The Demonic Games (Disgardium Book #7): LitRPG Series

by Dan Sugralinov

  I had hoped to deal some damage to the boss while invulnerable with Equanimity, but for some reason it didn’t activate, and then I entered Clarity. After taking a full Combo to his outstretched arms, the boss fell down in Surprise. Now that the demon’s hands weren’t reaching for me, I burst into the instance, threw down Spirit Shackles and attacked, noting with satisfaction that Abaddon’s limbs were shortening, which meant the raid would get in without issue.

  After taking around thirty million health from the frozen, barely moving boss, I left Clarity.

  “…Inferno!” Abaddon boomed, his voice now audible instead of slowed. “Finally!”

  The demon jumped up sharply. His colossal figure blurred, and then he was in front of me. As he stretched out an arm to grab me, I sped up, dodged and darted to the other side of the vast cave.

  Abaddon shot after me. I answered with attacks, dodged his grip, moving and keeping an eye on what was happening beyond the gates. Finally, I saw the outlines of my allies across the threshold — this was the moment of truth, the perfect time for the dirty trick I had planned.

  I entered Clarity, fired toward them, leaving the raid as I went. That was it. Now I was alone, out for myself only.

  I stopped for a moment at the threshold, and could clearly see my allies’ animated faces, their eyes gleaming with anticipation, their mouths open in battle cries. Quetzal was in the lead, with the meleers behind him and the mages and healers in the rear.

  They were rushing to my aid, but they got stabbed in the back. Koba survived when Despot’s halberd arm cleaved into him, but burned up as soon as the demon began to swallow him.

  I attacked Quetzal, who had already crossed the threshold of the dungeon — Despot wouldn’t have killed him in time. It took three hits to finish off the titan destroyer. Then I killed Anna, Meister and Bloomer. My ally should easily be able to deal with the others. He was far superior to them, around a hundred levels higher.

  To speed up the slaughter, I exited Clarity, my eyes glued to the boss.

  “Traitor!” I heard from behind.

  Unable to resist, I turned.

  “Burn in hell!” Hellfish gurgled, impaled on the end of one of Despot’s halberd arms, blood bubbling from his mouth.

  I lost focus, missed Abaddon’s first strike. Equanimity didn’t activate and I lost 16% health, even with Resilience at rank three!

  But something else came as an even worse surprise — Reflection wasn’t working either! The boss’s defenses somehow absorbed all the reflected damage! Did that mean that none of the Paths of Resilience would work?

  I cussed out the developers profusely, slipped into Clarity and burst out of the cave, flying past frozen Despot and soaring upwards. By floor 660, my character was out of combat and I could start over again. As long as it worked!

  Quickly recovering my health, I flew back down, catching a glimpse of Despot blinking between the floors.

  As I flew to the bottom of the Pitfall, the demonic hand reached out for me again, slowed when I went into Clarity and looked closer at the numbers…

  My heart was thumping, my conscience screamed, but I’d gotten what I wanted: the raid was destroyed, and the boss’s health was back at six hundred and sixty-six million.

  * * *

  The battle with the final boss of the Demonic Games began anew, the fourth in total and the third that day, but now sure to be the last.

  As soon as I flew into the gates, Weak Will hit me. I fell out of Clarity and tumbled along the floor. When I stopped, I started chewing a coin to get rid of the debuff. The demonic gold crunched between my teeth. Then I activated Infernal Tenacity, giving me almost full immunity to hellfire for one hour.

  Abaddon headed toward me, his every step shaking the cave to the ceiling. Stopping thirty yards away, the demon roared:

  “Enemy of the Inferno! Finally!”

  With a squelch and a slurp, fountains of a bubbling bluish substance started shooting out from the floor and began to spread mist all over the cave. Suddenly I was hit with Dazed, and even Liberation was powerless to stop it.

  But the boss didn’t attack. A monstrous full-length shield appeared in Abaddon’s arm, a slit in the middle revealing his face.

  “What do you mean ‘finally’?” I asked. Apparently, there was no avoiding talking to the boss. “You’re finally going to get your ass kicked?”

  “Bravery is honorable, mortal, when there is strength behind it. Behind yours lies only foolishness, since you came here alone. Although I do sense another, hiding somewhere above… Weak, but treacherous, as my prince Belial likes them…”

  “Youlang? She’s hoping I lose. Then she’ll be the champion without a fight.”

  “Yes, Eynyon’s Gong has sounded!” the demon roared. “I cannot reach her! The final survivor will be named ‘champion’ over the other mortals, but her title will be false! The true champion, acknowledged even in the Underworld, can only be the one who defeats me! That is not possible, and so… Youlang is far smarter than you, Enemy of the Inferno!”

  Leaving me to consider his words, Abaddon turned to the gates:

  “What are you hiding there for, old rival? Enter. I give you my permission.”

