The first thing Gary became aware of was that he could feel again.
Not the weird, floaty, incorporeal feeling from the Balance Dimension where he'd been a ghost or soul or whatever the fuck you call a consciousness without a body. This was different. This was physical. He could feel his limbs, curled up tight against his torso. Could feel the walls pressing in around him from all sides. Could feel the warmth surrounding him like he was wrapped in the world's most uncomfortable blanket.
"Holy shit, I have a body again!!!"
Gary's eyes snapped open, or you could say he tried to. There was nothing but darkness. Again! Still Fucking darkness everywhere.
For a split second, panic clawed at his throat. Was he still in the void? Had the system lied to him? Was this some kind of cosmic joke where...
No. Wait.
This darkness was different. It wasn't the oppressive, suffocating, reality-crushing darkness of the Balance Dimension. This darkness felt... enclosed. Limited. Like being in a really small room with the lights off rather than floating in infinite nothingness.
And he could feel his heartbeat. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Fast and strong and real.
"Oh, thank... who do I thank again??? Yes, thank you creator whose name I don't know," Gary muttered, and immediately choked on whatever liquid was filling the space around him.
He thrashed instinctively, his hands, smaller than they should be, were flailing in the confined space. His fingers brushed against something warm and solid. A wall? No, it felt organic. Leathery. Kind of like...
An eggshell.
Right. Because he was a demon now. And demons hatched from eggs, apparently. Roy's story had mentioned that, and the system had said he'd get his powers "after eating his shell," which was kind of gross when he thought about it too hard.
"Alright, Gary," he said to himself, voice muffled and weird in the enclosed space. "You've been in the dark long enough. Time to see what kind of bullshit world you wished yourself into."
He'd spent god knows how long in that void, could've been hours, could've been years, time was meaningless in that place, and then however long it took for this egg to form and for him to develop inside it. He was done with darkness. Done with not being able to see. Done with feeling trapped and confined.
Gary pulled his arm back as much as the cramped space would allow and punched the shell wall.
His fist bounced off with barely any impact.
"...The fuck?"
He tried again. Same result. It was like punching a wall when you were five years old, you were hitting it, but you weren't doing shit to it.
Oh. Right. Infant demon. Baby strength. Fuck.
"Okay, new plan," Gary muttered, feeling around the shell's interior with his hands. His fingers were tiny. Like, actually tiny. Baby-sized. And they felt weird, the texture was wrong, the shape was wrong, even the way they moved felt wrong.
But he didn't have time to freak out about his new body right now. First priority: get the fuck out of this egg.
He found what felt like a slightly thinner section of the shell and focused all his tiny baby demon strength on that spot. Punch. Punch. Punch. His arms were already getting tired, apparently infant demons had stamina limits. Thank the creator he'd wished for an essence with unlimited stamina, it hadn't kicked in yet, but he kept going because fuck staying in this egg for one more second.
Crack.
"Yes! Fucking yes, I could cry right now!"
A hairline fracture appeared in the shell, and with it came light. Actual, real, blessed light. It was dim and kind of purple-ish, which was weird, but Gary didn't give a shit. It was light. He could see it. He wasn't in complete darkness anymore.
The crack also let in air, hot and humid air that reeked of sulfur and smoke and something else he couldn't quite identify. But it was air. Fresh(ish) air from outside.
Gary attacked the crack with renewed vigor, his tiny fists hammering away at the weakened section of shell. Pieces started breaking off, falling away, and the opening grew wider. The liquid that had been surrounding him, some kind of amniotic fluid or whatever demons were born in, started draining out through the gap, and Gary could finally breathe properly.
He took a deep, gasping breath and immediately regretted it when the sulfur smell hit his lungs full force.
"Cough... Jesus fuck, what is that smell? Is that, cough, is that brimstone? Are you fucking kidding me right now?"
But even as he complained, Gary was grinning like an idiot. Because he was out. He was free. He had a body again, he could breathe again, he could see again.
He widened the hole enough to stick his head through and immediately froze.
"...Holy shit!!"
The first thing Gary saw was the sky.
Except it wasn't really a sky in any sense that his human brain recognized. The "sky" was this deep, dark purple color, like someone had taken twilight and cranked the saturation up to eleven. There were no stars. No sun. Just that oppressive purple darkness stretching out forever in all directions.
And hanging in the middle of it, huge and luminous and completely impossible, was a purple moon.
Not "the moon looks purple because of atmospheric conditions" purple. Not "artistic interpretation" purple. This thing was straight-up, undeniably, "what the fuck am I looking at" purple. It was massive too, taking up way more of the sky than the moon ever did back on Earth, and it cast everything below in this eerie violet glow that made Gary's new demon eyes hurt a little.
"That's... that's a purple moon," Gary said out loud, because saying it made it real and if it was real then he wasn't hallucinating. "There's a purple fucking moon in the sky. I'm really here. I'm really in the Custom Made Demon King universe. Holy shit."
He pulled himself the rest of the way out of his egg, which was apparently black and about the size of a large beach ball, and stood up on shaky legs. His body felt wrong in every possible way. Too small. Too light. The proportions were all weird. His center of gravity was completely different from what his muscle memory expected.
