it to a little drop in the terrain, I dropped to the ground. While I was running, I did everything I could to remain silent, so he shouldn’t be too hot on my tail, and will have no idea where I went.

I prayed to anything that would listen that this Demon wasn’t good at tracking people in the dark, or maybe not so dark with those glowing eyes. I held my breath as I heard the demon running around nearby. I had hidden myself under dead leaves and sticks while tucked in a small alcove.

My spot was as good as it was going to get, and as the Demon dropped down the small ledge, my anxiety peaked. If anything seemed off, I was going to get everything beaten out of me by this Demon. They clearly were more skilled in combat, I had to prepare several traps before I would do anything to win against this skilled fighter.

The Demon kept walking in the direction he thought I had gone. I wasn’t about to start moving just yet. I had run a decent distance from the waterfall, so making noise was going to get me killed. I was breathing as little as possible for as long as I could.

Once the sun had started to rise, I figured I was safe. I gout out of my leafy prison and hopped back up the ledge to survey the area. It looked like nothing was out of place, which meant I was good to head back to that waterfall.

I drank as much water as my body could hold. I could follow the river, but that was going to be dangerous with a new enemy on my trail. They would probably be looking around the same areas. They were probably also going to start the corruption process soon if they hadn’t already.

This was going to be rough, but I think I might be able to save this world. All I have to do is figure out how to reverse the corruption. I wouldn’t even be able to test anything until I found the corruption, and even then, I had to hope that the corruption didn’t immediately kill me.

Well, there wasn’t much I had left to do other than follow the path of that Demon and sit in the corruption they make until I can figure out how to revert it. I would also have to think about some ways I was going to fight that Demon in the future. I would lose every time in direct combat.

I dusted myself off, making sure I got most of the leaves out of places that leaves were never meant to be, and started following the trail of trampled grass. The Demon was not careful about leaving a trail behind. I guess at this point, they were still looking for me, but they’ve probably already started corrupting this world since I got away from them.

I walked around, following their clearly marked trail. They stomped down grass carelessly, making it extremely easy to follow their path. I was walking slowly and quietly, prepared for an ambush at any time. I knew they couldn’t be silent with the armor they were wearing, but I was observing my surroundings as often as I could.

I was acting a little paranoid, but I figure better safe than sorry. A little paranoia keeps the brain healthy, or so I just made up, but it sounds about right for me these days. Once I encountered and open meadow, I decided to stop directly following the trail.

I didn’t want to get caught with my pants down because I was following a trail in an open meadow. I decided to stay in the shade of the treeline and look for a high spot to see where I was aiming for next. I was tempted to just climb a tree, but that felt stupid considering the circumstances.

Once I found a high spot, I noticed that the meadow in the distance was changing, and while I couldn’t feel anything yet, I knew that it was exactly what I was looking for. It was corruption, and it was spreading slowly, which meant it must have just been recently corrupted.

This was the break that I needed, I just had to make sure that the other Demon wasn’t still around to stop me from reverting the corruption. Never mind that I still had no idea how to revert it, but that wasn’t an issue for now. I had plenty of time to work at a solution for it.

I surveyed the meadow for close to ten minutes before I felt confident enough to make my way over to the area that seemed to be corrupted. The corruption of this word was odd, it looked like there was nothing around, only dry rocks on the ground, almost like gravel.

Walking into it, the air was insanely dry, and the feeling of wrongness that came with being in a corruption zone washed over me. It was an odd feeling, and the more I experienced it, the more pronounced the feeling of something being twisted flowed over me.

Let’s mess around a little here. I sat on the ground with my legs to my side, screw sitting cross legged and meditating, I was going to sit how it was comfortable for me. I closed my eyes and focused on the feeling of wrongness, and the twisted nature of it.

I tried to visualize it in my mind but struggled to see anything more than a tangled mess that made no sense. It was if someone had only cooked a single long spaghetti noodle and now expected you to eat it. It was just a mess, and no one was happy at the end of it.

