A boy with green hair and dark brown eyes crouched behind a pillar. His breathing was shallow, and his body was pressed flat against the cold stone of a tall pillar.
The ruins around him stretched endlessly.
Cracked pillars thick as trees, collapsed halls where ceilings had decades ago, and the broken remains of a fallen demon lord’s domain. Everything here had once belonged to soone powerful.
Now it belonged to nothing but beasts and scavengers.
And people like him.
A growl sounded behind it.
It was heavy, deep. The kind of sound that made prey freeze in their tracks.
The boy slipped behind the pillar without panic, without hesitation.
His movents were practiced. Efficient. He’d been in this situation a thousand tis already.
A Behemoth stepped into view.
Thirty feet tall. Thick, matted fur clinging to muscle. Its size alone was enough to crush stone beneath its feet.
Its breath ca out in wet snorts, and its eyes scanned the ruins with dull movents.
The boy watched it with annoyance.
Stupid beast.
When he’d first been stranded in these ruins, Behemoths had terrified him. Now they were so of the least troubleso creatures in Algara.
Huge, dangerous, but predictable.
Easy to avoid.
Easier to trick.
He waited, counting the Behemoth’s steps, watching its head turn slowly left, then right. It sniffed once, pawing at the ground, then lumbered deeper into the ruins.
The boy exhaled slowly, then slipped out from behind the pillar and returned the way he’d co.
His campfire was still burning when he reached it.
Small flas licked at a few pieces of dried wood he’d scavenged earlier.
The boy glanced at the fire, then activated the storage ring on his finger.
It flickered faintly, the rune inside pulsing as he pulled out strips of at he’d hunted three days ago.
The ring was his most valuable possession. He’d found it on a corpse shortly after being abandoned in the ruins. Without it, he’d have starved weeks ago.
These rings were items he’d never seen before entering the runes. Only the richest demons ever touched them, and rich was far from what he had been.
He skewered the at on a sharpened stick and held it over the fire, watching the edges blacken and sizzle. The sll made his stomach tighten, but he forced himself to wait until it finished cooking.
While the at cooked, he thought about the ruins.
Algara had beco his ho.
At so point, he’d stopped hoping to escape. Escaping would an descending deeper into the ruins, where monsters far stronger than Behemoths road. There might be treasures below. There might be power. There might even be a path out.
But the boy had no intention of risking his life chasing impossible hope.
He knew what he was.
He was a coward.
And he was honest enough with himself to admit it.
If delving deeper ant almost certain death, then only a fool would do it. Survival mattered more than ambition.
He finished cooking the at and ate slowly, savoring it more than he wanted to admit. Food was one of the only things keeping him sane. The ruins had beco his world. Hunt, hide, eat, sleep, survive.
That was enough.
It had to be enough.
BOOM!
A massive explosion tore through the ruins.
The boy jerked upright, dropping the at on his lap.
A nearby pillar shattered into dust and stone fragnts, the force of the blast sending debris skittering across the ground.
Through the dust cloud, he saw a man collapse onto the ground.
Behind him, a portal flickered briefly before snapping shut. It was a similar portal to
The boy didn’t move imdiately.
He watched from a distance, skeptical but interested.
This was the first sign of company he’d seen in months.
The last person who’d entered the ruins had ignored him completely and imdiately descended deeper, likely chasing Algara’s inheritance.
That person was probably dead now.
The injured man coughed blood and begged for help.
The boy approached slowly, keeping his distance.
Then he asked.
"What’s your na?"
The man hesitated before answering.
"Ton."
The boy studied him carefully.
Ton had no horns, so he probably wasn’t a demon.
Maybe human.
Maybe vampire.
Not a dwarf, at least.
The boy couldn’t tell for certain, but he knew enough not to trust anyone who appeared suddenly in the ruins.
Still, he took out a bottle of water and moved closer.
The mont he got within range, Ton attacked.
The boy smirked.
He’d expected this.
