Reborn to Devour: A Demonic LitRPG

It grew ever closer, whatever it was. Tendrils gripped onto the rocks and propelled its wide body forwards at a deceptive speed, already bridging much of the space between it and us. From how it steadily moved along, our presence did not seem to hasten or hinder the blob’s progress.

Its maw opened and closed, taking in black wisps that wafted off of the floor. A conversation of many voices escaped its mouth, playing out some sort of macabre scene to the two-person audience.

A red bar sat on its head. Unfortunately, it lacked anything else that could showcase its strength. I wondered if that was something that was once human too. If it still possessed the thoughts and ego what it once was. The thought of the form changing that much disconcerted me and I imagined just how far the mortal form could be twisted by the infernal powers. If it were human, I would need to strive to avoid sharing that fate.

I readied my claws and prepared to attack it, to test my strength against something more suitable. However, instinct warned against overly reckless actions despite the knowledge that even a disastrous failure would not end in a permanent death.

“Squealer,” I said to the cowardly demon who was actively trying to scuttle away from the confrontation. “Shoot a quill at it.”

“What?” Squealer hissed, taking another couple steps away. “You want me to fight something like that? No, I’m not dying again.”

“And, what if there’s nothing weaker than this down here?” I asked, shaking my head at his continual uselessness. “Are you going to run with your tail tucked between your legs at everything that you meet down here?”

Squealer’s face contorted in contemplation. As it grew closer, both he and I walked away at a similar pace to its approach. It was no more than a brisk walking pace and kept it about 20 feet away. Squealer kept looking forwards to see if anything else was waiting ahead of him. His sharp nose constantly sniffed for anything that seemed out of place.

“What do I get out of it if you kill it?” Squealer pressed, willing to negotiate.

“I do not know what happens if we both kill it,” I replied honestly with a shrug. “If you help me kill this one. I’ll help you kill the next one. That seems fair enough, right?”

As Squealer considered the offer, a familiar box phased into existence, answering the question at hand.

Tip: You can form “parties” with others to share rewards. Look at the person you wish to collaborate with and use the command word “party.”

Once again, the powers at be had gifted me yet another timely tool. I did as the message recommended, leaving the choice of acceptance in the hands of Squealer. The rodent paused and weighed its options. Undoubtedly, it despised me and wanted little, if anything, to do with me. Knowing a beast like him, it was likely already plotting a way to get its revenge. However, he knew better than any what I was capable of. Using it to recover his lost stats and leveling up was too tempting to ignore.

With a soft ding, the covenant was made. Squealer clenched his eyes and shot a volley of quills towards the blob. I had to jump to the side to avoid being peppered by the fool’s friendly fire.

The quills stuck into the blob’s flesh, causing the bar atop its undulating body to shrink a small amount. It halted, no longer focused on whatever it had been doing. If it had eyes, it would have been looking directly at us.

The creature lurched forwards. While faster than before, the speed still was not worthy of much fear. Even a mild jog was enough to outpace it. New tendrils branched out, blindly flailing to strike whatever had injured it. Moss was ripped from the rocky walls, mushrooms were crushed, and fissures of stinking miasma oozed from the wall.

“Shit, it did nothing,” Squealer lamented, already plotting its escape.

I ignored Squealer’s defeatist words and approached the flailing beast. Unlike Squealer, I knew just how inaccurate and weak those untrained quills were. Only a handful had avoided the jagged rock walls and plunged into the beast’s flesh. Considering that, by courtesy of our duel, Squealer’s strength had only diminished, I had enough confidence to believe that this beast was uglier than it was deadly.

I took a step forwards into the range of the thrashing beast. Tendrils slapped my scales and bruised my flesh, dealing a respectable amount of damage. The low ceilings of the tunnel made it impossible to take a mighty slash at it. Instead, I reached my hands above my head and performed a much shorter strike on the creature. A modest chunk disappeared from the creature’s health, giving me further confidence that I could eliminate it.

In a flurry, I rent the creature’s jelly-like flesh with my claws. Lacerated tendrils splattered against the tunnel walls and its body sprayed acrid, black liquid all over my scales. It screeched in indignation and resisted with greater desperation. Unlike Squealer, the unthinking beast fought back and I could only laugh gleefully that I finally got the fight I desired. It bludgeoned me with dark tendrils, scraping off health each time. The sound of an adult screaming overtop a child leaked from the mouth and echoed off the walls.

I was more than willing to join the creature’s death spiral. In fact, endorphins flooded my brain as reward for my participation in such a visceral fight for survival. The deep, dull pain from my tenderized flesh flipped the switch in my brain that brought me all the joy and all the consequences I experienced in my life. It slipped away and left only bliss.

My claws hurt it far worse. As it could only buffet me with whipping strikes, I dismantled it entirely. The boneless flesh came apart in massive chunks like a chainsaw to gelatin. I clawed and slashed and bludgeoned the creature into submission, rendering it into a quivering puddle of miasma.

“I hate you!” The puddle screeched in a childlike voice before it evaporated.

You have defeated a Fragment of Negative Emotions. +25XP.

I moved to wipe the putrid goo off of my body and stained shorts, but the miasma dissipated as though it were never there to begin with. My health bar, brought down to below half, already slowly was working its way back up to full. The deep bruising I felt from the force of the tendrils began to fade as well. I was almost disappointed that the tenacity of the creature was made so temporary. It deserved more.

At least one mystery was solved, it didn’t appear that it was originally a human.

