Imp to Demon King: A Journey of Conquest

Adam's long coat fluttered, the crackling fire's soft glow he had been stirring filtering through the worn holes riddling the rag. Yes, a rag invaded by thick patches of dark, dried blood, a rag that seemed to have endured the worst the world had to offer and even more. Yet, its owner still sat, his only eye sunken and so dark that the flames didn't reflect in it.

Even the acidic scent of the sizzling meat didn't draw his attention. After all, everything was the same in the abyss: dark and disgusting, nightmares impossible to wake up from.

However, two things helped him keep hope... Well, one of them hadn't answered his expectations yet. But maybe today would be different?

He raised his head with a sigh, the fire catching on his ashen-gray skin—the indelible mark this unforgiving place left on him. The dark scales that had once proudly protected his muscles like armor had receded, the sparse remaining ones seemingly melted and unnaturally smooth, as if skin and keratin had combined on his right neck and arm.

Fiery crevices, a reflection of his fractured fate, ran along their surfaces as he raised his palm and clenched his fist.

"Today," he muttered, a sliver of light returning to his eyes as a sharp ding shattered the silence, and a notification appeared in a shower of scarlet flames before his eyes.

[Talent's daily use available. Use: Yes/No]

"Yes."

He watched the familiar red wheel form before his eyes. It was bigger than ever, with each prize looking like an artefact anyone would kill to possess. But the sparkling armors intricately engraved with pulsing enchantment didn't interest him, nor did the glinting falchions, katanas, magic staves, or bows.

Well, he could use a bow. His last shattered a while ago, but his eyes darted past them and the many empty slots to land on what he dreamed of every day: a small talisman.

Inconspicuous amidst the other items, he recognised it. How could he not when it was the same one he had used on his first day to escape the demon realm—the same one he could use to escape this eternal nightmare?

He closed his eye, listening to the slowing rattle with a heavy exhale until it stopped. When he reopened it, he lowered his face, his short, vine-like dark hair cascading down his curved horns and his shoulders slumping.

"Tomorrow..."

His lips quivered as the abyss' oppressive silence retook its rights, and he forced himself to eat the rancid meat.

Looking back at when he took his first steps in this place, he was full of hope. But the first thing that made him despair was the food. Meat, again and again, every day. Honestly, he believed that eating this was a punishment much worse than the lightless sky, the pressure that had shackled his every move, or the droves of creatures.

Thinking about them, these relentless hunters had given him a few hours of peace. Was it because of this withered ruin?

He didn't know, but this was the first trace of civilisation he had found after all this time, and if that was the case, he bit his lip in regret. He should have delayed his fifth evolution until he found it instead of... hiding inside the guts of a grotesque carcass, surrounded by rotting intestines and praying not to be found for two months.

But it didn't matter anymore, nor did the uncountable wounds he suffered from the endless battles or the trail of stiff corpses he left behind. Instead, he rose to his feet and stepped underneath the cracked archway of this antique building. Stay connected via empire

Empty streets laden with dust and rubble greeted his eyes as he saw a scarlet flame flicker before a large temple. He would have thought someone lived here in the past—not anymore. Nothing could survive in the abyss for long, not even him...

He shook his head and gritted his teeth as he summoned his chaos bringer and stomped the ground.

"I'll survive even if I must climb over a billion of these abomination corpses."

A boiling surge of adrenaline brightened his cracked scales. Violence and defiance swirled beneath his eye's dark purple glow as dust particles glowed around him with each step he took between the crumbling walls.

The noise of his bare feet colliding with a flight of stairs echoed a moment later before his gaze fell on the temple's crumbled columns. But the building didn't interest him. Instead, he scanned the sticky dark liquid coating the old metallic brazier and the nearly extinguished ember sizzling inside.

"What is this?" he whispered, shocked that something could burn for long amidst the abyssal winds battering this dark land.

WHOOSH

As his question lingered, a sudden burst of flames rose to brighten his somber face... and what hid behind the brazier.

He had seen his fair share of horrible creatures, but this? An icy shiver ran down his spine as he watched the creature's long, slender arms open. Its fingers, each as long as him and as crooked as an ancestral tree, moved in a beckoning gesture before its torso.

The visible sides looked like bony armor, while its sunken stomach gave him the chills. Beneath, tendrils of flesh cascaded into a gray robe and spread similarly behind its back into four wings encrusted with two giant red eyes.

By now, he didn't want to raise his head to gaze at its face. But he had to—to survive, to kill it, to escape this place. After all, its horror might hold the key.

His breath hitched in his throat when he did.

Tentacle-like hair ran down its gigantic neck. Two empty eye sockets locked on him, dark tears trailing down the hollow cheeks. And above its head... Just what was that unholy, dark aureole?

But if horror gripped his heart earlier, he trembled in pure dread when the creature's lips curled and parted to let out guttural words.

"How did you escape the corruption, little demon?" It gestured again. "Come closer. I haven't had company for an eternity."

His fingers trembled around his blade as his eye narrowed.

"Sure."

He saw the creature's smile broaden into something hideous, but it was fine. The colossal shadow of its hand closing on his body was, too.

"Good, good!" The creature exclaimed, its fingers beginning to wrap around his body. "Obedience deserves reward, does it not? Perhaps ten thousand years in my care. I'll only devour a sliver of you each day—just enough to taste your despair. Am I not merciful?"

That was fine, too, because...

"I'LL RIP YOU TO SHREDS, BASTARD!"

Before the fingers closed on him, his scarlet blade flashed, and his right foot stomped the ground.

SPLASH

A shower of dark blood erupted as he cleaved through the steel-like bones and hacked off the first finger with a vengeance.

His foot already facing the second one, he leapt into a front flip, his blade spinning downward and dividing another like a candle before he landed on the ground a meter away.

Ready to clash again, he lunged, only to stumble and frown as the expected counterattack never came.

Instead, the creature retrieved its hand without a sound, licked the blood, and shuddered. Then, its guttural voice boomed with eagerness as it laughed.

"I see! Chaotic draconic features! They forced your body to regress to adapt to this place." Tentacles burst through its fingers, squirming and projecting dark liquid everywhere and the red eyes on its wings flashing with desire. "Will I regress too after devouring you?"

Adam exhaled a cloud of drifting smoke. Time wasn't for dialogue or pondering, yet a detail caught his attention. How did his body regressing help with adapting? Was there more to it than the rejuvenation of his demonic looks after his last evolution?

He shoved those confusing considerations in a corner of his mind and crouched low.

The ground exploded underneath as he rocketed toward the creature's long neck. His blade sliced through the air, its whistle challenging the creature's grating laughter. However, his instincts clawed at his skin and roared in his mind. "Dodge!"

Without hesitation, he thrust his flickering left palm forward and channelled his demonic essence.

BOOM

Flames erupted in a dark conflagration that shattered his momentum—just in time to see a finger shoot from below like a gray spire.

Undeterred and boiling with rage, he moved his palm back, raised his legs to his chest, and used another conflagration to propel himself forward.

BOOM

Battered by the icy wind, his blade left a radiant arc in its wake as he swung with all his strength.

However, his eyes widened when he saw the smirking creature's head snap to the side like a striking viper, its neck a blur of motion.

BANG

Sparks flew as it collided with his blade, and he ground his sharp teeth to resist the impact. But the creature was too big and heavy. It was powerful, too, probably of the seventh tier or ten levels higher than him. But he had already proven that those stats weren't everything, and he'll prove it again.