But he was standing. He was outside. And the view...
"This is insane," Gary breathed, spinning around slowly to take it all in.
He was on a beach. But calling it a "beach" felt like calling a nuclear explosion a "campfire." This was a beach, the way Hell had beaches.
The sand, if you could even call it sand, was this dark, blackish-red color that looked like someone had taken magma, cooled it down just enough to stop glowing, and then ground it into particles. The stuff closer to the water was almost black, while the sand farther inland was more red, and the whole thing seemed to radiate heat. Gary could see wisps of steam or smoke rising from the ground in places, and the air shimmered with heat distortion.
It looked like someone had dumped the world's supply of charcoal onto a beach and set it on fire.
"That's... that's actually kind of cool," Gary admitted, kicking at the sand with one tiny clawed foot. It was warm. Not burning-hot, but definitely warmer than any beach sand had a right to be. "Volcanic ash beach. Okay. I can work with this."
He turned toward the ocean and felt his breath catch in his throat.
The water was red.
Not "reddish" or "looks red in this light." The ocean was the color of fresh blood. Deep, dark crimson that looked almost black in some places and bright scarlet where the purple moonlight hit it directly. Waves rolled in with a sound like wet meat slapping against stone, and where they broke against the shore, they left trails of red foam that looked disturbingly organic.
"Blood ocean," Gary muttered. "Of course there's a blood ocean. Why wouldn't there be a blood ocean? This is Hell. Or the Abyss. Or whatever the fuck demons call this place. Blood oceans are probably on the tourism brochures."
But even as he snarked, he couldn't look away. Because riding those blood-red waves, washing up onto the volcanic beach with every surge of the tide, were eggs.
Thousands of them. Maybe millions.
They floated on the surface of the blood ocean like some kind of fucked-up Easter egg hunt, bobbing and rolling with the waves. Some were tiny, about the size of chicken eggs. Others were massive, the size of cars, maybe bigger. They came in every color Gary could imagine, black like his, deep red, purple, silver, and even some that seemed to shift colors in the light.
And with every wave, more eggs washed ashore.
"This is a hatchery," Gary realized, watching the tide. "A natural demon hatchery. The ocean just... spits out eggs, and they incubate on the beach until they hatch. That's actually genius. Brutal as fuck, but genius."
He could see the survival-of-the-fittest aspect immediately. Eggs that got pushed far up the beach, where the sand was hotter, would hatch faster. Eggs that stayed near the water, where the sand was cooler, would take longer. And some eggs never made it to shore at all, he watched one particularly large purple egg get smashed against a rock by a wave, its contents spilling out into the blood-red water in a cloud of dark fluid.
"Sheesh. Talk about bad luck."
Gary looked back at his own egg, cracked open, empty now, sitting on the sand about halfway up the beach. Not the hottest zone, not the coldest. Middle of the pack.
"I'll take it," he said with a shrug. "Could've been worse. Could've been one of those poor bastards who got smashed before they even had a chance."
He turned inland, following the slope of the beach upward, and that's when he saw it.
Rising up from the center of whatever landmass this beach was on, dominating the horizon like some kind of ancient monument to destruction, was a volcano.
And not just any volcano. This thing was massive. It made Mount Fuji look like an anthill. The peak disappeared into the purple-black sky, wreathed in clouds that occasionally flickered with red light from within. The slopes were dark and craggy, covered in what looked like old lava flows that had cooled into twisted, alien shapes.
"Holy shit," Gary whispered. "That... is that thing active?"
It didn't look active. There was no lava flowing down the sides, no explosions, no ash cloud. But something about it felt alive. Like it was sleeping, not dead but dormant.
"Mount Doom's got nothing on this bad boy," Gary said, unable to keep the awe out of his voice. "This is like... this is like someone looked at every volcano on Earth, combined them, and then said 'what if we made it evil?'"
He stood there for a moment, just taking it all in. The purple sky. The purple moon. The blood-red ocean. The volcanic beach. The millions of demon eggs. The absolutely massive volcano looming over everything.
This was real. This was actually, genuinely, no-bullshit real.
He wasn't in New Jersey anymore. He wasn't even on Earth. He was in an entirely different dimension, an Outer Dimension that he'd wished into existence through modifications to a web novel he'd been reading before he died.
"I'm in the Abyss," Gary said out loud, and then he started laughing. "I'm actually in the fucking Abyss. I'm a demon. I hatched from an egg on a volcanic beach next to an ocean of blood under a purple moon. This is the most isekai bullshit that has ever happened to anyone, and it's happening to me."
His laughter echoed across the beach, mixing with the sound of waves and the occasional crack of other eggs beginning to hatch.
And you know what? Gary was fucking thrilled.
Back in the Balance Dimension, when the system had explained everything, when he'd made his wishes, there'd been this moment of unreality to it all. Like he was still processing. Still trying to wrap his head around the concept of dying and getting reincarnated and having wishes granted.
But now? Standing here on this Hell-beach with his tiny demon body under an alien sky?
It was real. He was really here. He really had a second chance at life.
And he was going to make the absolute most of it.