I tried to poke at it after expanding my demonic power, only for it to tangle even further. It was a losing battle from every side. No matter what I tried, it only seemed to make it worse, and doing nothing to it just meant that it would spread even further.

Frustrated, I tried to cut a section of the most tangle area out. The line of whatever this was reformed in a mostly untangle line. I decided to just start ‘cutting’ random sections of the lines out of the mess, and it seemed to be calming down, almost flattening out.

However, it seemed this was only a temporary fix as the tangle mess just spread right back to the areas that looked like they healed. It was kind of frustrating, but I just started, I couldn’t expect the results to be perfect with just a single attempt.

I opened my eyes to take a breather. The environment was still corrupted with no visual change. It was also still spreading at the same rate. I had probably three weeks to figure this out before the point of no return. Most likely less if the Demon kept adding more points for it to spread from.

I decided to look around while feeling through the corrupted area to see if maybe there was a central knot or something causing all this tangled mess. After wandering through the entire corruption zone more than a few times, I figured there wasn’t anything like a ‘core’, I was just working with what was in front of me.

Which sucked, because I had no idea what I was actually looking at. Sure, when I visualized it, it looked like a bunch of lines running through the air, but in reality, it was more complex than that. It was a feeling of something being tangled, the lines ran in every which way, so flattening them out wasn’t going to fix everything.

It was an honest mess, with no solution in sight. I was thinking that maybe I just needed to keep trying things randomly, but I got the feeling that it would end poorly if I messed something up. I could try combing sections. Like messy hair, a comb would fix things up and straighten them out.

Using the same feeling I used to cut sections out, I tried to comb the tangled sections. It failed almost immediately, the energy from the corruption made the ‘comb’ dissipate as soon as it got tangle up in the knots. I thought for sure that was going to do something, but it was worse than my first attempt somehow.

I sighed as I decided to lay down on the gravel, I felt that I was safe considering that if nothing attacked me while I was staying in the open for so long, I wasn’t going to be attacked. The gravel wasn’t extremely comfortable, but my leather armor certainly lessened a lot of the potential discomfort I was going to get. Wearing it under the army uniform was a great idea.

I closed my eyes to help focus, not that there was much to get distracted by to begin with in this corrupted area. It was just gravel, at least on the surface layer, but never mind that, I was already getting side tracked from my goal of reverting this corruption.

I focused on the feeling of the corruption and attempted to visualize a more accurate picture of what was going on. The lines started to form in my mind, overlapping and twisting. It was hard to follow and which line, as they continued on into infinity. It was a beautiful sight in my mind.

The feeling of the corruption left the feeling of the color purple on my mind, dyeing the surroundings in a deep purple color. It was beautiful to look at, but I wondered why purple, was this the natural color, and what steps I would even need to take to fix it.

Would be so wonderful if I could just spread out the feeling of not being purple, and not being corrupted. If that worked, I’d laugh… Then the scenery started to ‘untwist’, an odd thing to imagine, as un-twisting was still twisting, but it looked like it was moving backwards through time itself.

I started laughing as I felt grass beginning to appear underneath me. It was hilarious, I was just messing around with something, and it partially worked. The area recovered was small, but the area I attempted to influence was tiny.

How this managed to work for me was insane. I would have to focus more on it to see how it was actually working, and if it even could influence a larger area at all. I stood up and got to work without hesitating, I was in for a lot of work, but I finally made progress.

The feeling of it not being purple wasn’t just a wishful thought, it manifested into something that felt like it was cleansing. The feeling of it not being corrupted probably compounded and made it not immediately revert back to the purple hue. The lines of energy themselves were an almost blue color, so the purple probably meant corrupted.

What even were these lines of energy, they’re not demonic power. At least not any more now that I stripped away the demonic part of it. I stared at the lines longer each time I saw them, there was a natural beauty to them, and I was stuck staring at them for longer than I would like to admit before I managed to pull myself away.

It was something a bit beyond my understanding. All I knew is that I was getting tired the more corruption I cleared, and that the area cleaned scaled exponentially with the area I directly influence using the demonic power. It was a good system where I would remove the corruption in a small area, then move on.

