Chapter 214: Stare Into My Eyes.

Dust fell upon me. The ceiling crumbled. The sky was falling. The weight would crush me. . I was more than strong enough to survive it. The many visages of me drawn upon it were beautiful, even at their end. Not exactly my favorite sort of image, but I could not deny that it was poetic in a way, and I loved that shit. I should get out of the way anyway, even if I’d be fine. It’d be stupid to do otherwise.The ceiling parted. The sky revealed itself, and the sun beamed down from above. Pandemonium absorbed the ritual hall back into itself, to be reconstituted later.

At first I chuckled, and then I laughed, long and hard.

I cackled like a mad demon as I continued to lay there under the bright sunny day.

It was a beautiful afternoon. There were so many things I could do. I wanted to just stay here and feel the breeze. My body called to me, so much power, new potential.

I snorted. It would be worse if I didn’t have my Stable Personality Matrix.

I was one mind divided, yet united. Everything connected, in the same way one brain might have different clusters of neurons, but also so much more than that. I supposed the best way to describe it would be a brain but with more lobes and such, and of different makes too. It was more like the brains of different sorts of creatures grafted together.

I cursed this world. I wanted it to burn down. I thought of how to best go about that, what would be the best kindling. Another part of me wished to just let go and enjoy the whole process of repeating the Burning of Gardine, but now on a worldwide scale!

I grounded myself with my demon brain, and shared that same resilience to the others. The load was shared, but not equally, as I figured out how to have my demon brain take the brunt of my turbulent emotions. And… the two other brains could help by keeping a better track of my mental state and its many changes.

my

No.

Name: Haell Zharignan

Species: Devil

—Mutations—

Curse Heart: Level 80

Demon Brain: Level 80

Demon Skin: Level 80

Evil Eyes: Level 80

Demon Flesh / Demon Bones / Demonic Musculature(synced) : (All) Level 80

Demon Arms: Level 80

Demon Hooves: Level 80

Resentment: Level 80

Demon Horns: Level 80

Mana-infused Blood: Level 80

Regen Heart: Level 80

Demon Wings: Level 80

Hellfire Heart: Level 80

Untouchable Memory Core: Level 80

Extradimensional Demon Blood Storage: Level 80

Demon Tail: Level 80

Localized Dimension Scanner Matrix: Level 80

Rapid Combat Nervous System: Level 80

Blood Heart: Level 80

Blood Eater: Level 80

Hell of Creation: Level 80

Devil’s Tongue: Level 80

Blood Eater: Level 80

Space Heart: Level 80

Stable Personality Matrix: Level 80

Ritualist Brain: Level 80

Complex Computative Brain: Level 80

Dimensional Weight Distributor: Level 80

—Soul Feats—

Reincarnator

Progenitor

Imp Progenitor

Progenitor II

Demon Progenitor

Demon Harbinger

Progenitor III

Archdemon Progenitor

Slaughter of the Astro Manor

Pandemonium

Mark of The Beast

Legacy of Cursifix

Curse of Cursifix

Birthless Demon

Progenitor IV

Devil Progenitor

I groaned and got back up.

Night had passed, and the sun was rising from the far off mountains once more. It took until I was certain I could actually function. I didn’t want to instantly do something very bad, stupid, and irreversible because of a random train of thought.

I still wasn’t that was the case. That I was fully stable. I most certainly was not. But I had to move at some point. There was so much I wanted to do, so much more I do. I was dying to unleash my new potential and paint another city in the fires of my soul!

not.

“RRRAAAAAAHHHH!!!” I gave a warcry and sprung to my hooves. I looked around, the ground so much further away from me. Everything was just a little smaller. I knew that I was now somewhere in between my dad and late grandfather’s height.

“Hey, Haell,” Moonwash greeted, looking up from her canvas as she sat across the courtyard. She’d been here the entire time, and I was comforted by her presence the whole way. “Are you alright now?”

I paused for a second, three minds as one pondering the question.

“I will be.”

