After a wild chain of associations, Xanathar was sure it had figured out the truth, and clung to its conclusion with religious certainty: "The Goddess of Life is already dead. Ha! Her followers—every last one, nothing but a joke!"
"He's got to be a demon worshipper now! This news needs to go public—I'll make sure his reputation is destroyed!"
The more it ranted, the closer the beholder's voice came to madness. One eyestalk pointed toward the Halfling, barking, "You. Go now. Take your subordinates and infiltrate his monastery. Find out exactly what's going on—bring back proof that he worships the demons! I want the world to know he's the real fiend here!"
The Halfling muttered assent and turned to go, only for Xanathar to snap, "Stop!"
He froze, and the beholder's voice dripped with disgust. "Take those things with you. Use them as cannon fodder if you have to. I don't want to see them here."
The jumbled, writhing, black, and unnaturally slender chaos-creatures squirmed a bit, playing up to their Master. The Halfling shot them a wary glance, a mix of nerves and suspicion on his face, then bowed his head. "Understood."
Off to the side, the Mind Flayer watched Xanathar's cruelty and megalomania in silence, lost in contemplation.
...
That night, the second half, in the South Harbor District, at the monastery.
After meeting with her informant, Adele slipped quietly back into the monastery. Besides being Willo's daughter, the Green Vines' highest-Mana druid, and her tribe's heir, she'd always carried one more, often overlooked identity:
Agent for the shadowy intelligence networks.
All this time, she'd never cut ties with that underground network. She knew all too well that timely, reliable information was the only way to make the right decisions. She worked hard, always making new connections, forging key channels.
Her trip to Liberl Port became a chance to meet more senior officers of the network—besides Daevyl Starsong—and widen her information pipeline.
She also learned what Charles had actually been up to.
Where her mother Willo had only a vague sense that Charles was "cleansing evil," Adele got the precise body count—and the number was enough to make her pulse skip.
Still, she found herself oddly calm about it. If he could handle an Abyssal Lord, then a mass slaughter of irredeemable criminals seemed almost acceptable.
So she played it cool, kept talking to the network, and each night, slipped in and out of the monastery, feeding them inside info.
She was sure Charles had no clue about her movements, even feeling a bit proud of her covert operations. But what she didn't know was that, thanks to the system's map, Charles saw every step she took.
In truth, since she never touched any real top secrets, Charles simply couldn't be bothered to rein her in.
So she'd come and gone undetected for days. But tonight, something unexpected finally happened.
As usual, Adele started by sneaking up to the monastery's main wall, shapeshifting into a small cat. She leapt lightly to the top, then landed inside.
She wasn't a specialist in shapeshifting, but handling weak creatures—cat, dog, whatever—was easy for her.
She returned to her human form as soon as she landed. She was just about to head to her room when she froze, body surging with mana, eyes taking on a magical shine as she triggered her "Darkvision" spell on instinct.
With that magic, she spotted, on the far edge of the monastery, several extremely long-limbed figures crawling silently over the wall!
Thieves!
Adele's mind instantly leapt to the most logical conclusion. Without hesitation, she raised one hand—no incantation needed—and the ground erupted with emerald vines, snaking out to wind around the intruders' limbs.
It was just a 1st-level spell, Entangle—not very powerful, but she figured it more than enough for a bunch of petty burglars.
But then, to her shock, something wild happened. Her vines snagged them without a hitch—but those bodies suddenly stretched and thinned, as if she'd just tangled up not people, but some kind of oozes, able to freely reshape themselves!
But… oozes with humanoid shapes?
Adele was stumped—this was outside her knowledge. She stared, surprised, but what happened next stunned her even more.
Sensing her spell attack, those shadows dropped down on all fours, their limbs lengthening and contracting as they scuttled at her like bizarre crawling animals!
Wait. These aren't people!
They're… monsters I've never seen before!
That revelation flickered into Adele's mind as she recoiled, already chanting, "Barkskin!"
She stepped back, and her skin grew tough, ridged, as hard as chainmail—a staple druid defense.
But she'd underestimated them—badly.
"Hiss—!"
That black, lizardlike monster darted up to Adele, letting out a low, freakish shriek—its head elongating like a spear, stabbing right at her!
"Schlick—!"
Adele's eyes went wide in shock. Her Barkskin splintered like paper, and in a blink, her chest was pierced through!
All around her, at least a dozen more shadows were pouring over the monastery wall.
No—mother is in danger!
Even with her life bleeding away, all Adele could think of was her dearest mother.
...
Inside his dorm, Charles had just been sleeping soundly when he woke up with a jolt—system interface flashing red in his eyes.
He scanned the map: it was swarming with red dots.
Enemies. The monastery was under raid!
Beside him, Hattie—assigned as tonight's bedmate—woke at the commotion, sitting up fast and letting the covers slip, exposing her bare chest and flawless pale skin.
She hugged his arm to her, eyes wide with worry and confusion. "Master, what's wrong—a nightmare?"
"Worse than a nightmare." Charles's voice was grim. "Andny, wake up. Get everyone up. Right now!"
"We've got hostiles inside the monastery. We're already under attack!"
He leaped from bed, not bothering with clothes, slapping Mage Armor and False Life on himself, and sprinted for the door.
Hattie's face turned white at his words. She spun off the mattress, muttered a quick incantation, and her nun's habit appeared, enveloping her in black silk.
She'd skipped undergarments as usual—she was used to going commando, so this was nothing new. She followed Charles out the door.
The instant they stepped out, the first thing they saw was Adele, impaled through the chest by one of those mutant black chaos-creatures!
"Adele!"
His shout rang out as he bolted to help—only for a tidal wave of nightmarish, shifting shadows to surge at him from every direction.
He caught sight of their true forms—and his expression darkened to black.
Chaotic creations.
Or, to use the colloquial name: Proto-Demons!
The demons of the Infinite Layers of the Abyss didn't originally look as they do now—they've evolved through countless cycles.
But these things before him—born directly from raw, primal Chaos Energy—were the original, most ancient type of demon, the sort thought long extinct in the brutal bloodbath of the Abyss!
That knowledge may have faded from mortal memory, those ancient histories lost to all but the most eldritch beings and the gods themselves—but as a player, Charles had run into these freaks in late-game content. Of course, he recognized them!
Shit—why were they here?
Why the hell are proto-demons invading my monastery?
No way… could there really have been a proto-demon worshipper among the black gangs I wiped out in South Harbor? One even rarer than a mosquito in winter?
The thought made Charles curse under his breath.
Disgusting!
Proto-demons might not be the strongest—though at his level, they were already extremely dangerous—but what made them truly vile was this: when killed, they merged with the ground, remaking it as "chaotic demon-soil."
From then on, the land would spawn abyssal blood-pools, demon trees, and all manner of demon-breeding features—creating endless new demon abominations!
It was way different from modern demons. Sure, normal demon corpses left "demonic filth," which drove mortals insane, polluted the land, and sometimes could be used as magical fuel. But if left alone, all that stuff would eventually dissipate.
Proto-demon "demon-soil," though, didn't fade—it spread, and kept spreading, until it would transform whole regions.
In short: these monsters might have less brute strength than modern demons, but their corruptive power was massively greater—making them the absolute worst.
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