Chapter 16: Gains (b)
He'd seen the word before in the system, Curse. Back then, it hadn't meant much. But now, it carried weight, something heavy. Dangerous.
They were his kind's version of magic. Not cast through mana, but souls. Demons apparently couldn't use spells like humans. But they could bend souls like muscle. An imp though? No affinity. No control.
But the system changed that.
Through it, he could touch souls in ways no imp ever had. His curses were split into two types, Buffs and Debuffs. The labels felt off, but he didn't question it.
Hellfire was a Buff. An attack enhancer. Simple. Direct. His kind of tool.
[Curse // Hellfire]
[Type // Active]
[Category // Buff]
[Sub-Category // Offensive]
[Rank // F]
[Description]
[Coats User's claws or wielded weapons in black Soul Fire.]
[Effect]
[+10% damage to all melee attacks while active]
[Limit // Self]
[Cost // 1 Soulmass to activate // 1 Soulmass per 5sec Upkeep]
[Cast Time // Instant]
[Duration // Until canceled or until Soulmass is depleted]
[Cooldown // 30 seconds]
[Note]
[All attacks count as Hellfire-infused // No elemental burn or enemy ignition at F Rank.]
[Flavor Text]
["It burns what should not be touched, fed not by flesh, but by the stolen weight of souls."]
"Not by flesh, but by souls... I like that. Reminds me of me."
He could already see it, his claws wrapped in black flame, carving through flesh, ripping out organs, killing anything in his way. The thought alone lit something deep inside his mind. He started wondering what other curses he might unlock, what other soul-bound powers were waiting.
A hunger for knowledge clawed at him now, curiosity, raw and desperate.
'What is a soul, really?'
Closing his eyes, he forced himself to breathe. He wasn't sure why, but it helped. Calmed the storm of thoughts. There was still too much to do. Learn the interface. Assign his points. And then... the cleavers, his most painful gain yet.
"User Interface."
A brand new tab blinked into view, listing options highlighted as Unlocked. He could now move or resize any display in his view. He left them as they were for now. In the top corner opposite his Health and Soulmass bars, he toggled the Map feature to stay active.
Now, a faint circular icon hovered in the corner, opaque, with shifting shapes and colors that roughly mapped the terrain around him. The letters N, S, E, and W marked each cardinal direction, and at the center sat a single red dot. Him.
He hesitated, then toggled one more setting, Automatic Rewards. No more stabbing through confirmation prompts.
Swiping the panel away, he stared at his updated view. He gave a slow nod, satisfied.
"Forty health. Is that good?"
[User currently has four Vitality. Natural stats cap at one hundred. User has four of one hundred possible Vitality points. This equals forty Health. Forty out of a possible—]
"I get it! Stupid question…"
He should've known better. Even if the System answered more now, it still had a way of making him feel like an idiot.
Opening his profile again, he took a moment to press through each stat, letting the data sink in.
Strength boosted attack power, obvious enough. More strength, harder hits. Vitality increased health. Agility meant speed.
Intelligence was where it got weird. The System had labeled his INT stat as "nerfed". Normally it would expand a user's mana pool. For him, all it did was improve processing speed, think faster, react faster.
Soulmass couldn't be raised with INT. Only leveling, increasing his Soul Integrity, or evolution would expand that.
But it was the last two stats that got interesting.
Flesh and Will.
Flesh, the system didn't explain much, but it was clear. The higher it climbed, the more he'd be able to shape and control his body. To command his own flesh with a thought.
Will was tied to the System itself. Raising it would unlock new features… and eventually, something called the Network. Every time he tried to select it, an error appeared. Even direct questions about this Network went unanswered.
And that made him want it more.
The only stat that really confused him was his defense. Unlike the others, it sat at 0%, a percentage, not a number.
When he pressed on it, the system simply explained that defense translated into damage reduction, but gave no information on how to increase it.
"Can I add points to defense?"
[Negative.]
"Then how do I increase it?"
[Currently, User can only increase defense through armor. Future options include evolution, buffs, and trait absorption via User's racial ability, once rank up has been achieved.]
"Rank... so I need to evolve for Minor Shifting to gain more slots? How many will I get?"
[Unknown. User's evolution path has not yet been deciphered or encoded.]
