A demon's pride

"Your potential is unprecedented, enough to bring one family above the rest. If you won't join us then I will make sure you can't join anybody else either."

"Oh…"

'Fucking hell, fuck'

Aster was cornered between two goliaths. There's no doubt that if he chooses one then the other will kill him.

He needed more choices, preferably ones that allow him to remain human and walk away safely but such luxury does not exist.

'I need more information.' He thought.

"Umm, where are we exactly going?" He asked, trying not to be seen as afraid.

"The demon continent." Carl replies with a monotone voice. He seems awfully calm, befitting from a descendant of the demon of pride. Aster sorta figured that out on his own.

Aster burrowed his eyebrows. "What are you going to do with people on board?"

"Food."

That one word explained it. Aster felt sick in his stomach, there were many people on the ship including toddlers to elderly.

Grimacing, he asked another question.

"So, uhh, what are the benefits of becoming a vampire or a pride demon?" He asked.

'For all I know, a demon and a vampire could be much different from what was portrayed on Earth.'

"Oh and also the disadvantages." He added.

Nicolas and Carl stared daggers at Aster, seemingly pissed that he questioned the superiority of their families'.

Nicolas got over his daze first.

"Being a Vampire has plenty of benefits such as superior longevity, unique skills solely unique to us, increased attributes, new classes and a blood core." Nicolas said slowly like explaining basic common sense to a 5 year old.

"As you may know, almost every race out there has cores inside their hearts. Our cores are the physical manifestation of our souls and their development is directly proportional to our strength. A being with only stage one core can only reach Lv 10 while a stage 2 can reach Lv 20 and etc. Most races' maximum is stage 9 while demons and angels have stage 13 as their max. When we reach the max, we can evolve to the higher stage of our species! In order to increase the stage of the core, we cultivate similar to how humans strengthen their bodies. We, Vampires, have the maximum of 13 stages as we are a type of demons and we developed our own way to cultivate as we have a special core."

"Although just drinking blood strengthens our core, we found a better way to utilize blood to cultivate. We submerge ourselves in blood and we absorb it through our skin, hence strengthening our core with much greater efficiency. Depending on whose blood you use, you can even inherit special traits or affinities from it."

"That alone is a huge advantage but I'm not done. I mentioned unique skills before, yes? One of the unique skills allows us to manipulate blood. All vampires have this. Second one allows us to contain blood in our core for both feeding and combat. About half of the Vampire population have this skill. Another one lets us absorb vitality from the blood we drink and I don't mean just the attributes. You can permanently increase your hp, energy and strength, agility, endurance and vitality by just feeding! It's a rare ability but the chances of you obtaining it is never zero. In fact, I have all three!" Nicolas proudly exclaimed.

Aster was speechless. Wasn't this too unfair?

Carl gritted his teeth. If Nicolas wasn't assigned to this ship with Carl then he would have already knocked the human out and kept him captive and then presented him to Lucifer personally. Unfortunately for him, it seems that the Vampire was successfully luring him in. He can't accept that.

"Wait one fucking second." Carl called out.

"Vampires along with the other 5 are looked down upon by the natural demons and there is a good reason why. It's because they are weak!"

"What did you say? Want a blood spear to pierce through your pea sized brain?" Nicolas retorted back.

"A natural demon has many abilities! You will become a spiritual being, natural affinity to the darkness element along with demonic energy, extremely powerful miasma instead of aura and you can learn many new magic that humans prohibit. A natural demon has the ability to revive infinitely as long as not exorcized with divine essence. You can corrupt and possess people! You get a 300% proficiency increase as a spiritual being, immunity to physical attacks and status effects. And best of all, you don't have to worry about the sun like those Vampire mosquitos!"

"On top of that, you get the unique skill of the family you join! In your case, you can get the unique skill [Pride]. This skill grants you extraordinary strength as long as you know your place and hold your head high. The extraordinary strength includes gigantic increases to attributes or skill level boost or even cultivation efficiency increase! We also have our own way to cultivate! Every family has their own special way to cultivate." Carl continued to maniacally rant.

The previous atmosphere where it was hard to breathe disappeared, much to Aster's relief. Both Nicolas and Carl are now arguing with each other about natural demons and the sub demons and no longer pressuring him which was also great.

Even though Aster asked about the details of their races, he did not have the intention to convert. He wanted to remain human.

Now that his kidnappers were busy, he was trying to escape. He inched closer to the door ever so slightly every second. He even deactivated the effects of [Charm] so he wouldn't get noticed.

[The skill [Conceal] has evolved to [Conceal [EX]]

[Description: Hides a considerable bit of your spiritual presence]

[The skill [Stealth] has leveled up]

Stealth hides his physical presence and conceal hides his spiritual presence such as aura.

They didn't notice him as they were busy throwing slurs at each other and were ready to fight.

'Just a little bit more.' He prayed.

'Just a little more.'

Finally, Carl snapped and lunged at Nicolas, who responded by conjuring up multiple 2m long blood spears.

Then Aster sliced the metal hatch apart and ran away with full force.

[The skill [Dash] has been acquired]

[Description: 200% movement speed for a second]

[Cost: 100 energy]

Nicolas, who noticed him running away, tried to get to him, only to get punched in the gut by Carl.

"What the hell are you doing? He's running away!" He yelled but Carl didn't care.

To a natural demon such as Carl, it was degrading to be deemed equal with a subdemon.

The ideal outcome for Carl was that Aster would flock to him and beg him to be converted into a pride demon without even acknowledging Nicolas' existence. But not just that he didn't beg to be converted, he even listened to what Nicolas had to say! That greatly damaged his pride and he would do anything to avenge it. To a demon like him, pride was everything.

"Crazy bastard." Nicolas managed to say before manifesting a dozen blood daggers. The blood was condensed and infused with his mana, thereby giving it a look and texture similar to a dark red crystal.

He then threw towards Aster and diverted his attention to Carl, now dead set on killing him.

Some of the daggers found their target, much to Aster's displeasure.

[-196hp]

[Status effect: Bleed has been inflicted. 2 damage per second]

With a grunt, he ignored the pain in his back and kept running. Loud crashes, curses, yells and screams could be heard behind him. The fight was destroying the ship.

'I was lucky to have met with a pride demon.' He thought.

'Any other demon wouldn't react like he did.'

While doing his best to ignore the cries of the people, he threw some wind slashes at a circular window in a hallway and jumped.

Wind howled in his ears, drowning any other noise.

Across the horizon, an endless black sea with a blue tint could be seen.

'Plunging into that sea is not a good idea.'

With that thought, he activated [Wind current control] and tried to take control of his fall.

He carefully manipulated the air around him and successfully learned how to glide,

[The skill [Glide] has been acquired]

[The skill [Glide] has been unified with [Wind manipulation]]

[The skill [Glide] has leveled up]

Aster looked back, he got quite far from the ship. With a sigh he looked around and found nothing but dark sea water.

Aster's heart sank.

'How far did the ship go? Exactly where am I?'

It seems Aster would have great difficulty returning back.

However what little hope he had was crushed when he saw a few black dots appearing in the sky.

The dots grew bigger and bigger extremely fast until Aster could see their silhouette

"SCREEEEEEE"

Two giant wings, two claws and a sharp beak.

5 giant bird monsters and they were eyeing Aster hungrily.

***

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