As Adam and the twins walked towards their destination, Adam thought it would be a good time to clear up some questions he had.

 

“Mira, how are people able to identify daemons? If maena exist, it can’t just be by appearance, right?”

 

“You are correct, Sect Master. Daemons have a little-understood ability to exert a sort of ‘pressure’ on those in their surroundings, and anyone who’s come in contact with a daemon before is unlikely to forget it. It’s a peculiar feeling. I believe you should be able to control it, but I've also heard it’s influenced heavily by emotions.”

 

“I see, I see,” replied Adam. Thinking back, the registrar didn’t seem to notice he was a daemon, or at least didn’t show it, but Adam was quite calm then. When Luther realized Adam was a daemon, it was immediately after he killed two men, and he was still a bit on edge from the fight.

 

“Can you feel this ‘pressure’ now?” he asked, turning to look at Mira.

 

“No, it was gone when we came out of the building.”

 

Adam used a technique he’d learned back on earth and focused his inner anger. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and thought of the reasons he fought. Opening them again, he turned to ask if they could feel it now, but the answer was written on their fearful faces.

 

“I guess it is based on emotions. That will be useful. I doubt anyone would even think of trying to take maena away from an ostensibly furious daemon.”

 

The twins calmed slightly at the insinuation he was doing this to protect them, but it was still obvious they weren’t the most comfortable 

 

“Sorry, but you’ll have to get used to that feeling. You’ll be feeling it a lot from now on.”

 

The twins nodded, and the group resumed walking. Adam kept up his pressure, entering a mindset he’d been in for a long time back on earth, during the fiery early years of his organization, fraught with conflict.

 

As they began to encounter people again, having left the completely deserted section of the sectless district, Adam could see the effects. Nearly everyone on the street physically reacted when Adam reached about 10 meters from them. He ignored their looks, and kept going until reaching the shopping district. He put on the persona of a very tired and very important person, and walked past the throngs of fearful people, twins in tow. Nobody stopped them. He was glad the being that sent him here had been kind enough to give him reading proficiency in the native language, because it would’ve been a lot harder to find what he was looking for, namely, a tailoring shop.

 

Soon, he found one. There was a small gap in the crowd near the entrance, and the reason soon became clear. A young man, likely an apprentice at the shop, was being berated by a portly, mean looking man. Adam had no context and was unable to extrapolate based on the irate shouting of the man what his actual grievances were, but he was impressed at the apprentice’s ability to remain mostly calm in the situation. Adam probably would have at least clocked the guy once or twice by now.

 

Walking up to the apprentice, he completely ignored the customer, placing himself between them, the twins to his side.

 

“Hello,” he said to the apprentice, “I’d like to have some weaver robes made for a new sect. Are those made here?”

 

The apprentice was caught off guard. At first he was stopped from feeling Adam’s pressure by his focus on the angry customer, but now he knew he was speaking to a daemon. Which, given Adam’s polite tone, he immediately decided was much better than dealing with the other man.

 

“Of course, yes, please come in, Sir…?”

 

“Sect Master Adam.” he said, presenting his sect core, before dropping it back into his pocket.

 

“Please come in, Sect Master Adam. Let me show you to the design room.” The apprentice gave a bow before turning to lead them into the store.

 

“Wai-!” began the angry man, stopping in his tracks when Adam turned and looked him in the eyes, focusing his anger even more. The man dropped to his knees on the spot, eyes wide and body shaking. Adam entered the building, the twins close behind.

 

They passed through several rooms, filled with a myriad of cloth, tools, and machines. When they arrived in a smaller room, with a mirror fitting station on one end, and a large table covered in papers filled with many designs and patterns, the apprentice stopped.

 

“Please wait here while I go get master Inya.”

 

It wasn’t long until the apprentice returned, shadowing behind the woman who must’ve been master Inya. She was taller than the apprentice, but not by much, and still a head shorter than Adam. She was wearing a beautiful, flowing robe covered in intricate flower embroidery that sparkled in the light and seemed to draw the eyes constantly in new directions.

