David entered the demon knight's soul and found a castle.

  The architecture was gothic and somehow alien, walls that couldn't decide if they wanted to be metal or wood or scales, like a fever dream where geometry gave up. Crucified bodies lined the walls, arms spread, heads bowed. So many heads sat on spikes rimming the outer edges that Dracula himself would've felt a twinge of professional jealousy.

  He walked inside. The interior looked like he'd stumbled into a battlefield after the fighting ended. Bodies everywhere. Most were demons, different kinds, different shapes. He spotted things he didn't recognize mixed in. Stagfiends too. A lot of stagfiends. They lay in the positions they'd fallen, scattered across the floor like the battle had just finished and everyone had walked away.

  He crouched beside one of the unfamiliar bodies and nudged it. His hand met solid resistance. Not a body at all. A brick. A piece of the soul formed into a shape, a representation. He checked another. Same thing. Every corpse here was like that. Impressions. Records. The knight had done a lot of killing and kept everything imprinted in its soul, every kill turned into something permanent.

  He looked at the field of bodies again. All of these dead. Not trophies exactly. Something deeper. Incorporated. Part of what the thing was now.

  "The harvest indeed," he muttered.

  A grey square of text appeared in front of it.

  [Demon Soul — Alastiel the Eternal Harvest

  Status: Defiant.

  Description: …A soul that values harvesting lives as the center of its existence, the act of reaping. each life taken it ritualistically imprints an echo into its being, strengthening itself without limit through endless collection….

  Oracle: …A conflagration under a creator's pyre, feeding the creation, engulfed by the huntress...]

  David read it. Then read it again. He had no idea what most of that meant, but parts of it sounded familiar. Creator. That’s me. Obviously. So the oracle was saying he'd burn the soul. Well sure. He planned to. That was kind of his whole thing. Transmuting souls with soul fire. Feeding the creation was also something he planned to do. That tracks.

  The last part was concerning. The huntress. Who was that? What would the souls and this mess of corpses become? He didn't know. But at least I know whatever I plan to do will work. That was something. The oracle aspect was good for something besides attracting perceptive monsters with a taste for humans. Slightly confused but vaguely reassured, he moved on.

  David strolled through the demon knight's soul. Among the bodies scattered across the battlefield, he noticed trees. Bright macabre trees with roots that spread deep into whatever passed for ground here. The trees illuminated the castle, casting light that reached corners the gothic architecture kept dark. Bodies hung from the branches, swaying softly in a breeze he could see but not feel.

  His vision showed him what they really were. The complexity. The brightness. The sheer supernova of energy stored within each one. He knew, both from experience and from that instinct that had kept him alive this long, that these trees were skills.

  He counted. Twelve trees. Twelve skills.

  Dang. Talk about overpowered. His cohort wouldn't have stood a chance against this thing in a straight fight, even if everyone had an extra ten levels each.

  David read the description and thought about what it meant. A soul built around harvest. Not one with scythes and wheat, but one that collected lives. Reaped them. Each kill left something behind, an echo. An imprint that stacked on top of the last one, strengthening the thing without any cap he could see. No limit meant it could keep going forever, getting stronger endlessly, as long as it kept killing.

  Is that a ritual? Something I could learn? He wondered. I hope so. That sounds like a brilliant way to keep breathing.

  The knight had been doing this for a while, apparently. Stacking imprints. Building itself higher with every kill. That sort of thing didn't happen by accident. It required belief, repetition, some kind of structure. Faith. Like the magic the warlock used, but more ingrained. More… fundamental. Less casting and more being. A way of existing that turned killing into fuel.

  He thought about Cinder. Where Cinder worshiped him, built shrines from the fallen, performed sadistic rituals in his honor, this knight worshiped something else. Harvest. Which wasn't farming. Wasn't gathering crops. It was killing. Farming lives. The knight had found something to believe in, something that gave its violence meaning, and it had shaped itself around that belief until the belief became part of its soul.

  Were all demons just crazy?

  He let that sit.

  He paused and thought about what came next. Alright. Look at what I've got here.