"Alright, Gary," he said to himself, grinning so wide his face hurt. "You died once. Slipped on some water and cracked your skull open like an idiot. Embarrassing? Yeah. Pathetic? Abso-fucking-lutely. But that's in the past now."
He clenched his tiny fists, feeling the unfamiliar claws dig into his palms.
"This time? This time I'm doing it right. No more dead-end jobs. No more mediocre bullshit. No more just... existing. I'm gonna live this life to the fucking fullest. I'm gonna get strong. I'm gonna explore this crazy-ass multiverse. I'm gonna do whatever the fuck I want, whenever I want, however I want."
His grin turned sharp.
"And I'm not dying again. Not to some stupid accident. Not to some overpowered enemy. Not to anything. I've got the Essence of Involate Self. I've got my Origin Artifact with its Essence of competence and infinite energy."
He looked up at the purple moon, at the alien sky of his new home.
"I know I'm gonna enjoy every fucking second of this."
Gary took a deep breath...well, as deep as his tiny infant lungs could manage, and looked down at himself for the first time.
"Okay," he said slowly. "Let's see what I'm working with here."
He held up his hands, examining them in the purple moonlight.
They were small. Like, baby small. His fingers were thin and delicate-looking, but they ended in black claws that were sharp enough to have helped him tear through his eggshell. His skin was red. Not "I got a really bad sunburn" red. Not even "I painted myself red for Halloween" red.
This was red red. Like someone had taken a crayon labeled "demon" and that's the color it would be. A deep, dark crimson that looked almost like dried blood in the weird purple light.
There were black markings on his skin too, thin lines that ran along his arms in patterns that almost looked like circuit boards or tribal tattoos. They didn't seem to glow or do anything magical, they were just... there. Part of his natural demon physiology, apparently.
Gary flexed his fingers, watching the claws extend and retract slightly. "Huh. That's actually kinda cool. Built-in weapons."
He looked down at his body, small, compact, definitely infant-sized but not like a human infant. More like a scaled-down version of an adult body. He had muscles, actual defined muscles, just tiny ones. His proportions were weirdly perfect too, like someone had taken a full-grown person and shrunk them down but kept all the ratios the same.
"Humanoid," Gary noted. "Okay, that's good. I can work with humanoid. Better than being some kind of blob monster or..."
He felt something twitch behind him and turned his head.
A tail. He had a tail.
It was black, sleek, maybe a foot and a half long even on his small body, and it ended in a sharp arrow-shaped point that looked like it could actually do some damage if he stabbed someone with it.
"Tail," Gary said flatly. "I have a tail. Of course I have a tail. I'm a demon, demons have tails, this is fine."
He tried moving it experimentally and found that he had full control over it. It swished back and forth when he thought about it, curled up when he wanted it to, and even lifted up to point at things. It was like having a third arm, except it was a tail, and it felt weird but also kind of natural?
"This is gonna take some getting used to," he muttered.
Then he reached up to touch his head and felt the horns.
Two of them, one on each side of his forehead, curving backward over his skull. They weren't huge... again, infant demon, everything was smaller, but they were definitely there. Solid. Hard. Like bone but smoother.
"Horns," Gary said, running his fingers over them. "I have horns. I have a tail and I have horns and I'm red and I have claws. I look like..."
He paused, trying to think of a comparison.
"I look like Azazel from X-Men," he finally said. "Like, almost exactly. Azazel from the movies. Red skin, tail, horns, humanoid body. Except, you know, baby-sized."
He looked down at himself again, taking in the full picture. Red skin. Black markings. Claws. Tail. Horns. Definitely demonic. Definitely not human anymore.
"I mean... it could be worse," Gary said slowly. "At least I'm humanoid. At least I've got the right number of limbs. Could've hatched as some kind of tentacle monster or a giant bug or..."
He stopped himself.
"But fuck, this is not the look I was going for," he admitted with a grimace. "I'm trying to capture the hearts of those sexy Female Angels when I eventually meet them, and I look like Satan's baby picture. How's that supposed to work? 'Hey there, beautiful angel lady, I know I look like I crawled out of Hell, which I did, but I promise I'm a nice guy once you get to know me'?"
He sighed dramatically.
"This body is temporary," he declared. "Once my second wish kicks in, the first thing I'm doing is giving myself a customization glow-up. Or at least make myself look less... demon-y when I need to blend in with the prettier species."
A thought occurred to him.
"Although... I guess in the Abyss, looking like a demon is probably normal. It's everywhere else I'm gonna have problems. Gonna be real awkward showing up in, like, Naruto world looking like this. 'Hey Konoha, don't mind me, just your friendly neighborhood demon passing through... why is everyone reaching for their kunai?'"
Gary shook his head, filing that problem away for later. He'd deal with his appearance issues after he figured out how to not die in the next few hours.
Speaking of which...
Crack. Crack-crack-crack.
Gary's head snapped toward the sound. All around him, other eggs were starting to hatch.
The ones closest to him, eggs that had landed in similar temperature zones on the beach, were beginning to show cracks. He could see tiny hands and claws pushing through the shells, could hear muffled sounds of effort and confusion from the infant demons inside trying to break free.
"Huh," Gary said, watching with interest. "Guess I wasn't the only one ready to hatch."