I walked over to her, and crouched down to see the painting. It was of me, in my newly-evolved form… and completely naked. am

I pointed my palm at where the ritual hall once was, and space mana streamed out. I kept control of the magic, until it settled right around a set of garments prepared for me. Reality around it bent, and my change of clothes were dragged along.

It was too slow. I was certain I could do so much better than that. I focused on my senses, the weave of the dimensional fabric as translated by my Localized Dimension Scanner Matrix. I analyzed this phenomenon, this constant force of reality. Like gas as thick as water, the skeleton of a realm-spanning skyscraper mixed with jelly. It wobbled and weaved at every moment as the world itself moved. Neutral, impartial, a mere fact of reality. It folded like a blanket around my change of clothes.

My shirt snapped to my hand and a… rippled softly through the arm that received it, once I finally applied these initial epiphanies.

“Great!” I beamed as I put on the light airy sundress, and then the tighter dark shirt that went over it. “Now no one has to pass me the remote.”

“You look amazing,” Moonwash complimented.

“Thanks.”

My girlfriend quickly made some finishing touches to her work, and in the span of a minute, she finally put down her brush. “Let’s see what you can do now.”

I grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”

The floor dropped from under us and we fell.

The fall was intentional. Pandemonium swallowed us up, before dumping us back at Moonwash’s extensive laboratory. It had only grown to assimilate more and more of the manor’s underground.

We landed on our ass after a long slide. I shook my fist at the ceiling jokingly, before turning my attention to the heavy set of armor waiting just for me. It was a light grey in color, sturdy for my level, but without much else going for it. Still, there was beauty in that simplicity. The important thing was that it actually fit. We’d prepared it ahead of time, because a lot of the changes I made to myself as I evolved were obviously pre-planned. I didn’t go into it blind.

I picked up Devilcalibur.

I looked at it. I stared.

“This isn’t even a greatsword any longer. It’s just a sword! Not !” I groaned, but dutifully holstered my partner-in-crime by my waist anyway. Afterwards, I cheated on my favorite weapon by picking up another!

It was a greatsword fit for my size this time. Its body was beautifully engraved, made of a specially shiny silver that Moonwash labeled SharpiniumX8-P31.

…These names were getting ridiculous. But it couldn’t be helped, as my girlfriend had become increasingly more obsessed over alloys. She’d naturally gotten far better at making them too. We needed a good resupply of materials soon, and I was happy to be able to provide that once again.

No need… for a whole party behind me. I was confident. I was now strong enough to delve through the core of Geonesis.

“You sure you want to come?” I asked Moonwash as we prepared for take-off.

“Yes. I trust you.”

I scratched my head with one arm. The other was holding the small woman tight to my torso, though she was actually quite large now relative to most people. Moonwash had been in between my mom and dad’s height ever since she got all Mutations across the Level 80 mark.

“Well… I guess I’ll just have to trust in the you that trusts in me.”

“You should.”

I laughed before finally opening my evermore expansive wings. They cast a large shadow across the ground. My silhouette was one for nightmares, an existence they could only dream of becoming.

I swung the wings

A great wave of force and wind instantly flattened the grass. Air, gravity, the planet itself resisted my ascent, but it was forced to bow to my will.

I lifted off the ground, and shot right into the sky. I hovered there for a few seconds, before orienteering myself and shooting off towards the mountains. Arisen City disappeared from beneath me, the scenery rushed passed. The air began to beg for mercy after only a few flaps. I pushed myself harder, until thunder boomed in my wake.

I’d broken through the sound barrier.

I accelerated. The explosions of sound grew louder. I felt the pull on my muscles trying to hold me back, but I broke through those barriers over and over again.

This was freedom. This was my power. I was The Devil!

My mind was suffused with the depravations of mortal-kind as my body was enhanced beyond my normal limits. The curse was ever expanding, yet so had my grown stronger. I celebrated every violent thought, I comprehended the destruction I wished to wrought. The lifeblood inside me, inside all of us, the way it flowed so violently through my veins. I applied that understanding to my magic, and I sped up

I left a vacuum in my wake. The atmosphere slammed back against each other with great violence. The clouds above parted, in deference to my power.

I reached the impenetrable barrier range in only a few minutes.

