Mind Demon's Path of Domination

An arrow flew at an incredible speed towards Mark’s chest and he spread his hands wide apart.

"Come, tear through my chest!" he shouted.

The arrow pierced through his chest and crashed onto the ground, but right as it did, Mark flew away, his form blurring through the entire dome without ever stopping.

Alchemic Shapeshifting.

His chest mended back to normal.

The Lord of the Savages, who had teleported beside his arrow, spat on the floor.

Eye of Heaven!

Aura Teleportation!

He appeared right in front of Mark, a long sword went for the demon’s torso but Mark smirked. A Savage had his weaknesses, he couldn’t defend himself while attacking—or his Glass Dome would block his own attack.

The sword tore through Mark’s torso like a knife through butter and his blood exploded into the area. But at the same time, Mark’s golden eyes tore into the enemy’s eyes with a glance as fiery as fire itself.

Parasitic Dream Shock!!!

...

The Lord of the Savages, or Sakhal Malkan, remembered his childhood when he was surrounded by warmth. His father used to teach him swordsmanship those days, wise, always smiling, and warrior-spirited.

"A lifeform shouldn’t hurt another lifeform, Malkan. In my belief, there are only two kinds of people in this world, the ones who kill and the ones who save."

Malkan shook his head. "And there is another one, the one who kills to save."

"Malkan, take your sword, ready your hips."

"Yes, father."

"You have a habit of being absent-minded in battles, even while fighting, you always think of things far into the future or about something else. Do you know that?"

"Is that bad?"

"For someone else, yes. But for you, who has trained your body to move even without your will supporting it, it’s better training."

Malkan raised his sword. "I will train so much, my body will move even if I am dreaming."

...

The Lord’s hands moved, the blade heading right towards Mark’s neck even though his eyes were dazed. Falling onto the floor with his leg-less body, Mark flapped his wings, appearing on another side of the battlefield as blood leaked down his torso wound.

His intestines fell, stomach all over the place.

He felt lightheaded, woozy.

Alchemic Shapeshifting.

"Guhh!" He choked out a piece of some internal parts.

The Lord opened his eyes, breathing in gently. "You’ve got a weird body and a similar set of abilities, demon."

Mark rubbed his mouth clean, does he have no weakness?

And I had to lose my torso for that, you know? And... He laughed. This fucking monster hadn’t even used his Glass Dome right after awakening back.

Parasitic Dream Shock!

Mark moved like a shadow through the dome, moving towards the enemy’s back this time.

...

"The truly evil have no bottom line, Malkan. They will stab you in the back, they will blackmail you with your family, or anything like that on the line. But never listen to them, beat them half to death first and we’ll talk after that. You have the power to do that."

"I do?"

"You are a Tier 2 Pinnacle Savage—one with all the Magic that any savage could hope to have. With the Mask, all your abilities are Tier 3 Low-level and in this World, the peak is Tier 2 Pinnacle, but you are like a well-rounded Low-level Tier 3 with no particular weakness."

"Why am I different, father?"

...

Mark’s hand touched the man’s back, it was masculine, filled with scars of training.

Alchemic Shapeshifting.

His back exploded and blasted Mark off to the wall again.

And this time, Mark’s face was anything but calm. He hadn’t exploded the man’s back himself, the enemy exploded on his own volition.

Savage Magic—Nullification!

The ability to nullify an enemy’s ability by exploding oneself.

It can work using partial explosion, too?! I can’t feel any connection to Alchemic Shapeshifting at all, there is an ominous lock over it now. But my other abilities are fine.

The Savage Lord opened his eyes.

Blood Healing.

The man breathed in again, healing his back easily as he turned his head, three eyes looking at Mark with a renewed expression of calmness.

"You truly are evil," he said. "And with that, my own Mindpower is exhausted."

A mask appeared around his face, unlike any Mask that Mark had seen before, it had a pure golden color. Three eyes blinked at the same time, and now, the enemy had infinite Mindpower.

Mark felt sweat ooze down his body.

"Evil?" He chuckled. "I have been hearing that so much from you savages, I might as well go deaf from hearing it."

"Fools. A demon would of course be evil," Savage Lord said, agreeing with a chilly voice. "Me, too, have been a rather big fool to have believed that even your race could have some warmth in you."

Drip. Drip.

Blood and sweat dripped onto the floor from both sides.

Inside Mark’s World Space, two different demonic tricks shimmered.

Once more.

Parasitic Dream Shock!

The Savage Lord recoiled slightly, dazed once more. But yet, his hands subconsciously raised the sword in his hand as if readying for an attack. This time though, Mark didn’t attack using the earlier rough tactics.

Heart Input!

Failed.

Mark ran on the dome’s walls as his eyes expanded, and his mind ran in circles. As I thought, due to his Mindpower being nearly infinite due to it being linked to the Mindpower of the world itself, Heart Input won’t work against him.

For Heart Input to work, the enemy shouldn’t have Mental Resistance and their Mindpower should be equal or lower than Mark himself. Even if he could refill his used Mindpower using Black Water in his World Space, it was still just refilling and his limit was only (1000) Mindpower value at a given time.

How can he use Heart Input against a man with nearly infinite Minpower when he only had a thousand values of it at a given time? Truly, being favored by the world was a cheat.

Another two demonic tricks shimmered inside Mark’s World Space.

Heart Input and Parasite began to fuse, creating a new Ultimate Demonic Art!

The Savage Lord, lost in his new dream, didn’t notice at all even as he stood defensively.

Ultimate Demonic Art...

Heart Parasite.

...

"Malkan, what do you want to do in life?" His father asked.

"Hum, I want to kill all the demons in the world, save all the savages, and bring the humans under our lead. I want to become the hero that saves everyone!"

