[Chapter: 05: Awakening Power, Testing Limits And Hunts And It's Problems]
Looking at the stone and silt piled up before him, Dex opened his palm without hesitation.
Since this was a bloodline-awakened spell, it required no chanting, no preparation, and no elaborate gestures. The power surged through him instinctively, as natural as breathing. Within an instant, a blood-red fireball, its searing heat warping the air around it, formed between his fingers. Roughly fifteen centimeters in diameter, the fiery sphere pulsated ominously, illuminating the entire cave with a sinister glow.
Call out!
With just a thought, the fireball streaked forward, tearing through the air at breakneck speed.
Boom!
A loud explosion rocked the cavern, sending a shockwave reverberating through the stone walls. The fireball struck the obstructing rubble, blasting it apart in a shower of molten fragments. The crimson flames licked the surroundings, briefly illuminating the depths before dissipating into flickering embers.
Dex allowed the residual magic to fade as he observed the results. In the aftermath, a large hole, about three to four meters deep, now marred the stone barrier. It wasn't enough to fully clear the passage, but based on his memory of when he originally sealed it, one more shot would be sufficient to penetrate through completely.
Summoning his magic power once more, he conjured another fireball—identical in size and intensity, but this time, he didn't just form it. Instead, he directed his mental focus toward the fire, compressing the blood flames violently, compacting them into an even denser mass.
Boom!
A second explosion roared through the cavern, this time even more forceful. When the smoke and embers faded, Dex examined his handiwork.
The newly formed hole had expanded another two meters deeper. There were still a few residual obstacles, but nothing significant. With one final spell, he could completely breach the passage.
Yet, he did not immediately act.
Instead, he analyzed the results.
The first spell had used his innate fireball technique, while the second had involved directly compressing blood flames without shaping them into a fireball. The difference in power and consumption was staggering.
Using the fireball spell resulted in maximum efficiency, with controlled expenditure.
Compressing blood flames without the spell reduced power by nearly half, while consumption skyrocketed—four times higher than the fireball technique, an eightfold difference in efficiency.
Dex smirked, storing the knowledge away. "Useful, but inefficient."
Before proceeding further, he decided to thoroughly test the rest of his abilities. He moved deeper into the cavern, selecting a relatively open area where he could freely unleash his new spells and skills.
Over the next hour, he experimented with each of his newly acquired skills, gauging their effectiveness, mana cost, and practical application.
The results left him more than satisfied.
His bloodline spells required no incantations, could be cast instantly, and had zero cooldown restrictions. As long as he had enough magic power, he could unleash them as often as he pleased.
Additionally, his energy vision allowed him to perceive magic in ways he had never before experienced. He could sense the ebb and flow of power, detect the faintest shifts in life energy, and even see invisible entities lurking beyond mortal perception.
Stealth, illusions, and most tricks were meaningless before him.
After exhausting his energy reserves through relentless testing, Dex finally sat on the chaotic, debris-littered ground, taking deep, slow breaths as he allowed himself to recover his magic and stamina.
As he meditated, the lingering heat from his blood flames radiated softly in the dim cavern. The warmth was almost comforting, a reminder of his power.
After some time, he licked his lips, his crimson eyes gleaming with renewed hunger.
It was time to move on.
Rising to his feet, he dusted himself off and began his next objective.
He had spent enough time testing his abilities. Now, he needed to determine something even more important—
Where did he stand in the Wailing Forest's food chain?
---
The first real test of his strength came in the form of an unfortunate opponent.
A hulking demon, its form resembling a monstrous werewolf, loomed before him. Dark chitinous plates covered its body like armor, making it look more insectoid than lupine. Its clawed hands twitched with tension, and a primal snarl escaped its throat.
It could feel its life force being drained, its vitality slipping away as an unseen force siphoned its energy.
Its instincts screamed resist, and so it did—or at least, it tried.
Summoning every ounce of its remaining power, the beast lunged forward, intending to launch one final, desperate attack.
But Dex had already anticipated its futile resistance.
Hiss!
With a swift motion, his barbed tail speared straight through the demon's chest cavity.
The moment the blade-like tip pierced flesh, he twisted violently, churning its internal organs like a butcher grinding meat. Simultaneously, blood flames surged through the wound, roasting its insides until they were charred beyond repair.
The demon's howl of defiance was cut short.
It died instantly.
This one was a Little Devil, a rank stronger than the Ape Demon he had faced before.
Yet the fight had been over before it even began.
Dex hadn't even lifted his hands.
The moment the battle started, he had cast an instant bloodline spell—[Soul Impact]—stunning the creature's mind, leaving it momentarily paralyzed. His tail had done the rest.
The fight hadn't even lasted a few seconds.
Pathetic.
Holding up the lifeless body, Dex smirked before tearing off one of its arms with a single jerk. His jaw unhinged, his mouth stretching far beyond human limits until the edges reached the sides of his ears.
Rows of razor-sharp teeth gleamed in the dim light.
Then he bit down, tearing into the meat without hesitation.
