Demonic Devourer ch. 130

If I thought the hells were in a bad state, the anchored reality is a thousand times worse.

Even in the final moments of a hell’s destruction, the sheer scale of the devastation never even approached the size of this world.

Unlike the dying hells, there is actually something that stabilizes reality, but that doesn’t make it any better.

While Marie’s angel nuke was designed to invert the nature of the angels—to destabilize instead of restore and protect—the last angel's power follows the intent of the fae. It is a restorative force, so it brings balance, even if that comes in the form of reducing every particle into the empty vacuum.

Part of the world—including most of the surface—has already been cleansed, and that which is not is quickly going the way of the void. Where the angel's light has not yet scoured and stabilized, the framework breaks away, piece by piece. What few pieces are still firmly in place only do so thanks to our combined impossible nullspaces alongside the continuing efforts of Adrian and the fae.

We are not going to contribute to the angel's mission. My Devour—though with how intertwined we are now, it’s more realistic to call it our Devour—tears through air and land and flesh and blood, just as the void does. At Sapphire tier, this skill is powerful enough to rend the world apart.

And so rend it does.

Everywhere outside of our space is either covered by the angel’s attack that I want to use as fuel or in our way to it. The latter goes the way of the gods, ripped apart and torn until there is nothing left.

I return the atmosphere and the land that I can affect to a vacuum of its own, one unlike the one Angel 1 creates. We both annihilate, but if the last angel stills, I create chaos, sending this already tenuous reality spiraling further into the primordial dark.

It is the angel's scouring, scorching, Reconstruct that I need to consume and take possession of. If I don’t, this reality will collapse with us still in it, and Sapphire will have for all intents and purposes achieved her perfect victory.

I don’t know if the angel recognizes this, though I doubt it does. Angel 1 is so focused on killing every last one of us that it doesn’t even realize that doing so will ensure its defeat. As far as I can tell, there is no way to activate the Unbreakable Mortal Spirit without its body, and I highly doubt it wishes to keep the weapon intact.

The wave of devouring white reaches out for us, radiating forth from the progenitor, brilliant and divine magic spiraling out in a flash.

Tendrils of it reach for us, and from the impossible sphere I hold influence over, demonic magic does the same, tumbling out in quantities I would’ve thought physically impossible up till this day. My Devour pours out in waves, and the might of a millennium of fae and angels rises to meet it.

As our magic burns, twists, and consumes, I feel the same burning sensation that I did when I tried to Devour the modified corpse of 191 as it detonated and eliminated the Eighth Circle.

I can sense its influence amongst ten thousand others, all of them combining to form a single monstrous presence that burns me from the inside out, gnawing its way through my greatly expanded existence.

Since the Eighth Circle, however, Sierra and I have both gained a vastly enhanced insight into the forces that govern our souls—our authority. It is not only my existence that contends with the angel's power.

While Sierra holds us stable, I draw upon the endless well of hunger, the depthless desire for power, reaching for the fundamental truths that I found my existence on.

I advance, but advancing requires surviving, and consuming all that remains of the fae forces in this world.

I kill, but the only being I need dead is outside of my range.

I protect, but the people that I need to keep alive are either defending themselves or surviving within the bounds of my nullspace.

With Sierra’s presence guiding me through our soul bond, we enforce the last and final truth I carved out for myself.

I devour, and my existence has been shaped such that there’s nothing that can stop me from doing exactly that. Not even if it kills me.

The combined power of all the angels may threaten to wipe my existence from this world, but it’s not only my lifeline that burns as I feed upon the light that burns the sky.

Over the course of the past several minutes, an eternity when operating at our speed, we have seen and consumed some of the strongest beings that have ever walked this world.

It’s not only my life that we're burning; it's every victim I’ve claimed. It’s what remains of the titan Sapphire did not take with her. I shine with the reserves of a dozen broken gods and what little pieces of the population I managed to consume before the angel.

And yet, it's still not enough, because this attack was meant to overwhelm every Titan. Their dormant power is not the same as it would be if they were all active at their full strength, and the angel’s light burns us faster than we can supply more life.

I remember the angel tide sweeping over them like they were nothing but pebbles, sending them hurtling into the forever, infinite nothingness that will exist for a few short, peaceful moments before this world collapses forever.

Once upon a time, this would’ve been enough to crush me like the insect I was, but with all the conceptual weight I now command, I am more than just a single living being. I matter more. My very existence stabilizes the space around me, and that’s not just my nullspace in action. I simply am an anchor.

Suggestion, Sierra sends. System. Manipulation.

As always, she’s right. With the system as flexible as it is, with the world it rules over unraveling, we can re-thread, recompose, re-create. We can do that which could not be done.

I look at Adrian and I look at the fae.

I only need one of them alive.

Adrian still holds the Moon half of the weapon, and he continues pours his concept into it, modulating it, preparing it for its first and final activation, but the fae? The fae are only here because they can provide information to me.

Devour more than the soul, I send to Sierra. It’s a nonsensical message, but I have grown proficient in the language of the Titans. I encapsulate my ideas into it with ease. Possible. Question.

She tells me, With you, everything is.

With her go-ahead, I retract my nullspace just a little, allowing Sierra’s to overtake it. Understanding my intent, she activates the nullspace of Balance.

It happens so quickly that the fae don’t have time to react. Before any of them even notice that a new burst of magic has exploded from our location, they are reduced to nothing but their component particles orbiting around Sierra.