  David had a demon soul and a demon body right in front of him, tangled together with the stagfiend's corpse. Two high-level corpses, one of them still radiating that harvest energy he'd just been reading about. But he had no thrall slots open. The warlock was using the last one.

  So I have to choose. Keep the teacher or take the soldier.

  If he transmuted this thing, used its soul and body as raw material, its skills would be gone forever. That was unavoidable. No matter what method he used, the skills couldn't survive the process. They'd burn away, leave behind something simpler. But what remained would be a powerful undead minion. Like Cinder. Starting from a base that was already level fifty-seven, already soaked in countless kills, already imprinted with echoes David couldn't access anyway. The skills were impressive, but they were also useless to him. I can't use them. Can't learn them. Can't do anything but watch them fade. So what am I losing, really?

  He looked at the warlock standing nearby, still waiting, still loyal enough for now—more to itself and its ambition than him. The thing would probably turn on him the moment his skills grip loosened. But releasing it meant losing access to sigil study. That meant hunting down another warlock, leveling it up, forcing it to share what it knew. That would take time. Time I might not have. And time the ogre isn't giving me.

  He looked back at the knight. Another demon soul like this one? On this floor? Probably never. Not without dying in the process. I'd have to fight something even stronger. Take even bigger risks. Hope it had a soul worth taking. This one is here now. Ready. Available. What am I going to do, leave it?

  Trade a teacher for a weapon. That's the choice.

  He made the call. The warlock goes. I'll find another. They show up eventually. They always do. But another demon soul like this? A powerful one? That's not walking by twice.

  "Guess I'll be building a demon," he muttered.

  David began to dismantle the demon knight's soul, but he didn't consume it. He'd been consuming souls for days, working with them, using everything he killed as a resource, and he'd learned restraint and control. It would be more accurate to say he dissected the soul. Studied it.

  First he cut out the most powerful looking bodies, each and every one. They were scattered throughout the soul-space, some near the castle walls, others clustered around the bases of the skill trees. He worked carefully, separating them from the rest of the soul-stuff without damaging their integrity. Each one came free with a resistance that felt like tugging roots from soil.

  Then he moved to the skill trees. Twelve of them, bright and complex, radiating energy that made his own soul feel dim by comparison. He carved around them slowly, leaving the bodies hanging from them entirely untouched. He wasn't sure if separating them would cause damage, but whatever connection they had felt intentional. The last thing he wanted was to destroy something integral because he got impatient.

  The rest of the soul he turned to rubble and consumed with flames. The castle crumbled. The walls dissolved. The crucified bodies and the heads on spikes and the battlefield of lesser corpses all went the same way. Just fuel. Raw material for consumption. Nothing worth preserving.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  His damaged constitution needed the points.

  When he finished, he was left with just over two hundred pieces of the knight's soul. Twelve skills in the shape of bright, complex, energy-dense trees. And around two hundred imprints—the bodies that had felt important enough to save.

  David picked a skill tree. It was heavy as hell, denser than anything he'd handled before. He couldn't use them, couldn't graft them onto another creature without it going mad, but with so many soul-skills, rich and energy-dense—a lion's share—he felt it was a profound waste to just burn them down like he usually did. The skills were dense with energy, rich and complex. At the very least he would try to study them as he worked.

  I can't use these. Maybe not ever. But burning them feels like throwing away a library because I can't read the language.

  He picked one up, and with mountainous effort, turned it over in his arms. The skills were different from sigils. Sigils were spaces, patterns you filled with intent. These were something else entirely. Dense energy pathways that generated, altered, changed, and created their own unique brand of energy. They didn't channel power—they made it. Constantly. A self-sustaining engine of whatever that skill was supposed to do.

  How does something like this even exist?

  He stared at it for a long moment. The complexity was overwhelming. Layers upon layers of structure, each one interacting with the ones beneath it, creating feedback and flow and generation that made his head hurt to track. He felt like he was looking at a galaxy. A small one, maybe, but still a galaxy. Stars and orbits and forces he couldn't name all working together to produce something he couldn't yet understand.

  He had to look away. Take a breath. Let his eyes rest on something simpler, like the pile of rubble he'd made from the rest of the soul.

  That's a good thing, he told himself. If it was simple, I'd already know it. If it was simple, everyone would know it.