"Oh, what an admirable dream!"

"And I will also rule over this world, and bring about a world of peace."

"How pathetic," suddenly the father said, transforming into Mark’s appearance. He rubbed the youthful savage’s hair, looking lovingly at him. "Such a useless dream you have, my boy."

"Useless? Pathetic?" The boy tilted his head.

Mark snapped his fingers, another demonic trick mixed into the Heart Parasite Demonic Art and transformed it even more. Dream Shock—he had made that demonic trick into his own while inside an enemy’s dream.

Dream Shock, Heart Input, and Parasite combined temporarily and created another Ultimate Demonic Art.

Ultimate Demonic Art—Parasite of Heart and Dreams.

"Oi, demon, tell me," The boy asked childishly. "Why is my dream useless?"

"You once called me evil, and I was unphased then. I am too irritated by that question, do you know why?"

The boy shook his head.

"It’s the same reason why I think dreaming what you dream is pathetic."

Why am I evil? Why is a hero pathetic?

"Look at that, boy."

The boy turned, now standing above moving clouds. He was flying. But then, his focus shifted to looking below at his city. A sight made his eyes shine.

He was in the middle, surrounded by all his loved ones cheering for him.

"Malkan, you saved our world! All demons are gone!"

"You are our hero!"

"Everyone is going to be happy because of you."

"We will build a statue for you."

The boy’s eyes lit up.

"Do you see that? That’s an older you who saved your world from demons."

The boy nodded eagerly.

"Now watch this."

Years began to move by quickly, everyone entered an era of peace as the boy had wished for. A statue was erected with his appearance. Then, years began to go by again and the boy frowned. Soon, he turned old and grey-haired.

Everyone still respected him as the world’s hero, and he smiled.

Years went by again and he died.

Everyone mourned his death, his statue was repainted. Everyone he had saved in his youth also began to die one by one, their life ending like a candle at its end.

Nobody he saved remained alive after some years.

"No matter whether you save or kill them, one hundred years go by and they die anyway. You might be kind, but time is indifferent to your kindness. So what if you saved them? What if I killed them? It is nothing but extending or shortening a meaningless life."

The boy gawked.

Years went by again, generations after generations of peace and happiness. Justice had prevailed, and evil had perished. But then, after thousands of years, his statue had been buried under history’s new legendary figures.

Forgotten.

Then some years passed again and due to a wild epidemic, all humans went extinct. Savages ruled the world for more millennials, but then, the world itself started dying. The sun had a life expectancy, and when it ended, the sun would die.

The world fell into darkness, and all life ended.

"Years from now, no life would remain alive in this world. If the people were alive, the world would die and begin a new cycle of life and death from the start years after. That’s how the world works. Killing or saving doesn’t matter when it is inevitable anyway."

The boy looked at Mark’s demonic face, filled with an indifferent, friendly smile.

"Then, is justice worthless?"

"Ask yourself."

...

Malkan and Mark opened their eyes at the same time.

"You evil—"

"Goodbye, Malkan, you were a fun battle partner."

A red-skinned demoness stood some distance away from Malkan, fire burning all around her body. She had long since used the Ultimate Demonic Art—Trapped Animal on Malkan. A dome of fire surrounded him while a boom exploded from within the dome.

Boom!

Mark smirked.

"You might be able to attack and defend using the sword while in a dream, but you can’t use Glass Dome then, right?" Mark chuckled. "As I said, you are too arrogant to not go full cautious on your enemies. Or did you just assume I won’t call someone for help and act like this is some battle of valor?"

The man’s exploded body parts were scattered all over the place, and Mark squinted. Had he really died?

Meanwhile, Dona caught one piece of the body and jumped to stand beside Mark. It was an ear. He waved his hand, sending her back to his World Space, she could use Fire Seal on the body part of a Savage by touching the body part for 30 seconds.

It wouldn’t work on humans like that, but a savage’s body part wouldn’t die even if it is detached from their body. It will still be alive

The golden Mask of the enemy pulsed, hidden in a gory bulk that could barely be called a body, ready to have some transformation. Mark gently touched it. A savage only dies when he is killed after his mask is destroyed.

"This is enough time for my Alchemic Shapeshifting to come back to activeness."

Alchemic Shapeshift—

Suddenly, the mask turned grey and broke down on its own. Mark frowned and looked at the number of Golden Savages he had killed in his System—that sated his thoughts, the guy had given him the worth of killing more than 60 Gold Lords all by himself.

The corpse remained still.

So, he had died indeed. He was strong, stronger than me. And I still don’t understand how his powers worked, I should talk about this with Yuri—and damn, I almost thought I can’t handle this battle without winning that Dream Gamble with Yanchan.

That would have been too deadly, luckily, it didn’t require that.

He said in his mind: "Yes, luck. This battle relied a lot on luck."

Reol’ran snorted. "No. You were just at peak performance, don’t give it to luck. There are not many madmen out there who would let their torso be destroyed to connect an attack. You did well, beyond my expectations."

Mark smiled.

====

[Mission 1: Kill 100 Silver Savages.]

[Killed: 139/100]

[Rewards:

Entry back into the Demon World. (Claim)]

[Mission 2: Kill 10 Golden Savages.]

[Killed: 93/10]

[Rewards:

Portal Key. (Claim)]

[Mission 3: Kill 100 Golden Savages.]

[Killed: 93/100]

[Rewards:

Seal of Destiny.]

====

Damn, now that I think of it, the Demon World Will is also crazy. Killing a hundred Golds for a Seal just isn’t worth it. But sigh... I need seven more, huh? That’s not that hard considering they will be scattered about.

And.

Heh, I now have more Ultimate Demonic Arts.