As he chewed, he strolled onward, completely indifferent to the still-warm corpse dragging behind him, impaled on his tail like a piece of dried meat.
After sucking out the last remnants of vitality, he discarded the husk, tossing it into the underbrush.
---
The Wailing Forest
Since leaving the cave, he had wandered aimlessly, encountering a steady stream of foes.
Over a dozen Little Demons
Seven or eight Baby Demons
Hundreds of demonized creatures—feral beasts corrupted by Abyssal energy
These creatures weren't native demons. Their ancestors had come from other planes. The ancestors of those demonized creatures, unlike the native creatures like demons, mostly came from other planes, and finally stayed here for various reasons.
The offspring of them absorb the magic power in the bottomless abyss, drink the water of the abyss, eat the plants of the abyss, and the animal flesh and blood of the abyss. After experiencing the pollution of the abyss, they will become bloodthirsty and evil regardless of their original Alignment.
Now, they were mindless monsters, incapable of anything but killing and breeding.
Most of them weren't worth his time. Too weak. Too fragile.
The demonized creatures in the Wailing Forest have high and low strengths. The strongest is probably the [lower demon] rank, and the weakest is a bit weaker than the [young demon], but most of them have one characteristic in common. It's good reproduction, otherwise it would have been killed by endless demons!
The strongest creatures in the Wailing Forest barely reached the Lower Demon rank. But even after searching for hours, he had yet to encounter one.
His plans for a true challenge were falling apart.
Dex's patience was running thin.
His tail lashed out, impaling yet another demonized beast attempting to ambush him. Its crude optical camouflage was utterly useless against his energy vision.
[Evolution Points +77]
He barely acknowledged the notification. Instead, he scowled as he looked toward the darkening sky.
"Too slow."
Raising his head, Dex narrowed his crimson eyes at the darkening sky, a frown tugging at his lips. The eerie glow of the abyssal stars, a sickly reddish hue, was beginning to fade beyond the jagged skyline of twisted trees and looming cliffs. Time had passed faster than expected, yet he felt far from satisfied.
This is too slow.
The rate at which he was collecting evolution points and refining his abilities left much to be desired. Compared to the chaotic bloodbath of the riverbank, where demons clashed in a frenzied struggle for dominance, the Wailing Forest was an entirely different beast.
At the riverbank, demons surged forward in relentless waves, slaughtering anything in sight. There was no room for hesitation, no time for strategy—only raw carnage. The strong feasted on the weak, and the battlefield itself became a forge, tempering demons into stronger, more vicious predators. It was a place where survival hinged on raw power and the ability to kill before being killed.
But the Wailing Forest was different.
It was not a battlefield of mindless slaughter but a vast hunting ground, carefully designed to sharpen the instincts of young demons. Here, brute force alone was not enough. The forest demanded cunning, patience, and an understanding of unseen dangers lurking in every shadow. The abyss itself was an ever-shifting nightmare, constantly birthing new horrors, and this place was a microcosm of its endless depths.
The true threats did not announce their presence.
They lurked in the canopy, watching with eyes that glowed like embers. They coiled beneath the thick, gnarled roots of ancient trees, waiting for an unwary footstep. Even the flowers here were not passive; some released hallucinogenic spores to ensnare prey, while others hid barbed tendrils capable of piercing through demon flesh in an instant. The ground itself could betray him—what looked like solid earth might crumble away, revealing a pit of writhing, flesh-eating maggots or a slumbering predator waiting to be disturbed.
A single misstep could be fatal.
The Abyss, for all its chaos, had a brutal kind of logic. The riverbank honed a demon's ability to fight, to face enemies head-on in a relentless struggle of strength against strength. But the Wailing Forest trained something far more dangerous—the art of predation, the skill of silent, calculated slaughter.
It was a different kind of battlefield, one that molded demons into assassins, manipulators, and patient killers.
And that was precisely why Dex found it frustrating.
For him, a demon whose strength grew through combat, this place felt inconvenient. He didn't need to hunt in the traditional sense—he needed constant battles, relentless opposition, and an unending flow of enemies to refine his skills and accumulate evolution points. The creatures here, hiding and skulking about, forced him to waste time playing a game of patience rather than indulging in the straightforward brutality of war.
'If only I could flush them all out at once…'
For a fleeting moment, he considered the idea of setting the entire forest ablaze, turning it into a grand inferno of destruction. It would force everything hidden in the shadows into the open, driving them into a desperate frenzy to escape the fire. He could slaughter them in droves, reaping their souls before they had a chance to scatter.
The thought alone was exhilarating.
But when he tested the feasibility of his plan, reality proved to be disappointing. His blood flames, while powerful, were not suited for mass destruction. The trees here were not ordinary—they were enchanted with abyssal energy, making them highly resistant to elements. He could force them to burn, but only by continuously supplying magic. The moment he ceased feeding them power, the flames would sputter out.
It wasn't just the trees. Even the undergrowth resisted burning. The plants of the Abyss were alive in more ways than one. Many of them could regenerate from damage, and some even absorbed fire as sustenance. If he wasn't careful, he might end up strengthening certain creatures rather than weakening them.
