As I looked at the corpse of the human in front of me, my instincts screamed at me that this human had great potential to develop after using [Noble Mark] on him.
Strangely, I don't remember ever feeling this way in the past when this body saw other humans, either because those humans didn't have the potential, or because I didn't have this ability at the time, something I would discover in the future.
But knowing that this was a good opportunity to test my new power, I guided the magic through my body as I extended my hand forward.
At the tips of my fingers, a red symbol began to appear.
Slowly, Mana flowed from the tips of my fingers and formed a unique design in the air, a pentagram with words written on each of the five points of the star.
Looking carefully at these words, they were written in a language I had never seen before, using symbols I did not know, but I could still understand them.
In the words I read Strength, Agility, Durability, Magic, and finally, instead of a word, there was a drawing of a star, a star with a tail of flames falling.
"Morningstar..." I said unconsciously as soon as I saw that drawing.
Even though I had never seen that drawing before in my life, I am sure that it means Morningstar.
And as I looked at that symbol, something inside me resonated like that... as if that symbol... was mine...
"Considering that I am the first Devil in this world, the one who will light the way for the many who will come in the future, the title Morningstar really suits me..." I thought with a wry smile.
In a few seconds, the drawing finished forming, and the pentagram floated from my finger to the cut hole in the back of this man, right behind his heart.
When the Mark touched his wound, a sizzling sound began to ring out, as if flesh were being fried.
And before my eyes, the hole was closing.
When the wound healed, flames erupted from the pentagram and completely engulfed the man's body.
But these flames did not burn.
Both the surrounding brush and the man's clothes remained intact, only his body was burning, purifying, reshaping itself, slowly ceasing to be human and becoming a demon!
A small pair of wings began to emerge from his back, as well as a short tail from his coccyx.
After a few minutes, the flames began to subside, leaving only the man, still unconscious, lying in front of me, his chest now moving slowly, showing that he was breathing slowly.
Knowing that this would be an important moment, I let him rest a little while I leaned against a tree, trying to sense our surroundings so that no one would appear and see him with his wings out and mistake him for the target they were hunting so hard.
As I settled in, I felt a change happening in me too!
My power, which had been stagnant at Peak Low-Class Devil, was now evolving.
It was evolving much faster than it would have naturally! In just a few seconds, I broke through the bottleneck I was in, officially becoming a Middle-Class Devil!
Just this small advance caused my total Mana to increase greatly, and my physical power was also rising rapidly.
At that point, I felt as if my strength had at least doubled!
"I'll need to test this breakthrough soon..." I thought excitedly.
Curious, I called up the status screen again to look at the change.
|-----------------------------------------
| Character Status |
|-----------------------------------------
| Name: Adam
| Race: True Devil
| Level: Middle-Class Devil
| Peerage: 1
|------------------------
| Demonic Abilities: Noble Mark.
|------------------------
| Demonic Powers: Creativity Magic, Devil Whisper*.
|-----------------------------------------
Seeing the change from Peak Low-Class Devil to Middle-Class Devil brought a huge smile to my face, but seeing the new addition to my Demonic Powers surprised me!
[Devil Whisper: A Devil capable of manipulating emotions with their voice, inducing states such as trust, fear, or temporary subservience. In combat, their voice can become a sonic attack, such as a roar that stuns enemies or a whisper that plants doubts. The ability also allows them to create limited auditory illusions.]
'Holy shit!' I thought, shocked. 'That's so OP! It's like Lucifer's ability in the TV series to induce people to open up to him and tell him their desires... damn, if I were an RPG character, that ability alone would be the equivalent of instantly raising my Speech level to 100!'
But where did this ability come from?
Thinking that I hadn't done anything special in that short amount of time, I remembered a part of the [Noble Mark] description.
[...Upon activating Noble Mark, a hellish glyph reincarnates the target, living or newly dead, into a demon, amplifying their special characteristic into an innate skill...]