The areas cleared weren’t round per say, but they were close enough. More like a square with rounded edges. One thing to note was that the corruption never once spread back into the areas I cleared. It kept spreading outwards, but the healed areas were completely safe.

Now, all I had to do was clear up this large section and follow the trail of corruption. I was hoping that corrupting this world was more tiring than cleaning it, but I highly doubted it. After around two hours of removing corruption at a steady pace, I felt like a dried-up husk.

The demonic power that I normally felt inside myself was now sluggish and hard to do anything with. I felt like I could push the reserves to the bottom, but I knew that would be a bad idea, especially since I wasn’t alone on this world and could only rely on myself.

…

I panicked when I woke up, I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but I had just randomly collapsed to the ground. I guess it wasn’t necessarily random to be fair, I knew it had something to do with the demonic power. How it actually worked was still a mystery to me.

I wasn’t spending it per say, but it moved slower after a while of using it, and I didn’t magically get more after expending myself like some random protagonist of a story. How I was going to expand the reservoir was going to be something I needed to look in to.

I felt pretty good after my impromptu nap, it was probably the best I had slept in a few months. I felt extremely refreshed, like I had slept the perfect amount of time and all of it was restful sleep, something I haven’t had in years, before I even went to those floors.

I had no idea how much time passed, but the sun was starting to set. I figured that working through the night wouldn’t be the end of the world. I was thirsty, and hungry, but filling up on a little bit of freshly grown grass helped sate my hunger.

What was worrying was my thirst. I had to keep clearing this corruption in order to keep up with it, but I also needed to find water. Fuck it, I’m a Demon, I should be fine for a day or two without water. Thirst is a human concept.

I walked while clearing the corruption. It was getting easier and easier to clear it the more I cleared, which was really nice. I also noticed that I didn’t have to clear it completely, if I left a small edge, maybe around thirty meters uncleared on each side, it would clear itself after I cleared the center. This was only if it wasn’t adjacent to a larger patch of corruption.

Honestly, it felt like pressure washing an old deck, there was this immense feeling of satisfaction when I looked around and saw that everything was returning to normal. Seeing the planks coming clean after becoming filthy was nice, a good feeling.

That’s when I noticed that the ‘pool’ of demonic power within me had grown. It was slight, extremely slight. If I hadn’t been so obsessed with monitoring it during the second world to make sure I never let it leak, I would have never noticed this increase. Did clearing all this corruption somehow increase my demonic power?

It didn’t make sense, I was going to have to ask Titan, he would have most likely been monitoring me throughout all this. He would surely have some sort of explanation for me once I return, however, I wasn’t hopeful, as he had no idea how to reverse the corruption, and it was so simple.

There was only one major issue, I had to fight the Demon that was in this world with me. I wasn’t dumb, so I knew that I was at a complete disadvantage, and now that Demon was going to be on high alert since it knew I was around here somewhere.

I really made a stupid decision, thinking I could win against a Demon with a massive handicap, and not preparing at all beforehand. I think if I was back on the floors, I would have thought of something better than whatever I did there. I would have prepared a trap and then led them into it while I was running away.

Now, I would struggle to find the other demon again… maybe I didn’t have to find them. What if I could lure them to me? That way, I could prepare as many traps ahead of time as I wanted, pitfalls and anything I wanted. Making anything substantial enough to kill that Demon who was wearing plate armor in all the important places will be hard.

What if I just crush him with a tree or five? Set up some larger trees in a precarious way that I could set them to all fall in a set location and try to crush the other Demon. It just might be crazy enough to work, how would I lure the other demon in? I could let my demonic power run as wild as it wanted inside me, that might do something for getting me found.

I walked around, clearing corruption faster and faster until I found that it was spreading less and less. I was probably catching up to the Demon. As soon as I restored a section of forest, I enacted my plan, and used my ax to cut notches into trees that made them float precariously. The trees were probably a good meter thick, so nice and heavy.

