Chapter 14: Symbiosis
Carnage.
That was the only word for it.
Chopping, biting, slashing, smiling, the imp tore through his kin, a blur of steel and rage. Cleavers flashed. Limbs flew. He moved like something starved for violence, leaving pieces of imps in his wake.
Up close, the difference was clear.
He was taller. At least a full foot above the rest. The only one with horns. The only one standing upright and holding blades.
The swarm rolled in around him, a living grinder of teeth and claws. Still, he held his ground with greater strength, faster reflexes, cleavers tearing through anything dumb enough to close the gap.
It helped that the swarm fought itself almost as much as it fought him.
KRG-SHNK!
He cleaved into the neck of the closest imp. Its head launched, immediately devoured by the bodies behind it.
Screeching, slashing, he lost himself in the butchery.
Wounds stacked up. One imp had buried its claws into his back before dying. Its severed arm still clung to him, refusing to let go.
He didn't care.
Murder was all that mattered.
His vision pulsed. System alerts flashed in his periphery, steady and constant, but he ignored them.
Critical Strikes. Low Health. Experience Gained.
None of it mattered.
Only blood. Only the need to hurt.
He brought a cleaver down, splitting an imp's face clean through. Its body collapsed mid-screech.
And then, just as his foot caught, slipping on a shattered piece of skull, a notification screamed into his mind.
[Level Up +1]
He hit the ground hard. Claws tore in. Fangs sank deep. The swarm fell on him like a starved beast.
Something gave. A crack, not in bone, but in the air surrounding them.
A burst of red light erupted, a pulsing flare of system energy that seared through the swarm. They screamed as eyes that had only known darkness were scorched by system radiance. They clawed at their own faces and scattered, screeching like they'd been thrown into a fire.
The level up was like cold water to the imp's bloodlust. He snapped upright as the glow faded. His thoughts cleared, the blinding rage gone.
And now?
Now he saw the swarm still coming. Not as things to hurt. Not as meat, but as a threat. So he did the only thing he could think of... he ran.
"What is going on!?"
Leaping over the next wave of imps, he turned and bolted, feet pounding across the gore-soaked field back the way he came.
"System! What happened?!"
[User experienced the MADNESS state.]
"How?!"
[Unknown. High probability linked to successful bonding process.]
'Bonding...?!'
He glanced at his hands, still locked around the cleavers. His claws wouldn't unclench. The weapons wouldn't drop.
Running on two legs wasn't cutting it.
"How do I unbond?!"
Screeches rose behind him. He risked a glance. Dozens had broken ahead of the swarm, gaining fast.
[Bonding is permanent. Unable to process User request.]
Permanent. The word nearly made him trip. He needed all four limbs to outrun them. Needed to lose the cleavers.
But he could feel it. The fusion wasn't just physical, it was something deeper. His flesh wrapped the hilts. His nerves fed the blades. The cleavers weren't tools anymore. They were him.
A cold shiver ran up his spine as that voice, the one from the dream, the one that mocked him while he bled out, ripped through his memory.
"How do I let go?!"
[System // Notification]
"Just tell me!"
He slashed at the panel as it blinked into view, scrambling to stay ahead.
[Recommendation: Think return. Visualize the weapons receding into your arms.]
"Visualize?!"
He nearly vomited. Visualize? How the hell was he supposed to picture anything but his own death right now?
Still, no matter how impossible it felt, he had to do it, and fast.
Out of nowhere, his back split open. An imp had gotten too close.
Muscles spasmed and his nerves screamed. He hissed but he didn't stop. If he slowed down, claws would be the least of his problems.
"Wait, I still—!"
But as soon as the thought came, he instantly realized it was no good. He couldn't use his skill with the cleavers still fused to his hands. He couldn't use his claws.
[Weapons are symbiotic in nature. Rend will still apply.]
His heart skipped.
"Stay out of my head!"
Skidding to a stop, he spun, arms wide.
He didn't think. Just acted.
"Rend!"
An icon blinked into view with a three second countdown. Accompanied by something else.
The cleavers grew.
He didn't get to admire it. No time. His arms moved on instinct, both blades outstretched, he brought them together, slicing through the closest imps as his arms crossed.
Violence... then silence.
The blades stretched nearly four feet in an instant, massive, wide cleavers that looked like they belonged to something five times the imp's size. Brutal tools made for butchery. But despite their size, they felt unchanged.
Half a dozen bodies had hit the ground, torn clean through. Their parts scattered like wet meat, distracting the swarm as he pivoted again.
'Three seconds!'
He pushed forward, cleavers ripping through anything within reach. Four, maybe five more swings.
That was all.
But the flesh field had emptied around him. Over thirty of his former kin, dead.
[System // Notification]
[Kills with Symbiotic Weapons grant Cooldown Reduction // 15sec per kill // All Skills]
He didn't realize it, too new to the system. Normally, Rend would've gone into a five-minute cooldown. But the timer never appeared.
His view was clear.
He glanced at the Soulmass meter. Still full.
[System // Notification]
[Symbiotic Weapons now auto-consume soulmass from targets. No cost to User if conditions are met.]
He looked at the swarm, and grinned.
He wasn't sure how these blades would fare against stronger enemies. Against higher demons. But for his own kind?
They were overkill.
He charged, laughing. Loud and wild. For the first time, he understood it. That envy he'd felt toward Charon, the sound of his laughter.
Now he had his own, and it felt good. Really good.
It felt like power.
"Rend!"
----
Very few things could make a demon pause, especially in Hell. Death, betrayal, horrors beyond reason, all of it was constant. Unremarkable.
But on this day, inside the first layer of Hell, deep within the flesh fields of the Maw, something was happening that would make even a Demon Lord stop and wonder.
An imp was slaughtering his own kind.
One could argue it was the how. The way he moved, two cleavers soaked in guts and meat, blades stretching mid-swing to cleave through entire clusters of his brethren.
But none of that was what truly mattered.
From the lowest feeders like the Corpse Worms to the mightiest lords of Hell, only one thing would hold their attention.
The laughter.
That shrill, joyous laughter.
Even as he chased the last of them. Even as he slammed his cleaver down again and again, pulping what was already dead, he laughed.
A devil's holiday.
"Wonderful!"
There were fewer now. Easy to count. His focus split, half on the timer floating in his view, the other locked on the fleeing imps.
KRG-SHNK!
One swing. A headless corpse dropped. The cooldown ticked down in chunks. The kill clean, just like the others. No arms, no tails, only necks. And the occasional skull.
He scanned the field. The rest were scattering, bolting in different directions.
"Heh-he-he...that's enough."
He exhaled, steam pouring off his body as the tension faded from his limbs. For a moment, he stood in the silence... and chuckled.
"That was...fun? Yeah...fun."
[User has continued to exceed system expectations. Recommendation: seek shelter. Process changes. Collect rewards.]
The voice killed his mood.
"Wait..."
He blinked a few times.
"Rewards?"
Mood restored.