With my nullspace overlapping hers, it is simplicity itself to absorb their authority, their souls, their lives. With Devour as strong as it is and the nullspace making the impossible ordinary, I consume and gain all of them. Not just their magic, not just their skills, not just the authority which the system recognizes as experience; no, I get the sum of everything they are.

I get their memories, their final thoughts. Everything.

They died terrified—not of the angel, but of Sapphire. And, I see, of us.

A smile creeps its way across my lips as I look deeper.

I see the reasons why Sapphire didn’t encounter more resistance in the fae realms. I witness memories that prove the fae kingdom was a dying one, that the hero who brought the gods down from their skies a thousand years ago has been absent for centuries.

More importantly, I see the shape of the system. With our link established as it is, so does Sierra. I ask her if this is enough.

I don’t know, she replies. When has that stopped us?

Point.

This system is an amalgamation of pieces of gods that are as alive as any of us are. In its own twisted way, it too is a living being.

Living things can be bent, broken, manipulated, experimented upon with enough force.

We can twist our authority into something the system will be forced to recognize as a skill. We’ve done it before, worked outside the bounds of the system, but we came back to it eventually because we are not yet gods of our own.

To do the same now to a greater extent—to enable a power that will allow us to consume the world and leave it sliding into the void, which surely goes against the purpose of what the system was created for in the first place—would be significantly more difficult if not for the fact that the framework of corporeal existence is built on is actively crumbling.

I can sense its presence as it, too, begins to fall. Without anything living in this world, there is nothing left for it to enforce its rule over, and with few users, its facade begins to crack.

Before the system crumbles away into the empty space that Angel One has created, before the last remnant of the gods in this timeline that Sapphire will end can fade away, I bring it one last request.

Well, not exactly a request. More of a command.

Even with all the life we are burning to even touch the last angel’s Reconstruct, even with the oceans of mana we Siphon and Devour together, the two of us alone still can’t triumph over this culmination of a thousand years of fae and angelic power.

I need to force fragments of to into grant me what I do not yet have and should never have.

The raw presence of the gods in the system is as great as anything I’ve ever experienced, but with the fae realms disconnected, they no longer have anyone to guide them. With Sapphire gone, seeking her original body, the framework built on her skeleton loses a major part of its indomitable will to resist.

The foundational parts of them that once were have either been eliminated from this world or have departed it in other ways; there are no gods remaining, and the largest pieces of them burn in divine light.

Even though the system’s sheer power might be enough to overwhelm me, its willingness to do so is not as great as it might be.

We give it instructions, demand of it nigh-limitless power.

The system isn’t willing to roll over and play dead just yet, though, so we offer a trade.

The built-up authority we stole from the deaths of our brethren, all the shapeless power we have but cannot yet use—enough to keep a dying system alive for a blow or two longer, perhaps—in exchange for a single skill that will allow us to survive, using every bit of the framework that remains.

Under normal circumstances, the dead gods within the system would enforce the will of the fae, but the last fae are dying or no longer connected to this world. Their will is fractured, and the constant encroaching pull of the void worsens it.

WITNESS US, we cry. WE WERE HERE. WE ARE HERE. AND HERE WE WILL REMAIN.

Processing…

ERROR: Undefined behavior detected.

ERROR: No definitions for behavior found.

Falling back on Protocol One.

…

…

You are witnessed.

#

New skill unlocked: Tautology (Sapphire)

You cannot die as long as you live. Your existence weighs upon the world, and unless the world itself is gone, you will remain. While this skill is active, you cannot die.

#

Now grant us peace.

I break myself out of my soul just as Sierra does, new skill flaming active, and even as the angel’s heavenflame burns us from within, even as it tears us apart, we survive.

There are no impossibilities. Only avenues we have yet to explore.

Demon, angel, Titan, god—I will Devour them all.

The light sears into my nullspace, and I realize that for once, I do not have the upper hand. The last defiance of the angels cuts through with no resistance.

It is only the sheer scale of destabilization that prevents my nullspace from popping like a soap bubble. We’re sliding into the void with increasing speed, now. Even areas the angel has scoured clean begin to rupture and break away.

Less than half a second has passed.

Adrian has not even moved. His will is the only part of him that is even relevant at this speed.

I judge the distance between the searing light, the collapsing world, and the Category 3 that has survived by the skin of his teeth up until this point.

Activate, I say.

Activate, Sierra agrees.

We use a Sapphire-tier skill from her Blue Mage class to bestow angelic power onto Adrian.

Immediately, I know it’s too much. Adrian’s frame is not designed for this kind of power. His Mind (Speed) isn’t even close to being up to par to react.

And yet—the Paradox is a nullspace that separates cause from effect. Adrian’s will is ironclad. Even if he does not have the speed, his will manifests before he can even process what is happening. His raw intent is so single-minded that I can drive his body beyond what is physically possible for him.

It’s going to be a nasty job. We haven’t even consumed the entirety of the angel, and even with the fae’s memories, any knowledge of what the weapon actually does and how to use it has been lost to the ages.

As Sapphire’s actions take hold a thousand years ago, though, we don’t have a choice. This reality is not long for the world, and if we don’t act now, we will join it.

Effect: Sierra and I blink to Adrian’s side.

Cause: I activate Crimson Storm a moment later.

Effect: Adrian activates the Unbreakable Mortal Spirit — Moon, injected with the power of an endling’s last breath.

Cause: We join hands with each other.

Effect: The world slips into pure, unfathomable darkness.

Cause: I do not know. I will never know.

We are not alone in the darkness. In this emptiness there is infinity, and in that infinity is the target of the weapon that pulls us.

I bear witness to it for a single second before the system fails entirely.

And then we are falling and falling and falling.