He walked closer to the nearest egg, a dark red one about the same size as his had been, and watched as a clawed hand punched through the shell. Then another hand. Then a head pushed through, and Gary got his first look at another demon.
It was... not humanoid.
The thing that emerged from the red egg was quadrupedal, walking on all fours like some kind of demonic dog. Its body was covered in scales instead of skin, and its head was elongated, almost reptilian, with rows of sharp teeth visible even though its mouth was closed.
"Okay," Gary said, taking a step back. "That's... that's a thing."
The reptile-demon shook itself off, spraying amniotic fluid everywhere, and then turned its head toward Gary. Its eyes, three of them, arranged in a triangle pattern on its face, focused on him with an intelligence that suggested this wasn't just some mindless beast.
They stared at each other for a moment.
"Uh," Gary said. "Hey?"
The reptile-demon made a sound somewhere between a hiss and a growl, then turned away and started walking toward the inland part of the beach, apparently deciding Gary wasn't interesting enough to bother with.
"Right," Gary muttered. "Cool. Nice meeting you too, buddy."
More eggs were hatching now. Gary could see at least a dozen demons emerging from their shells in various states of confusion and disorientation. And the variety was insane.
Some were humanoid like him, red or purple or even black-skinned, with similar horns and tails and clawed hands. But plenty weren't humanoid at all.
He saw a demon that looked like a massive centipede with way too many legs, its segmented body gleaming in the purple moonlight. It immediately started eating its own eggshell, mandibles crunching through the material like it was candy.
He saw a demon with six arms and no legs, pulling itself along the sand with disturbing efficiency. Its face was almost human, but it had no nose, and its mouth was just a bit too wide.
He saw a demon that was basically a floating ball of... something. Flesh? Muscle? It didn't have any visible limbs or features, just this pulsing spherical mass that hovered a few inches off the ground and drifted aimlessly across the beach.
"Jesus Christ," Gary breathed. "Roy wasn't kidding when he said demons came in all shapes and sizes."
One egg nearby cracked open, and what emerged made Gary actively take several steps backward.
It was insectoid. Extremely insectoid. Like someone had taken a praying mantis, made it the size of a large dog, gave it way too many eyes, and decided it needed to be born in Hell. Its exoskeleton was a sickly green color that looked diseased even in the purple light, and when it moved, its joints made clicking sounds that set Gary's teeth on edge.
"Nope," Gary said firmly. "Nope, nope, nope. That's disgusting. I don't care if we're technically the same species now, that thing is gross."
The insect-demon turned one of its many eyes toward him, and Gary could swear it looked offended.
"Sorry, not sorry," Gary told it. "I'm still adjusting to the whole 'demons are real' thing. I'm allowed to find you creepy."
More demons continued hatching. Some had wings, actual, functional-looking wings that they spread out and tested immediately. Gary felt a pang of jealousy watching them. Wings would be so useful. Flying was like the #1 most practical superpower.
"Add that to the list," he muttered. "I should create a technique to fly."
He watched as a particularly large egg, one of the silver ones, finally cracked open. The demon that emerged was huge even as an infant, easily twice the size of Gary. It was humanoid, thankfully, but its skin was almost metallic-looking, and it had four arms instead of two. Horns like a ram, curling around the sides of its head. When it stood up, it was already taller than some of the fully-emerged demons.
"Oh good," Gary said sarcastically. "Power-scaling is already a thing. Of course the big eggs make big demons. Why wouldn't they?"
But as he looked around at all the hatching demons, the humanoids and the quadrupeds, the insectoids and the weird floating ones and everything in between, Gary felt his human sensibilities rebelling.
Back on Earth, "human" was the default. The normal. The standard. Sure, there were animals, but they were clearly animals. Different category. Not the same.
But here? In the Abyss?
Here, all of these things, the centipede-demon munching on its shell, the six-armed crawler, the floating flesh-ball, even the insect thing that made his skin crawl, they were all the same "species" as him. They were all demons. All equally valid forms of life in this reality.
And Gary, with his human-shaped body, was just one variation among infinite possibilities.
"This is gonna take some serious mental adjustment," he said quietly, watching a demon with too many tentacles pull itself out of a purple egg. "I keep wanting to think of myself as 'normal' and everything else as 'weird,' but that's not how it works here. There is no normal. There's just... demons. In all shapes and sizes."
He shuddered as the insect-demon walked past him, its legs clicking against the volcanic sand.
"But I'm still allowed to find some of them disgusting," he added firmly. "Cultural relativism only goes so far. That bug thing is nasty."
Still, as Gary stood there on the beach, surrounded by thousands of hatching demons of every imaginable form, he couldn't help but feel a grin spreading across his face again.
Because this was real. This was his life now. This chaotic, violent, beautiful, terrifying new world where demons hatched from eggs on beaches of volcanic ash, where purple moons hung in alien skies, and where an ocean of blood delivered new life to the shores of Hell itself.
"Alright, Abyss," Gary said, stretching his tiny arms and feeling his tail swish behind him. "Let's see what you've got."
But out of nowhere, Gary felt an intense hunger.
(START HERE)
One second, he was standing there, grinning like an idiot at the chaos of the demon hatchery around him. The next second, his stomach felt like it was trying to eat itself from the inside out.
