As the crimson sun revealed its glorious radiance to the abyss once again.
Veal and his mates stood at the front of their lust building, clad in thorn armor. They gazed in the opposite direction of the outer cradle, the wind swaying their hair. Today, they were going on a trip, a journey to the end of their cradle.
"How far is the end of the cradle from here?" he asked Velra.
"Not too far. With our speed, it should take us about one and a half days to get there," she answered.
His eyes narrowed as he made a quick calculation, then turned to a 7-meter-long, three-headed goat demon that was patrolling.
"You!" he called. "Come here."
The demon rushed to him with its heads lowered. He patted the demon's heads one by one and said,
"Today, you will have the honor of being ridden by me."
The demon's eyes shone with extreme joy. Then it dropped to the ground on its belly.
"It's my greatest honor, master," it said, its multiple overlapping, insidious voices laced with joy.
Veal climbed on its back and gripped the horns of the middle head, turned to his mates, and asked,
"What are you waiting for?"
Hearing him, they hopped on the demon's back. Alexandra wrapped her hands around his waist, and Velra wrapped her hands around hers.
Veal tapped the goat's head, pointed in the opposite direction of the outer forest, and commanded,
"Go."
The demon stood on all sixes, its legs contracted, then whoosh! It turned in a blur toward the direction where he pointed.
....
The first day of their journey was dull and uneventful. It wasn't until the second day that they started encountering other demons. Thousands. But they were nothing special; none were above the crimson bone rank. Just sensing a hint of his aura drove terror into their demonic hearts, prompting them to stay clear of him.
He used some for food and ignored the rest.
Soon, the three days passed, and they reached their destination, the end of their cradle.
Because they had traveled on the crimson bone demon and not on their own, the estimated time doubled.
They unmounted the goat demon and gazed at the still, seemingly outstretched, endless blood desert before them. But they knew that was not the case.
There was something special standing a few kilometers ahead.
Something invisible to the naked eye.
Veal turned into an afterimage. After traversing a distance of a kilometer, he paused and frowned as he felt a force press down on him. It was as if his body weight had increased a little. After a second of contemplation, he continued forward. The further he traveled, the stronger the force became. After journeying for half a kilometer, his body weight had multiplied by thirty. Even though the pressure was intense, he could still easily withstand it.
Half a kilometer forward, he came to a standstill. His body weight had multiplied by a hundred, his demonic aura blazing brightly, and the ground beneath was laced with web-like cracks. Pressure at this level brought tremendous strain onto his body, but still, it was not enough to cause him injury.
He slowly raised his right hand and pressed it onto the invisible barrier that was stopping his advance. This barrier was dome-shaped, spanning the entirety of his section of the demon cradle. Its purpose was to separate his section of the cradle from the others. From his inherited memory, he knew that the cradle was nigh boundless in size, yes, boundless.
He couldn't even imagine its true scale, and it was split into countless sections.
And as the name cradle suggested, it was the home of the babies of the abyss demons. Even he would still be considered a baby in a certain sense.
It was only after an abyss demon ascended to the blood core/middle/noble ranks that it would no longer be considered a baby and would be kicked out of the cradle into the real abyss. A place that made the hellest of hells look like heaven.
A boundless place.
A place where the true nightmarish demons dwells, demons that devour worlds or even entire universes for fun.
Blood core rank demons might die the moment they set foot inside, or they might experience a fate worse than death if they were unlucky.
Only the ones that were extremely, extremely lucky would survive. The only demons who might have a less unfortunate fate were those with noble blood flowing through them, for they had lineage, a place that might shelter them in the true abyss.
Veal leaned forward on the barrier, pressing his forehead against it, and his purple eyes narrowed as he peered through. At first, he saw nothing but the same endless, rolling blood desert. But he knew this should not be the case.
His eyes narrowed further as he focused his strength on them, still no change. His mind spun for a second before he muttered,
"Ignitional Vitala Bloodial Lust."
He burned his blood, increasing all of his bodily aspects. That was when it happened. It was as if a veil had been lifted. The desert blurred out of existence, revealing the truth it had concealed.
A flaming world of obsidian mountains and an ocean of bloody lava.
Within it, he saw his siblings, who swam in the bloody lava and wandered the mountains. They were locked within the objective eternal state of the abyss demons.
The hunter and the prey.
And, surprisingly, there was a demon whom he recognized.
This demon lay in lordship atop a mountain not far from the barrier. It was eel-like, with a body that stretched 15 meters in length, obsidian in color, almost indistinguishable from the mountain beneath it.
This was the last demon who had chased him within the final moments before he surfaced from the river of birth.
The demon, as if sensing his gaze, raised its horned head high and locked onto his direction. It stared intensely for a few seconds before its gaze drifted to the bloody ocean in Veal's direction, after not seeing what it sensed was watching it.