Myewphi

Hey! So you might be wondering why this chapter says its made up of three parts? Basically, I wasn't super happy with my oldest chapters so I am doing a bit of an overhaul on them. Part of that means im rewriting huge sections of my story, but another part is im just making the chapters a bit longer by combining them. So instead of having 1k word chapters, theres gonna be 3k word chapters!

Eventually, I will be editing all the chapter numbers so that this will just be called chapter one instead of "parts 1, 2, & 3" but thats gonna wait until ive finished combining and editing all the other chapters. If you are curious whether or not a chapter has been edited or not, just look at the name. Any unedited chapter will say (Unedited) next to the part number.

Anyways, thanks for giving my story a shot! Hope you enjoy!

“Awaken, my Demon Lords.”

My dark brown eyes opened for the first time and I stretched lazily, as if waking up from a long nap. My whole body froze as just under one hundred others did the same. All of them, including me, finding themselves in an unfamiliar room. 

Except… what was familiar for us? Images of a violet sky, a myriad of strange bodies, and countless voices flashed through my mind in an instant. They were not my own, I realized with a start. No, someone had put these in me. But if they weren’t mine, who was I?

No one. At least, not yet. I was a vessel of a hundred thousand lives, a hundred thousand names, a hundred thousand minds, and none were my own. I might have panicked, but this wasn’t really worth panicking about, was it? If I was not yet myself, then I simply had to create myself, right?

“I always love this moment.” A voice called out from in front of me, breaking the stony silence that had engulfed the room as we all stood too engrossed in our thoughts for words. My head snapped in the direction of the sound to find an old man standing upon a stage, regal black robes flowing around him as a timeless gaze and powerful presence washed over us.

“You all react so differently to finding yourselves here. Some with confusion, some with fear, some almost lifeless and robotic, but I suppose you can’t be blamed as none of you have even figured out who you all are. I created you and yet I find that I can hardly understand you all, having never been in your shoes.”

He paused as a smile crept onto his face, before suddenly laughing.

“Ah look at this old man drone on to you children! There is a reason I am here, and it is not to spout philosophical nonsense. No, I am here to tell you who you are…” He paused again, making me start to think this guy had a thing for dramatic silences.

“You all are Demon Lords, and I am your creator, the Grand Demon Lord.” The Grand Demon Lord’s back straightened as he said this.

“Standing in this room are exactly one hundred of you. One hundred more of you stood here one hundred years ago, and a hundred more still one hundred years before that. For over two thousand years I have continued this cycle of creation, pulling your very essence out of the spiritual energy that flows through everything.” A chill ran through my spine as I felt the history of this place, and the significance of what had happened here.

“And here you shall learn. For one year you all will stay here and be taught your abilities as a Demon Lord. What you do with them once you leave will be up to you, as each of you will find your own meaning in your existence.”

Suddenly his regal presence disappeared, and a good natured smile returned to his face.

“Of course, I won’t be the one teaching you! One of our greatest abilities is that of delegation, and I will be doing this today by introducing you to your teachers. Come my succubi.”

As he spoke those works, ten humanoids of unearthly beauty appeared from the rooftop and slowly drifted down towards us. Each one went to the front of a row and beckoned for us to follow them.

“We will speak again, my demon lordlings, but not today. Follow my creations, as they have much to tell you.”

Just like that, we were all filed out of the cathedral-like room we had been born in.

We were lead down a series of halls decorated lavishly with tapestries and suits of armor made from valuable metals. I found my eyes drawn to the suits as something in my memories allowed me to identify the metals used, and from what I knew, each of these suits could be considered legendary. If armor of this quality was used for decoration, I wondered what kind of armor lay waiting in the Grand Demon Lord’s true armories.

It didn’t take long before we were brought into what seemed to be a comfortable lounge with a whiteboard in the front. Facing the whiteboard was a mixture of sofas and armchairs, with a large table sitting in the center of the room.

The succubus, who appeared as a tall man with blond hair and purple eyes, walked to the front of the room before turning to our group.

“Welcome again Demon Lords, you may call me Ivercel. It will be my pleasure to teach you most of what you will need to know. For now, you may all take a seat if you haven’t already.” He said, flashing his ‘class’ an award winning smile.

The moment I had entered the room I was already eyeing a particularly comfy looking recliner, and before Ivercel had even finished talking, I had taken it. A few glares made their way to me from the demon lords who hadn’t been as quick to take a seat as me, as they were forced onto couches.

Hmph, sore losers. They should have known all’s fair a battle for the chair.

“I see you have all gotten comfortable, so let’s begin.” Ivercel wrote a word on the whiteboard and pointed at it. 