“Oh, come on,” Squealer complained. “I only got a hundredth of a point back from that? I have to kill twenty four more just to get back to even?”

“Did you even do anything after I started attacking it?” I questioned, not remembering a single bit of help from Squealer after the first quills.

“I didn’t want to hit you by accident. You took up as much of the tunnel as that thing did,” Squealer rationalized, pinning as much of the blame on me as possible. However, a quick glare from me righted his attitude. “I will work to improve my aim.”

In the end, I could only shrug. I was more than ready to replace Squealer with someone more competent at the first opportunity available. But, for now, I would tolerate the near-worthless demon. At the very worst, I had convenient fodder if the need rose.

“So,” I said, dropping the subject. “Do you want to go forwards, or back?”

Squealer sniffed the air in both directions. His eyes narrowed before he continued forwards. I shrugged, figuring that either direction would be serviceable.

We pressed forwards through the tunnels. The scenery felt identical among all the tunnels. Moss, mushrooms, and leaking miasma was all that existed inside these tunnels. Even when new paths intersected and different routes were taken, nothing truly changed. There were no landmarks, no interesting twists or turns. Just straight lines and wide turns that occasionally crossed paths. However, the map continued to update, preventing a slip in sanity to begin.

A high-pitched screech emanated from down the tunnel and I tensed my muscles in anticipation for whatever approached. It did not sound like the black blob that we faced earlier nor did it sound like a person.

I heard the sounds of nails scrabbling against rock getting ever closer. Squealer unsubtly swapped places with me, choosing to hunker down behind my scaled form.

Then, a blur of white fur crawled along the walls and sprinted overhead. Without slowing, it rapidly changed directions and tucked its limbs into itself. The small body ricocheted off of the wall, then the ceiling, and then into Squealer’s chest at the speed of a fastball from a pitching machine. I thought I heard a cracking sound as the demon and monster tumbled unceremoniously to the ground.

Squealer stayed down and sucked in air while the beast bounced towards me. I timed my swipe as best I could, but, like a slider pitch, it arced past my swinging claws and landed back on the tunnel walls.

Instead of fleeing, it began to bounce rapidly off of the walls like an overinflated basketball. Each collision with the sides of the tunnel only increased its speed.

“How much damage did it do?” I asked Squealer, who was only just picking himself off the ground.

“Ten,” he wheezed.

I took a breath; I had a few tries at this. It didn’t matter if I got hit a few times, I just needed to figure out the timing.

The beast made a mocking screech as it launched itself at me. I did a wide sweep with both my arms to see if I could catch it at all. However, the speed was still too fast for me. It smacked my left shoulder, making a loud banging sound when it collided with my scales. 8 HP melted away as it flew into the ceiling and towards Squealer, who managed to scurry away in time to dodge.

It was then that I noticed something about the beast. It was too slow after hitting me to also hit Squealer, but, when it hit the tunnels, it accelerated. My tongue flickered out of my mouth with excitement as I plotted my next moves.

I could see that the beast was not mindless. After striking both of us, it made the decision to prioritize Squealer. The rodent tumbled and rolled around the tunnel to avoid the beast’s impacts. All the while, he fired out blind quill shots like an errant Gatling gun. I had to hop several steps backwards to avoid being turned into a reptilian pincushion.

After dodging the multitudes of quills, the beast decided to take another pass at me. This time, I was ready to test out my new theory. It was aiming for my torso again, so I slightly turned my body to control the direction of its ricochet. Its trajectory remained straight, giving me confidence to push on with my plan.

I pushed out my chest to meet it at the impact point. A crushing feeling hit me like a bowling ball thrown directly into my chest. But, despite that pain, I grinned widely. My action destroyed much of its momentum, causing it to fall towards the ground without speed. Before it could press its body to the ground, I punted it as hard as I could. I could feel tiny bones shatter against my foot as its health bar almost evaporated in a single blow. Its limbs splayed out, some twisted in unnatural angles, as it skipped along the ground.

I could see its body tense up. It was going to try to bounce its way around Squealer and to safety.

I opened my mouth to issue an order, but Squealer seemed to have a plan of his own. His eyes were different. Instead of the hopelessness that clouded his pupils during our fight, a seething rage twisted his visage. The smaller creature did not scare him, it infuriated him. He did not close his eyes and shoot blindly. Instead, he launched one large quill from his back to kill the beast.

As the beast bounced, I was convinced that Squealer had missed his shot. However, as if led by invisible string, the quill suddenly changed course and impaled the beast to send it falling limply onto the rocks with an unintelligible scream.

You have defeated a Fragment of Negative Emotions. +25XP.

“Fuck you, you annoying fucking thing!” Squealer screeched with unhinged glee as he punctured the corpse with several more quills before it disappeared entirely, much like the blob from before.

Squealer was breathing heavily, his teeth showing with euphoric glee. He had found suitable prey for himself.

As the euphoria of the kill wore off, he gave me a sidelong look as though he were expecting me to say something. I did not need to rub in the idea that he had a killer’s instinct as well, he already knew and no amount of denial would change that fact.

I smiled, now certain of the type of person that Squealer was: spineless towards the strong, tyrannical towards the weak. I knew many men like that in prison. They bowed their heads while they schemed underhanded plans towards your downfall. As soon as they knew that they were stronger than you, they were as relentless as they were merciless, like hyenas disemboweling a wounded lion. They would not stop until you were broken. But, until they found that confidence, they were loyal; convinced that, at any moment, you would do to them as they wished to do to you.

I knew how to work with that.