The Twelve Apocalypses: A Damned Soul's Path to the Abyss

In spite of the success I'd had with my family's spells, I wasn't quite satisfied with the day's work just yet. Sure, the Hall magics were a solid start. But those magics hadn't saved my family from falling to the Abyss.

Even if that fall had been partly due to treachery, it wasn't wise to rely fully on my mortal inheritance. Not if I really wanted to grow.

With this sound reasoning in mind, I finally broke out the souls I'd been saving. Hunger sprang up in me at the thought of devouring them all. For a moment, I tried to pretend that this desire was all about my growth-goals and had nothing to do with my demonic cravings.

I didn't pretend for too long, though. This was not the time for overanalysis or hesitation. I just scarfed all the souls down, and if I did relish the way they melted on my tongue, then so what?

As a demon, I was able to examine soul crystals as thoroughly as an Absorption Station. That meant I had a rough idea of what each soul could offer me. This collection of souls was one I'd carefully set aside amidst all the chaos of preparing for Breskwor. It included several different jinn souls and a couple Lagyel natives with interesting magical skillsets.

It also contained the soul of a superior golem.

Once upon a time, I had been terrified of devouring a superior soul for fear of what that would do to my sense of self. Now, I merely cherished the tingles it sent racing through my senses.

Whereas regular and greater souls did add a miniscule amount of power to my reserves, it was with the superior soul that I saw my first hint of true progress. The edges of my soul pressed ever so slightly outwards, and I even noticed a slight thickening in my soul's opacity at those same edges.

Unfortunately, that was it.

I knew on an instinctive level that if I kept devouring souls, then my own would eventually grow both larger and thicker. Once the changes reached my core, they would suddenly accelerate, and all the power trapped within me from the consumption of others would erupt into a glorious evolution.

Alas, the number of souls required for such growth would be staggering. Unless I could somehow get my hands on a few souls of greater quality than my own, it would likely take years of constant devouring and battles before I could advance further.

Of course, the Abyss was always ready to provide for those willing to serve.

The importance of merits had finally become obvious to me upon my ascension. Those demons lucky or skilled enough to earn merits could, at any point, visit an Absorption Station and cash them in for an infusion of growth directly from the Abyss itself. It was the most expedient and explosive means of progress available to any demon. Accrue enough merits? You could exchange them all at once and progress straight through into the ranks of nobility.

Another potential method of advancement was to make a sacrifice, like I had done to further my transformation into a demon past the basic levels. The only downside of that plan was that you needed to sacrifice a soul with particularly valuable knowledge or unique traits. For example, the first demon to sacrifice the soul of a species never before encountered by the Abyss stood to gain ridiculous rewards.

Sadly, this was both difficult and rare. Thanks to the long and bloody history of demonic invasions, everything worth sacrificing had already been offered up to the Abyss at least once. I had it on good authority that the plane had even feasted on the soul of a Primordial before. What could possibly be left?

There were rumors that some enterprising demons ran mortal 'farms', where they were attempting to produce unique species or organisms, but that kind of thing was definitely not to my taste.

In any case, the souls I had just eaten weren't valuable to me primarily for any growth they could provide.

The knowledge they contained? Now that was the true prize.

I started with the jinn. Just the insight into how they approached spellwork was invaluable. As partially elemental life forms, they had a fascinating method of accumulating mana. They freely established a connection between themselves and the elemental plane. Then they could build a gate within their soul that spewed out elemental mana endlessly. They used this gate to temper themselves, grow their mana reserves, and 'purify' their own elemental mana.

I couldn't use the method wholesale, but I could probably adapt it to start building up my affinity for crystal mana at an accelerated pace. Come to think of it, I was fairly certain Glaustro had done something similar with earth mana. I'd noticed an oddity in his soul that could be explained as a jinn-inspired type of elemental gate.

It was an odd thing to be so keenly aware of other people's souls, and to know that they had just as much insight into your own. Some of the older and more powerful demons did bother with defenses that made casual inspection impossible. However, this was often seen as a sign of cowardice.

Silly? Perhaps. But then again, demons never did make much logical sense.

The second thing of value I discovered was the method jinn used to conjure up that rune-armor of theirs, though I had no desire even to try and copy it. The change was semi-permanent and took a ton of work to dispel. They twisted their natural forms into an enchanted, battle-ready state and then used runes to prevent the change from undoing itself.

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The runes also strengthened them and gave them some unique abilities, sure. But that didn't change the fact that the jinn were basically mutilating themselves for a power boost. Beyond the insights this method gave me into their enchantment practices, it held zero appeal.

Next, I turned my attention to the mortal souls, which provided me with some fascinating information about crystal magic. Most of the Lagyel mortals used some flavor of sand or crystal magic themselves. After all, if you squinted hard enough, sand was a type of crystal.

Thanks to this overlap, I had high hopes of figuring out how to ape the mana-resistant properties of Lagyel's sands. Only time and a thorough examination of my armor and sword would tell if that idea could bear fruit.