 

“Welcome to my humble workshop, Sect Master Adam.” she said, bowing. “How may I help you today?”

Adam quickly appraised the woman. He had a discerning eye for people - one of the many skills that assisted in his rise to power back on earth - and he could tell this woman was skilled. The way she held herself, spoke, and the look in her eyes were all Adam needed to know he was looking at a master of her craft. He smiled.

 

“I just recently formed my sect and am looking for someone to craft robes for me and my two disciples here.”

 

“Just you three? Not a whole sect order?”

 

“Us three are the priority. A deal for supplying the sect with robes in the future could be worked out, if you’d like, but not immediately. When I say I just formed my sect, I mean it. I was born only a day or so ago, so it’ll probably be a bit before everything is up and running.”

 

“Well, the offer is open. What were you thinking about the designs?”

 

“Function is the number one priority. For that end, my robe should really only be a lower body garment. My specific body and techniques aren’t exactly conducive to keeping upper body clothes intact,” he glanced at the shreds of the portion of his robe that had covered his torso previously, “so I’d rather just sidestep the problem. For the two girls, a standard design should be fine.”

 

“What about colors and iconography?”

“This is our sect’s symbol, “ said Adam, pulling out the sect core. “A brown recluse spider with seven eyes, and two prominent fangs.” He pointed to the girls. “These two will be my Fangs, so they’ll need something that could differentiate them at a glance from any future members of the sect.

 

The girls were surprised by what Adam said, but kept quiet.

 

“Your Fangs, hmmm.” Inya squinted and looked closely at the sect core with its symbol suspended within. “A standard sect uniform usually has the sect’s symbol, or an abstracted version of it, on the back, where it can be made large and distinguishable. Usually two colors will be used throughout the design, and also act as an identifier. Did you have any in mind?”

 

“Black as a primary color, and gold as accents would be my first choice.”

 

“Luckily enough for you, I don’t know of any sect already using that combination.” Inya smiled at Adam. “I have a few ideas about the designs, would you be averse to me sending you some options in a few days, and moving from there?”

 

“Not at all.” Adam smiled his full smile at Inya, and extended his hand.

 

“Pleasure doing business with you.”

 

The trio proceeded out of Inya’s establishment, and before Adam could announce where they were going next, Sera began speaking quickly.

 

“What did you mean by FaAOW-” she began, before being silenced by a precise elbow to the stomach, delivered by Mira.

 

“I think what my sister is trying to ask, Sect master, is what you meant when you informed Master Inya that we would be your ‘Fangs’.”

 

“Hmm, well I’ve been slowly constructing the organizational system our sect will use in my head. The position you two will hold is that of my Fangs - The highest ranked warriors below myself. I will be teaching you both personally, so this follows naturally. Your duties will be more divorced from the command structure of the sect, as my two personal disciples you will accompany me on important trips, and perform tasks I see as important enough to send people of your strength on.”

 

The two girls seemed somewhat visibly shocked at this explanation, but MIra managed to keep her composure as she started, “I fear we may not be able to live up to-” before being cut off by a simple look from Adam and a slight increase in his ambient presence.

 

“If there’s one personal skill I am absolutely confident about, it's my sense of people. Beyond that, I am a Daemon, and though I was born only recently, I am still a being of great power, and I will be personally training the both of you. I have determined with my sense of people that both of you have significant potential, and with my powers as a Daemon I will make it so. There is nothing more to it.”

 

The girls were silent.

 

Adam was content to leave it at that, so he began moving again. They spent another few hours wandering the markets, mildly frightening passerby, and looking at things. The girls felt like they were aimless, but Adam was not just wandering for leisure. He was absorbing as much information as he could from the items he could see on offer. Foods, accessories, services, tools. He took in all the information he could. Of particular import were the few weapon stalls he found. While there were some of the weapons he expected - swords, blades, spears, and the like - there were also several new weapons, much rarer than the ‘normal’ ones. They followed a pattern where they seemed like handles or hilts with strange protrusions but no blades. It took Adam a while to figure out what they were for without asking, but when he did he couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

 

They were weapons specialized for those with strong external spira - they would thin and sharpen their spira, then string it on the protrusions to act as a kind of energy blade. It was ingenious.