More unknowns. He was starting to wonder if the system actually knew anything at all.
Sighing, he paused and gathered his thoughts, careful not to sound like an idiot.
"If I understand this right... my racial abilities rank up when I evolve, and system skills, like Rend, evolve through use?"
[Correct.]
It was a lot to process, but clarity was starting to form. He could finally begin planning and shaping his path forward.
He stared at his stats again, thinking back to the last fight. Where had he fallen short? What stat, if raised, would've made the most difference?
[Impressive. User has selected the most logical method to evaluate growth. Noted.]
"Is there a toggle for you staying out of my head?! My thoughts!"
[Negative. No such toggle exists.]
The imp clenched his teeth. So this was just his life now—
"Life!"
Panic surged as he quickly scrolled to the bottom of his profile, finding the section he'd forgotten in all the chaos, his Directives. Feed, Kill, and Survive. He hadn't checked them once since he first read them.
His pulse slowed as he found what he was looking for.
[DIRECTIVE // SURVIVE]
[Life expectancy under standard conditions // 36 Days]
[Status // NORMAL]
The last time he saw it, he had thirty-six hours at best. Now he had days. He exhaled sharply, relief washing over him. Only briefly, because as his knowledge expanded, so did his grasp of time.
Thirty-six days wasn't long.
"How do I increase my lifespan?"
[Imp physiology is unique. User's race does not age, they decay. Feeding is the only method to prolong existence. To extend the time between required consumption or reduce the rate of decay, two known options exist. One, consume souls of higher purity. Two, Evolve. Imps were not born to survive.]
Snarling under his breath, he realized he hated his species even more than he thought possible.
"Eat and fight. So that's basically all I need to do..."
[Correct.]
The imp sighed, then smirked.
'At least it's simple.'
Killing wasn't a problem. Eating what he murdered was also second nature. All that was left was getting to Earth, finding a green place that didn't try to kill him every second.
With that, he made his decision. Based on the earlier fight, speed was what he needed most. He had a healing passive now, and his racial trait Feed was tied directly to the cleavers. As long as he kept the passive active and landed kills with his weapons, his health would recover. It wasn't perfect, but it was enough. Of course more health wouldn't hurt as well.
Strength would still be his long-term focus. Intelligence was worthless to him right now. Flesh and Will could wait.
Eyes glowing, he pressed his claw and began distributing his stats.
[STR // 7 → 10 // F]
[VIT // 4 → 6 // F]
[AGI // 6 → 10 // F]
[INT // 3 // F]
[FLH // 3 // F]
[WIL // 3 // F]
[AP // 9 → 0]
Three to Strength. Four to Agility. Two to Vitality.
His health ticked up to sixty. He still didn't know if that was good, but it felt like survival.
Then, almost mocking, the torment began.
A violent surge of fire tunneling under his skin. Muscles swelled too fast, tendons twisted like snapped cords. His back arched as his bones cracked, reshaped. It felt like his insides were being wrung out and stitched back together by hooked wire.
He strained, claws digging in, teeth bared as he snarled through the agony. Every nerve screamed. Every joint buckled and reset. His legs lengthened, shoulders bulked. His lungs burned like they were boiling.
Then it stopped. Not a fade, but a drop.
Breathing heavy, shaking, he flexed his claws, and they sang. Bloodlust surged, bright and hot. He wanted to rip something open. See what this new body could do. But a different voice, quieter but present, pushed up from the dark.
Think.
Not instinct, but his will. A new part of him was learning to wait. Even if his mouth still watered. Even if the need never really left.
Didn't help he was always hungry.
"Display Symbiotic–Weapon profile."
The greasy hole lit up again.
The last thing left, the cleavers. The things that had nearly killed him.
He still remembered the voice, the one that mocked him while his body was torn apart in a storm of arrows. That memory of death hadn't faded. Not even now, as the winds howled above, or when the heavy crunch of bone snapped through the air.
He opened the weapon profile and began to read, eyes narrowing with focus, not hearing a thing around him. Line after line, effect after effect, there was too much to take in at once, but he tried.
If he hadn't been so engrossed, maybe he would've noticed. Maybe he would've felt it.
The presence. The movement just beyond the patch of hair he was hiding in.
Something had arrived.
Drawn by the bloodbath he created.
And it wasn't alone.