The bottle in his hand transford into a blade, revealing that it had never been just water.
Illusion magic was his specialty.
He dodged Ton’s clumsy strike and drove the blade straight into Ton’s chest, aiming for the heart.
Ton scread in rage, furious that a re peasant dared trick him.
"You fool?! You dare! A peasant dare attack ?! Do you know who I am?"
The boy scoffed internally.
Never mind, he’s probably a demon. He recognized I’m a peasant so quickly.
Ton’s movents had been obvious, and more importantly, his mana flow was sealed.
That told the boy plenty. Ton wasn’t an explorer. He was likely a prisoner sent here to die. Anyone thrown into the ruins with sealed mana was either dangerous or desperate.
And definitely useless without magic.
Trusting him would have been idiotic.
Ton continued cursing him, but the boy said nothing more.
He drove the knife into Ton’s throat, ending him quickly.
He pulled the blade free and stepped back, watching until Ton stopped moving.
The boy sighed, disappointed but not surprised.
Of course Ton wasn’t a companion.
There were no companions in the ruins.
Everyone who ca here was either searching for the previous Demon King’s inheritance or had been cast here to die.
Either way, they couldn’t be trusted.
What did I do to be thrown in here with lunatics like these?
The boy knew of course. Well, he didn’t know the exact reason his parents cast him away in here, but there had probably been so profit involved.
Well, whatever. That was in the past.
Wiping his blade, the boy turned to leave.
Then he heard movent behind him.
His heart froze.
Not because he thought Ton survived.
Ton’s mana was sealed, and even if he sohow lived, he wouldn’t be able to hurt the boy.
No, what frightened him was the sensation rising from the corpse.
It was evil.
Heavy.
Vast in power beyond what the boy had ever felt.
This power did not belong to Ton. Even in the short ti the boy knew him, he knew this for sure.
The boy turned back slowly.
Ton’s corpse was smiling.
A wicked smile stretched across the dead man’s face as his body rose from the ground.
Fear gripped the boy harder now.
This wasn’t a wounded prisoner.
This was sothing else.
He took a step back.
Ton’s body appeared in front of him almost instantly.
The boy couldn’t move.
When Ton spoke, the voice was different. It sounded amused, mildly disappointed, and entirely in control.
"I’m surprised the old fool died so quickly. And you? You killed him? Very good, boy."
The boy understood who it was imdiately. There was only one demon capable of body hijacking at this level. And the voice was one every demon had heard at least once in their lives.
Awe and terror crashed through him at once.
He fell to his knees, lowering his head without hesitation, and murmured the na.
"Lord sr."
sr was pleased that the boy recognized him.
sr smiled and spoke.
"I’m glad you killed Ton with your own hands, boy. If Ton had died to one of the ruins’ monsters, sr said, he wasn’t sure where Ton’s power would have gone."
The boy was confused, though he didn’t dare interrupt.
sr noticed and explained.
"Ton possessed a rare power, one that could transfer from person to person through death. It was a form of soul magic. The ability allowed its wielder to steal souls and use them to strengthen their own."
The boy was stunned.
A power like that sounded almost impossible, the kind of ability that could turn even soone weak into sothing terrifying.
Before the boy could speak, sr continued.
"The ability transfers when its owner dies. The one who receives it is the person the user thinks of last in the mont of death."
"Despite that old fool Ton’s best wishes, it seems like your face is the one he thought of in his death. You saved a lot of trouble, boy. Finding his inheritor would have been a pain." sr said, sounding very pleased as he repeated what he said earlier
The boy’s eyes widened.
He looked down at his hands.
Nothing felt different. No great power surged through his body. No overwhelming sensation announced itself.
But he didn’t doubt sr’s words.
If sr said the power had passed to him, then it had.
sr asked the boy’s na.
The boy answered.
"Bruce."
sr studied him through Ton’s corpse for a mont, then asked Bruce a simple question.
"Do you want to escape this place?"
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