Demon King Ascension System

251 Finishing The Evolution (5)

With Blake drawing the flame pillar rune formation, the same one that he drew about an hour ago to combine with the whirlwind rune formation spell and create a fire tornado to kill the vultures, the humanoid demon finally took the full brunt of Blake’s attacks without being able to weaken it beforehand.

Blake intentionally used the flame pillar attack, one that had pure fiery red flame inside it rather than the dark flame because of the humanoid demon’s ability.

From his tests earlier, Blake found out that even though the humanoid demon was able to weaken his spell that contained a significant amount of darkness elements in them, the humanoid demon couldn’t do anything against a spell that didn’t have the darkness element as the consequential part of the spell. Evident from the humanoid demon being unable to do anything other than defend against Blake’s ordinary earth spike before.

And now, with such an explosive spell being thrown at the humanoid demon suddenly from right under it, the humanoid demon couldn’t do anything other than trying to cast a darkness barrier that covered its whole body from all sides.

However, Blake had poured enough nether into the rune formation to even cast a second realm darkness spell. Something that even the humanoid demon couldn’t completely dispel despite it was a spell that was purely made out of the darkness element, the element it could manipulate at will.

The sheer amount of nether and the raw strength contained in a spell that had that much nether in it was too much for the humanoid demon to handle. Moreover, it was a spell that purely consists of the fire element, not an ounce of darkness element was contained inside the 20-meter tall flame pillar.

With that kind of attack, the flimsy darkness barrier, no matter if it was twice as thick as the ordinary darkness barrier that Blake used to cast, wasn’t able to hold out against the flame, being destroyed in a matter of split seconds before the humanoid demon’s body was assaulted by the flame.

The humanoid demon might look lifeless and walk around like an undead demon that didn’t have its own goal and had a body that was numb to pain to support its reckless behavior.

And when the flame pillar hit its body square, Blake even began to think that the humanoid demons were indeed some type of undead demon due to the absence of screams or even any signs of showing pain despite having its whole body turned to a char.

.....

Instead of feeling pain, Blake could even see the humanoid demon had tried casting more spells while inside the flame. Fortunately for Blake, the humanoid demon’s attempts were fruitless due to the flame pillar maintaining its form for more than 10 whole seconds.

In those 10 seconds, the flame pillar had destroyed about ten darkness constructs, all of them which were the humanoid demon’s attempt to protect itself or even pull itself out of the flame pillar by throwing in a darkness tendril to shove itself out of the flame pillar’s body.

However, the flame pillar was too strong, destroying the darkness elemental constructs before they were able to manifest properly. And the flame pillar had also maintained itself long enough to destroy the humanoid demon’s unexpectedly tough body despite its frail appearance.

The vultures, the birds that were as big as Blake, couldn’t even take on the flame pillar without being turned into charred birds in just one second, but the humanoid demon surviving for about 6 whole seconds speaks volumes about how tough actually the humanoid demon’s body despite its body being similarly built with Blake.

Fortunately, with all that said and done, Blake the humanoid demon was finally defeated. Leaving nothing behind other than a charred corpse, a floating soul orb, and of course, the condensed darkness elemental stone that it had attached to its forehead.

First and foremost, Blake walked over and grabbed the soul, and swallowed it right away.

Nodding his head with a look of understanding, Blake mumbled, “It’s a level 15 soul. It had the same taste as the soul of the humanoid demon from the second realm.”

The soul didn’t have any kind of taste other than the original savoriness that a high leveled soul had. It was surely still a soul that Blake liked to have. But with his growing palette of sweet-tasting souls, the original savory taste of a spell without the sweet complimentary taste couldn’t get much reaction from him any longer.

It’s like after knowing how good a salad tastes after adding all kinds of condiments in it, mayonnaise, thousand island, soy dressing, sweet chili, and other kinds of salad dressings, Blake couldn’t be amazed too much by the pure taste of salad itself without the addition of those condiments.