"Holy fuck," Gary gasped, doubling over as the sensation slammed into him. It wasn't like normal hunger. This was primal. Instinctive. The kind of hunger that shut down rational thought and replaced it with one singular, all-consuming need:
Eat. Now.
His mouth started watering, no, not just watering, practically flooding. Saliva dripped from his fangs and hit the volcanic sand below with a hiss, and Gary watched with detached fascination as the droplets burned into the ground, leaving little smoking pits where they landed.
"Okay, cool, I have acid spit now," he muttered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "That's not terrifying at all."
But even as he said it, his eyes locked onto his broken eggshell. The pieces of black shell were still scattered around where he'd emerged, and they were calling to him. Not literally, he wasn't that far gone yet, but his demon instincts were screaming that those shell fragments were food and he needed to eat them right fucking now.
Gary knew what this was. He'd read the novel. Roy had gone through the exact same thing. Eating the eggshell was how demons got their inheritance memories, how they learned their true names and confirmed their identities.
And for Gary specifically? This was the trigger.
This was the moment his wishes would activate. The moment the Essence of Involate Self and the Origin Artifact would manifest. The moment his second life would truly begin.
"Once I eat that shell, there's no going back," Gary said out loud, staring at the fragments. "Not that dying and being reborn as a demon was normal to begin with, but this is... this is it. This is where Gary McNeish, orphan from New Jersey who died slipping on water, stops existing. And where Valdos whatever-the-fuck, demon of the Abyss, starts."
He took a breath.
"Fuck it. Let's do this."
Gary dropped to his knees and grabbed the largest piece of eggshell. His demon instincts screamed yes yes yes finally, and before he could second-guess himself, he bit down.
Crunch.
"Oh. Oh shit, that's actually not bad?"
The shell had the texture of really crispy rice crackers, the expensive kind you'd get at an Asian grocery store, and it tasted... baked? Like someone had seasoned it with salt and smoke and left it in an oven until it was perfectly crispy. The heat from the volcanic beach had probably cooked it while he was developing inside.
Gary's conscious mind was going "this is so fucking weird, you're eating your own birth sac," but his demon body was going "holy shit this is delicious, eat faster."
Guess which one won?
He tore into the shell fragments like a starving animal, grabbing pieces with both hands and shoving them into his mouth. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Each bite sent waves of satisfaction through his body, the terrible gnawing hunger slowly starting to recede.
"Not wasting a single crumb," Gary said between bites, his words muffled by shell fragments. "This is my power activation we're talking about. My wishes. My second chance at life. I'm eating every last piece."
And he did. He scoured the sand for every fragment, every tiny shard of black shell, and consumed them all. The smaller pieces dissolved on his tongue like crackers in milk. The larger ones he had to really work at, grinding them down with his surprisingly sharp teeth.
Finally, finally, Gary swallowed the last fragment and sat back on his ass, feeling his stomach settle into something approaching fullness.
"Okay," he said, wiping his mouth again. "That was weird. But also kind of good? I'd give it a six out of ten, would eat again if I had to..."
The memories hit him like a lightning bolt to the brain.
"Fuck!"
Gary clutched his head as information flooded into his mind. It wasn't painful, exactly, but it was intense. Like someone had opened a door in his brain and dumped a filing cabinet's worth of knowledge directly into his consciousness.
Two things crystallized immediately:
Identity: Demon.
Well, duh. He'd already known that. He'd wished for that. He'd spent the last however-long floating in the Balance Dimension specifically planning to become a demon in a modified version of the Custom Made Demon King universe. This wasn't news.
But knowing something intellectually and having it confirmed by your own soul's inheritance were two different things. Gary could feel it now, deep in whatever passed for his core. He wasn't human anymore. Wasn't even pretending to be human. He was a demon, through and through, and that identity was etched into every fiber of his being.
"Alright, cool, identity confirmed," Gary muttered. "What's the second thing?"
Then he felt it. His name.
His true demon name.
Valdos Belial Maxim Raizel… Vancouver Gabe.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Gary burst out laughing despite himself. "That's my demon name? That's what the universe decided to call me? It sounds like someone tried to name me after every edgy anime character they could think of and then threw in 'Vancouver' and 'Gabe' at the end for shits and giggles!"
He counted on his fingers. "Valdos, Belial, Maxim, Raizel... and then Vancouver? Like the city? And Gabe? What, was Gabriel too formal? Did Hell's naming department run out of intimidating names and just start pulling from a hat?"
But even as he mocked it, Gary felt the weight of that name settling into his soul. This wasn't just some random string of syllables. This was his name. His true name. The marker that identified his soul across all of existence.
And he could never tell anyone the full thing.
The inheritance memory made that crystal clear. A demon's true name was sacred, and sacrosanct, for a very specific reason: it was a vector for targeting.
See, when a demon was born, when their soul first crystallized into existence, the universe, or the Abyss, or whatever cosmic force governed demon creation, stamped that soul with an identifier. A unique marker. Like a serial number on a product or a file name on a computer.
And that marker was the demon's true name.
