NOVPUB
Chapter 237
It wasn’t often that a plant could be called truly revolting. Flowers, leaves, branches, fruit, and trees—verdant and beautiful—were pleasant to imagine. Brimming with life, they made up the beauty of Mother Nature.
But the same could not be said of the Residents of the Rift who had invaded the demon realm. Their screeching filled the air.
Not all plants were created equal, and these weeds—twisting and writhing, desperately attempting to mimic the movements of humans—were undeniably grotesque.
They were clearly evolving.
Their initial structures were reminiscent of potted plants. If one imagined the skulls they wore as upside-down flowerpots, then the mass of tangled, violet tendrils sprouting beneath them made sense.
At first, they slithered along the ground like octopuses. However, once the battle had begun, their tendrils began to twist, tangle, and interlock, forming crude imitations of humanoid arms and legs. The creatures were soon rising onto makeshift limbs.
The sight made the demons shudder as they began to attack.
“The Residents of the Rift are mimicking us!”
“Stop them! Don’t let them do it!”
It was unclear why, but from the moment the trial began, the demons were overtaken by a primal sense of revulsion. This disgust wasn’t limited to the sentient demons. Even the wild, mindless individuals felt it.
They did not know what these creatures were, yet the words “Residents of the Rift” came unbidden to their minds as soon as they laid eyes on them. It was as if the knowledge had always been there. 𝒏𝒐𝙫𝙥𝙪𝙗.𝒄𝙤𝙢
Something isn’t right with these creatures, Esil thought. She felt the strongest sense of foreboding, and she was very much on her guard.
Demons had a natural survival instinct, one that could never be ignored. If this instinctual knowledge had surfaced so suddenly and naturally, it could only mean one thing—this information was embedded in their very beings.
“Oh, no!”
“Agh!”
“Watch out, everyone! If they touch you, they’ll drain your mana!”
There was no time to dwell on it. At the front lines, the demons who had engaged with the Residents of the Rift were already retreating in confusion and panic. The violet tendrils coiled around them, greedily sucking away their mana.
“Out of the way!”
Demon knights wearing Evil Spirit Armor charged forward. They tore apart the tendrils binding their comrades with sheer brute force, but the vines were relentless. The severed plants screeched as they twisted in midair like snakes, changing direction to target the death knights instead.
“Don’t you dare!”
Fortunately, the Evil Spirit Armor was enough to prevent mana drain. Harmakan had specially modified it for the demons at Suho’s command, and it was proving very effective indeed.
However, the weeds were persistent. They writhed, wriggled, and slipped through the tiniest gaps in the armor, jabbing their sharp, thorny feelers into the demons’ exposed flesh.
“D-damn it!”
The demon knights, feeling a sense of dizziness, frantically yanked the tendrils away.
They turned toward Esil and shouted, “Lady Esil! Be careful!”
“They’re not just draining mana! They’re injecting some kind of venom with those vines!”
It was as if the creatures were a cursed fusion of mosquitoes and leeches, with the worst characteristics of each. A single touch was enough to drain one’s mana, and a single jab from a thorn meant being injected with some mysterious poison.
“Damned creatures! I’m coming!”
Esil’s voice cut through the chaos. With a flash of movement, she donned a set of Evil Spirit Armor herself and dashed into the thick of the battle.
“Die!” she thundered.
Her spear flew like a thunderbolt from her hand, crushing the skulls it passed through. As each skull shattered, the vine-like growths that had been clinging to it suddenly wilted and fell away.
Seeing this, Esil commanded in a loud voice, “The head is the weak point! Aim for the head!”
The demons who heard her quickly relayed this message to their scattered companions.
“Attack the heads!”
“The skulls are their weak spot!”
They lunged forward with renewed ferocity, now intent on damaging the skulls.
“If you wear the armor, they won’t be able to suck away your mana even if they touch you!” Esil shouted. “Death knights, lead the charge! Just watch out for the thorns!”
“We don’t know what that venom does! Don’t let them inject you!”
The demons began to shatter skulls left and right. The battle had begun in earnest.
But even with this knowledge, the fight wasn’t getting any easier. There were simply too many of the weeds from the start. They were pouring out endlessly from the dimensional breach, their numbers vastly outmatching Esil’s forces.
She gritted her teeth.
I should have gathered more demons!
Frustration burned in her chest.
If the demon realm was what it had once been, they would have never been outnumbered like this. If it hadn’t been torn apart, shattered into fragments and left floating through the dimensional rift, she could have brought more soldiers. She could have gathered every demon scattered across those fragments.
These creatures are weak individually, but there are just too many of them. Where were they hiding all this time?
“Agh...!”
Amid the chaos, the first demon fell.
A demon who had been entangled by the vines had his mana completely drained. Foam bubbled from his mouth, and his unfocused eyes glazed over.
Suddenly, laughter echoed from one of the weeds—no, from the skull that had just succeeded in draining the demon.
At that moment, Esil finally knew why she had felt so uncomfortable as soon as she had seen these mysterious Residents of the Rift.
The plant’s vines began to fall together and intertwine beneath its skull like muscles wrapping around bones. It was as if a new body was being constructed from the inside out.
“No... It can’t be...”
Esil and the other demons could only gasp and watch in shock.
I knew something was wrong from the start, Esil thought.
The vines had mimicked limbs earlier, but now they were transforming into something much worse. After entirely consuming the mana of a demon, the weed had become a demon itself.