Eventually it was getting late, which Adam only really noticed because of some stalls and shops closing, as well as restaurants becoming busy with the dinner rush, and Adam decided to turn in and find a place to sleep.

 

Given Adam’s inability to easily approach people while training his daemon presence, he was able to find a good inn after getting Mira to ask around.

 

Approaching the Pharixscale Inn, he was impressed. It was a five story building, about half the height to this underlevel’s ceiling, and seemed well built. Judging by the lively sounds and light coming through obscured paper film windows, the first floor was a sort of tavern, and the upper floors were for occupants.

 

Adam entered through the front double doors, and approached the Hostess’ stand. In the short time it took the three of them to traverse those few meters, the loud and lively tavern atmosphere had wilted away, leaving only hushed whispers. Adam didn’t have to look around to know nearly everyone there sober enough to think was staring at him.

 

The Hostess, to her credit, was barely fazed. Adam caught a tiny flicker of fear on her face before the mask of professionalism was restored and she asked “What can I do for you, sir?”

 

“I’d just like a place to sleep tonight, for me and my companions here. Do you have rooms with multiple beds?”

 

“We offer rooms with anywhere between one and four, sir.”

 

“We’ll take a three-bed room then.”

 

After sorting out the money (involving a not insignificant amount of change - Adam had pretty much been given the equivalent of a wallet of the highest denomination currency accepted) the three of them made their way to a room on the fourth floor. It had a paper window, and three roughly twin sized beds. They had arranged for dinner to be sent up to them, as well, and so they ate several minutes after settling down. 

 

After a fairly quick and mostly silent dinner, Adam got ready to go to sleep and be ready for the next day when he was struck with an intrusive thought - he knew next to nothing about other daemons. It hit him so hard to realize the only thing he knew was what Mira had told him about their ‘pressure’, but other than that? Nothing.

 

“Other daemons?” replied Mira. “They’re quite rare, and I’ve only seen one. When me and Sera were quite little, a wandering daemon visited the district we lived in. The memory’s a bit fuzzy but they were very strange. They looked nothing like a human or even a maena, more like a magical beast, but more in some way. It was more of a feeling than anything, but it was strong enough that I can still clearly recall it. All the other details are hazy.”

 

“And you failed to mention this during our previous conversation about other daemons because…”

 

Mira’s eyes went wide. “Y-your pressure was a bit much for me to handle. It must’ve slipped my mind.”

 

“Don’t worry, I’m not mad. That’s understandable. But about that feeling of more, do you get that feeling from me in any way?”

 

Mira had to think for a bit before replying. “When I first met you, a bit. After you saved me it had lessened even more during your talk with Luther, but once you started acting like a daemon, exerting your ‘presence’ and all that, it felt stronger. Nowhere near the one from my memories though.”

 

It was late, and Adam got the feeling he wouldn’t get much more out of Mira, so he let them go to sleep. But the thought still hung around in his mind. That daemon was not just a “human with strange powers” but another being entirely. Adam began to think about himself. What he was. 

 

He was no longer human. It finally hit him. He thought he’d feel more sad, but to his surprise it felt much more relaxing than sad. While he’d done a good job back on Earth, he still considered that life a failure in the end. He never reached his lofty, idealistic goal, and even though it was likely impossible it still made him a bit bitter.

 

But now? Now it was different. He was given another opportunity. To be more. Who cares if he was put here to satisfy some mysterious fate? He was going to take this opportunity by the throat and wring everything he could out of it.

 

The first step to that was accepting what he was now. A daemon.

 

His next actions felt almost automatic, as if fueled by some internal instinct.