If someone knew your true name, really knew it, all of it, every syllable in the correct order, they could use that knowledge as a targeting system. Not to control you, thank fuck for the Essence of Involate Self protecting him from that bullshit, but to locate you.
Anywhere. Anytime. Across dimensions, across worlds, across the entire infinite expanse of the Outer Dimensions.
It was like giving someone your phone's GPS coordinates, except the phone was your soul and the coordinates never changed and there was no "turn off location services" option.
"So even though I'm immune to people using my name to mind-control me or manipulate my soul," Gary said slowly, working through the implications, "they can still use it like a fucking homing beacon. Great. Just great."
The inheritance explained it in more detail:
When a demon's true name was invoked, spoken, written, or even just known with intent, it created a resonance. A ripple in the fabric of reality that connected the speaker to the demon's soul. For most demons, that resonance could be exploited. Used to bind them, control them, curse them, or even damage them directly.
But even for a demon like Gary, who was protected from all that bullshit by his Essence, the resonance still existed. It just couldn't be weaponized the same way. Instead, it acted purely as a locator. Someone who knew his full true name could find him. Could track his movements. Could always know where he was, no matter how far he ran or how well he hid.
"And that," Gary muttered, "is why demons never, ever share their true names. Because giving someone that kind of access is suicide."
There were exceptions, of course. The inheritance showed him that. Demons could share parts of their true names, usually just one or two segments, as casual identifiers. It was normal to go by a shortened version. In Gary's case, he could call himself "Valdos" or "Maxim" or even "Gabe" if he wanted to be ironic.
But the full name? All five segments in the correct order?
That was for him and him alone. Forever.
"Valdos Belial Maxim Raizel Vancouver Gabe," Gary whispered to himself, testing how it felt to say it out loud. The syllables resonated in his chest, vibrating with a weird harmonic frequency that made his soul hum.
"Yeah, that's... that's me now. Guess I should get used to it."
He paused.
"Actually, fuck that, I'm still calling myself Gary in my head. Valdos is for when I need to sound intimidating. Like 'Valdos the Demon', it has a better ring to it anyway."
But before he could dwell on his identity crisis any further, something else started happening.
Heat.
Not the external heat from the volcanic beach or the humid air. This was internal. A warmth that started in his chest and spread outward, flowing through his veins like liquid fire. It raced through his arms, his legs, his tail, his horns, suffusing every cell in his body with energy.
"Oh shit," Gary breathed. "Oh shit, it's happening. The Essence, it's activating!"
The heat intensified, but it didn't burn. It was invigorating. Like his entire body was waking up from a deep sleep, systems coming online one by one. The warmth reached his brain and his thoughts sharpened, became clearer. It flooded into his soul and he felt something fundamental shift.
Gary gasped as the changes took hold.
His body felt lighter. Like gravity had suddenly decided to cut him some slack. The exhaustion from breaking out of his egg, from punching through that shell with his baby demon fists, just... disappeared. Vanished like it had never existed. He felt fresh. Rested. Like he'd just woken up from the best night's sleep of his life.
No, better than that. He felt tireless. Like he could run a marathon right now and not even break a sweat. Like he could fight for hours without slowing down.
[Unlimited stamina] his mind supplied. [That's what the Essence gives you. You'll never get tired again. Ever.]
"Holy fuck," Gary whispered, flexing his hands and feeling the power coiling in his muscles. "This is insane."
But it wasn't just the stamina. He could feel other changes, other protections clicking into place like pieces of armor snapping together.
His body felt secure. Locked down. Like someone had put a "no unauthorized access" sign on his entire existence. The instinctive knowledge flooded into him: he was immune now. Immune to poison, to disease, to any attempt to manipulate his body against his will. His mind was his own, no mind control, no supernatural persuasion, no memetic bullshit could touch him. And his soul? His soul was involate. Untouchable. No curses, no bindings, no targeting.
"I'm free," Gary realized, and the word hit him harder than he expected. "I'm actually, genuinely free. Nobody can control me. Nobody can trap me. Nobody can fuck with my head or my soul. I'm..."
He laughed, the sound bubbling up from his chest.
"I'm immortal. Biologically immortal. I'm never going to age past my prime. I'm never going to get sick. I'm never going to get tired. And I've got infinite willpower on top of all that too, so even if shit gets bad, even if I'm broken and bleeding and everything's gone to hell, I won't stop. I can't stop. I'll just keep going. Forever."
The weight of that realization settled over him, but instead of feeling crushing, it felt liberating.
Back in his first life, Gary had been powerless. His parents died in a car crash and he couldn't do anything about it. He grew up in a group home because he didn't have any other family. He worked dead-end jobs because he didn't have the money or connections for anything better. And then he died, slipping on water in his own apartment like the universe's punchline.
But now?
Now he had control. He had power. He had options.
"Nobody's putting me in a cage ever again," Gary said quietly, his voice hard. "Nobody's controlling my life but me. And if anyone tries to fuck with me, if anyone tries to manipulate me or trap me or take away my freedom, they're gonna learn real quick why you don't mess with someone who has the Essence of Involate Self."
He grinned, feeling his fangs press against his lower lip.
