An unknown amount of time later….
Asher's mind was drifting off in a murky haze.
His mind seemed to be clouded in darkness, with every last thought he had only being sucked further into oblivion.
For a while, it seemed like this would be Asher's fate. That his mind would stay in this strange state of limbo forever, without any hope of ever leaving, until a sudden notification shook the void.
〘Congratulations Awakener Asher Vale on becoming a Soulbound Summon〙
With the system ringing in his mind, Asher's eyes snapped open.
Now properly awake, Asher quickly realised something was wrong.
Unlike when he normally woke up in bed, his entire body had been curled up and wrapped tightly as if he had been squeezed and confined into a cramped space.
To make things even worse, the smell all around him was awful. It was a thick and foul odour, and he could even feel a layer of rancid, mucous-like fluid clinging to his body like a second skin.
Unable to just remain caged like this, Asher tried to make sense of his surroundings, but there was no light or sound where he was kept.
No matter how hard he tried to look around, all he could sense was an all-consuming darkness.
'Okay, this is bad..,'
Asher knew he should remain calm, but faced with the sensory-depriving darkness, an intrinsic sense of panic inevitably rose in his chest.
Without realizing it, Asher instinctively opened his mouth to shout for help, but the second he inhaled, that disgusting wave of rancid liquid from earlier showed no mercy and rushed into his throat.
Asher's body convulsed as he nearly choked to death.
Thrashing his limbs wildly like a drowning person, Asher's hands luckily struck something solid.
If Asher took his time to feel it out, he would realise that it was a thin, warm wall. But he was too panicked to even think straight, and just pounded his fists against it again and again.
Asher's body felt shockingly weak, but he still didn't care and continued pounding until the sound of a faint crack forming in the wall reached Asher's ears.
Not too long after that, a sliver of dim red light pierced through the fissure, illuminating Asher's world of darkness, causing him to almost jump up in joy.
'It worked!' Thought Asher
Since there was light coming out of this faint crack then it meant that there was an exit. And an exit meant that he could really escape from this cursèd place!
Now fueled by both hope and desperation, Asher kept smashing until, piece by piece, the wall tore away, allowing enough room for Asher's entire arm to pierce right through.
Asher's arm formed a giant gap that caused all the strange fluid around him to gush out through this new gap, and for the first time in what felt like forever, fresh air filled his lungs.
Asher breathed in deep, so deep that it hurt, but he didn't care.
The rush of wind in his lungs felt glorious!
"Fuck! I ain't no damn fish!" Cursed Asher
"Humans need air, god damn it! Air, I say!"
Asher, right now, wanted nothing more than to find out who stuffed him into this strange contraption and shove them in a dark fish tank to see just how much they would like it!
'Fuck! They even added some sort of strange slime as well. That sick bastard needs to be fucking flogged, medieval style!'
Scowling with a new set of malicious thoughts, Asher forced himself through the crack and tumbled onto the soft ground, gasping and blinking against the dim red glow that illuminated his entire surroundings.
Eventually, Asher's eyes adjusted to the strange new light, but when he looked around properly, the first thing he saw made him freeze.
The first thing Asher saw was a lake, but that alone wasn't enough for him to be unsettled
No, what truly unsettled him, despite being water from an underground lake, the entire pool shone with a deep red crimson hue that made everything feel as if it was a giant pool of blood
"What the…?" he muttered, staring at the surreal scene.
Asher was starting to realise a big problem
"Where… where am I?"
The strange, bloody sight gave such an ominous feeling that Asher couldn't feel comfortable again, no matter how hard he tried
And when Asher looked back at the object he'd just crawled out from, the feeling only got worse as a cold chill crawled up his spine.
The reason for this was that Asher hadn't come out of a large water tank like he had expected, but instead it was an egg!
Yes, that's right. He a human, had just crawled out of fucking egg!
"…You've got to be fucking kidding me." Muttered Asher in disbelief
"I …hatched from an egg?"
Asher's mind was spinning in confusion.
He stretched out his hands to slap himself awake from this strange, lucid dream when he suddenly froze.
He looked at the hand he was about to bring to his face with conditions
His once familiar human hands were nowhere to be seen; Instead, they were now replaced with small, red palms, tipped with sharp black claws.
