Chapter 1100: 1099: The High Price of Power (Spacecraft Bonus -)
[A/N: This bonus Chapter is thanks to Pilgrim_. You’re the GOAT man. I appreciate this. Thank you.]
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Simon turned his attention inward.
Inside his body, the demonic energy of three Demon Kings was still waiting. He had held it back while he devoured their corpses, keeping it separate from his own and leaving it untouched.
Now, it was time to make it his.
He began with the coral-jawed Daemon’s.
It was the smallest of the three, and its nature was heavy and cold, like seawater at the bottom of the ocean. Traces of the Daemon’s Will still clung to it, and it was stubborn and foreign.
Simon drew a thin stream of it toward his heart.
His Chaos Flame received it.
The small, dense flame flared, and the foreign traces burned away. What remained was pure demonic energy, and his Chaos Flame refined it into his own elemental Chaos.
Then he guided that Chaos into his Forged Heart.
The black crystal walls of his heart had been forged in a single process. There was no flesh left to transform. To advance from one sub-grade to the next, he had to strengthen the living crystal he already possessed by pressing his Chaos deeper into its structure.
Simon sent the refined Chaos through the seven interwoven patterns inside his heart.
Earth. Fire. Ice. Shadow.
Wind. Space. Lightning.
The fine silver boundaries between the crystal layers brightened slightly as the Chaos sank into them.
Then the newest patterns.
Water had only just entered his body, and its marks within his heart were still thin and faint, like hairline cracks in black glass. Simon guided a careful portion of Chaos into them and watched them deepen slightly.
He couldn’t let one pattern grow faster than the others. His heart had to grow as one.
One cycle.
Then another.
And another.
The coral-jawed Daemon’s demonic energy was used up far sooner than he had hoped.
Simon frowned slightly, then moved on to the ram-horned Daemon’s.
It was larger, rougher and more violent. When it entered his Chaos Flame, it thrashed against it like a wild beast that refused to be tamed. Simon held it in place with his Will and let his Chaos Flame burn away the Daemon’s lingering traces one layer after another.
Once it was purified, the earth pattern in his heart drank more of it than any other.
Cycle after cycle passed.
The silver boundaries became brighter. The black crystal walls of his heart became denser, carrying more pressure with every beat.
Then the ram-horned Daemon’s energy was gone too.
Simon’s frown deepened.
He had expected it to take more than a single Demon King’s energy to advance.
But not this much more.
He turned to the largest portion.
Ilvara’s.
It was enormous, far more than the other two combined. And it was cold. Not the cold of ice or deep water, but the cold of a place light had never reached.
When Simon drew the first stream of it toward his heart, he felt something faint within it. A remnant of resistance, as though the shadows inside it still remembered who he was.
His Chaos Flame burned it away.
Because his shadow affinity was now High A grade, refining it was far easier than it would have been before. Ilvara’s demonic energy flowed into his Chaos Flame more smoothly than the other two had, and the shadow pattern in his heart deepened with every cycle.
Simon closed his eyes and let himself sink into the rhythm.
Draw.
Purify.
Refine.
Temper.
Over and over.
The rain kept falling on him, but he was no longer aware of it.
He knew why this was taking so much energy.
First of all, he wasn’t an ordinary demon. He was a True Daemon with two Royal bloodlines inside his body, the Uruqath and the Nine-Tailed Byakko. Royal bloodlines demanded more at every step than Noble or Common ones ever would, and he had two of them.
Secondly, his Chaos Flame wasn’t ordinary either. It had been baptized and transformed by the true Chaos Flames of the Chaos Wraps. It was purer and denser than the Chaos Flame of other demons at his rank, and it needed far more energy to refine.
Then there were his affinities.
Most demons possessed one affinity. Some had two. A rare few had three.
Simon had far more than that.
And they weren’t weak affinities. Wind, Space, Lightning, Fire and Ice were all S grade. Shadow was now High A grade. Earth was Peak B grade. He also had Darkness which was F grade.
Every one of them had a place in his heart. Every one of them had to be tempered alongside the others. The higher an affinity’s grade, the more Chaos its pattern demanded before it would grow.
All of these combined meant that he needed an absurd amount of demonic energy just to advance by a single sub-grade.
Simon kept going.
The patterns in his heart grew deeper and denser. The silver boundaries brightened until they gleamed between the crystal layers like veins of moonlight.
Then he felt it.
The threshold.
His heart pressed against it.
Simon gathered the refined Chaos from Ilvara’s demonic energy and drove it through all of his heart’s patterns at once.
BADUM!
His heart contracted deeply.
BADUM!
The black crystal walls held, and a heavier pulse spread out from the Chaos Flame at its centre.
A wave of pressure rolled out from Simon’s body. The rain falling around him was pushed back for a moment, and the surface of the sea beneath him flattened into a wide circle.
Simon slowly opened his eyes.
His crimson eyes glowed faintly in the grey light.
A Superior Forged Heart.
He was now a Superior Greater Demon.
Simon exhaled slowly and examined himself.
His demonic energy was denser than before. There was more of it too. His body felt stronger, though not by a huge margin. The room his body had to grow into had expanded again.
Then he turned his attention back to what remained of the demonic energy.
There was barely anything left.
Simon’s brows drew together.
He had hoped there would be enough to push him closer to the Supreme rank. But now he could feel it clearly.
The energy of three Demon Kings, one of them a Superior Demon King, had barely been enough to advance him by a single sub-grade.
And advancing to the Supreme rank would require even more than what he had just used.
’Far more.’
Simon looked out across the sea.
There weren’t many ways to obtain that amount of demonic energy. He would need to devour many more powerful demons and Daemons. Or he would need hell stones.
Not low grade or mid grade hell stones.
High grade hell stones. Peak grade hell stones. And a lot of them.
Even with all the hell stones he had taken from Lucien long ago, he doubted it would be enough.
Then a thought came to him, and his expression slowly became solemn.
If advancing from Superior to Supreme required this much, what would it take for him to become a Demon Lord?
And a Demon King?
Simon tried to estimate it.
He stopped halfway.
The number he had begun to imagine was so absurd that he didn’t want to finish calculating it.
"I might actually need to spend some time cultivating when I get to that point…" he muttered. "… maybe a few years?"
He fell silent.
Then, slowly, he started laughing.
It began as a soft chuckle and grew into a quiet laugh that rolled across the empty sea.
He couldn’t help it.
In his past life, it had taken him decades, almost a century of fighting and suffering, to become a Demi-God.
In this life, it hadn’t even been a year since he awakened his Chaos Flame.
And yet here he was, worrying that he advanced too slowly, while sitting on the sea after killing three Demon Kings. Demon Kings who were strong enough to be compared to the powerful Demi-Gods he had heard of in his past life.
Simon shook his head with a faint smile.
"How ridiculous."
His laughter faded.
In the distance, Vhal-Sar was still burning. Smoke still rose from the city in thick black columns.
His expression became calm and cold once again.
Simon stood up on the surface of the sea.
Six seams opened along his back, and his wings unfolded behind him. The slits along their surfaces opened all at once.
WHOOOOSH!
The vents fired.
Simon shot into the sky, the rain spraying away from him in a wide ring, and flew toward Vhal-Sar.