  Shriveling Despot crossed the threshold, looking more like a puppy in trouble than a fearsome labyrinth guardian. The shield in Abaddon’s hands melted away. The demon rumbled enticingly:

  “Closer, minion of Diablo, closer…”

  Opening his furnace mouth wide, my ally spoke so timidly and nervously that I was amazed:

  “Don’t be angry, General…”

  “Shut your trap, traitor!” Abaddon stretched out a hand and grabbed Despot by the throat, brought him up to his own face. My ally’s arms hung helplessly like the legs of a kitten being held by the scruff of the neck. “I will give you one chance and ask you — will you fight with me or against me?”

  “I can do neither one, nor the other…” Despot croaked, his voice shaking. “I cannot go against you, you know that. And if I betray an ally who I swore to serve, I will lose honor…”

  “You? Honor? What nonsense do you speak, worm? Diablo, whose treachery is the envy even of my prince Belial, would spread your parts across the Inferno for such words! I see the pestilential influence of the mortals has changed you! Fool! The Underworld has no place for insects like you!”

  The crimson scaled hand with black fingernails clenched into a fist — my ally’s bones and chitin cracked and screeched. Twenty-foot-high Despot went limp, cracked like clay, then caught fire and dissolved in a stream of liquid flame into Abaddon’s colossal palm.

  Your ally Despot, level 531 demon, has been disincarnated.

  “Death and dust…” Abaddon said, thoughtfully inspecting his hand. He looked at me. “Today I will bring the Inferno it’s six hundred and sixty-sixth Demonic Games, mortal. I will return a champion! I will have my own dominion, like Lucius!”

  “Learn to count, demon! This is only the nineteenth Games!”

  “For you undying, yes! But counting from our Exodus…”

  “And what happens if you win?” I ask.

  “The demons will return home!” Abaddon declared triumphantly. “And none of your weak little gods have the power to stop it! The Celestial Arbitrage itself must obey the Demonic Pact and open the passageway between the worlds!”

  It all clicked. As it turned out, the developers’ next expansion of the world was on my shoulders. A passageway would open, and the demonic races would become playable: satyrs, imps, succubi, tieflings and all kinds of other devils… Interest in the game would skyrocket; for the first time, a whole new world would be unlocked to the players. The balance of power would change completely, and conflict would be sure to arise around the entrances of the interdimensional passageway. Dis would become even more fun… No, not on my watch.

  “Are you planning to fight, Abaddon?” I asked, hoping that combat would remove Dazed from me. The demon’s chatter was to my benefit — my spirit had fully rec
overed, and my health potion cooldown had ended. “Or do you only know how to talk?”

  “Is your soul so eager to be devoured, Enemy?”

  Abaddon spread his arms, then joined them. A wave of flame ran down them, materializing into a huge fiery poleaxe.

  The mist in the air dispersed, the geysers emitting the strange substance calmed down, but I still couldn’t move.

  “For the Inferno!” Abaddon roared and started running toward me.

  The fight began. At that same moment, Dazed lifted and I shot straight at him. An instant before the boss’s poleaxe descended, I entered Clarity, flew straight to his red-hot face and launched a full Combo.

  Flying away and hovering in the air, I went back to normal speed, took a breather to let my spirit recover, dodging the charging boss’s horns and counterattacking.

  In the first minutes of the battle, there didn’t seem anything supernatural about Abaddon, fearsome general of hell. He just attacked with his hooves, his horns, the fiery poleaxe that suddenly appeared in his hands.

  I saved my spirit for dodging the boss’s physical attacks and for launching counterstrikes. Abaddon burned with an Infernal Aura like Despot’s, so I could only attack up close in short bursts, delivering a few strikes with Storm Fists.

  After taking critical damage from a Hammerfist to the face, Abaddon flew into a rage, clapped his hands and knocked me out of Clarity! Echo of Purgatory, it turned out, deprived me of all my skills for three seconds. I crashed to the ground, rolled into a wall.

  “Well now, time to lose!” the boss roared.

  Covering himself with his shield to block my path to him, Abaddon struck the ground with his arms. The floor went out from under me, began to shift, then bubbled up in huge boils that popped like cysts, divulging fifteen-foot copies of the demon’s tentacle-like arms. They all turned their palms toward me, each with an eye at its center, then lunged like attacking snakes. There was no way I could dodge them at normal speed, but luckily, I got Clarity back just in time. The hands covered the spot where I had just been lying, the fingers crooking and scrabbling across the stone. Finding nothing, they pulled their way back into the floor, which evened out again. The main thing was to stay calm when the boss knocked me out of Clarity with his Echo of Purgatory.

  Soon Abaddon showed me another ability — Diabolical Flame — when he leaned back and then breathed out lime-green acid steam. I nearly died when the cloud first hit me. Then I realized that the boss’s pose predicted what he was about to do, and I had around a second to get safe and attack back. But there was another problem — the cloud of deadly gas birthed thirteen tiny imps that got stronger with every second. They mobs went down to a couple of Hammerfists, but I had to kill them while they were still small.

  Abaddon also fired off Strings of Chaos. I veered between them in Clarity. The blistering air emanating from them dealt me only a little damage thanks to my Infernal Tenacity buff. After Resilience, the damage from Strings of Chaos was pitiful.

  When the boss’s health was down to 75%, he filled with blinding light and flared up in bright white flames. Breath of the Underworld (-9% health every second for 10 seconds) turned the entire cave into a blast furnace. The heat burned away my gear, but I survived, again thanks to Infernal Tenacity, which reduced the damage to tolerable levels.