***
“Is this... the demon realm?” Suho asked.
He was shocked by the hordes of magic beasts in front of him as he entered the double dungeon through the breach.
Antares shook his head. “No. Just the dimensional rift.”
“Then what are these demons?”
“What else? They are the Residents of the Rift. They devoured demons, proving themselves worthy of becoming demons themselves.”
As Antares had said, purple demons were gathered in front of them.
[Demon of the Rift]
[Demon of the Rift]
[Demon of the Rift]
[...]
Their name tags clearly identified them as “demons,” but their bodies were composed of interwoven violet vines. While they’d once resembled octopuses nestled inside skulls, they had now taken on humanoid forms. The tendrils were wound into visible muscles, like anatomical models seen in science labs.
In terms of size and shape, they appeared more akin to demons than humans. Some of them even sported horns.
The unsettling truth, however, was that their transformation wasn’t just superficial.
[Title: “Demon Slayer” buff effect has been activated.]
[When facing demon-type monsters, all stats increase by 40%.]
“Actual demons,” Suho said, his eyes gleaming.
The activation of his Demon Slayer title effect confirmed it. These creatures had become real demons.
“So they devoured demons and became demons themselves?”
“Yes,” answered Antares. “It seems that the fragments of the demon realm scattered throughout the dimensional rift were attacked by the creatures. In other words, the demon realm was contaminated.”
His gaze darkened as he observed the creatures with obvious distaste.
“As I said before, the Residents of the Rift are waste matter that the Absolute Being abandoned mid-creation. That is why these weeds are always hungering to be something. The easiest targets are demon souls.”
Suho had a feeling he knew what Antares would say next. “Don’t tell me... Is it because demons can’t go to the Sea of the Afterlife even after they die?”
“Not exactly. When a living thing dies, its soul wanders the Sea of the Afterlife and is eventually used as nutrients by the World Tree. That is the way of things—”
Their conversation was cut short as battle erupted. The Demons of the Rift surrounded them, attacking from all sides.
“I’ll cover the rear!” Jiwoo said, knowing that they were wide open.
Suho swung his twin Vulcan’s Horns toward the creatures rushing at him from the front.
These “demons” behaved slightly differently from the weeds Suho had fought earlier. The creatures that had only been identified as “??” had burned helplessly in the flames, but these monsters actively dodged his strikes or retaliated with weapons of their own.
“They’re fighting back like proper demons,” Suho observed.
This was intriguing, but hardly a threat.
[Skill: “Dark Flame Storm” has activated.]
There was a thunderous explosion.
[Demon of the Rift has been defeated.]
[Demon of the Rift has been defeated.]
[Demon of the Rift has been defeated.]
[...]
As the skirmish intensified, Antares fluttered upward on his tiny wings and landed on Suho’s head. He continued his explanation with a solemn expression.
“I’ll first have to tell you about the World Tree. It feeds on dead souls to grow and bear fruit. New souls are born from this fruit, with the most beautiful and flawless fruits producing the soldiers of the Rulers. The other fruits give rise to the various races you already know of.”
“So it’s like reincarnation?” Suho asked.
“Perhaps. Call it what you will. No one truly knows what happens within the World Tree. The souls are absorbed by the tree and eventually reborn, but there’s no way to confirm whether the same soul emerges again. But that’s beside the point.”
Antares looked toward the Demons of the Rift and continued, “As I said, some souls never make it to the World Tree. Many are captured and consumed by weeds like these. That’s what we call the contamination of mana.”
“Contamination?” The familiar term sparked recognition in Suho’s eyes.
“Yes. One of the roles of the World Tree is the purification of dead souls. But souls caught by weeds without going through the World Tree will become polluted. Those souls will never again return to the Sea of the Afterlife.”
The demons around them chittered and shrieked.
“Instead, they turn into demons just like these. That is the moment when the dregs that were nothing finally gain an identity.”
Before Antares could finish his explanation, messages appeared in Suho’s vision.
[Mana is contaminated and cannot be extracted.]
[Mana is contaminated and cannot be extracted.]
The notifications confirmed what he had suspected.
Ah. I’ve always wondered.
Every time Suho had fought demons and was reminded that he could not extract their souls, he had been curious: Why doesn’t it work? What is it about their souls that makes them unextractable?
The more he thought about it, the more difficult it had been to understand. There was a great variety of magic beasts, including animals, insects, and other magical creatures. What was so different about demons that the power of the Monarch of Shadows, which dominated even death, had no effect on them?
Their mana is contaminated? By what? he had wondered.
If contamination meant “poisoned,” then the poison could be neutralized. If it meant they were “dirtied,” how dirty could they be? After all, Harmakan loved extracting the souls of villains, and those souls were no less wicked than those of demons.
So why is it that only demons are unavailable?
But today, at long last, Suho understood what the demon souls were contaminated by.
“The weeds never abandon a target once they’ve chosen it,” Antares said grimly.
As he spoke, Suho put the puzzle pieces together.
“The souls of the demons cannot enter the Sea of the Afterlife,” the Monarch continued. “They’ve already been claimed as food by the weeds, not the World Tree.”
The demon realm... It had been a chaotic, lawless domain since the beginning of time.
“So all demons were once... Residents of the Rift,” Suho murmured.
It seemed that the trial Esil had been waiting for was to prove who deserved to become a true demon.
At that moment, a solitary system message appeared in front of Suho.
Ding!
[A quest has arrived.]
