Nether Feast - Chapter 3

Reaching my maximum level 99, my growth stopped, but the demons I faced didn’t have the same limitation. Despite the continued evolution of my originally basic spells, I felt my end coming once again. greater and greater demons came in their place. In time, I concluded that they could sense my strength, and only those that would profit from killing me at my current level would bother to attack. Demons much stronger might come after me if I appeared before them but they didn’t seem interested otherwise. Only those around my same level couldn’t help but come.

Reaching my maxium level 99, my growth stopped, but the demons I faced didn’t have the same limitation. Despite the continued evolution of my originally basic spells, I felt my end coming once again.

A gorilla-shaped demon the size of a small house, had a bull’s head, and eagle’s beak, charged. It was a greater demon that had surpassed level 99.

I bound away dozens of meters into the air while turning to face the monster as it leaped after me.

My advanced fire spell, Crimson Star, was an inferno of flame highly compressed to the size of a grape. It shot toward the demon’s throat and plunged into its neck. Crimson Star exploded, covering my surroundings in demon parts and blood. I was quickly drenched in the gore.

My laugh was primal and abrasive. I’d been lucky with the placement of my spell, but it seemed my time had finally come.

Up until that point, I’d mostly been able to avoid ingesting anything from greater demons, but I had too many wounds. Its blood seeped into my body. The blood of lesser demons I could handle, but the blood of greater ones was far more corrosive. I fought the spasms and made my way to the giant husk of the greater demon. I began to drain it while casting a Greater Heal spell on myself.

Mana Leech had become Life and Energy Syphon which allowed me to draw health and mana from the creature. At its current rank, it healed me almost as well as greater heal did. The sheer size and amount of life in the greater demon made surviving a real possibility—but for how long?

My head almost slammed into the greater demon’s corpse as I fought off my body’s spasms while trying to remain on my feet. This wasn’t the first time I fought with this internal corrosion, and I was determined for it not to be the last.

I felt the corrosion become a boiling power that I could suddenly absorbed.

Greater Blood Tempering (Demon)

You have unlocked an exceedingly rare trait. This is a trait with a low chance of being unlocked when a person has been infected with greater demon blood. Most often, the intake is fatal, and in the case that a person survives, it usually leaves the body crippled. Due to constant healing, and advancement in level, you have fought off the greater demon blood’s destructive properties and even integrated it into your body. This grants you an increase in strength, agility, and a toughening of one’s flesh.

+50 Strength

+50 Agility

+50 Constitution

Armored Skin

Reinforced Skeleton

Demonic Digestive System

Bonus: You are now able to recover faster by eating Netherspawn.

But that was only the beginning.

Greater Life and Energy Syphon has evolved into Drain Essence. Draining a creature now allows you to recover Health, Mana, and Stamina.

If all of that wasn’t enough, I’d also leveled up past what was considered the maximum level to the first realm all thanks to the greater demon’s blood. However, it was the realization that I’d no longer have to munch on demon flesh that I felt the first true jolt happiness I’d had in an unknowable period of time.

Leveling past the naturally max level of 99 was a possibility even outside the Netherplane. It required advanced cultivation techniques that I’d never learned due to my lower level before coming here. Somehow surviving the effects of demon blood had allowed me to undergo a similar transformation.

I stood shirtless which was probably impossible to tell because I was covered in so much blood, but a new power radiated out of me as my body produced more mana than it could hold. I took a quick look at my stats before facing the closest incoming Netherspawn. I was tracking it with my improved perceptions.

Status

Name: Ailen Reaver

Trait: Greater Blood Tempering (Demon)

Level: 101 (First Realm)

Health: 15,351

Mana: 14,947

Stamina: 945,562

Strength: 124

Agility: 130

Constitution: 151

Intelligence: 147

Wisdom: 129

I still had no idea how long I’d been here. It had been months, at least. My battle was still unceasing. Even when I sought out a place to rest, lesser demons were like cockroaches. I’d survived by devouring the disgusting leftover parts of the monsters that hounded me.

If I could only say I was nearing the end of my nightmare but there was no end in sight. I’d ran across a few portal crystals, but none of them responded to anything I did. I’d even tried to force demons to use them on my behalf. All my efforts had failed. I doubted I’d ever see Arusha or my parents again. As time passed, my hopes of finding a way home faded.

