RD 5 Story Thus Far + Ch 1

Story Thus Far

The world had changed, deviating significantly from what Bran had expected. He wasn't omniscient, but even accounting for the changes he had caused in the current timeline, the current situation was hard to piece together.

The differences left Bran with only one conclusion: someone else was either aware of the changes he was making to the current timeline, or someone else had come back with him. 

Based on the way the changes were happening, Bran would have bet money that the Demon King himself was adapting to the changes Bran was making.

With that in mind, Bran had no choice but to go off script.

Instead of using the heroes that existed in his past life, the ones that were beginning to die far too soon, he needed to create a new team.

He chose those who had sat idle during the first demon war in his first life, but had later come out as top experts. They were a motley crew, each with their own strange motivations, but Bran knew them better than they knew themselves.

With main contenders for the Trial of Kings no longer in the picture, there was now the question of who would take up the mantles. 

But Bran’s group was shaping up, including Winnie of the Frozen Palace and Cao, a drunk monk who had once shown him how to mix his drinks to increase his poison resistance, as well as many others.

Bran trained them with monsters now roaming the world, instances, and even skirmishes with the demons.

Those early battles with demons confirmed Bran’s fears that he needed to confront the demons head-on sooner rather than later because they were growing faster than they had before. After all, the best defense was a good offense. To do that though, he needed to bring together forces across the globe in a united effort against the demons, lest they all be picked apart before they were able to band together for strength. 

To do so, Bran had come up with a plan to hold a tournament, putting his mythic ranked bloodline down as the grand prize. The bloodline was unique enough to lure even the most stubborn of the powerful initiated out for the tournament and force even the demons on the Heavenly Fist Sect to come play, lest they become even more suspicious. 

In training his people for this and for the fights to come, he used the same training grounds as the Tartarus branch of the Heros Clan, which was the front entrance of the Trial of Kings. However, during their training, an unfamiliar force greeted him, ready to try their hand at the Trial of Kings. Bran, hoping to make allies, fought his way through the entrance, opening the way for them and allowing them in. 

But Winnie's obsession with killing the Demon King was too great. She tried to rush into the trials herself, and in Bran's attempt to stop her, he, Circe, and Simone were cast into the trials as well. The trials had claimed many lives over the years, in both lifetimes. Now it was up to Bran to find a way to ensure the safety of his two loves that had entered alongside him. Then he’d need to take it on himself.

Chapter 1

I stumbled out of the darkness into a dimly lit hall, my head foggy like I’d just woken from a dream.

“Where am I?” I asked, not really expecting an answer. There was a sense of urgency that pushed in the back of my mind like someone was waiting for me. Yet I didn’t know who or where. All I knew, down to my deepest core, was that I needed to move through wherever I was and get back to them.

The hall shook, dust and sand sprinkled down from above and I fell into a defensive crouch, pulling a sword from my hip. I looked down at the blade in my hand, trying to remember why I had the sword.

Those thoughts were thrown aside as a hulking form of a demon lumbered into view.

My eyes narrowed, and however it got there, I was very happy to have my sword. Demons weren’t something I could ever leave alive; they all needed to die.

At the same time, the demon realized I was before it. The only thing between the two of us was a beam of moonlight coming through the castle windows.

The demon was clear amidst the moonlight, a dark carapace plating barely fitting over its overgrown arms as its shoulders hung forward not unlike a gorilla, only far far uglier. Its face was a wrinkled, ghoulish mess and for what its eyes lacked in intelligence, they made up for with cruelty.

I prepared myself. I was ready to kill this demon as I surged down the hall, my blade catching the moonlight as it flashed forward.

Despite his size, the demon was rather agile. He put his weight on one of his meaty fists and kicked off with his legs, folding his body up closer to the ceiling, before dropping his full weight down in a dangerous plunge.

I barely managed to throw myself out of the way, slamming my back against the wall. I launched a sanguine slash at the demon's midsection.

The demon twisted and took it cleanly on the side with little more than a grunt before its feet hit the ground and its other heavy arm came swinging up for my head.

This wasn't going to be a fight I could take so casually. 

Blood Boil set into my veins as they swelled along with my muscles. I could feel my strength increase as I let gravity pull me down and kicked off the floor hard, driving my shoulder into the demon's gut and slamming him into the other wall.

Despite my strength, he was big. Big enough that it simply wrapped its arms around my shoulder and squeezed for all that it was worth. The muscles in those meaty arms swelled like lumps of soil crawling with veiny worms and I felt my spine attempt to rearrange itself.

I gritted my teeth hard enough that I chipped a tooth. "Fuck you," I roared at the top of my lungs and smashed my head forward into the demon’s ghoulish gaze.

Its head snapped back. But beyond the movement, the demon seemed unconcerned with the collision of our skulls. 

"Stupid human," it said in an incredibly dumb tone. "Demon skulls are thicker than yours." 

Now it was its turn to throw its head back, seeming to want to prove the point.

I could appreciate in that moment just how much muscle was in the demon’s neck and shoulders before it crashed the crown of its tough forehead right into mine. It dazed me, though it only lasted a split second as Immortal Body kicked in and healed what brain trauma I had most certainly just endured. 

Grappling with the demon, I activated Blood Transfusion and began to drain it, even as it was crushing my chest and no doubt causing small but dangerous internal injuries. 

