Chapter 24: Devour

Night had settled over Sylvia’s estate by the time the last activity from the training grounds disappeared.

The sun was gone, replaced by three moons suspended across Eden’s dark sky, each casting a different shade of silver over tiled roofs, courtyards, gardens, and high stone walls.

Guards moved along their usual patrol routes with measured steps, occasionally passing beneath lanterns before disappearing again into shadow.

Servants had retired to their quarters, the kitchens had gone quiet, and even the western wing where Sylvia stayed had only a handful of windows still glowing.

Beneath that peaceful estate, however, the private cultivation chamber remained sealed, its formations humming faintly through the surrounding stone.

Sigurd sat cross-legged at the chamber’s center with his upper body bare, his torn clothes replaced and the four claw marks along his left arm cleaned, treated, and tightly bandaged.

Resting in his open palms were the rewards Osric had extracted from the two corpses before bringing him home: two Demonic Cores. One was roughly the size of a walnut, dark bronze with thin amber veins running beneath its surface, while the other was slightly smaller and pale silver, interrupted by irregular streaks of black.

Both gave off a pressure entirely different from ordinary Vis Shards. Sigurd could feel concentrated energy packed inside them even without deliberately extending his perception, dense enough that holding both felt like carrying two tiny furnaces.

Demonic Beasts stood beyond Ferocious Beasts on the same evolutionary road. Ordinary animals that lived within Vis-rich environments could gradually absorb the energy into their bodies, changing over generations or, under favorable circumstances, within their own lifetimes.

Those that crossed the first threshold became Ferocious Beasts, creatures whose strengthened flesh, bones, senses, and natural weapons could rival Awakened martial practitioners despite possessing no core of their own. If such a creature survived long enough and continued accumulating Vis, eventually that energy could condense within its body. Successfully forming a Demonic Core marked the transition from Ferocious Beast to Demonic Beast. Sigurd knew there was far more to the process than the simplified explanation found in introductory texts, but for now, that distinction was enough.

His gaze remained on the two cores while his thoughts returned to the forest. The Armored Bloodfang had pushed him harder than any training session since his reincarnation. Then Osric had taken him elsewhere and casually destroyed his understanding of what qualified as powerful.

Sigurd could still picture the two Demonic Beasts colliding, their movements disappearing from his perception while trees shattered and the earth broke beneath them. Worse was what came afterward.

One pebble. One flick of Osric’s thumb. A creature capable of turning that enormous clearing into wreckage had lost its head before Sigurd could even follow the projectile.

A quiet smile appeared on his face.

He wanted to see more.

Until today, Eden had mostly existed for him through books, lessons, family records, and the limited world surrounding Sylvia’s estate.

He knew intellectually that empires, sects, academies, ancient families, beasts, unexplored regions, and powerful martial practitioners existed beyond Zierghardt territory. Knowing was different from witnessing. Osric’s pebble had somehow made the wider world feel real. If one scarred instructor who spent half his time carrying wine could possess that kind of strength, Sigurd genuinely wanted to know what stood at the summit.

He drew a slow breath and pushed the thought aside. There would be time for that later.

For now, he had cultivation.

Sigurd closed his eyes and adjusted his breathing until every inhale became steady. His awareness sank inward toward the Nascent Vis Core within his body. It rotated quietly, drawing upon the ambient Vis gathered by the cultivation chamber’s formations.

Normally, cultivation required him to absorb that energy gradually, refine it, circulate it, remove impurities, and feed what remained into his Core. Tonight he possessed something considerably richer.

He tightened his fingers slightly around the Demonic Cores.

Then he began.

The reaction was immediate.

A small vortex formed beneath each of his palms, barely visible at first before darkening into two rotating distortions. Energy stirred inside both Demonic Cores. Sigurd felt resistance for only an instant before something deeper inside him awakened, and the atmosphere throughout the cultivation chamber abruptly changed.

Behind the seated boy, darkness gathered.

An enormous illusionary silhouette emerged from it.

Only a fraction of the creature could fit within the chamber’s boundaries, its shape indistinct and partially swallowed by shadows. A gigantic head seemed to rise behind Sigurd, followed by the suggestion of a body extending somewhere far beyond what the room should have contained. Then its mouth opened.