 

Adam got on his bed, but he did not lay down. Rather, he sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and began to focus. He focused on himself, and his body. Soon he could feel his kernel, but he was not meditating to practice weaving. He went deeper. He explored his motivations. His internal drive. His memories. Slowly he went deeper and deeper into self reflection, studying his body, the flow of energy through it, and anything else he could point his mind towards, when suddenly his eyes flew open.

 

But he did not see the room outside. Instead he was greeted by an endless blue-speckled void. He looked at himself, and for the first time since entering this world, he saw the entirety of his new body for what it truly was.

 

An impossible shape, an amalgam of limbs. Much larger than he expected. There were a lot of teeth. A significant number of eyes. He could even see the objects he’d eaten, and was sure if he’d counted how many arms there were before he’d eaten the White Snake weaver’s there’d be one more now.

 

In that moment, his mind finally cracked, and the last of his subconscious attempts to retain a human identity were gone. He understood what he was now. A daemon.

 

Of course - he did not lose his morals, or his driving motivations. If anything, they were strengthened. He was a daemon. Something more. And he would do everything he could with that more to accomplish his goals. He would learn the rules of this world, and bend them to his will.

 

He focused a bit, and found he was not tied to his body in this strange place. He had an intuitive sense of how things worked, as well, and soon he could examine his body in detail. It was marvelously terrifying. Majestically horrible. If his inner self had a face it would likely be showing one of his widest smiles since entering this world. 

 

When he figured out how to shape the body, his mind exploded with possibility. He quickly found the section of his body that existed in the real world, and began to work. If he wanted to be taken seriously as a daemon, he’d need to look the part.

 

He began to pull and push, shaping his visible body into something he felt was more fitting, not only of the title ‘daemon’, but also ‘Sect Leader’. He changed proportions, added limbs, on and on until he was happy. Then he remembered what he knew about weaving, and how it interacted with the body. He went back to the drawing board, reshaping the inside of his body as well for optimal weaving technique as he knew it, and eventually he was satisfied. He then ‘got behind the driver’s seat’ and tested out his new body in the strange space.

 

It was weird getting used to all the limbs, and having more than two eyes was jarring, but as he flexed his muscles, stretched his joints, and looked around, he felt a profound sense of peace.

 

He’d been a daemon since being reborn into this world, but only now did he truly take on the role. His body and mind finally in sync with his soul.

 

He tried weaving. It still worked in this space, which was not only convenient but possibly immensely useful for training more destructive techniques in the future. Wouldn’t want to wreck his own training grounds every time he had a new move idea.

 

He found it much easier to locate his kernel this time, and was unsure whether or not it was due to his new body, being in this strange place, or both. Whatever it was, it was doing more than that, which he realized as he spun his first spira and noticed a significant quality bump. It still wasn’t what he’d call good, or even comparable at all to the spira of masters in the scenes he’d had implanted in his mind when he was reborn, but it was progress.

 

He quickly threaded the spira throughout his body, using the little tricks he’d put inside to help. He knew that weavers augmented physical strength using spira inside their bodies as a sort of force multiplier, and he’d created internal attachment points to make setting up a full-body system orders of magnitude easier.

 

Normally it’d take a serious amount of time and training to figure out a clean system to connect all the joints and muscles in his body in a way where they could be  properly controlled, but given his innate knowledge of the body he essentially built himself, as well as the little helpers he built in it was much easier.

 

However, controlling the setup was much more difficult. The first time he tried to throw a weave-enhanced punch he ripped his own arm out of its socket. Luckily he couldn’t be injured here, but it certainly wasn’t a pleasant experience.

 

It took him a significant amount of time to get used to the movements, and how he needed to flow his internal energy, but eventually he got the hang of it. It’d definitely be much more time until he was ready to fight with anyone of actual skill using it, but he’d be training constantly.

 

Next he moved to practicing external weaving arts, and testing his own hypotheses using the information about weaving he’d been given, which consisted of  two things. First, a lot of basic information, foundational concepts of weaving. And second, a lot of scenes of masters fighting. Previously, in his human-like body in the real world, he could barely recall these fights, but in his own space, in his new body, they felt like they happened yesterday. He could clearly recall them, from start to finish, from either perspective.

