Chapter 005. Demon Part I.

Outside of the cave, three peoples are standing in front of the cave arguing if they should enter or not, the three of them were only at level 1 after all, after they level up earlier by fighting level 0 monster, they immediately set foot on a level 1 map to change their farming ground, not just the loots from level 0 maps were scarce but the exp they received weren't even double a digit.

So they wanted to try their own luck in a level 1 maps, they're expecting that something might good happen in the process, but after they tried fighting level 1 monsters, they immediately regret it, although they can fight and kill level 1 monster, that's with the assistance of basic healing potions, if they don't have any potions fighting against a level 1 monster, it's just a matter of time before they died as they keep receiving damages while fighting, moreover the damages they recieved where at the range of 40 to 50 points, they only have a more than 100 HP right now, that kind of damages can be lethal to them in a long run so a potion is a must have when grinding levels.

They then started to advance through the forest with great caution from their surroundings until almost an hour passed, they found this cave hidden inside of the forest.

One of the three players keep convincing the other two that they only have a few potions left, it wouldn't be enough to kill all the monsters inside and they don't even know what kind of monsters they would fight once they entered because of the darkness but he can't seem to change their decision.

「Don't be a coward Harold, we've already come here after going through our hardships and you're only backing out now?. What's even the point of wandering around if we won't take risk like this?.」

「Eman is right Harold, now that we're here, why don't we try heading inside?, we might even get fortunate while we're there.」

「Fi-」

When Harold is about to agree to their decision, he didn't even manage to finish his first word when he froze from where he was standing with a widen eyes, his two companion's back are facing the entrance of the cave so he's the only one who can see that something's and what is exiting the cave.

His two companion were both confused from his reaction while looking at their back. When both of them turned around, their reaction were exactly the same as Harold, they froze to where they're standing like statues.

A humanoid creature walking elegantly out of the cave that has a height of two and a half meters with two black horn coming out from his head, black eyes that can seems to penetrate through their soul, he also have a long black hair that reach upto his back, and although he's wearing something out of ordinary, everyone can still see his white skin.

He doesn't show any kind of expressions from his face but to the perspective of the three players, they can see that they're being looked down with pity through the humanoid creature's eyes.

But the most shocking revelation about this humanoid creature is not the appearance but his stats, although the humanoid creature were only a level 3, their stats wouldn't still be enough to fight him even if they combined it into one plus the 2,000 HP it possess. They're already struggling to fight the level 1 wolves whose stats were only slightly higher than them and only had 1,000 HP.

After the humaniod creature fully exited the cave, he suddenly vanished and reappear in front of the three players and brandish his right hand with sharp claws.

Harold who became the target that still frozen from where his standing received the full brunt of the attack and was sent flying 6 meters away while his hp bar keep reducing until it reach 0.

「Run Owen!.」

After the humanoid creature launch an attack, the two other player snapped out and come back to reality, Eman shouted to his other friend Owen to run, with all the strength they can muster they turn back and immediately attempt to flee but the humanoid creature starts to chase after them, it wasn't even a chase as Eman and Owen only managed to do 4 steps before the humanoid creature appears before them and kill both of them.

Only 4 seconds passed when the humanoid creature exited the cave but it had already killed the three players without a sweat.

「My Lord, it's done.」

The humanoid creature kneels before Sien as he walk out of the cave, Sien who used the [Demon King's Call] to test how powerful a demon he would summoned wore a satisfied smile on his face. When the demon first came out, he's surprise how high the stats it possess, it's almost 3 times of what he had right now including the stats from his items. Although it's a bummer that he only have 2,000 HP but compared to the current players, he would be akin to a field boss that cannot be killed by any teams of players.

「Good work Quinn. Hide on my shadow for now, I'll call you later when I need you.」

Sien said as he continue walking to where his summon is kneeling and pat his shoulder. Quinn who received the order said yes as he fade through the shadow of Sien.

「That's so convenient, if only I have a lot of mana, I would be traveling faster than anyone.」

Sien said with an envy look on his face, although he have the skill, he can't just use it blindy in a dangerous place like this unless he had a mana enough to not worry about his mana being depleted. Even now the mana he used to summon Quinn still haven't recovered yet, although he already drank a mana potion, its effect wasn't instant, he would need some time to fully regenarate.

What if after he used his mana to travel multiple times that it depleted his mana and while recovering, tons of monster appeared, that would be his doom.

Sien shook his head as he thought of 'Now isn't the time to think that' and walk to the dead body of the players, at first he thought he will only test the strength of his summoned demon to some monsters after getting out, but when he heard the voices outside of the cave he thought that now is the perfect time.

Not just that but when a free stats presented itself to Sien, there's now way he would let it go.

Normally, a dead body of a player would disappear once they died but with the presence and influence of Sien's trait, it will stay so that he can devour their souls only after he's done will the dead body disappear.

After a few steps, Sien arrived next to the first dead body, when he used his trait's ability [Soul Devour], a fist size white flame like soul came out of the player's dead body and flew through in front of Sien, he can feels the inside of his chest and his heart were reacting to it and then the soul suddenly get sucked by his heart. The process only took 2 seconds without any problems.

〈You have successfully devoured a soul. Soul Devoured is currently 1.〉

When Sien saw that there's no problems, he then did the same for the other two more dead bodies.

〈You have successfully devoured a soul. Soul Devoured is currently 3.〉

After receiving the system notification, he opened his status window to increase his demon power stats. A message confirmation appeared asking if he wants to use the souls he devoured to increase his demon power that he immediately answered with yes.

〈Demon Power increased by 0.3 points.〉

「I knew it.」

Sien said with a dejected expression, he already expect something like this would happen. After all base on his trait Ability description the increase of demon power depends on how strong the soul is and the strength of the souls of a three level 1 players only amounts to 0.3 points.