There was no throat within.

No tongue.

No teeth.

Only darkness.

It resembled a black hole given the shape of hunger.

The chamber’s ambient Vis trembled.

Both Demonic Cores responded violently.

Thin streams of bronze and silver energy were pulled from their surfaces, spiraling downward into the vortices beneath Sigurd’s palms before entering his body. At the same moment, the illusion behind him opened its impossible maw wider, and the flow increased.

Sigurd saw none of it.

His eyes remained tightly closed.

The moment the first wave entered his body, thought itself became difficult.

Warmth spread from his palms through his arms and poured into his chest. It wasn’t like absorbing ordinary Vis. The energy carried a richness and density that made everything he had cultivated before feel thin by comparison. His Star Devouring Leviathan accepted it greedily, stripping away resistance and drawing the essence inward with such ease that Sigurd’s shoulders relaxed unconsciously.

His expression softened.

The sensation was intoxicating.

Every pulse brought another wave of warmth through his body. His muscles tingled. His bones felt strangely light and heavy at once. The Nascent Core rotated faster, receiving refined Vis in quantities that normally would have required days of patient cultivation.

Sigurd sank deeper into the sensation, unaware that the shadow behind him had become darker or that the formations engraved across the floor were beginning to glow more brightly as ambient Vis was dragged toward him.

Minutes lost meaning.

The chamber disappeared from his awareness.

There was only the endless current entering him and the hunger answering from somewhere much deeper.

For an instant, Sigurd felt as though he stood within his Soul Sea again. Stars surrounded him in impossible numbers, distant lights scattered across endless darkness. Somewhere beneath those stars, something colossal shifted in its sleep. He couldn’t see the Star Devouring Leviathan completely.

He never could. Yet he felt its presence, and for the first time since his awakening, that presence didn’t merely seem dormant.

It seemed satisfied.

The thought disappeared beneath another wave of energy.

Sigurd continued absorbing.

Eventually, the flow weakened.

The warmth pouring through his palms became thinner, then thinner again. The immense shadow behind him faded gradually into the chamber’s darkness, its open maw disappearing last. Sigurd remained motionless while the final traces of essence entered his body.

CRACK.

A fracture appeared across the bronze core.

CRACK. CRACK.

The silver core followed.

Their surfaces lost their glow as branching fractures spread from one end to the other. A moment later, both Demonic Cores collapsed simultaneously, crumbling into dull powder that spilled between Sigurd’s fingers and collected across his palms.

Silence returned.

Sigurd remained seated for several breaths.

Then his eyes opened.

He exhaled slowly, and a faint stream of warm air escaped his lips. His gaze dropped toward the grey dust covering his hands. Nothing remained of the concentrated pressure the cores had possessed earlier.

He slowly clenched both fists.

Power answered.

His Vis moved more heavily through his channels, and the Nascent Core felt noticeably fuller than it had before the session. He circulated a small amount through his arm, feeling it travel from shoulder to wrist before withdrawing it again. Even his body seemed invigorated beneath the exhaustion left by the day’s battles.

Sigurd smiled.

"At this rate, it won’t be long before I reach the Ascended Stage."

He opened his hands again and watched the core dust slip between his fingers.

"Those two cores gave me more progress than two months of normal cultivation."

That realization was difficult to ignore. If two Demonic Cores could produce this much progress, then a steady supply would dramatically shorten the time required to advance.

Sigurd sighed. "I wish I had an endless supply."

He immediately shook his head, amused by his own greed. Demonic Cores weren’t ordinary stones he could collect without consequence. Even if he somehow acquired hundreds, absorbing them recklessly would contaminate his Vis with foreign impurities faster than he could refine them.

The Leviathan’s Devouring ability clearly made the process extraordinarily efficient, but Sigurd wasn’t foolish enough to assume efficiency meant immunity.

Cultivation built foundations.

Poisoning those foundations for speed would defeat the purpose.

Still, as Sigurd stared at the dust, his smile returned.

Used carefully, Demonic Cores could become a very useful shortcut.

And after what he had witnessed today, Sigurd suspected opportunities to obtain more would find him anyway.