Chapter 8
How do I escape this hell?
Felix sat against the cold cave wall, scratching his head until his scalp stung. No matter how hard he tried to think, only fog and death answered him. Every possible path ended in the same image — his broken body lying among the piles of corpses, forgotten and rotting. The tunnels were endless. The darkness was alive. And he was just one weak, cursed human in its belly.
He let out a long, tired breath.
"If I can't get stronger… I might as well die."
From that moment, training became his entire existence.
Days blurred into weeks, and weeks stretched into what felt like months. Felix pushed his body to its absolute limit inside the glowing cave and the surrounding tunnels. He returned again and again to the mountain of corpses where his nightmare had begun, dragging back the largest bones he could carry — femurs, spines, and thick ribs that served as crude clubs and training weights.
There were no swords here. No proper weapons. Only violence and bone.
During one brutal session, he swung the heaviest femur he could lift in wide, powerful arcs. His muscles screamed. His grip slipped from sweat and blood. The bone slipped and slammed into his own shoulder with a sickening crack. Fresh blood poured down his arm.
Felix hissed in pain but didn't stop. Instead, he stared at the wound.
Something strange was happening.
Small traces of his blood moved on their own — writhing like living silver threads. When he focused, he realized they were the parasites the demoness had planted in him. Instead of devouring him, they swam through his bloodstream like loyal guardians.
He squeezed the wound deliberately, watching more blood spill. The moment it touched the ground, the silver threads twisted and crawled back toward the open cut, re-entering his body like a nurturing mother returning to its child.
"They didn't turn me into that thing," he whispered. "They're… living inside my blood."
A chill ran down his spine.
"It's not that I'm ungrateful to be alive… but this feels wrong. Really wrong."
He smacked his own face hard, trying to steady his spiraling mind. His sharpened senses — courtesy of the demonic energy — made every ache, every heartbeat, every distant scream in the tunnels feel ten times louder. The urge to train grew stronger every day, almost like an instinct that wasn't entirely his own.
He had learned one valuable truth from watching the demons: true power came from an unbreakable physique. So he trained harder.
Hours later, Felix finished another brutal set. He ended with a grueling hand-stance exercise — balancing his entire body on two fingers while holding a heavy bone across his shoulders. When he finally collapsed onto the cave floor, he was soaked in sweat, chest heaving, every muscle burning.
He lay there, staring at the glowing stones above, trying to regain feeling in his numb legs.
It's time.
"It's high time I explore further," he said aloud, voice echoing softly. "But only if I can control this energy."
He raised his palm and stared at it. Dark, faint veins pulsed beneath his skin. The demonic force answered his focus, swirling lazily.
"Thise who had awakened had guides from a young and hand the chance to go to a prestigious academy," he thought bitterly. "But I've never heard of anyone with demonic energy. If the human world ever finds out… they'll treat me like one of these monsters."
Despair tried to swallow him whole.
This can't be my future.
Felix suddenly slammed his fist into the stone floor.
"Curse you!" he roared at the nonexistent sky. "Oh, fate… you really did this one."
His voice cracked. The weight of everything he had lost crashed down on him at once.
Everyone he knew was dead. His village. His father. The simple, quiet life he once had. All of it stolen. Abandoned by the very heavens that were supposed to protect the innocent.
"Damn you!" he shouted, banging his fist again and again. "If you think I'll just carry this pain forever, then the heavens themselves will feel my sadness!"
Tears of rage and grief burned in his eyes. He clawed at his dreadlocks, pulling hard as if the physical pain could somehow silence the storm inside.
"Yes… they will feel it."
For a long moment, silence filled the cave.
Then something deep in his heart settled — quiet, cold, and unbreakable.
He was no longer the scared boy who had curled into a ball in that prison cell. That innocent boy had been abandoned in the darkness. What remained was something sharper. Something forged in blood and betrayal.
Felix slowly rose to his feet. His eyes gleamed with newfound resolve.
"I will give the demons a monster to fear."
The words left his lips like a vow — not shouted, but spoken with deadly calm. There was no joy in them. Only the heavy determination of someone who had lost everything and chosen to become what the world forced him to be.
He would survive.
He would grow stronger.
And one day, the demonic continent would learn to dread the name of the human it had tried to break.
Felix looked around his makeshift camp — the glowing stones, the parasite bottles he had sealed away, the crude bone weapons leaning against the wall. This was his new reality.
He picked up the largest femur, rested it on his shoulder, and walked toward the mouth of the cave. The tunnels called to him. Danger waited. But so did opportunity.
As he stepped into the darkness, a faint, bitter smile touched his lips.