Demon Anomaly System

Chapter 9: Cold

The imp didn't move, he didn't blink. What lay before him wasn't just big. It wasn't just strange. It was terrifying.

Three immense statues stood in a wide circle, each one facing inward toward a central point. They rose from the heart of a massive underground ocean, an endless expanse of blood stretching in every direction.

And he was on one of them.

The cavern itself was immeasurable. From the distant ceiling above to the dark horizon of the blood sea below, it all felt impossibly vast. Like the Maw had cracked at its center and this was what had been rotting inside all along.

No walls. No end. Just stone, darkness, and blood.

The statues towered over it all. Four-armed Giants, demonic in form. All three different. All of them terrifying and grotesque.

The one to the left had no recognizable face. Just tendrils where features should've been. No eyes or mouth, just a mask of endless nightmares.

The one across the pit was bone. All of it. A skeletal titan wrapped in what looked like pinned bands of flesh, held in place like chains, twisted into demonic symbols along its chest and limbs. Its mouth hung open in a permanent grin, lined with jagged teeth that didn't match its skull.

And the one he was on now? It was a beast. A primordial horror pressed into stone.

Rows of teeth, layers deep, packed into a mouth stretched wider than most buildings. Eyes, too many to count, lined its face and jaw, all of them carved open in silent rage. Its massive wings, half-folded behind its back, were the only thing that overshadowed its face. Each feather was a blade, fanned out like a wall of knives.

He sat on the rim of its cupped hands. Where the blood gathered. Where the beast drank.

Even as stone, it looked ready to bite the world in half.

Above him, the top set of arms were lifted high, raised in silent prayer. Hands cupped skyward. All three statues were like this, one set of arms raised in demonic praise. Catching blood.

It rained from high above, thick streams falling from the Maw itself, dripping down into this place through tears just like he'd fell through. The blood struck their hands. Rivers of it sprayed through their fingers and cascaded down.

The second set of arms were held lower, at the face. Cupped close. The statue's mouths met their hands, drinking. Stone faces, pulled forward. Lips frozen just inches from the pool formed in their lower palms.

And just beneath that, where throat met chest. Split. All three. A single deep gash across each neck. Even the straps of skin wrapped around the skeletal statue were sliced at the neck.

Waterfalls of blood poured from their slashed throats, crashing down into the ocean below.

He stared, unable to move. But the system didn't let him sit still for long.

[Recommendation: Healing needed. Collapse is imminent. Suggest User locate fuel source.]

He snarled at the interruption, sniffing the air, irritation twitching in his jaw. His nose led him toward the swirling pool of blood and gore he'd crawled out of.

[Negative. Biomass rejected. Source lacks Soul Integrity. Unusable.]

His growl deepened. He snapped his teeth twice.

"What do I eat then? There's nothing here. And I can't... swim?"

[Correct. 'Swim' is the appropriate term. Scanning...]

'No food, I die. No soulmass, I die. No evolve, I die...'

He needed to find a green place, like the ones from his dreams. Something alive.

[Scan Results: Potential fuel source located. Follow Compass.]

"Com-pass? Compass... that?"

He pointed at the red arrow floating at the top of his vision. Before the system could answer, something else caught his eye.

'My soulmass?'

SM: 1/10 

Top-right corner of his view, in red text.

[That is Compass. Correct. Follow the red arrow.]

He crawled, broken legs dragging as he skittered forward, following the arrow. It led him towards the demon statue's massive face.

"Where am I going?"

[Potential fuel source.]

Hate was starting to sound too soft. Loathe. He loathed his new companion. But what choice did he have? He could only follow.

Thanks to his Wall Crawler trait, even with his legs broken, he moved easily, even upside down. No slipping, a bit of strain. He remembered seeing the ability listed in his profile as C-rank. It wasn't the worst.

That had given him something like pride.

Crawling across the demon's massive stone ear, then down, he approached the shoulder.

The arrow pointed upward.