  One day, he would understand that galaxy. Might be years into the future. Decades even. He was okay with that. If he didn’t die? Then he’d had time. The ogre had given him ten days, whether he lived or died was up to him. If his plans worked and he survived, there would be others. More floors. More enemies. More time to learn.

  And then, once he did understand? He could apply that knowledge to other areas. Rituals. Sigils. His energy affinity. Battle sense. His portals. All of it connected. All of it was just different ways of doing the same thing—shaping power into something useful.

  All I have to do is learn.

  David held the skill tree and exited the knight's body. He reappeared in the outside world, one palm still resting on the knight's back, the other holding the skill tree by a root. In the outside world, the phantasmal thing was light as a feather, barely any weight at all.

  He looked over at Cinder. "Would you bring me that stagfiend forearm? The one that fell off during the fight."

  She moved without question, walking over to where the limb had landed, bending down, and picking it up. It was heavy, dark chitinous plates covering muscle underneath, claws still sharp at the end.

  David looked at his forces. Cinder's body was in rough shape. Part of her shoulder was just gone, a chunk of flesh and scale missing like something had bitten it out. Scales hung loose from her torso, cracked and dangling, some barely attached. Chunks were missing from her arms and legs, places where the stagfiends had gotten through. The demon didn't react to any of it. Didn't flinch when she moved. Didn't seem to notice she was falling apart. She was undead, deathless. He had no idea how to fix her.

  But there's over a hundred bodies lying here. Fresh material everywhere. Something in all that meat has to be useful.

  Cinder walked back and held out the forearm. David leaned against the dead knight for support—the soul work had left him drained, heavier than he wanted to admit—and took it from her. He held it over his own arm and let his blood run onto it, coating the thing, marinating it in what he had to offer. His blood was soul-stuff now. Every drop could touch what lived inside things, could interact with the parts of them that weren't just meat.

  When it was covered, dark and glistening, he beckoned Cinder closer and entered her soul.

  David held the forearm in one hand and placed the other on Cinder's shoulder. He entered her soul.

  Cinder's soul looked like a small crate. Patchwork, made of mismatched materials nailed together with no regard for aesthetics. Glowing seams ran along the edges, hinting at something contained within, some fire or force held back by the wood.

  He moved closer with the stagfiend forearm, now coated in his blood, and began trying to graft it to the exterior. He pressed it against the crate's surface, willing it to bind, to burn itself into the structure. The wood resisted. The seams glowed brighter.

  Then the top of the crate suddenly opened.

  Blinding light poured out, white and hot, and David felt something yank at his other hand. The skill tree, the one he'd carried out of the knight's soul, tore free from his grip and shot into the crate. It vanished into the light.

  More things started erupting through him. He felt them pushing out from somewhere inside his own chest, things he hadn't summoned, hadn't chosen to bring. Bodies from the knight's soul poured through him and were sucked into the crate. Soul-skills followed, dense and bright. Pieces of the demon knight's soul, hundreds of them, all of it pouring into Cinder.

  Then he started seeing things he didn't recognize. Twisted stagfiends made of pure smoke erupted from his chest, their forms writhing and indistinct, and they too were sucked into the crate. The crate grew in size, seams stretching, wood groaning.

  Before he knew it, it was over.

  [Soul-Manipulator Lvl 6 → Soul-Manipulator Lvl 7]

  [Infernal Thrall Lvl 2 → Infernal Thrall Lvl 3]

  The crate had grown. When he'd entered, it had been about waist height. Now it was as big as he was. Still patchwork. Still looked unfinished. The glowing seams still hinted at that deeper fire, that something hidden within. But now, the edges of the soul trailed smoke.

  David exited Cinder's soul-space and returned to the real world. His back still rested against the demon knight. He watched his demon minion fall unconscious like a felled tree, her body still badly damaged from the battle.

  Not from the damage. Something else.

  He looked over at the two bound corpses. The demon knight. The heretic stagfiend. He studied them, close now, and saw what had changed. Their souls were gone. Both of them. Cinder's soul had consumed them.

  Through me. I was touching both. My back on the knight, the stagfiend tangled with it. I was a conduit. Didn't even realize it was happening.