There were a few notches I prepared that were easily visible, but they were meant to distract more than be useful, but an extra tree falling will be useful. I went up into the trees and tied branches together, hoping that doing this paired with the notches will cause a chain reaction.

From what I knew, I was sitting on a timebomb myself. After testing on a far away tree how much it took to actually knock one of these things over, I made the initial drop tree one or two hits away from falling and then let my demonic power run wild.

An almost euphoric feeling runs through me as I let the power loose, but I focused my mind. This plan should work, and even if it didn’t, I had an escape rout ready. Everything together took three hours to prepare, and I hope I didn’t spend all that time for nothing. The sun was already starting to rise again, and thankfully I still felt mostly rested.

This Demon was hopefully the cocky, arrogant and impulsive type that it seemed most demons were. Every part of this plan hinged on equally sketchy parts, but it was what I had to work with. After just ten minutes, I hear something running through the forest. That could only mean it was the other demon. I prepared myself and drew my weapon from its sling.

“You fucking coward! I finally found you!” The Demon screams at the top of their lungs as they approached me.

“I was following you the whole time.” I cockily say to the Demon. I needed all of their focus to be on me and not the environment.

“Bastard, I went easy on you last time, this will be your grave.” The Demon charged me; this was exactly what I wanted. I could probably take three hits before needing to escape, and one of those was going to be needed because of leaving myself wide open on purpose. It’s like I enjoy pain or something.

As I went to block their first attack, I noticed that the Demon had bloodshot eyes and looked as if they hadn’t slept in weeks. The metal gauntlet that came flying at my face was fast, but nowhere near as coordinated. I easily blocked the attack, the power behind it was no joke.

I staggered backwards despite deflecting the brunt of the attack. The man hit with the strength of a truck. I was a bit worried and decided I would run after two attacks now, enraging him made him stronger, but easier to predict.

I would still need to take a single hit to achieve my goal, and I was hoping it wouldn’t cripple me further than I already was crippled. Well, now was a better time than ever to enact my plan. I took one extra step back while dodging and attack and swung my ax as hard as I could into the tree beside me.

The sound of the metal fist appeared to cover the groaning of the tree I had just cut. I could tell the tree was moving, but so was the rest of my vision as I took a hit to my stomach so hard, I think it might have rearranged things. I fell to my knees involuntarily as I gasped for the air that was forcibly removed from my lungs.

“You aren’t so cocky now.” The Demon monologued, and that sealed his fate.

He stepped backwards to dodge the first falling tree with a shout. He was about to climb over it when a tree dropped behind him to his right. He turned to check it wasn’t going to hit him, and that was his final mistake as a third tree drops from behind him, trapping him against the ground with a noise of wet meat hitting a hard surface.

Having seen a man get crushed, yet clearly not die was a brutal scene. However, the Demon was trapped, and not having a good time based on the heavy and pained grunting. Using some clever leverage, I move the lighter of the two trees on the side so I can get a look at my nemesis.

Pinned under the tree was a mess of flesh and metal. The tree was barely able to bend the metal, but in turn, the metal, whatever it was, dug into his flesh and broke bones as it pushed into limbs and organs. The falling tree did massive damage to the Demon, it would die on its own if I just left it.

“Aren’t so cocky now?” I said while crouching over the mess of a Demon.

I had won, it was a cheap victory. Though, only the loser ever complained about an unfair fight. It seemed that the tree had crushed the Demon’s lungs. All it could do was listen to me while it bled to death. The blood was seeping into the ground all around, bleeding more than I thought even a demon should.

I wonder if this was a stronger Demon, if I would maybe have an easier time from here on out. I laughed hard at this thought, earning me a glare from the bleeding Demon who thought I was laughing at him. I gave him a solid kick to the teeth as I stood up. Despite breaking most of its teeth, it still tried to bite me, earning it another kick.

I watched and waiting for the demon to die underneath the large tree. I needed to make sure that it had died. The real problem being that getting my ax in there at a good angle to kill it would be challenging, and I wanted this demon to suffer. I had a lot of pent-up frustration, and it was gratifying seeing this thing bleed out while squirming in pain.