And there was another issue.
Even if the fire did succeed in wiping out large numbers of demons and creatures, he would still have to find their souls afterward. Souls didn't linger forever. The Abyss was a realm of endless hunger, and if he didn't personally claim them in time, they would either be devoured by stronger demons or dispersed back into the chaotic essence of the plane.
Dex grimaced, acknowledging another flaw in his abilities.
He lacked the means to harvest souls on a large scale.
Right now, he could only claim them one by one, manually restraining them with his magic and absorbing them through his own power. Regular demons, according to his inherited knowledge, needed to at least reach the rank of [Lesser Demon] before they could begin harvesting souls from a distance. And even then, the process had limits—if a soul was too strong, it would resist capture. The more powerful the enemy, the harder it was to claim their essence.
Among demons, there were only three widely accepted methods for securing souls:
1. Kill the target personally. This was the simplest and most direct method. If a demon was powerful enough, they could rip the soul from their victim immediately upon death. However, this required an overwhelming difference in power, or else the soul could resist or even escape.
2. Forge a contract. Many demons specialized in deception and manipulation, tricking mortals or lesser beings into binding contracts. Once a soul was bound by an abyssal agreement, it could be collected without resistance, no matter how powerful the target was. The power of the contract was absolute.
3. Corruption and domination. Some demons had the ability to infect and erode the will of others, gradually twisting them into puppets or thralls. When the corruption was complete, the victim's soul became an extension of the demon's power, allowing for effortless harvesting.
Dex had none of these abilities yet.
For now, he had two potential paths to strengthen himself:
One option was to wait for an outside summoning. If a mortal attempted to call forth an abyssal entity, he could seize the opportunity, riding the summoning magic into another world. This would allow him to escape the slow grind of the Wailing Forest and find better prey elsewhere.
The problem?
There was no way to predict who would be summoning him—or why.
It could be a desperate cultist offering sacrifices for power, an arrogant warlock seeking a servant, or—worst of all—a group of researchers looking to dissect a demon for magical study.
Every day, countless demons tried their luck, answering summonings in hopes of gaining power or making deals with mortals. And every day, just as many were captured, imprisoned, or outright destroyed before they could even step foot into another world.
Many demons fell into the hands of wizards and alchemists who saw them as nothing more than exotic specimens.
One moment, a weak demon might think they'd found an easy target—a foolish mortal trying to strike a bargain. The next moment, they'd find themselves bound by powerful runes, dissected for magical research, or turned into fuel for an even greater spell.
No thanks.
That left one other option—continuing his evolution here, in the Abyss.
Dex sighed, exhaling a faint trace of red mist from his nostrils.
The other option was to integrate himself into the Howling Forest step by step. Although the efficiency was slower, it had its own advantages. The experience gained in such an environment was invaluable, and the rewards that came with it were undeniable. Moreover, the strongest opponents he would face in this place were only at the level of [lower demons]. As long as he avoided being surrounded by a large horde, there was little chance of facing fatal danger.
After three seconds of careful deliberation, Dex made his decision.
It was far better to bide his time and adapt to the Wailing Abyss rather than rushing ahead recklessly and getting himself torn apart before he could truly grow. The Abyss was merciless, and death came swiftly to those who failed to consider their next move.
Though the very essence of his demonic nature craved bloodshed, destruction, and mindless slaughter—an insatiable thirst to tear through worlds and feast upon the weak—it was something deeper, something more primal, that burned hottest within him. It was lust. Not just a desire for carnage but an all-consuming hunger that extended beyond the battlefield. His instincts demanded domination, not merely in combat but in all things—flesh, spirit, and power alike. The intoxicating need to subjugate, to ravish, to drown in the corruption of ecstasy was woven into his very being, a fire that no amount of indulgence could ever truly quench.
And yet, amidst this primal chaos, there was another force at work—a whisper, faint but persistent. The lingering memories of his past life as a human stirred in the depths of his mind, offering silent warnings against reckless indulgence. Brute strength alone, no matter how overwhelming, was never enough. The history of the Abyss was littered with the corpses of those who believed otherwise. Demons who sought nothing but raw destruction, who fed their desires without strategy or caution, rarely lived long enough to carve out a true legacy.
If Dex truly wished to—savor every forbidden pleasure, to make the universe itself kneel before him—he would need more than just power. He would need cunning. True invincibility was not achieved through brute force alone but through ruthless intellect, through manipulation and foresight.
Power was only the first step. The ability to wield it effectively, to know when to hold back and when to strike, was what separated the rulers from the corpses. And Dex had no intention of being the latter.
His tail twitched behind him, restless. The Wailing Forest wasn't ideal, but for now, it was the best hunting ground he had. If he wanted to grow stronger, he would have to make do.
He would simply have to hunt faster.
No more wasting time.
A dark grin stretched across his face as he cracked his knuckles, his claws gleaming in the dim light.
"Time to shake the forest up a little."
*****
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