Demonic Devourer's Development

"Oh, that thing again." I tsked. "What do you want from me? Show off to people?"

The Master of Sin raised a brow and sat back in his seat. "Not if you don't want to. As far as organisation of things goes, we have a more immediate and important problem. We are expecting plenty of guests, and the resources of Dis are barely enough to feed those who already live there. I ordered the guards to put the useless rabble from the streets to the meat grinders, so that will give us some something to eat—but we have a much harder time with things to drink. Meat can be preserved, but blood cannot, and gathering water from bodies is a hard and barely worth it process. We normally keep some people alive just for gathering blood from them, but they require guarding, and if I were to order to save as much as I suspect we will need, there won't be enough guards to keep the order in the city."

"Ah yes. Water." I grimaced. I've been drinking only blood all the time I've spent in Dis, and it had been not the most delightful of pleasures. Clean water—I've been missing it, together with all other pleasures of the mortal realm. Unclean water, though… "I suppose I can arrange something. There's plenty of water in the Third Circle. That's two circles away, but still…"

"And barely a drop reaches us." The Master of Sin curled his lip in distaste. "If only the rain clouds from the Third Circle gathered over the Abyss, too—but no. It makes sense as Hell is supposed to be the shittiest place imaginable, but the sheer closeness of all that water makes my blood boil." He clenched his fists, minding his claws by habit, but his knuckles still turned white from the strength he put in the gesture.

"The most ironic thing is that people from the Third Circle think that they have too much water." I snorted. "Alright. I will build a ladder to the third level. You will be able to use it to gather rainwater and bring it back there. Or trade for flamerock, maybe?"

"Amazing! What an excellent idea. It alone makes you the best lord Dis had even seen." The Master of Sin jumped up in excitement. "Trade! The grand movement of civilisation and prosperity. I never thought I'd ever hear this word mentioned here except in stories from my harem girls."

"This is all on you." I gave him a narrow-eyed look. "You just wanted water. Well, there will be water. And I want my army, sooo…"

"You will have it." The Master of Sin gave me a deep nod. "I'm sure people from the Third Circle will be enthusiastic to come here, too."

We were going to wait and see. Before that, I had to build the ladder, which is what I set out to do as soon as my immediate business in Dis was over. I had all the materials I needed—my webs—and the rest was a matter of weaving.

Maybe it would've been better to make it a rope elevator, but this sort of construction was too complicated for me to make. So ladder it was. Demons, at least half-decent ones, were strong enough to carry containers with water and heavy rocks up and down, even with how long the way was.

It took me two full days of weaving webs to make a basic rope ladder, fixed here and there on the stone. It was about six kilometres long, wide enough for three people to use it at once, and by the end, I felt like I could weave more ladders with my eyes closed. I was also so sick of the process that even the potential profits of such task didn't motivate me to build a similar ladder to more circles.

On my way, I met inhabitants of the rocky Fourth Circle, too, and scared them away from the ladder with some threats of what I will do with everyone if it breaks—which wasn't the easiest thing to achieve with how strong my webs were. Then I advertised them the upcoming tournament.

With the Master of Sin happy and sending out more people to trade with the Third Circle, while employing some brave enough to descend to Dis people from the Fourth Circle, I had no more organisational matters to attend to—thankfully. Enforcers were busy regaining their former strength of bodies and didn't need my help.

I was free to experiment with my own abilities. This power to consume another's conscience—how did it work? What combination of abilities allowed it?

I evolved some—I had EXP to slightly level up some of my abilities, first of all flight, as I needed mobility to get in for a bite. Then I experimented on rabble from the Sixth Circle that was unlucky enough to meet me. First, I would kill a man, then kill him again, and again, and again, until their soul would be so far gone, it would be see-through and ready to escape to the Wheel of Reincarnation. Then, I would try to eat it… it didn't work.

I tried to remember that feeling I felt. The unity and the divergence of the mind and the body—it was so elusive, I spent days chasing it for naught. The obsession for it burned my soul, and I could not even force myself to check on the matters in Dis. They were doing fine, and the Master of Sin knew better than to distract me in the state I was.

But I got it, eventually. When there was no body left, no meat shell to provide a ground, no basis for the mind to feed on, I could do it, I realised. To reach out with my mind and to consume a defenceless conscience, devour its memories and personality, leave nothing behind. It didn't join me, it wasn't even transformed into EXP, but it was destroyed, and for good.

There was no escape.