And it was not just his hands that had changed. His skin was now also completely different. It had morphed into a strange, burning crimson red colour with Veins black as ink twisting beneath them like polished vipers.
And this was just the start, as the strange features just kept on coming.
Feeling his head, a new set of goat-like Horns curled from his skull whilst a spaded black tail twitched eagerly behind him. Even His feet had changed, becoming clawed and almost feral
"Haha! I'm a freak."
Asher was laughing, but that was only because he was still dissociating and unable to accept the reality of the current situation.
But his smile soon faded as a horrible thought struck him. It was thought so bad that it had quickly snapped him out of his newly blossoming psychosis
"God no, please no…"
Fearing the worst, Asher's eyes widened as he glanced down at his crotch.
"….."
No words were said. Only a painful moment of silence passed by that eventually ended with Asher's light whimper.
'It's over', he thought in despair, almost falling to his knees
Asher had now experienced every man's nightmare
His manhood had been nerfed for no apparent reason!
Damn it! He should have realised it earlier!
He was standing out here in his full birthday suit, but barely even felt a breeze!
His 'little brother' had now become very little indeed.
'Fuck!' Cursed Asher
If before Asher simply wanted to beat up whoever put him in this situation, now he wanted them dead!
Not only was he turned into a freak, but his most important asset had been nerfed into the ground.
And why? It's not like his tool was all that game-breaking to begin with. Sure, he was a bit better than average, but did he really deserve to be nerfed into the ground?
Who did it? Who did this to him! God? No, a God couldn't be so cruel! Only a devil could come up with this level of cruel, targeted malice!
Asher felt like the world was ending when he suddenly slapped himself awake.
"Bang!"
The hot buzz on his cheeks brought him back to reality
He couldn't despair, at least not now. It didn't matter what it looked like or where he needed to go because he still had a family to get back to.
And as for his new depreciated asset...
No great craftsman ever blames his tools!
Asher didn't believe he was a poor craftsman, so he suppressed his discomfort and coped and believed that his current new set of miniature tools wouldn't affect him too much
After all, everyone knows the old saying.
'It's not the size of the boat that matters, it's instead the motion of the ocean!'
In fact, if Asher thought about it more, he should be glad that he even had his tool to work with, otherwise ….
But before Asher could continue on that train of thought any longer, his body suddenly trembled.
All of a sudden, an immense feeling of hunger surged through his body, hitting him like a brick to the gut
The sheer intensity of his hunger left Asher no room for rational thought, and he quickly turned toward anything near him that gave off even a shred of scent.
Eventually, his eyes rested on something:
His eggshell.
That jagged and broken shell was now exuding an oddly delicious aroma.
The scent felt like a message whispering straight to his instincts:
'Eat.'
'Eat and learn'
Asher didn't think any more. He just lunged, grabbed a curved shard of the eggshell, and shoved it into his mouth.
Crunch. Crackle.
As Asher chowed down on the hard shell, the taste surprised him. It was smoky, crispy, almost like roasted meat.
As Asher was eating, the light snack did more than just satisfy his hunger—it sparked something ancient inside.
Suddenly, a flood of foreign memories crashed through his mind, stabbing directly at his sea of consciousness.
Asher staggered backwards, his voice now trembling
"What… what is this?"
The memories weren't his own, but somehow they felt as if they belonged there in his mind.
But perhaps more important than the strange way these new memories came about was the information that they carried with them
They told him he was no longer human. He was a demon.
The answer burned into his soul as the memories solidified into a single, searing truth—the act of consuming the shell had awakened an ancient lineage,
As Asher was thinking, a name blazed across his mind like fire etched in stone:
"Asherion Dulmerith Malriven Kryonar… Endrimion Vale."
Asher's breath got stuck in his throat.
The name echoed in his mind like the tolling of a cursed bell.
This was no mere name. It was a mark, a chain and in a sense….a key.
It was his mark as a being born from the pure energy of the abyss and proof that the abyss had come to accept him in his entirety.
His Demonic true name.
The memories explained his current situation a little more clearly.
He didn't know how he ended up here, but what he did know was that he was a being born inside a place known as the abyss.
The abyss was a place where demons and monsters lived and were constantly fighting and devouring each other to seek stronger powers and evolution.
In this wild and lawless land. He had become an Abyssal Imp. Quite literally the weakest creature on the food chain.