I thought of my fiancé often. I hoped she’d move on and recover from having our party wiped out. We’d always shared the same dream of becoming archmages. She’d also wanted lots of kids. Imaging her living the life she always wanted was one of my few joyful pastimes—even if it would be without me.

Years passed. Fighting and bloodshed become so common that unless a truly challenging opponent showed up, I found myself growing bored. There were times I even got to sit down, but that was the limit to my inactivity. I’d learned to rest my mind even while fighting. My body didn’t need it as long as I kept draining my kills to restore myself.

One day I found myself facing off with a soldier rank demon. I should’ve been frightened. Death drew near, but I’d been in this same scenario so many times that if death dared, I’d welcome it. However, this demon would have to earn its meal.

As I drove a spear-like spike I’d harvested from the arm of a greater demon into the monster’s eye socket, I didn’t wait until I was wounded to drink of its corrupted blood. I held the creature up by the neck and let the black ichor pool in the back of my throat before swallowing.

I was already draining it of mana, life, and stamina as I began to breakthrough to the second realm and past the level 199 limit.

The frequency of my battles lessened at my next realm, but each fight grew more challenging. The lesser and greater demons would still appear before me at times, but they’d run off—or at least try. With my physical stats, I simply outran them, grabbed them by the neck, and broke them.

My stamina had reached such a level that the need to sleep no longer existed for me. When the fighting ceased, I tried to find a way to relax, but before the end of the first hour, I found myself moving, looking for prey of my own.

I knew moving was unwise. Up until that point, I hadn’t seen anything much stronger than my current level, but the higher I got up in level, the more danger I’d present to truly powerful demons. Eventually they’d come looking. My only hope was to keep going. To grow in power quickly enough that not even a demon lord themself would be my match.

Whether it was destined to be, or simply lucky to be thrown into this part of the Netherplane, I couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t until my next advancement to Elite Blood Tempering that I faced off with the first demon who bothered to speak with me. It was then that I learned I was considered an interesting spectacle to the truly powerful demons. I was but a challenge for their soldiers to deal with. I was on the outskirts of the demonic empire, so no one powerful enough had bothered coming to wipe me out. But my luck was about to change.

It was then, after defeating the demon elite and sparing the creature’s life, that I turned away from their lands. Traveling in the opposite direction, I headed into the Netherwilds. Monsters and feral demons dwelt there in a much more primitive state. The danger of running into beasts that were beyond my level was great, but if I would’ve stayed then my death was guaranteed.

In was there in the Netherwilds that I first tasted the flesh of dragon, drake, and wyrm. They gave me minor stat bonuses, but because of how advanced my demon blood was, they were only temporary. Before I dared returned to the demonic realm to undergo my next advancement, I grilled the liver of an adolescent dragon and ate my full to take advantage of the temporary boost in strength and regeneration.

It wasn’t long before a demon champion arrived to face me. He was a devil of a man at twice my height, red armored skin, and with a tail with spikes more vicious than any morningstar. His level was more than twenty above of my own, but with the minor dragon bonuses, our stats were nearly even. Not that I’d ever care to play fair.

The champion breathed fire as hot as any dragon, but my flesh had decent resistance and I could constantly heal myself.

As the demon champion scaled a boulder to reach me, I waited for him to peek his ugly mug over the top. It was then that my hidden fire spell, Brilliance of a Dying Star, erupted. The mountain of rock beneath him became tons of shrapnel. I dived into a crevasse and left the demon to handle the wrath of my magic by himself.

When I found him, he was broken and bloody. For the first time in countless years, I drank demon blood more advanced than my own and felt its corrosion again. My body was already undergoing the advancement process. My evolution was painful but came easier this time. It was only after I had reached Champion Blood Tempering (Demon), that I walked over to my defeated opponents tail and removed an axe from my inventory that I’d taken from the death grip of an orc chieftain. Even with my newly increased stats, it took me a minute to cleave the whip like tail from the demon’s body. The job left the axe a ruined hunk of metal.

Taking my prize, I retreated to the Nether Wilds to continue my growth. Only then did the demon’s hunt for me truly begin.