Veal crossed hundreds of kms, but he was still some distance away from the bronze pillar. About five hundred kms.
The parasite followed closely, but because they were at the same rank, it couldn't catch up to him.
Time passed, and he made it within a hundred kms of the pillar. That was when he heard a loud roar laced with killing intent echo out from behind him,
"You cannot escape."
'Matron!'
He glanced behind him, past the parasite, and to the huge trail of sand and the bloated figure who made it, Matron.
She was gaining on him extremely fast.
He turn his gazed back at the pillar.
But fortunately, not fast enough.
The three sped across the desert, akin to predators chasing their prey.
Three hundred kms.
Two hundred kms.
Right at that moment, boom sounds started ringing out. Veal gazed behind him, only to see the Matron hopping, no longer running.
The distance she was covering per second increased considerably.
His eyes narrowed, and without hesitation, he started hopping too. Boom! The sand collapsed under him as he launched dozens of meters into the air, crossing hundreds of meters with every launch.
Soon a hundred kms.
Fifty km.
Ten kms.
And he arrived a few meters before the pillar. It was shimmering with a beautiful bronze glow, and there was a giant, two hundred meters wide bloody, pentagon-like symbol at its center.
From it pulsed a compelling force. The urge him to step on it.
He turned and gazed at the Matron, who was just a km behind him, and shouted with a mischievous grin,
"See you on the other side, ugly… There we will continue our dance."
After, he stepped inside the pillar, at the center of the pentagon. Immediately after, a force similar to the one that transported him from the River of Birth to the Demon Cradle washed over him.
He waved to the Matron one last time, who was just a few hundred meters from him, after which he vanished.
Vash!
A second after, Boom! The bloated Matron landed a few meters before the circle. She didn't enter it, her face curling up in a hateful expression, and she roared, venting her frustration.
"Aaaaaah!"
She would not be able to get the corpses she needed for her advancement ritual if she entered a portal at this rank. Even though Veal had hurt her pride dearly, he was not worth her risking advancing to the Noble Ranks. With venom in her eyes, she gazed at the pillar one last time and muttered,
"Just pray and hope you die in the hands of creatures of that world. And don't fall into my hands."
After which she blurred towards the nearest silver pillar, leaving trails of disgusting parasites and her son behind her .
…
Veal reappeared in suffocating darkness; he couldn't perceive anything, not even his own body. Suddenly, the darkness was illuminated by countless bronze stars that twinkled around him, and he could feel the energy they were radiating, even though there was a mind-bending distance between them.
His mind blazed as he gazed at them,
'Worlds!'
Each was a world ripe for him to lustfully devour. Suddenly, he felt a connection to one of the stars; he could only describe it as an invisible string connecting him and the star.
The next moment, he heard whispers echoing out from the other end of the string.
"O demon that dwells in darkness,
I call thee from the depths of malice. I offer not love, but loathing."
"Come forth! Come forth!"
"Grant me the strength to rebel against my fate."
"In return, I will give my name, my past, my flesh, My soul, and the world."
"Come forth!"
It was a calling, a summoning; he felt he had the choice to accept this summoning or deny it.
'I accept!'
he thought. The next moment, he felt an irresistible pulling force from the other end of the string, after which his vision went blank as his body traveled at an incalculable speed towards the star.
…
{Saint World}
Within a dark, reeking hole beneath a graveyard, located somewhere on the outskirts of the Saint Empire, stood a hunched, armored figure. He stood before a bloody pentagon symbol, traced with his own blood using his bone that he ripped from his own body.
He was Yulo. Born of sacred blood, yet was fated to a life of torment and alienation. His face ugly, twisted beyond human recognition.
Children screamed at his sight.
The chief priests deemed him an unholy abomination, a sign of misfortune.
Even his own mother and father, who were the king and queen, tried to drown him at birth.
But for some unknown reason, he survived.
Because of his miraculous survival. They allowed him to live.
Thinking he was a bless by the gods.
But he was still stripped of his status, forced to live in the sewers of the royal palace. He was only allowed to exit a few times, and when he did, he needed to wear this armor that covered his body, and he must never utter a word of his lineage.
To the outside world, he never existed. He was just a guard of the second princess.
Not surprisingly, he hated everything with a passion. He wanted the entire world to be destroyed for what it had done to him.
But unbeknownst to everyone, he had found secret passages in the sewers that led to an ancient ruin deep beneath the palace. Inside this ruin, he found a diary written in the Old Saint Language from a thousand years ago.
It took him years to translate it.
It told the journey of the Priest of that time and how she defeated the demon that invaded the world.
But the thing that stood out to him was the last three pages of the diary.
Bloody.
The words were written in blood, and these words were detailed instructions on how to summon a demon from the darkest of pits. at the very end of the diary was chaotic.
'If anyone is reading this, please destroy this book and forget about everything you read. I cannot resist the demon's corruption any longer, so I have no choice but to kill myself.'
He did not heed the warning; no, he decided to summon a demon to enact his revenge.