The Demon God’s Apprentice

"Those statesmen were absolutely insane," a short, stubby man criticized. The other three criminals sitting around the bonfire joined in the laughter.

Clunk! They drank all the beer they had that night, which resulted in their incapacitated state. The four were sprawled around the campfire, loudly snoring, in a state of total immobility until the short stubby criminal raised his head, casually glancing at his surroundings to make sure he was the only one awake. He was jittering urgently because he drank way too much beer, looking to find a place to relieve himself. He slowly treaded behind a tree.

Hurghhhh...Hurghh. He glanced behind him but saw no one.

"Huh, I must have been hearing sounds. Jeez, I'm never drinking that much beer again."

After finishing his business, he backed up into something stiff, some entity that was heavily gasping for air.

Hurgh….Hrghhh...hur.

The criminal stood there in terror, a wave of cold penetrating through every single bone in his body. He felt something terribly cold on his neck, and upon turning around, he became face to face with a bloody figure missing several limbs.

"Youuu...You...How are you still alive?"

Eerily growling, the scarlet figure gently caressed the cheeks of the criminal, his freezing hands against the warm face creating a terrible skin-crawling sensation.

Plop. The stubby man died of fear, believing that zombies were real. The red figure then approached the rest of the camp, wielding the stone Buddha's pinky finger which had been chiseled into a sharp shank to carve statues.

The red figure screeched like a specter. He plunged the Buddha's finger into another criminal. The scream of surprise and the sudden death of their compatriot woke the other two up.

The old, scruffy man stuttered, "Ser...servant of hell?" The old criminal tried to use his finger arts against the red specter's chest, but he penetrated emptiness.

His finger had gone through a gaping, empty hole in the specter's chest, coming out of its back. He spat blood when he was hit by the Buddha's finger.

"Gh...Ghost!"

His body was flipped around, and he was welcomed into the cold, eternal embrace of darkness. The remaining criminal howled as he ran through the bamboo forest, to the point where his beard almost flew off his face.

An agonizing pain jolted him as he tripped on a pebble, collapsing on the bamboo shoots which deprived him of his mobility, tangling him up. He contorted wildly, alas fruitlessly, as the red-figure approached him. It smiled, chanting Buddhist scriptures while slowly descending onto the ground and crawling toward the struggling criminal who was desperately trying to get up.

Fortunately for him, his clawing actions towards the ground destabilized the tall bamboo stalk in front of him, which collapsed on top of him and the red specter, knocking both of them out.

When the fugitive woke up, he quickly scampered away, but he didn't kill that red figure, who he immediately noticed was the senior statesman as soon as the rays of daylight shone upon his face. He remembered the scene of the prince with an arrow still in his heart standing up as energetic as ever, and he thirsted for that sacred power.

Two weeks later, he had built a makeshift hut out of bamboo, taking care of the senior statesman, giving him the most regular commoner's clothes, and feeding him with as many grasses as he could find. After an arduous two years, he continued staying at the hut, unwilling to kill the old man because of the fear of solitude.

He wanted to go back to civilization but he couldn't. He was paranoid about everyone, even the most unsuspecting of innocent children. He thought that they were all spies who were out to catch him, and that meant execution.

Just as he was walking on his daily path to obtain more herbs, he suddenly fell through the ground. Dusting off his clothes, he was shocked to see that he fell in a dreary cave. Feeling the uneven ground, the fugitive discovered huge stone carvings of otherworldly, distorted creatures covered in a thick layer of moss.

A singular thought suddenly invaded his mind: "I'll turn myself into the strongest lifeform!"

For ten years, using the five stone carvings in the cave as guidance, he practiced the poses and motions depicted and recorded on the carvings, wasting not even a single second to imitate these hellish creatures. He felt a sense of release like never before, unspeakable contentment as he lost his humanity.

The fugitive practiced the poses for so long that instead of having the standing position of a normal person, he was reduced to crouching with his legs crossed together and his head contorted upwards. He replaced his language with growling, chirping, and barking, and his hair became so long and thick that it looked like the tendrils of a ghastly apparition.

He felt so powerful and youthful, knowing that the government officials would be powerless in front of him. He thirsted revenge against the Emperor, who had banished him from the Imperial Library. That's right. He used to be an Imperial Librarian until he accidentally looked at the Emperor's most favorite child for too long. As punishment, he was banished with bandits and other evils to the vast expanses of the regions of the unknown, filled with supernatural mysteries and dangers which even the hardiest, seasoned soldiers would be horrified by.

Taking off the medallion from the senior statesman who was still in a coma, he left the makeshift hut of his solitude, wandering without direction in hope of discovering civilization by sheer chance. He wandered through arid deserts, apathetic forests, endless plains, and jagged mountains for seven years. During that time, he practiced the set of motions he derived from the stone carvings, arrogantly naming them the Demon God's Fury. Every time he contorted wildly using the moves, he felt immense power which he also used to split tall trees and any other obstacles in the way of his path.

After so long, the moves of the Demon God's Fury became as easy as breathing to him, and he felt rejuvenated with a sense of purpose to spread out the Demon God's beliefs and powers to the world. In his forever distorted form, he finally obtained great strength.

One fateful day, while practicing the fist motions and mild movements of the stone carvings, he finally saw a faint structure in the distance. It was a city wall. The fugitive gleefully screeched for half a day until he finally prepared himself for his entrance into the city by night.

His hands became dark red, stained with the blood of countless animals which he voraciously consumed. His face was wildly uneven and malformed after his decades of daily intense practice of the Demon God's movements.

There was one city guard stationed outside of the city wall snoozing on the job. He was trying little to keep himself awake, but he was jolted into awareness as a distorted figure treaded towards him. The guard rubbed his eyes a couple of times, blinking to make sure that he was not seeing things.

The specter kept on approaching, but the guard shook his head, brushing it off as just a hallucination inside a dream. A split second later, he felt an iron palm slapping against his head, and he collapsed.

The fugitive, more similar to a hideous creature, stealthily slipped past the city gates using his inhuman-like contortions, slipping through the slimmest of crevices. The monster suddenly yelped, stimulated by an aroma wafting from a nearby mansion. It was the scent of blood.

The creature crawled over the wall with amphibious limbs and entered what seemed to be the main hall where a family was arguing. The old patriarch froze in confusion, but quickly and decisively threw a nearby spear at the monster which had entered into a trance-like state from the scent of blood emanating from a corpse of a middle-aged servant lying in the middle of the hall. Chaos ensued.

The creature tumbled back into a bookshelf, a golden medallion slipping out from his tattered remnants of clothing and loudly clattering onto the ground. The old family head stood up in shock, seeing the symbol which was so majestically engraved upon the creature's token. Shaking his hand, he pointed at the monster, uttering, "Who...are you?"

The creature magically contorted his body so that he stood up in one fell swoop, smiling and displaying his black teeth towards the noble family gathered in the main hall. He declared, "Arghhh...rawr...wigh," pointing at the brush and paper which laid upon the table in the center of the hall.

The old patriarch hurriedly handed the brush and paper to the creature, bending over to watch it write the messy words:

The Serpent has descended. Surrender yourselves and you may attain godhood.

The old patriarch looked up at the creature and murmured, "Son, call the estate guards!"

There was no response.

The old patriarch turned his head around and upon closer look, all his clan members were unconscious on the floor. In the midst of the pandemonium, they had been knocked out by the monster. Shocked to the core, the old patriarch knelt at the demon-like fugitive and swore allegiance to him.

A terrifying cult had been created.