He paused, and remembered.

When he first fell into this place, riding that half-shattered ribcage, he'd crashed into something before the vortex took him.

"I must have hit one of those hands."

He looked down to the ocean below. A fall from up there would've liquified him.

[User appears to have decent Luck.]

"Don't feel lucky. Feel very unlucky. No food. No green. Only scared and hurting since I ate you. Growing stronger better make me look like them. Big and scary."

He glanced at the bone giant's face, but quickly looked away. Even frozen in stone, they still looked aware.

[User's Evolutionary Pathways are Unknown. Probability of similar evolution... Minimal.]

He was starting to get the hang of ignoring the voice, didn't seem like it ever helped anyway. Following the arrow, he continued his climb up the raised arm.

"Food up there?"

[Negative.]

He paused and scowled. Then kept moving.

The stone beneath him was uneven, like crawling across a ruined field. Cracked carvings, jagged texture, deep etchings made movement slow and tense.

But as he climbed higher, something dark caught his eye, just barely visible against the ceiling of the cavern.

Black and rigid.

An immense chain.

Tied to each of the demon's raised wrists. He followed the chain with his eyes, watched it stretch outward, then down. It angled toward the center, where the three statues faced each other.

"There?"

[Correct.]

He clenched his teeth and steeled himself. Crawling along the back of the arm to avoid the falling blood, he reached the wrist. Where the chain was anchored in stone.

The roar of the river above slammed into his ears. Spray hit his face, warm and metallic. He licked instinctively, savoring the taste, which didn't help. He was still starving.

Gripping the chain, he readied to cross. Then froze as he felt something. Something alive.

A heartbeat.

THMP-THMP.

Clear, and heavy.

He knew the sound. Even with little experience, he knew. He'd held hearts before. His own kind's. Just before eating them.

He stayed still. Completely still.

Then—

[Elevated heart rate detected. No threats in current proximity. Recommendation: Move.]

His grip almost slipped as the voice surprised him. But he dug in, and slowly started to drag his way off the statue.

"You hear that?"

[Clarification required. No external audio.]

If the system needed clarification, then it hadn't heard it. But he heard the sound, and felt it. And that was enough.

Maybe it was paranoia. Maybe not. But the system had started to feel… off. Something more than just being easy to hate. But he needed to ignore the feeling. Focus instead on the chain, and moving the rest of his body onto it, slow and steady.

When his feet dragged off the statue completely, he waited... nothing. Breathing out a sigh, he continued. Claw after claw, pulling his broken body down the chain. It was a easy effort as each link of it was over three times his size.

Still cautious. He didn't buy it, the idea that these statues were just standing here. Something about this place watched. No matter what the System said.

The chain didn't sway much, but enough to keep him on edge. Every time he glanced down at the ocean of blood below, his gut twisted.

[Recommendation: Don't fall.]

He growled.

About halfway down, the smell started to change.

The metallic tang of blood thickened. Saturated the air. But it wasn't just scent, it hit something deeper.

His hunger began to twist. What was usually rot and pain in his gut became something else. Cold. A deep, gnawing freeze. The kind that needed fire. Demanded it.

And whatever he smelled now...

It smelled like a forest fire.

Like something that could melt the frost growing in his core. Something that could burn inside him forever.

Drool flooded his mouth.

He pulled faster. Forgot the chain, forgot the statues. Forgot the system. There was only the cold, and the need to melt it.

[Warning: User exhibiting symptoms of Madness state. System timer indicates 1 hour, 36 minutes, 17 seconds remaining until expected onset. Recommendation: Calm Down. Risk: Loss of Identity and Self-functionality.]

The voice snapped him back, just in time. His mind teetered. Then steadied, barely. Just in time to see what he had been about to eat.

A floating bead of blood.

More beautiful than any green he'd seen in his dream. So beautiful, he didn't even notice the two cleavers, massive, curved, and rusted, hanging just above his head.