It reminded me of what I had felt on those floors, trapped and in pain. Now that I was free, I could do whatever I wanted so long as it helped me achieve my goals. My goals being kill demons and stop corruption. Up to that, nothing more matters.

Eventually, it stopped moving, and the presence of a demon faded. I stuck around for two more hours after that and started poking it with sharpened sticks just to make sure it was absolutely dead. The corpse sufficiently dry of blood and mangled by the tree and my actions, I was now completely sure the demon was dead.

I did it.

I WON.

“I WON!” I exclaimed at the top of my lungs. It was an exciting moment, I had proven I was capable of something, after two consecutive failures, I managed to pull out a win.

I wasn’t done yet though. I had to go around and clear the corruption that still remained from when the demon was wandering around. I no longer had to worry about creatures or anything that would attack me. I could take it easy so long as I worked quickly.

I walked away from the gruesome scene with a large smile on my face. The euphoria of a hard-earned victory felt amazing, I could get used to it to be quite honest. I had forgotten what it was like to win, it had been so long since anything I had done could be counted as a win.

I walked around, completely elated. I was just so happy. I knew this was just the beginning, but I was super motivated now. This world was just victory after victory. I literally couldn’t stop winning, and I wasn’t going to let anything get me down now.

Once I had gone around for a few days, I had finally calmed down, and as I cleared the last bit of corruption, felt my vision shift. I guess it was already time to head back to Titan.

“Well I’ll be.” I’m greeted by a surprised Titan.

“Were you watching?” I asked with a smile.

“I looked away a bit while you mutilated the corpse of the Demon, but other than that, I saw everything. I was expecting you to fuck this one up if I were to be honest.”

“Didn’t you say I couldn’t mess this one up?”

“Well, there was a lot of hope in that statement. Not that I didn’t have faith in you, but you take some of the most stupid chances I have every seen. Did you really have to take a hit from that Demon in order to drop the tree on him, probably not.”

“I guess I see your point, but on short notice, it worked.” I shrugged my shoulders, it worked, so I’ll take it.

“As for clearing the corruption, I have to say, absolutely incredible method. I never thought you could do it like that, you didn’t even need to learn the True name of that world to do that.”

“What did I do? I don’t understand it, I just did something, and it worked.”

“You should try and learn what it is you are doing; it might be more useful to you than you think. Alright, for the nex- “

“I have a question first.” I interrupt Titan, and he looks surprised.

“Alright then, ask away.” Titan looks amused, happy even.

“When I was clearing the corruption, I passed out after I presumably ran out of energy which makes sense. Then as I cleared more and more corruption, I noticed that I had very, very slightly gained more of the demonic power to work with.”

“Oh, really, clearing the corruption increases that… hmm.” Titan started mumbling to himself.

“Titan, is it something important?”

“Kind of, but not yet. Either way, let me tell you a quick fact: There are five classifications of Demon, each more powerful than the last. Fledgeling Demon, Lesser Demon, Common Demon, Greater Demon, and finally, True Demon. You are a Fledgeling Demon, and the Demon you managed to mutilate was also the weakest Fledgeling Demon, and in fact, was just as weak as you in terms of power, but they had way more training than you did.”

“So, I need more training?” I ask with a bit of hesitance. I liked training, but too much of it was just going to be boring.

“Basically. You now have two ways to grow in power from here since you won’t be corrupting any worlds. You can clear corruption and take the miniscule gains, or when you kill Demons, you gain a portion of their power. Just being near them while they die is enough to do this, don’t eat a corpse.”

“I wasn’t going to eat a corpse. I may be lacking the basic human compassion for demons but eating something that looks human just feels wrong on so many levels.”

“Good, now the next world will be a challenge, but I believe you might be able to do this. Also, I won’t be calling you back right away this time, let me know when you want to come back, I’ll be listening.”

“Alright, I guess.”

With no warning, my vision shifted. It was time to continue this journey. A small smile crept onto my face as I thought of how it was only uphill from here.