'Maybe this human already had something like this ability before he died, and Noble Mark just amplified it and turned it into an innate ability? I tried to deduce.
The more I thought about it, the more I saw that it made a lot of sense, especially considering how much my instincts told me to use [Noble Mark] on him.
Perhaps this is a warning to tell me which humans have the potential to awaken an innate ability!
As my mind raced through the possibilities, the man in front of me began to wake up.
Suddenly, he jumped up in fright and looked at me defensively.
"Who are you?! Where are the others?!" He asked as he searched for something at his waist.
I just stayed leaning against the tree, trying to remain calm as I explained to him.
"I am Adam, the one who just revived you," I said.
Hearing this, the man was horrified, looking at his own body and starting to feel himself to see what was wrong.
At first he was calming down, until his hands went to his back and felt the wings and tail, at which point he started to freak out even more.
"My God, what have you done to me?! Are you some crazy necromancer alchemist who fused me with a monster corpse?!" He asked as he took a few steps back in fear.
Shaking my head calmly, I denied it. "No, your body is still entirely yours, I just used my ability to bring you back from the dead so you could live again."
"But what are these things on my back?!" He asked desperately.
"They're wings, more precisely two wings and a tail," I explained.
"Why did you put these things on me?!" He asked, almost starting to cry.
"I didn't put these things on you, I just wanted to revive you, and for you to come back to life, you had to become a Devil." I said as I moved away from the tree and stood up straight.
"Why?!" He asked.
"Because I felt you needed it, or would you rather stay dead?" I asked, crossing my arms.
"No, of course not! Being alive is great, but couldn't you have brought me back as a human?" He asked, holding his tail with his hands and looking curiously at how this new organ practically moved on its own.
"No." I replied dryly.
"Why not?" he asked, confused.
"Because I'm not a human," I said, causing my wings and tail to emerge from my back.
Unlike the wings of the man in front of me, which were still relatively small, with a wingspan of only 4 meters, my wings, which were already large, had become even larger now that I had risen in class, reaching 12 meters.
To make it even more dramatic, I released some of my Middle-Class Devil power.
When he looked at my large wings and felt the energy heading towards him, I saw his legs become a little wobbly, but he still managed to steady himself on the ground.
Seeing that he would not say anything, I continued to explain. "I revived you as my servant, the first servant of Adam Morningstar. By reviving you, not only did you receive the right to live again,
but your body has now been enhanced to a level of power even greater than when you were human, your lifespan has increased to hundreds, or even thousands of years, you have become more attuned to magic, able to use demonic magic, a magic that requires only Mana and your imagination to do whatever you want, in addition to the ability to fly and an innate ability that resonates with who you were when you were human."
Without me realizing it, some of my Mana was used in my voice, activating the [Devil Whisper] skill to try to calm him down and make him accept the situation more easily.
And it really helped!
When I told him about his lifespan increasing, his eyes widened in amazement.
When I told him about magic that uses imagination, he instantly reached forward and used his Mana to make a fireball appear in his hand, while he stared at it in fascination.
"It's like I've evolved," he said in shock.
"Logically, demons are superior to humans in every way," I said casually.
Having studied so much about demons in my other world, I was absolutely certain of this.
After playing around with the magic a little more, he looked at me with a little apprehension and asked a question. "And what's the price for all this?"
Nodding to him, I explained. "As I said, by reincarnating, you have become my servant."
Upon hearing this, unlike the disbelief and anger I imagined he would have, the man just looked thoughtful for a few seconds before sighing and replying. "Fair enough."
Returning a little from his excitement, the man asked me. "You said I would gain an innate ability based on what I was in my life as a human, what ability did I receive?"
This made me curious about something. "What was your life like as a human?"
Smiling, he bent down and picked up a broken piece of wood from the bush he had been lying on and showed it to me as he replied. "I was a bard."
'That explains a lot...'