 

And so he practiced and practiced, determined to develop his own weaving style. He needed one, after all, if he was to lead his own sect. Eventually, he was satisfied with what he called his style’s “foundational technique”. It was something useful, not too difficult to learn (he hoped) and could be expanded on in the future, which he planned to work on as soon as he had the time.

 

Thinking about the time, Adam became extremely worried. It was hard to keep track of time in his internal realm, but he was sure he’d spent at least a few days in there, but to his surprise upon jolting awake, it seemed as if almost no time at all had passed. It was still dark, Sera and Mira were in roughly the same positions on their beds.

 

The one noticeable difference was that his ears, now even more powerful, couldn’t pick up any sound from the tavern below them. Several hours must’ve passed in the outside world. He wasn’t sure what the ratio was exactly, but based on his gut feeling it seemed time in his internal realm passed significantly faster, compressing what felt like days of experimenting and training into only a few hours.

 

That would be extremely useful in the future, but for now he had to deal with the problem at hand: his shredded robes were covering even less of him now that he’d fully formed himself as a daemon.

 

Luckily, he was able to use his newly trained weaver skills to just barely fashion some acceptable pants out of the scraps, and he silently thanked his manic inner self for keeping his legs roughly the same shape, if much larger and now digitigrade.

 

After that was sorted out, Adam found himself feeling particularly fatigued, and decided to sleep. Luckily for him, he could just barely still fit on the bed by curling up his body, although it made a distressing creak as he moved around on it. The position he was in wasn’t exactly comfortable, but he really must’ve used up a lot of energy in his internal realm because he found himself falling asleep mere moments after settling down.

 

When Sera woke up, she was slow to open her eyes. Despite feeling well rested, there was a sort of existential tiredness that had yet to subside, caused by several back-to-back upheavals of her life. Even if she felt happy at where she ended up, it was a lot to take in, and so she was tired. When she did finally open her eyes, she nearly screamed.

 

She was already a little afraid of Adam, particularly the large maw on his torso, and the way he smiled a bit too intensely at certain times, but she felt she was getting used to him. Even his daemonic presence had become more bearable after being exposed to it constantly for hours. But this was a bit too much a bit too fast.

 

Sitting on his bed was Adam, now roughly three meters tall. His large, powerful looking digitigrade legs were wrapped with the re-woven shreds of his former robes, but other than that, he wasn't wearing anything. Moving her eyes away from his legs, his torso was different as well. The abdomen had shrunk in, and had several pairs of arms extending from it, with the maw now opening vertically rather than horizontally, though thankfully it was closed tight at the moment. Sera probably would not have been able to stifle her own scream if it wasn’t. His upper torso was bigger like the rest of him, but the skin seemed tighter on it, ribs clearly visible and distinct. All of his arms seemed tighter as well, powerful muscle in his forearms seemingly fighting to rip out of the skin, while his biceps seemed more streamlined. Various bony joints in the arms and hands were clearly visible. His two main hands both had mouths in the palms now, like miniature versions of his torso maw. His long hair was the same, and his rough head shape as well, although bigger to match the rest of his body. However, his face was almost completely different. He had seven eyes, what used to be his only eyes being proportionally larger with a smaller accessory eye above and below each, plus a new eye in the middle of his forehead opening vertically rather than horizontally. His mouth could open wider, and his teeth seemed ever so slightly sharper, but that may have just been her imagination.

 

At this point,  Adam noticed she’d woken. The only reason it took him until then was he was practicing weaving threads between his lower sets of hands and concentrating quite hard.

 

“Ah, Sera, good morning.” he said.

 

It felt like her body was being shaken. Now that she was starting to calm down from the sight of his body, she began to feel a strange presence. It was different to what he’d exerted the previous day, that was a simple emotion. A mood that he could push onto those around him because he had so much more of it. What she felt now was more itself. She felt like she was standing in front of a hero from folklore, or a legendary mountain. That feeling of awe you get when observing something your subconscious just knows is special, dialed up to 11. 