I breathed. I stopped. A growl rumbled through my throat. My mouth parted in a hungry grin as the echoes of my mere flight continued to thunder through the mountainside.

I healed the wear and tear across my wings, and the few aches that managed to make it through my body. I hugged Moonwash tighter to me, and then realized that she might’ve been hurt by that!

“Oh shit! Are you okay!?”

“I’m fine,” she claimed.

“This is why I didn't want to take you with me,” I continued. “I'm at my most unstable and ignorant of my own powers right now!” Blood streamed out of me and flowed over her body to heal the damage that I did.

“Relax, Haell. I said I’m fine.”

“Are you!?” I stared at her, the tension in her body now gradually loosening. Her expression wouldn’t tell me anything, but I felt like she wasn’t being entirely truthful.

“Yes. It’s just a little compression. And now I’m healed. Thanks.”

“See!? You did get hurt enough to get healed!”

“Only a little. Nothing that can’t quickly be fixed. I’m higher level than you, Haell. Don’t treat me like I’m weak.”

“O-oh,” I stammered, shaking my head, though perhaps I should shake my entire body considering that my other brains were in my torso. “Well… okay. If you say so.”

“I do.” She looked me in the eye. “That was awesome.”

I took another second to regather my thoughts–an eternity for those as as us–before finally allowing the broad grin to come through my face. “Hell yeah it was! I think so too. Fuck I’m fast!”

I dropped from the air, crushing right through the thick trunk of a tree, and cracking the ground below.

“You were very fast,” Moonwash confirmed. “Much faster than you or I assumed. That exceeded all expectations for how strong you will be after your evolution.”

“What can I say? I surprise even myself with how great I am.” I took the time to cackle, before continuing, “But it is true. I think we both underestimated just how much stronger my additional brains would make me. It helps with form of magic, not just with their specializations. I think…” I took a second more to gather my thoughts. “Well, a of it is how different the brains are. Ritualist brain is naturally creative, so it should be inherently much better than my demon brain for magic. The complex computative brain is going to generally be at that, but it still has some things to contribute. Like better visualizing my blood flows, and understanding its intricacies. That does also have an effect, in the same way that biomancy requires knowledge. Not to mention that it should be even better than my ritualist brain at space magic.”

“I see. Can you go test your new powers now? I’m very curious.”

I glanced at the mountain in front of me, the wildlife in between its trees strangely quiet and absent. But , I knew they were still there; hiding, cowering, as if they already knew that an apex predator had arrived.

I grinned. “Alright. I’m sure I’m even more curious than you.”

My aura creeped out of me, and the devil eyes reaped the lives of those foolish enough to remain in my sights. , I hadn’t even started. My glare turned into a glower, its violent designs palpable. The trees shook from my misery, as if they could feel. Their branches began to sag, trunks darkening. Leaves fell from the canopy, the grass below rotting.

And then my eyes burned, and the world burned with it.

Trees spontaneously caught on fire. A thousand critters writhed, wishing to flee, but unable to even that through the hellish pain. The color of blood saturated the air, as my hellfire further crawled up the mountain.

A reminder, to myself.

A seed of rationality in my rapidly deteriorating mental state.

I remembered the first time I got infernal fire. It wasn’t even hellfire back then.

I fought a warsymbol. I burned a forest down.

I had a disagreement with Elfrafim. I promised to at least maybe to not do this needlessly. I promised to at least think it over first.

I took a centering breath and leapt into the fray. I walked among my hellfire, the heat easily tolerable. I ripped the flames away from their meal, finding the action so much easier than before. I held the hellfire in my palms, and made it substantially hotter with a mere thought.

That was one property of my devil eyes discovered. They were much weaker than my regular magic.

I turned to the side and Clods of earth exploded into the air, as if a mine had just gone off. The burning trees in my path as I passed. Splinters flew every which way until I reached the edge of the spreading hellscape. My tail flicked, and then I turned again, now curving around the whole perimeter of the spreading hellfire as I strategically destroyed the plantlife around it.

