The three choices glowed in the air, and David’s mind translated them with the dry efficiency of a mechanic reviewing a parts catalog.

  Demon Blood meant more power and better control, but the refill rate got slashed. A classic trade: quality over quantity. Hellfire Surge was simpler—dip every spell in acid for more punch, and get used to the constant, low-grade sizzle on your own skin. Demon Body was the physical remodel: a flat boost to every physical stat and upgraded internals, with the only cost being the unknown, creeping change to his own flesh and psyche.

  He finished reading. For a full three seconds, he just stared, the constant background hum of paranoia and calculation going still.

  “Huh,” he said, the word leaving him in a slow exhale.

  It was a subdued, almost clinical acknowledgment of a legitimate proposition. The System had presented a clear menu with visible costs. A transaction. In the face of the system’s profound unfairness, his options were almost uncharacteristically decent. Impressive, even. He felt a flash of something almost like appreciation, a sharp, clear note in the usual noise of threat and survival. It was quickly smothered by the next, inevitable thought: Okay. Which one gets me killed the slowest?

  He deliberated the best one.

  Demon Blood would slash his energy regen in half. He could top himself off by draining enemies dry or by siphoning juice from his thralls through the tether. A decent workaround. The perk would double his total pool and make his control sharper. His Energy Affinity skill, the Death-Borne and Soul Manipulation parts, already did some of that and would cancel out the weakness from Hellfire. Doubling his pool was the same as killing and absorbing one hundred and ninety-four creatures. A nice instant bump. He could do it without the perk, but that was a lot of murder. A short-term gain.

  Hellfire Surge would multiply his offensive magic by five. It would soak everything in hellfire—his fire bolts, his death bolts, his soul flame, the energy he pushed into his spear, even his goddamn portals. Everything would burn hotter. The catch was the fine print: all hellfire damages the wielder to a lesser degree. So, pain. Constant, low-grade pain with every spell. David could handle pain if it meant winning. But what did the System consider ‘a lesser degree’? A tingle? A constant feeling like he’d grabbed a live wire? Or something worse, something with more screaming? The wording was a problem. Also, hellfire was a thing that existed out there. His Energy Affinity might let him find a source and just absorb it raw, making the perk a waste of a choice.

  Demon Body would jack up all his physical stats by thirty percent. Right now, that was a free thirty-six points. Later, as he grew, that percentage would be worth more. He got two Constitution and one Strength for every soul he ate. With the percentage boost, thirty souls would give him ninety points from the meal, plus an extra twenty-seven from Demon Body. The math was good. His body was already weird, stuffed with excess soul-stuff. He wondered how that would play with the ‘demonic restructuring.’ The perk would also upgrade his energy pathways. That meant his physical strength would get a passive boost from the energy always moving in his veins, and it would make using Cinder’s reinforcement technique easier. His whole system would adapt to demonic energy faster. Every skill, every pathway, every trick would run smoother. It was the best option on paper.

  But.

  It had the worst fine print.

  Minor psychological side-effect increases.

  That gave him pause. Living with a broken mind, without medication or help, was a special kind of hell. It was worse than dying. It was being a prisoner in your own head, watching some other version of you drive the body into a wall over and over. Movies made madness look cool. In reality, it was a prison where the walls were your own confused thoughts. He knew that. Even knowing that, there were things he’d risk it for. Seeing his daughter again would be one. But that was impossible.

  His Battle Sense suggested demonic corruption was different. It wouldn’t break his mind; it would just turn him into an asshole. An evil asshole. He’d had his will overridden before. The memory was enough to make him want to throw the whole perk away.

  One thing made him reconsider.

  The Level 27 Mind Knight.

  The Mind Knight was a threat to him in a way it wasn’t to the others. Not because of stats or magic. Because it could screw with his head. If David had mental attacks, he knew exactly the awful things he’d do with them. If the Mind Knight was even half that creative, the threat was off the charts. Demon Body’s side effects were called minor. The Mind Knight’s potential was major.

  Extremely so.

