Chapter 42: Only the Beginning
[Your Rare★★★★★ soul High Demon Lilith has evolved to Epic★ Arch Demon.]
[Lilith has gained the skill "Soul Nightmare".]
The moment the notification settled, the chamber filled with something Malrik recognized immediately and dreaded slightly — the same demonic pressure he’d felt when the evolution began, except heavier now, denser, carrying an edge of malice that hadn’t been there before.
More of it. Worse than before.
He braced himself for the sound that usually announced her — that light, delighted laugh she seemed incapable of suppressing, the one that had greeted him the very first time she stepped through a crack in the world.
It didn’t come.
No laugh. No sound at all. The cave stayed completely silent, the kind of silence that felt deliberate rather than empty.
Then the familiar shape began forming out of the retreating vortex.
Familiar, but not quite the same.
The purple hair, the crimson eyes, the black dress that had never belonged in a cave full of spiders — all of it was there, refined somehow, sharper at the edges, her presence pressing against the chamber in a way that made the air itself feel thinner. And behind her shoulders, unfurling slowly as the last of the black mana dissolved, two wings — leathery, dark, unmistakably demonic, the exact shape he remembered from illustrations in Cedric’s oldest texts, the kind he’d always assumed were artistic exaggeration.
They weren’t exaggeration.
Lilith stood in front of him, studying her own hands, her own wings, the changes settling into her one by one. And for the first time since he’d known her, she wasn’t smiling.
She wasn’t doing anything, really. Just standing there. Quiet.
Malrik gave her a moment before speaking.
"...Lilith?"
She didn’t answer immediately. He let the silence hold, watching her process whatever she was processing, and turned his own attention to the skill notification instead — partly out of genuine curiosity, partly to give her the space to catch up without an audience staring directly at her.
[ Skill: Soul Nightmare ]
[The user traps the target’s consciousness within a demonic nightmare.
Time inside the nightmare is heavily distorted.
While only seconds pass in reality, the target may endure hours of relentless torment.
All pain, fear, and despair experienced within the nightmare are perceived as real.
Upon escape, the target suffers severe Mental Damage, reduced Perception, and temporarily weakened mental resistance.
Duration is determined by the difference in Mental Strength between the user and the target.]
Malrik read it slowly, and the longer he read, the more the shape of it settled somewhere uncomfortable.
This isn’t an attack. This is torture with a time limit that doesn’t even apply to the victim.
He thought about Prison of Delusion — clever, effective, but fundamentally a battlefield tool, a way of turning enemies against each other. This was something else entirely. Something personal. Something that didn’t need a swarm of spiders to work on. Just one target, and however long her opponent’s mind could survive.
She gets scarier every single time she evolves.
"...Master."
Her voice finally broke the quiet, and it came out steadier than he expected. Calmer, too — not the usual playful edge, something closer to genuine reflection.
"I didn’t know." She looked down at her own hands again, turning them over slowly. "I didn’t know you actually held the power to change my race into something higher."
Malrik allowed himself a small smile.
"This is only the beginning." He said it plainly, without any particular drama attached, because the statement didn’t need embellishing. "You can reach far beyond what you are right now."
Lilith went still.
Genuinely still, in a way that felt different from her usual composed stillness — the stillness of someone who’d just heard something they couldn’t immediately fit into their understanding of the world.
"...A human," she said slowly, "with the power to raise the rank of another race entirely." A pause. "I didn’t think such a thing was possible."
But the proof of it stood on her own back, folded and unfamiliar and undeniably real.
"...I want to reach the rank of Demon King." Her crimson eyes fixed on him with an intensity that hadn’t been there a minute ago. "Or higher, if such a thing exists."
Malrik smiled wider.
"Of course." He said it easily, like she’d asked for something as simple as dinner. "But power like that isn’t free. It takes effort. Real effort, from both of us."
"Then tell me what I’m meant to do."
"All you have to do is follow me." He held her gaze. "You’ll reach strength you can’t currently imagine."
Lilith was quiet for a long moment.
"...I never imagined a day would come where I’d place my trust — my entire future — in the hands of someone at Mortal Rank." She said it slowly, like she was still testing whether the sentence made sense out loud. It clearly did, and clearly still bothered her a little to admit it.
Malrik smiled.
"You can head back to the spirit realm now," he said. "Tomorrow, I start preparing to push my own Rank up — toward Awakened."
"I’ll admit," Lilith said, something almost fond creeping back into her tone, "you’re the fastest person I’ve ever seen climb this quickly."
He raised an eyebrow at her, half-teasing.
"Speaking of climbing quickly — you’re not relying on my mana to stay manifested anymore, are you?"
She tilted her head, considering the question properly before answering.
"A great deal changed with this evolution. But the most important part is that I now hold an independent source of energy, separate from my summoner." A small, private smile. "Epic Rank isn’t like anything below it."
Malrik turned the information over in his head.
If Epic feels like this, what does Legendary feel like?
The thought lodged itself somewhere he couldn’t easily dislodge it from, a small persistent itch that no amount of "later" seemed capable of quieting entirely.
He pushed it aside for now and gave the order.
"...Return to the spirit realm. All three of you."
Fenrir and the Spider Queen dissolved without hesitation, sinking back into shadow the moment the words left him.
Lilith didn’t move.
"I’d like to stay with you."
Malrik blinked. "...Explain."
"I have my own energy source now." She spread her hands slightly, as if presenting the point. "I can remain manifested for far longer without drawing on you at all." A pause, calculated. "I could take a human form. Stay by your side. Permanently, if you’ll allow it."
"No."
The refusal came out flat, immediate, and entirely unprepared for what happened next.
Her eyes welled up.
Actual tears, gathering at the corners of eyes that had. Her lower lip trembled. A small, wounded sound escaped her, the exact register of a child who’d just been told no for the first time in their life and had absolutely no framework for processing it.
Malrik stared, genuinely thrown.
This is the same creature that just got a torture-nightmare skill.
He tried reasoning with her. He tried explaining, twice, in two different ways. Neither attempt survived contact with the tears, which only intensified, accompanied now by an actual sniffle that felt almost personally engineered to be unbearable.
He lasted considerably less time than he expected to.
"...Fine."
The tears vanished instantly — not faded, vanished, replaced by a radiant, delighted smile that made the previous minute feel like a performance he’d simply failed to recognize in time.
"You’re the best master anyone could possibly have."
She latched onto his arm before he could formulate a response to that either, practically glowing with satisfaction.
Malrik didn’t comment on any of it.
I need to figure out an identity for her. Fast. Whatever she is, walking into a Duchy estate as an unregistered demon is not the kind of attention I want right now.
-------------
Author’s Note:
Sorry for the break in updates, everyone! I had to deal with a few contract-related issues over the past few days.
Everything has finally been resolved, so we’re back to daily Chapter releases!
Thank you so much for sticking with me. If you’re enjoying the story, please don’t forget to vote with your Power Stones and send a Gift if you’d like to support the novel. Your support means a lot and keeps me motivated to continue writing.
Enjoy the Chapters!
Comments