Abandoning my humanity

I was in an endless expanse of void yet again, everything around me surrounded with never ending blackness.

At least that's what I thought until I sensed a bunch of red threads approaching my soul. Well, there were at least a hundred of them, all coming from the same direction, where I could sense a fragment of a red orb, most likely from the soul of the demon whose blood I drank.

Thinking I shouldn't let them hit me, I tried to move in an attempt to dodge them, but to no avail. I guess it makes sense though, since this all probably is happening inside my head, which is a different environment from the one where I appeared right after death.

Being left with no choice but to accept the red threads nearing me, I prepared myself mentally for whatever may come.

As they attached themselves to me one by one, what I felt was completely unlike anything I've ever felt before.

A mixture of all the possible negative emotions, like anger, suffering, pain or sadness were flowing into my mind alongside memories and images of various painful experiences ranging from being tortured on a stretcher, slowly being burned alive, drowning or having your skin ripped off of you.

But these weren't just images, memories or feelings, nothing like that. I was experiencing every single one of those emotions and going through every single one of these painful experiences all at once.

And that was not all.

Along all of these there was this overarching presence, trying to amplify all of these in an attempt to completely erase my mind.

Frankly, I was beginning to lose my mind.

Even if I got out of this now, I'd probably be permanently scarred.

Resolving myself, I tried to 'push' against the red threads that were responsible for making me feel all this.

And I did manage to push them back for a while, at least until 'it' realized what I'm trying to do and started to completely overpower me.

It must've still been furious about me killing it before, as that was the overarching emotion that I could feel coming from it.

I tried to think of a way out, but there really wasn't anything I could do now.

I kept trying to defend my soul as well as I could, but to no avail.

It only prolonged the inevitable.

Then, just as I felt the first crack appear on my soul, something completely unexpected happened.

I heard an almost robotic voice echo inside my mind.

"Critical condition reached, temporarily releasing seal to eliminate threat."

Seal? Critical condition? What does this all mean?

However, what shocked me more was that the red threads were no longer the ones on the offensive. A golden light flowed through them instead, attacking and absorbing the demon's soul into my own, assimilating it into the cracks it has caused inside my soul.

And then the strange power disappeared once again.

It all happened so fast that it was almost like this strange power never even existed.

Good thing was that even though it was gone, I could feel that my soul now became considerably stronger, and, hopefully, so did my physical body.

And it didn't take long for me to finally wake up and find out.

***

Scarlet's POV:

"Ugh, shit."

The demon's last attack sent me flying into yet another wall, and at this point I had trouble even getting up.

Glancing over at Seren on the ground, I sighed.

Guess he didn't make it.

As the demons slowly but surely approached me, wide grins spreading all over their faces and demonic laughter echoing throughout the area, I realized that I'd soon be returning back to the fire pits.

Or at least that's what I thought until one of them spoke.

"Why would we kill you, that would be such a waste. We've got much better plans for you."

So they're going to imprison me instead, huh.

Like I'm going to let them.

Taking one of my daggers, I aimed to stab it towards my heart, but before I could do that something absolutely shocking happened.

Two of the demons in front of me dropped dead, with holes in their back, right where their hearts were.

Standing behind them was a figure I almost didn't recognize at first - his black hair had turned completely white, his muscular torso completely exposed, covered in demonic crimson tattoos and his red eyes almost glowing. And his hands were completely covered in the demon's blood.

Turning around to face him, the third demon tried to hit Seren with a right hook, which he easily ducked under and plunged his hand right into the demon's heart.

However, as soon as the demon collapsed on the ground, Seren himself fell down to his knees, as the color of his hair changed back to black.

Staring at the scene before me with a look of pure shock, it took me a while to snap out of it.

What I had just witnessed was a human defeating demons so effortlessly, like they were nothing but flies to him.

And that means that he must've successfully gained power from the demon's blood.

Then, taking a while to recompose myself and stand up, I looked off into the distance.

"He should be here any time now, I thought."

It was about half an hour of sprinting from here to the demon's house we originally intended to raid.

And he should've noticed the commotion.

Just as I was thinking that, Greyn, my right hand man who had been scouting the house, appeared in my vision.

Arriving at the scene, I could see his normally stoic face turn into one of pure shock as he looked at the scene before him.

Then, he asked:

"What the Hell happened here Scarlet, and how did you manage to kill four demons. You only ever killed a demon one on one."

Pointing at Seren, I spoke:

"I didn't kill them, he did."

Taking a look at Seren, Greyn furrowed his brows.

"How?"

Then, joining into the conversation, Seren spoke:

"I drank the demon's blood."

Greyn's expression turned into a mixture of emotions when he heard that.

"How'd you-

"Nevermind that, let's pack up the demon's bodies and go. I'd say this was a pretty successful raid."

Stopping Greyn mid sentence, Seren started filling up some bottles with the demon's blood and putting their bodies in bags.

"He's right," I said. "We can talk about this on the way, but for now we should take what we can and get out of here.

Getting up, Greyn and I joined Seren in packing up anything we could take with us.

***

Seren's POV

After taking anything and everything that we could, we headed back for the shelter.

We walked in relative silence for quite a while, until Scarlet finally asked a long awaited question.

"So... how the Hell did you do it? How did you drink the demon's blood without losing your mind?"

Telling them about what happened inside my mind, I decided to leave out the stuff about that strange voice inside my head and instead told them that I overpowered it with my willpower.

Listening intently to every word I told them, Greyn did seem a bit suspicious of me overpowering the demon's will with my own, but after Scarlet told him I climbed out of the fire pit at the edge of Hell all by myself, he seemed to believe it.

Then they also asked me questions about my new power, and to be honest, I myself still didn't really know just what I was capable of now.

What I did know was that my body itself became a bit stronger, and that for about five seconds I could enter this state where I had the strength of a demon.

My hair would also change color to white, and some crimson tattoos would appear on my skin.

For now, I decided to just call it 'The devil's form'.

And if my theory wasn't wrong, then I could make this power progressively stronger if I just keep drinking the blood of stronger and stronger demons.

And, although far fetched, I already had an idea of how I could use this new ability of mine to grow stronger than anyone else.

But for that, I would first need to gain the trust of the people around me.