"This is the best fucking cheat ability I could've asked for. It doesn't make me instantly overpowered, doesn't give me god-mode combat stats, but it makes me unkillable in all the ways that matter. I can't be controlled. I can't be stopped. I can grow as strong as I want without hitting some bullshit ceiling. And I've got all the time in the world to do it."
Then something else bubbled up in his awareness. An instinct. A knowing.
He could change how he looked.
The Essence was offering him the option to customize his physical form. To reshape his body into whatever he wanted it to be. But... and this was important, he could only do it once. This was his one chance to set his "default" appearance, and after that, the form would be locked unless he found some other method to alter it.
"Oh, that's huge," Gary muttered. "I could fix the whole 'looking like a demon' problem right now. Make myself more human-looking, or angelic, or whatever would help me blend in better with..."
Crack. CRACK. ROAR.
Gary's head whipped around. More demons were hatching. Way more. The purple moon was getting brighter, and across the entire volcanic beach, thousands of eggs were cracking open simultaneously. He could hear roars, screeches, chittering sounds as infant demons of every shape and size emerged into the world.
And from the memories Roy's story had given him, Gary knew what came next.
This island, this hatchery, was about to become a warzone.
Newborn demons didn't have a social safety net. Didn't have parents or guardians or a nice demon daycare to help them along. They hatched, and then they were on their own. And when thousands of demons hatched at the same time in the same place, all of them hungry and desperate for resources?
Yeah. Bloodbath.
"Fuck," Gary hissed. "I can't do the customization right now. If I'm sitting here playing character creator while demon babies are trying to kill each other for food and souls, I'm gonna get shanked before I finish. I need to survive first, then I can worry about looking pretty."
He filed the option away. The instinct was still there, waiting, ready to activate whenever he chose. But not now. Not yet.
First priority: don't die.
Second priority: get strong.
Third priority: then make himself look good enough to seduce angel women or whatever.
"Alright," Gary said, shaking off the warmth still radiating through his body. "Essence activation: complete. Now for the main event."
He closed his eyes and turned his attention inward.
For the first time in his existence, both lives combined, Gary could sense his soul.
It wasn't a visual thing. He couldn't "see" it like he was looking at an object. It was more like... awareness. Like how you know your arm is there even with your eyes closed. He could feel his soul's presence, a bright core of energy and consciousness nested somewhere in the center of his being.
And inside that soul, he felt something else.
A tug.
"The Origin Artifact," Gary whispered.
He focused on that sensation, that pull, and suddenly his perspective shifted.
It was the weirdest fucking thing. One second he was standing on the volcanic beach, the next second he was... somewhere else. Not physically, his body was still outside, still standing there like an idiot, but his consciousness had dove inward, into his own soul space.
And there it was.
The Origin Artifact.
It floated in the center of his soul like a miniature star, radiating power so intense Gary could feel it even without a physical body. The thing didn't have a fixed shape, it kept shifting, morphing, flowing between different forms. One moment it looked like a crystal, the next like a ring, then a sword, then something abstract he didn't even have words for.
"Holy shit," Gary breathed, his mental voice echoing in the weird not-space of his soul. "This is real. This is actually fucking real."
He could feel the Essences contained within it. The Essence of Competence, sharing with him knowledge and an infinite learning capacity. The Essence of Infinite Omniversal Energy bestows him access to a bottomless well of power. They pulsed inside the Artifact like twin heartbeats, synchronized with his own soul's rhythm.
The experience was surreal. Unrealistic. Like something out of a fever dream or a really trippy anime episode.
But it was his.
This was his third wish, manifested. An item bonded to his soul, impossible to steal or destroy permanently, containing abilities that would let him grow stronger without limits. The Artifact would feed him knowledge, grant him skills, channel infinite energy through his body, and let him create anything he could imagine, but he had to have the strength to manifest that power.
"This is the most bullshit overpowered cheat item in existence," Gary said, grinning like a maniac in his soul space. "And it's mine. Nobody else's. Just mine."
He reached out with his mental hand and touched the Artifact.
It responded immediately, flaring with light, and suddenly, Gary knew things. Knew how to use it. Knew its functions. Knew that he could distribute "subjects" and "modifiers" to gain knowledge and abilities. Knew that he had three slots available right now, three things he could learn or enhance, and that number would grow over time.
But right now, Gary wasn't interested in testing those functions. He'd have time to experiment later, once he wasn't surrounded by thousands of potentially hostile demon babies.
Right now, he wanted to see one specific thing.
His status.
He'd added that function to the Origin Artifact specifically, a way to quantify his progress, to see his abilities laid out in clean numbers and descriptions. A status screen, just like Roy had, but customized for Gary's specific powers.
"Alright, Artifact," Gary said. "Show me what I'm working with."
The Artifact pulsed once, and a translucent blue screen materialized in front of his consciousness.
Name: Gary
Race: Demon
Bloodline: At least four different kinds
Demon Name: Valdos Belial Maxim Raizel… Vancouver Gabe
Form: Newborn
Hierarchy: Low-Rank (Bottom-Tier)
Attribute: Omni
Strength: 20
Speed: 18
Magic Energy: ∞ (Limited by strength and hierarchy)
Skills: None
Talent Ability 1: Soul Peer
Explanation: After living beings die, you can easily discover the location of their souls.