It slowed the hellfire’s spread, although it didn’t outright stop it thanks to the dead plantmatter that remained in the ground. Not to mention that my fire could keep burning in dirt, if for a much shorter time.

“Hmmm.” I cupped my chin into my hand. I shrugged, and then just tore up the mountainside as I ran laps around the perimeter of the flames, siphoning more of it out with every lap, shrinking its territory with every passing second, until finally the last ember had gone out.

It was over in a minute.

I told Moonwash of my discoveries. Of how the spell was weaker when cast through my eyes, and cost more mana on top of that.

“What’s the mechanism though? How is the magic delivered? It just teleports?” she asked as we stood on the ashes of my devastation.

“I don’t know. Let’s check.” My head snapped towards a nearby fox that thought itself clever, and then its body tore itself apart like a gory shapeshifter that wanted to commit suicide. “Hmmm. I’m still not sure what happened exactly. Only that my mana was drained, and then the effect that I wanted happened.”

“Do it when I’m ready and watching next time. Let’s catch a test subject first.

“Aye-aye.” I did just as she asked, and promptly caught a few more monsters. Rabbits burned, wolves rotted, and bears bled from every orifice– for the opposite to then happen, as its wounds began to heal.

That loss in power was made all the more apparent by how the healing I was able to enact through my eyes was frankly just pathetic for my level.

“I think it’s a process kind of like the cursetaceans’ revenge magic,” Moonwash put down her notes for a moment, and gave her theory.

“Oh?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Yes. The way your eyes work might have a similar delivery mechanism as the Angel’s Demise, or your own vengeance magic for that matter.”

That was an easy theory to test. I grabbed Moonwash, flew us around, and then found a warsymbol strong enough to gnaw on my arm and deal a good amount of damage to the limb

Moonwash observed this spontaneous delivery of mana for a long while, before then asking me, “Can I stab you?”

I furrowed my brows. “Uhhh, you sure? It’ll hurt.”

“It’ll hurt for you too. I need to feel this myself, because it’s hard enough to track how this mana manifests inside another body. It should be easier to feel inside my own.”

I stared at her.

“You know what? You’re right. I get hurt too.” I presented my arm to her. “So fine. It’s your choice.”

“It is.”

She stabbed down.

I the wave of self-loathing that came when I observed the wave of rot spreading across her hand.

Moonwash made her observations, and after some hours of this, we finally had an answer.

“The mana is indeed basically teleporting to its target. More specifically it spreads like how glass might suddenly crack, though with far less range. The effect is immediately active, the mana generated that way. Although I guess it’s not really being generated from nothing, as it pulls from your reserves. The targeting is additionally weird, as you know, as external armor is able to absorb at least some of your vengeance magic or the magic cast through your eyes. But that’s true of many forms of magic. Armor can interrupt the immaterial mana, much more so when actually worn, than as mere inert objects lying around.”

She convinced me to try out my eyes on her next, though I only agreed after I’d made sure that I could contain the rot and limit its strength. That’s when we discovered a significant difference between my eyes and instantaneous vengeance magic. The latter generally pounced on the specific implements used to deal the damage, while my eyes preferred to apply the magic evenly across the surface of one or more entities. Though what counted as an entity was weird, as I could also target inanimate objects, including the ground. The spread would just radiate out from the specific spot I was staring at.

I then confirmed that instead of designating one person as my target, I could just designate a portion of it, like one arm for example, or even possibly just a portion of that arm.

I didn’t have the time to master that, however, so I just withered Moonwash’s skin on her hand. It was definitely a more even process than my vengeance magic, it was stopped by armor much easier. Unless if I used blood magic, or certain kinds of curses, which actually pierced through armor and resistances better if used by my eyes.

There was no hard rule to this, only general trends. That was the case for everything magic, I supposed. The theory about my devil eyes being the same as my vengeance magic was clearly proven wrong here, but it was still fun and imminently interesting to discover where they differed and how they were similar.

Moonwash was a great help with that. I was glad to have brought her along. This going much more smoothly than the last time, where I tried to figure out a lot of my new powers on my own.

I ducked down to give her a kiss, which she returned with enthusiasm.