Chapter 2
- - - Creation - - -
Item: Mace
Description: Used to bludgeon and bash enemies
Modifiers:
* Heavy Blow: Boosts every swing of the mace with extra crushing force
Cost: 1 low-quality soul
- - - Creation - - -
I felt the comfortable weight of the mace in my hand after I confirmed the creation, and the soul was consumed. I could have defined the [Heavy Blow] modifier with a certain percentage if I wanted, but I felt that it was best to leave it all up to the system since it would give me the maximum boost possible for what I provided. This would only be a temporary weapon, so I didn't worry about it too much and just charged the nearest eggs. None around me had started to hatch, which meant I had no competition and no ready opponents.
I approached the first egg and swung with everything I had in my small demonic body, blasting straight through the egg and pulverizing the demon inside. A small soul floated up out of the corpse, so I stored it in the system before moving on. I flicked my wrist and watched as purple blood slid off my mace to join with the growing puddle of embryonic fluid, blood, and eggshell beneath my feet on the beach. The ground sizzled and belched pale green smoke into the air whenever the blood and other fluids touched.
I ran through the smoke and swung into the next egg, smashing the eggshell and throwing the demon inside out and onto its back. Insect wings and eyes started up at me as I approached, mace held high. It tried to screech, but I cut it off by shattering the demon's jaw, just missing caving its skull in. My missed attack only gave the insect demon a few more moments as it grabbed at its ruined face, looking at me with eyes full of fear as I blew its skull along with its brain apart into small bloody fragments.
I began to hear scratching sounds coming from the eggs around me, so I sped up my process by moving to a large cluster of eggs close together nearby. Three demons, still trying to get out of their eggs, died before I noticed demons begin to emerge and start devouring their eggshells. I knew that my easy soul-farming period was about to end, so I went into a frenzy and beat down another four demons with my mace, leaving their broken bodies beneath my feet as I lept at a fifth demon who was distracted with eating its eggshell.
In the moment, it was distracted by the onslaught of inherited memories from the shell I swung hard, shattering both legs with a single swing. It fell hard, choking on a piece of shell as it inhaled to scream. I turned its head into mush before it could recover and claimed its soul. I smiled as I saw that I had already collected 10 souls, but before I could turn to continue, blinding pain ripped through my body. I fell forward, nearly losing grip of my mace as I fell to the beach on my hands and knees. Pain flowed through my body in waves, all originating from the stump that would become my tail in the future.
I turned and looked behind me to find that a small demon had snuck up behind me and smashed a rock into the stump of my tail. In the future, my tail would become deadly, but for now, it was just a big weak point for me that I had to deal with. I managed to store the mace in my inventory before a few demons around me rushed toward it. They hissed once it disappeared but shifted their focus to me and dove with fang-filled mouths wide open and claws extended. I was barely able to kick the first attacker out of the way with the crippling pain I still felt.
The second and third demons bit deep into my arm and leg, respectively. I knew that I would die here if I didn't act quickly, so I pulled up the system, imagined what tail I wanted, and quickly defined it. I was just trying to survive and knew that I could modify the tail later, so I didn't fuss about the details and exact modifiers.
- - - Creation - - -
Item: Serrated Tail
Description: A tail that can be used for both offense and defense
Modifiers: [PHOTO OF TAIL HERE]
* Hardened Bone: The tail is made of hardened bone
* Steel Strength: The tail gains the toughness and strength of steel
Cost: 10 low-quality souls
- - - Creation - - -
I growled through the pain as the two demons began to rip into my side. I used my free hand to punch one in the head and knocked it back a step, but more still were charging my downed form after identifying me as the greatest threat. An unbearable itching and burning sensation spread from my tail stump as I felt the tail begin to emerge, but I fought through it and continued to punch the demon that was nibbling on my arm in the head repeatedly. Just as the second wave of attackers was about to reach me, something gave them pause.
There were two loud cracks that boomed out from a different location on the beach, gunshots. 'It seems that I am here at the same time as Roy,' I thought as that moment of distraction gave my tail enough time to form fully. I felt a strange sort of power flow from my tail and into my body. I also could move the tail instinctually as easily as I could move either of my arms. It seemed like the system had automatically adjusted my brain to being able to control an extra appendage which felt a bit weird, but I wasn't complaining.
When the demon biting my leg recovered from the shock of the gunshots, it found a tail blurring toward its head. My tail moved fast and struck with tremendous force, turning the demon's head to mush before I collected its soul. I then pulled my mace out of my inventory with my free hand and hit the demon I hed been punching, finally knocking it free from me. Blood poured from my sides where claws had dug deep while chunks of my left arm and leg were missing after being ripped out by razor teeth. The point of my tail shot down and into the downed demon's form.
Three more demons lunged from nearby, trying to tackle me to the ground. My tail punched out the heart of the first while I swung hard and shattered the ribs of the second. I ducked the third's lunge while collecting two souls. The demon with the shattered ribs fell, wheezing and coughing blood through bloody lips. I stepped on its chest, pushing the shards of its ribs deeper into its lungs before I used my tail to rip through the legs of the demon who had missed its lunge. I then used my claws to rip out both demons' throats and waited for their souls to appear.
Blood still poured out of my body and was beginning to make me feel lightheaded, so I quickly defined a healing potion in the system and consumed three souls to create it. A moment later, a vial full of crimson liquid appeared in my hands. I chugged the contents and threw the glass to the side to shatter on the rocky beach. The effect of the healing was immediate as my wounds stopped bleeding and began to mend themselves. I sighed as I noted the two remaining souls in my inventory, but I decided not to push my luck and waited for the full effect of the healing potion to take effect.
Demons circled me all the while, but I ignored them and waited for about three minutes until I was fully healed. That was also when the rumbling began. I had to stick my tail into the ground to prevent falling to the ground as the entire island shook. I looked up and further island to the solitary mountain that was pumping massive clouds of ash and smoke into the air. I then began to run, alongside all the other demons around me, toward the volcano. There seemed to be an unspoken ceasefire as all the demons stopped attacking each other and ran.
That didn't stop me from using my tail to blast my tail through the backs' of a few of the demons running in front of me. I collected their souls as I ran on, earning a few hisses and growls from the demons around me, but I just laughed. Soon, we began scaling the volcano, and that was when I wished I had a few more souls so that I could manifest some wings. I continued to tear into the demons around me and collect their souls as we climbed, which caused me to be avoided by the demons around me, but I had scored eight extra souls by that point, putting me at 14.
That was when we reached the lip of the volcano, and I prepared myself to begin to climb down into the maw of the mountain.