  His Calm Mind skill might handle the psychological bump. It had kept him ‘normal,’ more normal than he’d felt in forever. At the very least, it’d give that stuck-at-Level-One skill something to work against, a chance to level up. A safe—or as safe as it could be—way to grind the skill against something hostile. Facing a ‘Mind Knight’ with a leveled-up mental defense seemed smarter than facing it without. The stat boost, the better pathways, the faster adaptation—they were all good. But the chance to armor his mind against the thing that scared him most? That had real value.

  He stood in the forest, the damp heated air clinging to his skin, and weighed a permanent change against a monster that could turn his own brain into a weapon against him. A hostile that could rebuild the cage he’d freed himself from long ago.

  In the end, the choice was an easy one.

  “Demon body,” David said, his voice just another sound in the wet woods.

  The blue panels vanished.

  The pain arrived a second after his choice, a courtesy head start.

  It started in his bones. A deep, grating ache, like his skeleton was trying to twist itself into a new shape. Then the fire. It wasn't external. It ignited in his veins, a searing rush that had him on the ground before he could make a sound. His vision whited out. He could feel his own blood boiling in its pathways, could hear a wet, crackling sound as his muscles frayed and knit back together tighter, denser. His skin blistered and blackened, flaking away to reveal raw, glistening flesh underneath that immediately hardened into something smooth and unblemished. The demonic energy inside him, usually a coiled stream, ruptured its banks and raged through him, a flash flood scouring out new channels. It felt less like being rebuilt and more like being disassembled and forged, hammered on an anvil of pure agony.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Through the haze, he saw Cinder step closer. The demon loomed over him, a silhouette against the burning canopy. He felt a spike of something from her—not fear. A focused, intent watchfulness. A slight, professional concern. She trusted the process, but she was ready to stomp on anything else that tried to interfere.

  Footsteps pounded the earth. Rhea skidded to her knees beside him, her invisibility dropping. Her face, usually so composed, was tight. "David. David, what is happening?" Her hands reached for his shoulder, to roll him, to check his airway. The moment her fingers touched his smoldering skin, she hissed and jerked back, her fingertips red and blistering.

  "Don't... touch," David managed through teeth fused shut by the heat. The words were a grating whisper. "Skill... upgrading."

  Rhea’s eyes flashed from his face to the reforming skin on his arms. She saw the medical reality: he was conscious, he was coherent, he was currently on supernatural fire. Her nurse’s protocol and her survival instinct had a brief, silent war. The nurse won, but it brought the tools of the forest, not a hospital.

  "Okay," she said, her voice forcibly level. She didn't try to touch him again. Instead, she positioned herself near his head, watching his throat, his chest. "Your airway is clear. Try not to swallow your tongue. It's going to pass. Breathe through it." Her tone was the same one she’d use for a patient coming out of a seizure—clinical, direct, a anchor point in the chaos.

  The inferno inside him began to simmer. The pain receded from a world-ending roar to a deep, throbbing ache. The fire dimmed, flickering over his form before sinking beneath his new skin, leaving him covered in a sheen of cooling sweat that steamed in the air. The light faded. He was left lying on the scorched earth, breathing hard.

  [Demonic Energy Mastery Lvl 10 → Demonic Energy Mastery Lvl 11]

  He pushed himself up. His body moved. It felt... different. Not foreign. Over-familiar. Like he’d been living in a suit two sizes too small and had just stepped into the right fit.

  Wow.

  The thought was stupidly simple. He looked at his hands. They were his hands. But the skin was perfect, poreless, like polished stone. The muscles in his forearm coiled with a defined, resting tension he didn’t remember. He felt heavy. Not sluggish. Dense. As if his personal gravity had increased.

  "Talk to me. What do you feel?" Rhea asked. She was still crouched, assessing him, her burned hand tucked against her stomach.

  "Intact," David echoed, his voice a rough scrape. He felt a wild, surging grin trying to break through his usual restraint. He crushed it down into a faint, shaky smirk. "Better than intact."

  He got to his feet. The movement was effortless. A ripple of power followed the motion, a heat haze in the air around him. He looked at a nearby rock, a rough chunk of granite the size of a football.