“Inheritance. All creatures created from spiritual energy have it. Hopefully you have all noticed by now that your heads aren’t exactly empty, yes? That is what your inheritance is, memories gathered from countless creatures who have lived and died with spiritual energy flowing through their veins.”

Or whatever it is you have, I mentally corrected him as a memory from the life of a slime chewing on the carcass of a vulture slipped its way through my brain. No veins in that bad boy, or much of anything except blue goop.

“Inheritance is extremely important to you demon lords, as it is what keeps your creations from having to learn all the way from the beginning of their lives. Ah, and I suppose I should mention this, but you all have the ability to create monsters, just as the Grand Demon Lord created you.” Ivercel smiled as he delivered that bombshell that, judging my some of the almost bored faces around me, wasn’t a bombshell for everyone.

Like what the hell? Were we supposed to know we could create creatures with our minds? How did it even work? Wait, he was about to tell us wasn’t he? Questions flashed through my mind, until suddenly, I was no longer in the lounge with my fellow demon lords.

Soldiers stretched back as far as the horizon as I looked out at the monsters brought to end me. Weak. They were all so weak, and yet they would be my end. I was too tired, too injured, too spent, and there were just too many of them. 

I laughed at the cruelty of it all. So far I had come, and yet in the end I was to be brought down by sheer numbers? Cannon fodder? 

But I was not dead yet. My eyes met the enemy commander. The demon lord who created these scum had even had the audacity to come in person, despite the fact he had been too afraid to face me in the past. 

This day would be my last, but I was not dead yet. It was time I showed this arrogant demon lord what true strength really was.

“-by reliving and absorbing the memories of your inheritance, you will be able to gain the skills and instincts honed by the creatures that lived before you.” Ivercel's voice cut me out of my trance. 

What the hell, had that been a memory? It had felt like I was there, like I was the one facing down an army ready to tear into it with my bare claws. I mean hands. Wait, did I have claws.

I looked down and confirmed that I did in fact have hands. Huh, so whatever creatures memory I had relieved probably wasn’t a demon lord itself. If anything, the impression I got was that it hated, maybe even hunted, demon lords. Not going to lie, it seemed like a badass.

“I strongly recommend that each of you explores your inheritance. As none of you have personal experiences to draw upon yet, the experiences of others just might save your life one day.”

“But that’s enough of that! It’s time to move on to your next ability, the creation of monsters.” The succubus opened up a box. Inside were ten golden, fist sized coins. “These are called charms, each of you take one. Once I have explained to you all how to use them, we will be heading outside so that you may summon your first creature.” Having said that, Ivercel began to lecture on everything there was to know about the use of charms and how to create monsters.

It wasn’t too long until we were outside. We had been taken out a door connected to the lounge that led to a small courtyard. Apparently this is where we would all be summoning our monsters.

To be honest, I wasn’t so sure how much I had grasped of the whole summoning process. Thankfully the basics didn’t seem too complicated, and everything should be smooth sailing. That is, everything except the first step…

Charms. Items imbued with traits that, when used by a demon lord, would create a monster with the corresponding trait. Easy enough to use one and see what comes out, except the charms we had been given were special. 

I looked down at the golden coin in my hand. Its faces were completely smooth, or to put it another way, blank. It was an extremely rare kind of charm with no trait, known as a blank charm. What made them so special was that the demon lord using them could choose any trait that they could think of and use it for their creature.

Infinite possibilities. Infinite chances to choose poorly and stay up late every night regretting it for the next month. Bleh, whatever. Let’s just… think of a few options and figure out what works best.

Dragon Charm - Body

One of the strongest but most expensive body traits. With both strong bodies, minds, and magical capabilities, it can be rather difficult to earn their respect, making them unreliable for subordinates for demon lords who can’t prove themselves.

Info would flow into my mind anytime I thought of a trait to give to my charm, and of course the first one I thought of would have to be dragon. This one was specifically a body charm, as there were three types of charms for monsters, with the others being affinity and role.

Hmmm, I didn’t want my first creature to be one that was too expensive, since I would want to be able to create more. See, demon lords could only create monsters that they had previously summoned with charms, so whatever my first monster ended up being would probably be the only one I’d get for a while.

Fire Charm - Affinity

Representing both heat and passion, the fire affinity, is a versatile one that can take many forms. It’s a safe bet that any creature with the fire affinity will have rather flashy abilities.

An elemental affinity would be a pretty safe bet right? Versatile, but not full jack of all trades, master of none territory. That being said… a fire affinity doesn’t truly guarantee a useful creature, does it?

When a creature is summoned, it gets the traits of all the charms used to make it. So if you used a dragon body charm and a fire affinity charm, you’d get a fire dragon right? Except what about the role? 