「Kind of disappointed but there's still a lot of opportunities to come by to increase my Demon Power.」

Although the game easily gave him a new powerful special trait, it doesn't mean that the way to increase it would be easy at all. With a SSS rank speacial trait, the highest of all special trait, it's natural to have a high requirement for nurturing it. It will surely break the game balance if the way to improve a SSS rank could be easily done.

Killing players would give the killer a negative aura around them and their name would turn red evidence that they did kill someone. When they tried to enter a town or city, the guards there would immediately throw them to jail for a few hours, if they did killed a lot of people, they'll stay there for a day or two.

But when Quinn a summoned demon of Sien killed the three players earlier, he didn't receive the negative aura nor his name turned red. Sien can think of a 3 possible explanation for why he didn't receive the negative aura and his name not turning red but not 100% sure if it's accurate.

First reason is that, the one who killed them wasn't Sien instead the demon he summoned but when he thought about it carefully that shouldn't be possible because he previously saw one of his guildmates kill someone with his summon and he received a negative aura at the same time his name turned red. After Sien carefully thought the first possibility he cross it out on his head.

The second reason is that it might be because of his special trait, because before he regress, he heard a rumor about a member of one of the largest guild in the Philippines called 'Great Axe' guild, someone in the guild can kill any player without suffering the penalty for killing. Although it's only a rumor he heard and doesn't have a concrete evidence, if a rumor exist then there's a small chance it's real now that he's also experiencing it.

For the third reason, it might be a bug that the system didn't notice but for the 25 years he played the game, there's no bug ever recorded throughout the history of the game so he can't really accept the possibility of the third reason. To make sure things for Sien, he opened his status window to send a message about this matter.

The message contains about him asking the system for not receiving any negative aura and his name turning red after killling three players and then he send it. If it turns out to be a bug, then there's nothing he could do about it, he would just kill players from time to time so that it wouldn't take long before the negative aura fade out. But if things go the other way around-. Sien whose still thinking pause as he received a reply from the system.

It didn't even take 30 second before the system reply back. When Sien read through what the message contains for a few seconds, the only thing he can do is put his right hand on his face.

〈Greetings Player Sin.

There is no any problem detected with you not receiving a negative aura after your summoned demon kill the other players. It's because demons can't be affected by the negative aura.

Demon grow stronger through killing not just other monster but also npc's and players. They've a body that can easily absorbed any types of negative aura. So when your summoned demon killed the three players, instead of the negative aura flows to you after its release from the dead bodies of the players, it flowed to your summon and absorbed it.

As you have a Demon King's Heart special trait, you're also immune to any negative effect and can use it to strengthen yourself but only when your True Demon King's From is active.

From: The System. 〉

Sien can't help but grin evilly with this revelation, it seems that the rumor he heard about a certain special trait were real after all. He closed the message and starts walking through the forest, while walking Sien can't help to once again readjust his plans for the future events, now that he knows this there's no way he wouldn't use it to the fullest.

「But before that I'll first go to a level 3 solo dungeon.」

There's two types of dungeons in Paradise Worlds, the first one is the Solo Dungeon where you can enter with only by yourself and currently only possible for him to enter right now for being a lone wolf. The second type is a team dungeon where sometimes 5 people is needed to enter sometimes 10 or 50 or 100, there's even times when 500 people are required before entering although that wouldn't appear at this stage of the game.

As for the location of a dungeon, predicting the spawn coordinates would be impossible for normal players as they randomly appears through the whole maps, only a labyrinth has a fix location as when a labyrinth was cleared then it would just be closed for a day before the players can re-enter but after clearing dungeon, it would permanently vanish from its location, when that happens, the player can only do nothing but find another dungeon to clear.

This time Sien's destination is a level 3 map where the level 3 dungeon at, even if the spawn coordinates of a dungeon is random, for Sien who's once job on their guild is to acquire lots of information, locating a dungeon wasn't a problem, infact there's even still some places he wants to go but can't because of his level.

After walking for a while, a level 3 Dire Wolf suddenly launch an attack on Sien who's walking while in deep thoughts, when he noticed that a monster attacked him, the wolf's sharp fangs were only inches away from him. Sien doesn't have enough time to defend himself from the attack as he prepares for the impact, but even before the attack reach him, a black figure suddenly appeared at the back of the wolf and grabs its tail to throw it away.

「How dare you sneak attack on my Lord!?. 」

Quinn said after throwing the wolf far away and hit a tree two times before falling to the ground with an angered expression visible within his face, he attacks the wolf without mercy until it died without being able to fight back, the wolf didn't even manage to cry for pain before dying.

Sien who saw the scene before his eyes surprised by how fast Quinn saved him and reacted to the situation. He even killed the wolf with only a few attacks. That's a level 3 Dire Wolf, a stronger race of wolves than a Forest Wolf, even if it's not a special monster, it's still a level 3 monster, if a normal summon fought another monster with the same level, they wouldn't be able to replicate what did Quinn just do.

This scene make Sien thought of how broken a demon summon is. Too broken to have from the start of the game. Although he already saw the stats of Quinn, he still can't help but marvel on his own summon.

After beating the wolf to death, Quinn knelt in front of his lord as he hand the item drops by killing the wolf. Sien took the level 3 Common Rank Wrist Guard and some copper coins still thinking of what happened just now, he didn't even look at the stats of the wrist guards as he equip it and this time he didn't order Quinn to enter his shadow as they continue walking, instead Sien started to ask Quinn some question about his skills and what he can do, as not all of some character can do was recorded from their status window. Just like what the system told him about his trait.

Although it's not his first time seeing a demon, this is his first time knowing something about the secrets of a demon, so he have a lot of questions.