 

Once she managed to calm down, she was internally quite happy. While Adam was scary and impressive before, this is what she’d expected based on tales she’d heard of real daemons.

 

Mira had a similar experience when she woke up. Neither sister asked about Adam’s new body, to his slight disappointment. But they had things to do, so he didn’t bring it up. Luckily they were able to leave quite early in the morning on account of going to sleep early so they only scared one of the workers in the building while leaving, and the streets were mostly quiet and empty on the way to the enneofluid extractor to meet up with Luther. Anyone that was on the street stayed at a careful distance and watched as they saw likely their first or second daemon ever.

 

The trip to the extractor was otherwise uneventful, and when they arrived Luther was yet to show up, so Adam took the opportunity to look around the place. The room containing the extractor had significantly more pipes in and around it than he’d seen in other places around the city so far, and at the center of the room stood what could only be the extractor itself. It was a monster of a machine, built out of the same strange nigh-indestructible material as the underlevels and city foundations themselves. As he walked around it he marveled at the design, that was so clearly made with purpose even he could see it despite knowing nothing about how it worked. A quick conversation with the girls concluded nobody really knew, or at least it wasn’t public knowledge.

 

Reaching the other side of the room, he found a pedestal that stood out by itself in front of the extractor. Walking up to it, he noticed a hemispherical void in an otherwise flat top, and pulling his sect core out confirmed his suspicions - this was where he inserted the core to claim the territory. 

 

But that would have to wait until he confirmed he had a workforce.

 

Of course, he was perfectly confident Luther would show up, but he always made sure to stay on the side of caution, especially in cases like these when waiting that small amount of time didn’t cost him anything at all.

 

Sure enough, soon after his heightened senses began to pick up footsteps coming from the direction of the slums Luther and the others lived out of. Focusing, he found he could accurately separate and parse each set individually, and he counted thirty sets. They were mostly adult-sounding, with a few lighter steps seeming around late teens.

 

As they neared, Adam made himself presentable, by focusing his presence into that of a leader, or at least trying. His emotional control outside of anger wasn’t trained yet, but he knew he did it right when he noticed the girls’ postures changing, becoming more confident, and the same change was mirrored in their facial expressions as they almost instinctively took their places at either side of him.

 

Soon Luther and his people arrived, and they slowed down considerably when entering the room, on account of seeing Adam. Many of them were trying (and failing) to hide their fear, but he could sense some other emotions  mixed in too. The biggest being hope, which made him feel even more confident about his prospects.

 

“So, Luther, I see you and yours have accepted my proposal?”

 

“We believe so, however I have received some worries and would like to reassure my people of your intent. Would you mind if I asked a question before we pledge loyalty?”

 

“Ask away.”

 

“My people have always been treated as somewhat expendable by the weavers. They wish to know one thing before joining you. Will you protect them?”

 

Adam looked at the collection of people in front of him. They exhibited fear and hope in equal measure, to such a degree the emotions bled into each other. Nervous glances darted back and forth between the ground and his face, and he collected his thoughts before responding to ensure he got his point across.

 

“When you join me, you become my people. While I do have my own goals and ideals, my own dreams to realize, those will be and always have been second priority. My first priority is to protect my people. I promise you to do everything in my power to protect those who choose to join me.”

 

The pure conviction Adam felt in those words was amplified and shared to the people in front of him by his daemonic body, and it was powerful enough that nearly all the fear left them. He could even see some tearing up with joy.

 

Luther had a contented smile on his face. He kneeled, and then bowed, his people following suit behind him. They spoke in unison.

 

“We pledge loyalty to great Sect Master Adam. May he find prosperity in the Weave!”

 

Adam began to smile. Turning around, he brought his sect core out of his internal realm. Placing it in the pedestal, he watched in glee as the extractor began to emit sounds. Soon the whole room was lit up as enneofluid began pumping out of it, and for the first time in either of his lives, the physical size of Adam’s smile matched the emotional size of the happiness he felt.