Any trait that didn’t have a charm associated with it used would simply be… randomized. Meaning that if I used a fire trait, I might get a flaming donkey maid. Okay that kind of sounded amazing but still!

Paladin Charm - Role

Excellent tanks and supports. Their strong physical abilities make them valued front liners and guards, but their main trait is their ability to use support skills to help their allies. Support skills are dependent on affinity but by default they gain a healing skill.

A role that can fulfill both an offensive, defensive, and support position? Not to mention, unless I really got unlucky with the body trait, it really shouldn’t matter what the other traits are. After all, even if the affinity is meh, the paladin role is still guaranteed to get a healing skill which would be amazing.

It has got to be paladin right? I decided to check a few more traits just to be safe, and while I did nearly convince myself to get a few others, in the end paladin just seemed like the safest choice. I really hoped I wouldn’t regret this…

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly opened them again. The charm that had once been blank now featured designs of an armored figure knelt down before a god. I felt like the gods outfit was eerily similar to the Grand Demon Lord’s black robes but I decided that was just my imagination.

Alright, paladin charm created! Now just to actually use it to create a monster. Ivercel it would happen naturally, all I had to do was-

[Create Monster]

I felt something in the charm, almost like warmth but… different somehow? How would you even go about describing a sensation like temperature or touch to someone who couldn’t feel because trying to describe the sensation was just like that.

As I wondered over this pecularior new ‘sense’ that I couldn’t recognize even among my inherited memories, a light burst from the charm and scattered around me, momentarily blinding me.

When the light faded, I was left staring at... a unicorn the size of a warhorse. I could definitely imagine how it could be considered a tank, seeing how big the thing was.

[Analyze]

I felt the same strange sensation again, except this time in my eyes, as I used another of the abilities all demon lords are born with.

Unbonded

Unicorn Trait - Body

Paladin Trait - Role

Fog Trait - Affinity

Skills:

[Healing Hands]

Healing hands? Shouldn’t it be healing hooves? Actually, that’s not important. The real question is if that skill meant I would need to make physical contact with my unicorn to use its ability. Perhaps I could use that analyze skill on it…

[Analyze]

Healing Hands - Skill

Heal another creature using spiritual energy. Must make physical contact and cannot be used on self.

Having to make my unicorn touch whatever creature I wanted healed was a pretty big disadvantage, but honestly healing was still healing and I was happy to have it. That being said, it sucked that it couldn’t heal itself as well.

Then again, unicorns were great mounts right? I could easily imagine knights riding massive unicorns charging into battle, and as soon as they took an injury their mounts would immediately heal them. Arrow to the face? No problem, have some healing!

Anyways, I still had one last thing left to do. Apparently it was possibly to bond with your creations. Not like, emotionally, or well that was possible too I guess, but in a more spiritual sense. Wait, no, not in a spiritual sense either, I just meant it was possible to use spirit energy to forge a magical bond between yourself and your creature! Why was that so difficult to explain!

Basically, once a month a demon lord could either bond with one monster, or unbond with one monster. What this bond did was allow some of the demon lords energy to boost the monster, and some of the monsters energy to boost the demon lord. It was like sharing energy, but by sharing you both somehow got more energy than you started with?

The stronger the demon lord was, the more of a boost the monster would get, and the stronger the monster was, the more of a boost the demon lord would get. It was also possible to gain some of the skills of your monsters, as well as even physical traits. Older demon lords would often have many monstrous traits, some not even resembling their original forms in the slightest.

It did have one major downside however. When a bonded creature died, the demon lord it was bonded to would actually lose much more than they gained, and be damaged by the loss. They would recover eventually, but could easily prove fatal if a bonded creature was killed while the demon lord themself was fighting.

Now, unlike [Analyze] and [Create Monster], bonding with a creature wasn’t actually a skill. All you had to do was move your spiritual energy into the monster and sorta just… bond I guess? Ivercel had just said to try it and we would naturally be able to do it, so here goes.

Moving my spiritual energy without the help of a skill turned out to be much harder than Ivercel had made it sound. When I had used a skill, it had just felt like I was pouring a cup of water down and letting it flow down a channel. Without a skill it felt like I was pouring a cup of water on a plate and trying to get it to flow in a neat line.

I concentrated harder and the ‘channel’ I was creating between me and my unicorn grow more distinct. Slowly, I felt as the messy splash of energy narrowed down into a fine line, and connected with something just out of my senses with a faint, internal click.

I felt that strange feeling of ‘warmth’ I had began to associate with spiritual energy flow into me as soon as the connection was established, and I suddenly felt as if I had grown. Looking down, I noticed nothing seemed different about me, but deep inside I knew I had become just a bit stronger…