  Let’s see.

  He didn't wind up. He just crouched, placed his palm flat on its surface, and pushed. Not with his muscles. He willed the new, singing energy in his pathways to flood his arm. Selective reinforcement. It happened instantly, a surge of molten power that felt like flexing a new limb. The rock didn't crack. It compacted under his palm with a dull crunch, powdering into gravel and dust.

  A laugh barked out of him, short and sharp. Holy hell.

  He focused inward. The demonic energy that had always been a separate, volatile reservoir now felt like his own bloodstream. It thrummed in time with his heartbeat, eager, responsive. He remembered watching Cinder move her energy, raw and instantaneous. He’d always been playing catch-up, manipulating something external. Now, it was just him. He curled his fingers, and a wreath of black-edged green flame erupted around his fist without a conscious thought. It didn't fight him. It was him.

  Now for the second most important test.

  David focused on his magic. He pushed the energy out of himself, expanding it into the world around him. His external field snapped into existence, fast—almost too fast; a ten-foot sphere of invisible, humming pressure. He felt it hit its limit and refuse to budge further. He was slightly let down. Ten feet was useful, but a bigger field would’ve been nicer.

  He shifted his focus. He pulled heat and raw death from his core and channelled them into the magic field around him. Five black balls of flame burst to life in the air, orbiting his shoulders. The control felt different. Cleaner. Sharper. Like he was directing them with his hands instead of shouting instructions.

  Experimentally, he tried to shape the balls. He willed the flames to stretch, to sharpen. They elongated, warping into crude, jagged streams of black fire. Not quite swords like he’d intended. More like fiery, misshapen, crooked spears.

  He shot two of them. They streaked away, silent and hungry. One punched into a thick pine trunk. The wood didn’t just catch fire. It blackened, shriveled, and then exploded into a shower of brittle, burning shards. The other streamer hit the ground, and the earth withered in a three-foot patch, the grass and soil turning to grey, lifeless ash consumed by death and demonic heat.

  Woah.

  He was on to something.

  He kept the other three fire-streams circling him, moving like dark stars around a sun. He tried merging them, pulling them together into one massive, churning flame. He willed it to take shape. A blade. A real sword of black fire. The flame resisted, flickering wildly, burning, refusing to hold a sharp, stable, searing edge. It didn’t work. He couldn’t get it right.

  But he had never been able to shape or control the fire like that before. He couldn’t make a sword, or even a proper spear, but for the first time, he could tell the fire to be something other than a ball. It was a start.

  He looked at Cinder. She watched him, her head tilted. He felt a pulse from her—something akin to satisfaction. Maybe vindication. A deeper reverence.

  He turned to a stand of young saplings. He took a step, then another, then broke into a sprint. The world blurred. He wasn't just faster. The ground seemed to push back against his feet harder, launching him. He weaved through the trees, a sensation of overwhelming strength and heat propelling him. He stopped, not even winded.

  Let’s check the damage.

  The air around him wavered with a heat haze. He felt… better. Sharper. Like he’d been viewing the world through fogged glass that had just been wiped clean.

  Alright. Now for the big one.

  He reached out and a portal opened in front of him. The energy rushed into his magic field before the thought had even finished forming.

  [Portal Magic Lvl 2 → Portal Magic Lvl 3]

  The portal was huge. It was half as large as he was. On the other side, he saw a sea of endless bones.

  That had never happened before.

  He closed it immediately. The last thing he needed was something unwelcome easing through. The Demon Body perk had clearly redecorated his magical address book. He suspected this would affect every skill he had now.

  David laughed. He had some testing to do.

  “You’re naked,” Rhea said from behind him. Her voice was flat. “You know that, right?”

  David looked at her—she had a hand over her eyes, peeking through the gap between two fingers. Then he looked down at himself. His clothes were gone. Incinerated during the upgrade. His new skin was out in the open air.

  “Huh,” he said. “So I am.” He quickly moved to cover up.

  “First things first. Need to kill some things. Need to get some pants from luggage. Then, we see what else this Skill Perk broke—not in that order.”