  I was blinded, couldn’t fight. Flames seemed to materialize all around me, pressing in from all sides. Powerless to withstand it, I fell and curled up in a fetal position. That was when I realized that there was no way my allies could have survived ten seconds at the center of that nuclear explosion without Infernal Tenacity. That calmed my conscience while the boss was casting.

  I held on only thanks to Combo. The Lifesteal property the move gained way back in the sandbox turned a portion of the damage dealt into health, which saved me.

  It took me around ten minutes to get the boss’s health down to 50%, but it felt like half a day! And all because I was saving my spirit, letting it fill up a little between counterattacks. Toward the end of the second phase of the battle, Abaddon cast Weak Will again, and I had to chew up another coin to lift the debuff.

  “I never thought this would come into play…” the boss said thoughtfully as he turned into another form.

  It was still Abaddon, but more of the demonic broke through to his humanoid surface: his nostrils flared, his head seemed to split into two pieces and a second mouth yawned through the gap, the first row of teeth now like a palisade of fangs, the second a chain of fine needles. The body grew larger, wider, and plates of Corrupted Adamantite grew all over it.

  “Within my veins flows the blood of devils, mortal. Let’s see what you say to this!”

  After flaming me with Breath of the Underworld to keep me on my toes, Abaddon spat out liquid Flame of Cathexis. It covered the area around me with blue fire. I jumped away, but still got a debuff:

  Level 1 Cathexis

  You take 15% more demonic damage.

  Already exhausted by the fight, I nearly gave up. Any mistake now could mean total defeat! I flew around and dodged Abaddon’s attacks, now coming at me several times faster. I stayed ready to activate Clarity at any second, so I could jump away from Flame of Cathexis if the boss suddenly decided to spit more of it. The debuff had a number on it, which made me think that the stuff might stack every time I touched the flames.

  But Flame of Cathexis was just the warm-up. Abaddon had other new abilities in his new form. Stopping and stretching out his arms, he began to form a solid orb of black magic, a Chaotic Rift, and a shimmering black hole formed beneath me, started slowly pulling me in. The damage grew as I got closer to the rift, and for a time I forgot about attacking, just strove with all my energy to get out. It was a good thing the boss was standing still with his arms outstretched, casting, not attacking, and I had Flight.

  Redoubling his efforts, Abaddon struck me with Spirit Evulsion — a beam of light that I couldn’t dodge even in my quickened state. The light turned out to be a soul once absorbed by the demon. Angry and twisted, the entity sank into me in a battle for my body, dragged me to the great nothing.

  There, left without my abilities, I screamed inwardly. What could I do? Nothing beneath my feet, nothing around me, I hung in a shapeless form of light, and the shining, black-veined soul, now forming into the shape of a reptiloid, started tearing into me. A bar appeared before my eyes:

  A sinner’s soul is capturing your body: 4%… 5%…

  Realizing that I might lose my body, I roared and threw myself at the foe. I tore, scratched, bit, punched, and soon got what I wanted: the percentages stopped increasing at first, then started to drop.

  I fought myself free. The spirit of the sinner reptiloid floated away and I was returned to my own body. Before I could even get my bearings, the poleaxe came flying at my head. Just in time, I went into Clarity and the strike just slipped by me. In anger and fear, I shot toward the frozen demon’s monstrous face, fired a full Combo into him.

  And then from all sides came the Crying of the Damned: groans, screams of pain, gasps for breath. Liberation freed me from Despair, and I continued the fight.

  Now I fought with even more care — my spirit reserves were down by three quarters, and Flame of Cathexis had reached six stacks, increasing the boss’s damage against me by 90%.

  With a quarter of his health left, my enemy covered himself with his shield and changed again, and in a way that made me want to give up. The shield disappeared, but I saw nothing behind it. Demonic flesh began to grow from all the surfaces — jelly-like, it moved, quickly engulfing the cave walls and hardening, growing defensive plates, spikes and horns. Hundreds of eyes burned into me, a multitude of maws cruelly grinning. The cave grew demonic arms all around me, stretching out for me, writhing, but Clarity let me escape them.

  “The most nimble mortal of all I have seen!” Abaddon said in surprise, speaking through his many mouths all at the same time, making his voice seem to vibrate and permeate every cell of my b
ody. “The Sleepers must have a hand in this!”

  “Legendary Grand Master Oyama would give you a smack for those words!” I argued.

  “So you are his student? I see… The style does seem familiar…” the demon chuckled. “The old man is still alive?”

  Expecting to hear something interesting about my tutor, I started attacking less furiously, but Abaddon said nothing. His cunning at work. After getting me talking, he attacked: a tentacle arm caught me unawares, shooting out like back on the Pitfall floor, grabbing me and tightening its grip. I lacked the strength to free myself. My bones cracked, my health started falling rapidly.

  “You bore me,” Abaddon’s mouths rumbled. “I should have killed you right away, but I wanted to stretch my legs.”

  Abaddon the Destroyer dealt you damage (Death Grip): 173,405.