Talent Ability 2: Essence of Involate Self
Explanation: Complete immunity to all forms of external control, manipulation, or targeting of body, mind, and soul. Grants biological immortality, unlimited stamina and willpower, and protection from imprisonment or binding. Cannot be affected by fate, prophecy, or reality manipulation. Allows one-time physical customization.
Items: Origin Artifact
Explanation: Soul-bound artifact containing the Essence of Competence (infinite learning capacity, skill acquisition, and knowledge distribution) and Essence of Infinite Omniversal Energy (bottomless power source that scales with user's strength). Grants ability to master any skill instantly, extrapolate entire fields from basic knowledge, and substitute IOE for any energy type.
Evaluation:The wielder of the Origin Artifact stands outside normal power classifications. While currently limited by an infant demon's physical form, possesses growth potential without theoretical ceiling. Infinite energy reserves paired with infinite learning capacity and complete immunity to soul manipulation creates a terrifyingly versatile foundation. Current stats exceed average newborn demon by 40%. Prediction: Will either die within the week due to inexperience, or become an unprecedented threat to established hierarchies. Outlook uncertain but fascinating.
Gary stared at the screen for a long moment.
Then he burst out laughing.
"Holy shit!" he cackled, his mental voice echoing through his soul space. "Look at those numbers! Strength 20? Speed 18? I'm way stronger than Roy was when he hatched! He was sitting at like 14 strength and 12 speed, and he was premature too!"
He focused on the Magic Energy stat.
"And I have infinite energy! literal infinity! Sure, I can only access a fraction of it right now because I'm still a weak baby demon, but the potential is there. As I get stronger, I'll be able to channel more and more of the Artifact's power until..."
He cut himself off, shaking his head in wonder.
"Until there's no limit. Until I can throw around god-tier magic like it's nothing. Until I can power entire civilizations off my energy reserves and not even notice the drain."
Gary pulled back from his soul space, his consciousness snapping back into his physical body on the beach. He opened his eyes and looked down at his tiny red hands.
"I'm way ahead of where Roy started," he said quietly. "And I've got advantages he never had. The Essence protecting me from weird bullshit. The Artifact giving me infinite energy. And most importantly..."
He grinned.
"I actually know what universe I'm in. Roy had to figure everything out from scratch. I've got meta-knowledge. I know how the Abyss works, I know about the Gates, I know about demon hierarchies and angel politics and all the other shit that's gonna matter down the line."
He clenched his fists, feeling the strength in them despite his small size.
"I'm gonna speed-run this whole 'become strong' thing. Gonna blaze through the lower ranks so fast the other demons won't know what hit them."
But then something occurred to him. Something weird about his status screen.
"Wait," Gary muttered, pulling up the screen again in his mind's eye. "Where's the Demon Blood talent? And the Soul Devouring Addiction one?"
Roy's status had shown three talent abilities: Soul Peer, Demon Blood, and Soul Devouring Addiction. Gary had Soul Peer, that made sense, all demons could sense souls. But the other two...
Then it clicked.
"Oh," Gary said slowly. "Oh, that's why."
Demon Blood made demons bloodthirsty and prone to going berserk in combat. It was a double-edged sword, great for fighting, terrible for staying in control.
Soul Devouring Addiction made demons crave souls like a drug. Made them feel pleasure and ecstasy from devouring souls, which drove them to hunt and kill constantly.
Both talents were... well, they were downsides. Psychological weaknesses. Mental ailments that every demon had to deal with.
But the Essence of Involate Self granted "total immunity to all forms of poison, sickness, or disease, mundane or otherwise" and that "any existing ailments of physical, mental, or spiritual nature would be completely cured."
"The Essence classified those demon talents as ailments," Gary realized. "As mental conditions that were fucking with my brain chemistry. So it just... removed them. Cleaned them out of my system like a virus scanner deleting malware."
He tested it, searching his feelings for any hint of bloodlust or soul-craving.
Nothing.
He felt hungry for food, sure. And he had a demon's natural interest in souls as a resource. But there was no compulsion. No addiction. No uncontrollable urge to go berserk or to hunt souls beyond all reason.
"I'm not gonna lose control in combat," Gary said, relief flooding through him. "I'm not gonna get addicted to soul-eating and turn into some kind of junkie demon. I can stay rational. Stay in control. Make smart decisions instead of being driven by instinct."
He laughed again, the sound carrying across the beach.
"This is perfect. I've got all the advantages of being a demon, the strength, the magic, the soul manipulation abilities, without any of the psychological drawbacks. No berserker rage, no soul addiction, no mental weaknesses at all thanks to the Essence."
Gary looked around at the other hatching demons, at the chaos starting to spread across the beach as more and more infant demons emerged and began eyeing each other hungrily.
"Alright," he said, cracking his tiny knuckles. "Status check complete. Powers confirmed. I'm immortal, I'm protected from getting mind fucked, I've got infinite energy and infinite learning potential, and I'm stronger than Roy was at this stage."
His grin turned sharp and hungry.
"Now let's see how fast I can grind my way up from Low-Rank Bottom-Tier to something actually scary."
The purple moon overhead brightened, casting everything in sharper relief.