  As he watched, Cinder began to transform. Thick black scales grew across every inch of her skin, spreading like liquid, covering wounds, covering undamaged flesh, covering everything. Soon his most effective asset was wrapped in a dark cocoon, its edges trailing smoke.

  She's cocooning. No idea what comes out. Could be stronger. Could be nothing. Either way, I'm down a fighter until it finishes.

  David sat there, back against the dead knight, taking stock. Rhea unconscious on Fenrir. Cinder cocooned. The warlock still waiting. Two empty corpses. A field of bodies. He catalogued each piece, each variable.

  I don't know what just happened. But I'll figure it out. That's all I have to do. Like most choices in this place, it was either that or die. It was both no choice at all and the only choice he ever needed.

  Somewhat forlorn and mystified, he began picking up the fallen pieces of both the heretic variant stagfiend and the demon knight's bodies. The remnants of the battle he didn't need to waste time sawing away at. He doused them in his blood, then fed them to Cinder's soul.

  “No cool demon knight for me, I guess.”

  He muttered it under his breath, more to himself than anyone else. Now that he had no souls to play with, all he had were materials. He fed Fenrir's soul stagfiend armor until beneath the fur, his magic wolf was covered in dense defensive chitin plating. A true hybrid. Fenrir's fur turned a deeper black, and the wolf's white teeth now carried an almost metallic property. The minion shifted with each alteration.

  That's new.

  A thick horn erupted from Fenrir's forehead. Black plate, like a stagfiend's spear, but different. Something meant to pierce and savage. It surprised David. He hadn't expected that. Hadn't planned for it. The wolf just... grew it.

  I wonder what else they'll do that I don't expect.

  The warlock watched all this curiously, as if waiting for its turn to receive power. Eager, even.

  What an ambitious guy.

  David looked at the warlock. "Sorry, buddy. If I did this to you, you'd probably go mad."

  He paused. Only transplanting skills made people mad. Aside from Fenrir, who he'd built from the ground up, created from nothing, he hadn't tried to alter the living.

  You know what? What the hell. As long as I don't try to give it skills, it should be okay.

  He repeated the process until the old werebeast had dense chitin plates covering its forearms, legs, and vitals. Its muscles filled out too. He made sure to spam his thrall skill directly into each graft, trying to solidify his hold on the creature in a way that didn't need constant upkeep and reinforcement. He wasn't quite sure if it worked, but the skill's level ticked up.

  In the end, the warlock filled out. Its muscles grew. It wasn't muscular, not by any stretch, but it was no longer frail. Now it looked like it could actually walk without a cane. Maybe even run. Its fur was still grey, but slightly less so. The armored chitin scales clearly marked it as different. The creature stood a little straighter, and David felt from its link a profound sense of satisfaction.

  David looked at the field one last time. He'd used about half the bodies. Every fallen piece of the demon knight and the heretic stagfiend was gone, which was a lot of pieces. The stagfiend leader had been sliced to pieces during the fight, and as it tried to eat the knight alive, it had partially succeeded. The knight had been in pieces too. Most of it went to Cinder, but Fenrir and the warlock had gotten their fair share.

  Fenrir darker, armored, with that new dangerous looking horn. The warlock standing straighter, muscled, defensive chitin-plated. Cinder with whatever she was becoming inside that cocoon.

  Now, in a sense, all his minions were part demon. Fenrir and the warlock carried maybe five percent each. Cinder was a different story. After consuming the knight's soul and most of its body through David, she was technically two hundred percent demon now. If that was even possible.

  Math gets weird when souls are involved.

  David picked up the demon's sword, Nightcleaver. The sword's counterpart was still lodged in the corpse in a way he didn't have the strength to remove. With some help from his remaining minions, he took the enchanted gauntlets, the sword, the pieces of armor worth keeping. With some effort, they loaded Cinder's cocoon onto Fenrir's back next to Rhea's still form. The wolf took the weight without complaint.

  Then he walked back toward their camp, with each of his minions changed. Altered.

  Whatever came out of that cocoon, it likely wouldn’t be the same creature that went in. He’d fed the fire. Now he would have to live with what it forged.