Finally, having saved the best for last, I immersed myself in the memories of the superior golem.

The experience was… educational.

I immediately ran into some roadblocks, stemming from the extremely alien consciousness attached to the soul. Though the golem had been created to mimic the soul structure and thought patterns of a jinn, it simply wasn't an organic creature. It couldn't perceive the world through the same lens as a mortal or even naturally immortal species.

For it, the countless years it had spent as scattered grains of sand were but the blink of an eye, unremarkable and wholly acceptable. Me? I wanted to claw my brain out from the sheer boredom the memories inspired.

Even worse, I felt compelled to comb through them! The way the golem instinctively and naturally manipulated the sand that constituted its body was breathtakingly masterful. And it did so constantly. Each second of its existence was a valuable insight into advanced elemental control.

The spells I'd inherited did promise to make it just as easy for me to manipulate crystal eventually, but anything I picked up from the golem would definitely accelerate my long path to mastery.

Even more fascinating was the golem's behavior in its fully manifested form. The many runes that marked its body were seamlessly remade each time it broke apart, but they were also anchored to the creature's soul. Whenever their physical manifestations were damaged, the soul was damaged as well.

This feedback between physical and soul damage gave me an idea. If I could set up something similar on my own soul, and have my crystal manipulation spell up permanently… but that would require grafting runes directly onto my soul. I wasn't quite ready to contemplate that yet.

It was an idle thought at this point that led to something glorious.

What if I could copy the golem's inherent rune formation not on my soul, but using my crystal? After all, the main difficulty in enchanting an item came from getting the rune structure inside the object. What would happen if I tried to grow crystals with runes embedded in them from the start?

A more cautious person would have first tried to grow crystals in the shape of runes and attempted to trigger them like that. My stupid ass immediately conjured up a fist-sized crystal, whose internal makeup I then carefully manipulated to contain the outline of the demonic rune for 'heat'.

In my oh-so-brilliant mind, this would create a heating stone that could warm or cool depending on whether or not I was feeding it mana. I never paused to consider the fact that forging something out of pure mana meant it would be flush with the mystical force from the start. So, when I completed the final pieces of the rune, the result was… explosive.

I had about a fraction of a second for my mana sense to tell me that all the mana packed into the crystal was draining into the rune. Then a flash of light seared my eyes, and my hand felt like it was dipped into lava.

Now, since I was a demon, that wasn't the tragedy it could have been. But judging from the way Mia's claws poked into my sides, she very much did not appreciate getting flashbanged.

"…Ooops?"

"I was relaxing, Hayden. I was comfortable." Her quiet hiss didn't herald good things for my future.

"I'll do better?"

"Not good enough."

—

Mia refused to let me spend all our down time on my new obsession. I assured her that growing runes directly into my crystal would make me much safer and stronger in the long run, but that wasn't enough for the cat. Instead, as the rare period of peace and quiet dragged on for a few more days, she forced me to spar with her.

I didn't complain. In fact, after she almost kicked my ass in record time the first day, I swiftly came to share her enthusiasm for this form of training.

Mia was a speed demon at that point. When she combined all her spells to conjure clones, cloud a person's senses, and conceal her own position behind illusions, she became a true terror. I couldn't count the number of times her claws gently grazed against my neck, reminding me that the move could have been much deadlier if she'd wanted it to be.

I still gave as good as I got!

My shield was much better than hers. It also didn't take me long to figure out that I had a much finer control of mana than she did. While she had to keep feeding mana into her ravenous techniques, I could sustain several at just about optimal levels without much strain.

Our training duels grew more even, then tilted in my favor, when my crystal magic research began to bear fruit.

I didn't give up on my fast-paced style of combat that relied on phasing in and out of battle while harassing enemies. If anything, I just leaned into it further. Now, wherever my feet landed, twisted spires of crystal sprang out of the ground like demented flowers. I could even make them take on the form of rose bushes if I bothered to spend a little extra time and mana.

This didn't do much for the sheer functionality of the move. Still, it sure looked cool to see a whole 'garden' of crystal roses twist into existence, trying to grab hold of a slippery kitty cat with murder in her eyes.

I quickly became fond of conjuring up domes of crystal latticework that bristled with thorns and spikes. This did little to impede either of us, since we could send out gaseous clones and then instantly switch places with them, but I could imagine an enemy falling for the trick and getting stuck in a constantly regenerating crystal hellscape.

Best of all, a couple of days into our training montage, I finally managed to imbue runes into my crystals. The first rune I saw success with was 'toughness', then 'sharpness.' Sure, these were basic runes, but they seriously shored up some of the weaknesses in my conjuring. Mia actually had to dodge or block my constructs instead of just letting them hit her.

The strengthening also made my conjurations last much longer on the field of battle. Once I learned how to add self-regeneration runes, I wouldn't have to keep diverting part of my attention to fixing everything Mia broke. Then I would really be a pain to fight.

I had to pay in literal blood for every bit of progress I made, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying it.