A runt was placed there just to make up the number count.
Fortunately, the abyss had not completely abandoned him, as with his true name came a direct personal blessing from the abyss
[Evolve through plunder(EX)]
Despite things being made clearer about his current situation, Asher still had to take a moment to sit down and try his best to understand what was happening to him.
The Abyss was something that Asher was hearing about for the first time.
He had been a talented person back in the Blue Star Federation planet, so he was clued in on a lot of things, but not once had a person ever mentioned the abyss to him.
So there were only two options. Either the higher members of society were keeping this a secret, or this was clearly a realm or rift that had not been discovered by other human awakeners yet!
But just as Asher was about to delve more into memories of the abyss and the power that came with it, another ripple passed through his mind that called forth another voice.
The voice now was completely different from the one who had granted his true name.
It was something cold and mechanical, and obviously didn't belong in this realm
It was the system.
〘Congratulations on becoming a Soulbound Summoned Creature〙
After that notification, Asher's vision suddenly flickered as a screen appeared before him
〘 STATUS 〙
╭───────────────╮
[Name: Asher Vale]
[Race: Abyssal Imp] (Soulbound Summon/Clone)
[Rank: Common ★]
[Level:0 (0 / 100 XP)]
[Talent: Evolve Through Plunder (EX)]
You gain a chance to plunder and absorb one random skill or ability from any creature you kill.
The higher the rarity of the creature, the more powerful the stolen skill. Passive and active skills may both be absorbed.
[Evolution Value: 0/10 (When Evolution Energy is full, a new evolution can be unlocked)]
[Strength: 3]
[Agility: 3]
[Constitution: 3]
[Intelligence: 10]
[Heath Points (30/30)]
[Mana: (100/100)]
╰───────────────╯
Asher stared at the screen in front of his eyes in shock.
The class awakening system? But how did he have this?
The system was something exclusive only to human awakeners. Even other intelligent monster races the human federation met in rifts are incapable of owning a system or awakening a class.
This was confined to countless years of experimentation and Federation-backed research
The memories he inherited show that rift monsters and abyssal monsters were no different. So for that reason, it should be impossible for the Abyssal Imp, a monster, to awaken a system without a class unless…
Asher's heart jumped.
He realised something
The rule that monsters couldn't have access to the system was not absolute; there was one exception to how a monster could gain access to the system.
That way was for the monster to become a summon or pet to a Human awakened with a system.
With that thought, Asher quickly pieced together the dots.
He had somehow become a monstrous demon, and then that monstrous demon had become his own Soulbound summoned Creature!
So in a sense, Asher's summoning ritual hadn't really failed. Instead, he had just summoned himself!
No, seeing as he was somehow in a new body, his circumstances were probably even stranger than that.
If Asher's guess was correct, then what he experienced should be some sort of reverse summoning that had come about from the broken and glitched-out system that occurred during his summoning ritual
Regardless of how it happened, he had somehow become a glitch in the system.
A being with both the power of the abyss, like monsters and a being with the power of the system, like humans!
But before Asher could ponder too much on the glitches in the system, the screen blinked again, fading away with just like a hazy memory.
With the disappearance of the system came a strangely familiar scorching heat that Asher instantly recognised as the will of the abyss hidden deep within his bloodline.
Unlike the system that felt robotic and static, the will of the abyss gave off a completely different feeling
Asher didn't know if it was because of his two souls and naturally high intelligence, but he could feel this strange will of the abyss not just within his blood but even outside his body and within the cavern
It radiated from the stone beneath his claws, from the obsidian columns that formed the ribcage of the cavern.
But just as Asher felt like he was grasping on something deeper, the hush of the cavern was broken by noise that completely snapped him out of this trance.,
"Crack!"
A short distance away, a nearby egg, not all too dissimilar to the one he just came out of, twitched.
With the first one as a signal, many other eggs began to twitch as well
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Soon, the hundreds of eggs scattered throughout the cavern started quivering and shaking as they cracked apart.
Asher stood still, frozen in place as he stared across the cavern that now looked like a giant alien hatchery in utter horror.
Just then, as if on cue, the eggs all hatched at once
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The silence of this strange cavern was instantly shattered as howls screeched and guttural howls echoed out from all directions!