The demon laughed and squeezed me harder before it jumped in the air, positioning me underneath it in what I knew was going to be a very painful landing. 

What came a moment later proved that to be true. I felt my ribs break and the demon laughed as it rolled over and smashed me to the ground again.

However, it had loosened his grip enough for that maneuver, allowing me to activate Crimson Barrier. As it expanded, I was able to free myself and slip out of its grasp. I spat a mouthful of blood at it and activated Sanguine Locking. Vines of thorns sprouted from my blood, rushing across the demon’s arms and tangling it in prickly tangles.

The demon only laughed, straining its arms that glowed ever so slightly with a skill before it snapped itself out. "This will take a good long time," the demon snarled with a hateful grin. "I like when it takes a long time." 

It flexed his hands and I noticed the small punctures from Sanguine Locking were already closing up. The demon healed just as quickly as I could. It caught me looking. "You are not the only one that can heal. But here, let me help you practice your ability." 

The demon thundered down the hall, rushing after me. It reached into the wall and pulled the stone away, shaping it into a massive claymore. It was a greatsword that it swung with more weight than I had seen even from my master in my previous life.

I dodged as the hit sent pieces of stone flying into the air, obscuring my vision for just a brief moment.

The demon wound up a heavy swing, one that I had no option but to take face on. 

My wrists and my elbows buckled immediately under the pressure of the swing before he launched me back down the hall with a goofy laugh that made me want to bite a chunk out of it. 

"Human, why are you running away?" it laughed, continuing to thud after me with thunderous steps and the stone greatsword dragging behind him. "I only want to play." It came at me again, in a series of swings that were eerily familiar.

I should have recognized the moves earlier. I'd seen them a thousand times. 

"An Orak?" I asked. 

The demon swung gleefully. "Your eyes must be bad, for I am a demon, though I might have previously been an orc." With those words, it launched an overhead smash that ripped through the hallway. The demon was just a step behind, dragging that massive greatsword along with it, trying to ram it home to finish me.

Oraks were people at home nowhere else but a battlefield. Even before becoming a demon I wouldn’t have wanted to fight one.

However, I had no intention of allowing him the chance to take me down. I caught the stonesword, its edge not sharp enough to deter me, and spat a curse with my blood onto the blade to make it, hopefully, too heavy to wield as the sudden shift caused it to drop it into the floor at my feet.

My hopes were in vain, however. 

In the next second, it ripped it from the ground and hoisted it high overhead, as if it still weighed nothing. "Uh-oh," the demon said, mocking me, before dropping the blade like a colossal guillotine down on me.

My own sword couldn't stand up to it, shattering on impact. But I had expected it to break from that hit. I folded my arms in front of me, only for both of them to break as I used its momentum to kick off the ground and push myself further away. 

"Yes, struggle, little human." The demon clapped its hands like a big, fat child enjoying a toy. "When you struggle, it makes it so much sweeter. You know, you might be strong enough to make a good host. How about it? Surrender everything to me, and the problems will just go away. We'll even kill your enemies for you, save whatever family you have."

I scoffed even as I coughed up blood. I couldn't take its offer remotely seriously. "That's a good joke," I said, and spat a mouthful of blood towards the demon. It failed to make it all the way and, somewhat embarrassingly, missed by a mile.

"Your aim's a little off," it said, bent over with a chuckle. "All you have to do is give up. It's that simple."

But I glared back at the demon. The idea of giving up upset me more than his ridiculous offer. Demons didn't save loved ones. They might kill your enemies, along with the entire rest of the world, but not out of some sense of a deal to a human. They were disgusting, loathsome creatures. The only option was to kill them, or die trying.

"All right," I said, shaking my head. "You said you’d kill my enemies? There's this guy."

The demon had a big grin on its face and took a lumbering step forward. The demon’s guard lowered as it smiled at me. Yet, there was no way he could keep the hatred for all things living out of its eyes.

I wasn't fooled. I coughed blood into my hand, bringing my head down and mumbling.

"What was that?” The demon took a step forward and dipped his ugly mug.

I immediately activated Last Stand. I'd be weakened after that, but if I did not use it now, there might not be an after for me. Power surged throughout my body. I could feel it as my stats swelled and kept growing, far beyond their current level.

The demon reacted immediately, but he was too close.

I raised my sword and drove it into the demon's chest with a grin on my face through the whole motion, only for the sword to stop. I pushed the tip harder, making it into the pudge and failing to even pierce its skin.

The demon laughed and its ponderous belly slapped my blade away.

"You were never going to give in, were you?" It threw his weight forward along with an ability, and I realized how little it had used abilities in the current fight.

I was the first to pull out my emergency ability, Last Stand, and I was fairly certain that any sentient being integrated with the system had some card to pull when the situation became tough. 

Despair attempted to shake my judgment and whisper gently in my ear that all was lost and that I should give up.

But I didn't. I simply couldn't. That nagging feeling since I had found myself wherever I currently was told me I could not stop and I could not slow down. I pushed with everything I had, and my blade caused a small trickle of black blood to come from his belly before the demon's massive claymore came crashing down on my skull, splitting my vision and sending me to oblivion.

AN - Lets go! New MC time, Bran is dead.

PS, I have never in my life trolled my audience. Nope, never.