So after swallowing the soul and acknowledging how good a maxed-out soul from the first demon realm tasted, Blake quickly moved on to the main course that the humanoid demon provided.

He couldn’t really eat it, but it was the sole reason Blake even bothered going into the nether rich zone in the first place. It was the missing piece from finishing his evolution. The condensed darkness elemental stone.

Seeing the stone that had the same color as the charred corpse, Blake extended his hand and easily plugged it out of the humanoid demon’s forehead and observed it closely in his hand.

Now that he got the stone in his palm, Blake could feel the smooth surface of the stone. Unblemished despite it having been stuck on the humanoid demon’s forehead for god knows how long and with not a single mark on its smooth surface despite being put inside the flame pillar that was enough to break apart the bones of a demon.

And the most noticeable characteristic of all was the constant surge of nether that went in and out of the condensed darkness stone. Earlier when Blake observed it from afar he only noticed that the stone constantly emitted an abundant amount of nether out of it.

But now that it was in his hand, Blake actually felt that not only it emitted nether, it also sucked it in before actually releasing it, seemingly it being a living breathing stone that breathes nether.

Blake held the stone still in his hand and recalled the instruction that the quest had given him before he started fighting the humanoid demon earlier.

———-

+(Evolution) Defeat The Stone Warden!

Due to the host’s unique constitution, the evolution process needed more than just the nether of the realm to complete. With the evolution catalyst as the first requirement, the second requirement is a condensed darkness elemental stone that was found in one of the nether rich zones in the first demon realm. The stone was guarded by a warden that Host needed to defeat to acquire the stone. Please defeat The Stone Warden and place the condensed darkness elemental stone in Host’s evolution catalyst to complete Host’s first-ever evolution!

———-

Recalling the last sentence of the quest, Blake opened up the locket necklace hanging on his neck and put the condensed darkness elemental stone close to the pendant.

Before Blake could even put the stone in the middle of the locket, right after his hand was close enough to the necklace, the stone had actually jumped by itself, arriving straight in the middle of the locket, fitting like a glove as it rested right in the dead center of the locket.

Blake stared at the stone as it pulsed happily inside the locket, seemingly finding the place where it actually belonged.

‘I guess this locket and this stone had a history together…?’ It was a rhetorical question considering there’s too much coincidence for it to be… well, coincidence.

The fact that the locket was in the human world ever since he was born and the darkness elemental stone being in the nether realm for god knows how long yet the two of them seemingly belonged together, there’s no way it was something that was birthed out of a series of coincidence.

‘Who did all this…? And what is their purpose for me? What do they want me to do with all this…?’

A series of questions popped up in his head, but not a single answer came to him as the system kept its nonexistent mouth shut.

‘Haaa…’ With all the unanswered questions, a sigh was all that Blake could do as he shook his head and looked back at the condensed darkness elemental stone.

It just stayed there, doing nothing but kept inhaling and exhaling nether in and out of its body. But instead of only going through its smooth round body, Blake could actually feel the nether also going in and out of his body constantly as if the nether in his body was constantly getting renewed by fresh nether.

“And now what?” Blake was happy that he finally got the condensed darkness elemental stone. But the reason he went to get it in the first place was to finish his evolution. And now, the stone didn’t seem to be doing anything other than nourishing him with fresh nether while sitting comfortably in his locket.

Fortunately, the system did not stay idle after hearing his last question.

[Congratulations on finishing all the quests and completing all the requirements for Host’s first-ever evolution! You’ve worked hard, Host!]

Blake didn’t know if he was imagining things or not, but he definitely felt the system’s happiness despite its usual cold mechanical voice.

‘Did it really want me to evolve that badly…?’

[The system will begin the evolution process immediately, prepare yourself for greatness, Host!]

Right after saying that last sentence, Blake felt his body freeze as the thick higher quality nether of the nether rich environment started surging toward him.