Mind Demon's Path of Domination

Drinking coffee that reminded him of Earth, Mark walked towards the basement of the Laboratory Dungeon. Yuri and Dona were not allowed to follow and they just brooded on the couch.

Strangely, it felt as if the duo was becoming more friendly with each other recently. A violet screen shimmered within his mind.

[Killed... Sun Jin Hu]

[Killed... Hanmo...]

[Killed... Wind Demon Wolf]

All of those creatures had Soul Spheres that the system automatically absorbed into his Soul Space upon murdering them. Now, those souls had become just fresh energy that he could absorb anytime and they were dormant within the well inside his Soul Space.

He pushed aside the kill notifications and focused on his current stats.

________

[Marcus Haeligarth Aramanteuil Véxillarius Nócturnâ Aërglothur]

[Tier 1—Lower Demon]

[Physique: 100/100 (Pinnacle)]

[Mind: 100/100 (Pinnacle)]

[Soul Spheres: 869.9]

[Bloodline: Ephemeral Dungeon Heart Demon]

[Demonic Tricks (T1)—

Soul Devourer

Heart Input

Dungeon Heart Seed

Dream Gambler’s Mortal Puppet

Alchemy Shapeshifting

Parasite (Pinnacle)

Dream Shock (Pinnacle).]

[Cultivated Powers: Soul Sense (100 Meters), Magical Defensive Skin (Tier 1)]

-[Resistances]-

[Heart Resistance (Low) (Tier 2)]

[Plant Poison Resistance (Low) (Tier 2)]

[Physical Resistance (Pinnacle) (Tier 1)]

[Mental Resistance (Pinnacle) (Tier 1)]

-[Soul Traits]-

[Demonic Heart]

Fulfill the desires of the heart to live longer.

[Current Desires: Fight a Colossal Giant (100 Years of Lifespan) (Incomplete)]

[Life’s Great Desire: Become a meaningful existence in the world, experience the greatest pleasures that life has to offer, and be capable of attaining all that you desire by becoming the strongest Demon. (∞ Years of Lifespan) (Incomplete)]

[Soul Longevity: 39 Years.]

[Mission From the Demon World’s Will]

[Create a Dungeon spanning the entirety of a Nation in the Hunter World, and hand over the authority over the Dungeon to the Demon World Will.]

[Reward: Seal of Destiny (1), Portal Key to an unconquered World (1)]

[Soul Bond Treasures: Seal of Destiny (1), Portal Key to an Unconquered World (1).]

________

His Soul Spheres were at an all-time super high. It was 869.9!

Hanmo was the biggest contributor to that. Mark smiled. Moreover, he now had Alchemy Shapeshifting as one of his demonic tricks. That was important to Mark. As he entered the basement and closed the door behind him, he took a deep breath.

His golden eyes glinted in the dark room without lights and he walked towards a certain wall.

The wall itself was faintly alight with a blue light, and inside the wall was a naked woman of absolute beauty.

White hair, white eyebrows, similarly shaded lashes, and a tender physique of humane perfection. She seemed more human than any sort of demon.

This time, he looked at her more deeply than ever.

When he first met her, she had opened her amethyst eyes, and the violet screen within his mind had started thumping vigorously. Now, her eyes were closed but her body was bare for the sight as ever.

...even her pubic hair is white.

Mark touched the wall silently and went deep into thought.

"Have you had enough of staring at my naked self?" The woman’s voice asked in his mind.

Mark felt the coldness numb his palm.

"Who are you, woman? Why are you inside my mind?"

He was incredibly wary of this woman. No matter what she said or did—even if she gave him a Seal of Destiny—it didn’t mean she could stay in his head without his permission. And until Seo Jin Hu was trying to summon Angels into this world, he didn’t even know she was in his mind.

How long had she been in there? What is her purpose? How to get rid of her?

Also, she had told him to steal her ability, Clown’s Circus, using the new Seal of Destiny in his hand. That was supposed to be a sort of repayment for him, but why would she be bothered enough to repay him?

It was not as if she owed him something.

Something was completely amiss with the whole thing. Moreover, she was too peculiar.

There was a condition to use the Seal of Destiny. It only worked on people Mark killed himself. So, why would someone want him to kill them and take their ability?

"Reluctant to trust me, as I expected, huh?" she asked.

Mark’s eyes were cold. "You gave me a Seal of Destiny and told me to steal an ability from you. But you know that only works if I kill you. And somehow, you are even talking within my mind. Do you really think I can trust you?"

"Oh?" She laughed. "Seal of Destiny. It can only be used on others if you kill them, but I alone, am different.

Mark just stayed silent. His Violet Screen only showed one thing and this woman was going against that fact.

[Seal of Destiny]

[A soul-bond Unique Treasure created by the Will of the Demon World. It can help a Demon steal one ability of their choice from other creatures.]

[Limitation: Can only be used once. It doesn’t work on Angelic Blessings (innate powers of Angels). It only works on creatures that had been killed by Marcus.]

"Hmm?" she chuckled in his mind. "You don’t believe me one bit. Well, don’t trust me then. Just try using that Seal of Destiny against the ice and you will realize it works just fine."

"Do you know what?" Mark squinted. "You don’t look strong. I can just try using Alchemy Shapeshifting on this piece of ice and turn you into mush. Kill you and steal the ability normally. Or, you can be more straightforward."

"... I have never offended you, Mark. I even helped you, in fact. You will kill me?"

"I won’t deny that you helped me avoid the Angels," he replied. "But that doesn’t mean you can enter my mind on your whims."

"..."

Silently, Mark tried using Alchemy Shapeshifting on the ice wall but his heart skipped a beat. The ice was unmoved. It felt strangely invincible.

"You can’t do anything to this ice. Nothing at all." The woman said. "If the ice was so weak, I would have destroyed it long ago and come out myself."

Mark’s hands twitched.

For a while, the woman’s voice didn’t speak again.

"Don’t worry about me talking inside your mind so much," she said in his mind. "What is inside your mind is my detached will of sorts. My real body has to look at you to leave this behind and it runs out of energy if I talk too much. It is of no harm to you at all."

Mark just stayed silent.

A long, silent moment passed.

"Sigh..." She said ominously, "Well if you don’t trust me, I can only do one thing."

Wariness crept up Mark’s spine.

"I didn’t want to do this because it would leave me without any energy at all for years to come, but well..."

Suddenly, her corpse-like figure inside the icy wall opened her amethyst eyes and stared into Mark’s golden gaze. He stood stunned as they locked gazes.

Mark felt his heart thump in nervousness.

And his vision darkened.

...

Mark appeared in a vast, infinite world. It was so infinitely bigger, he felt eternally minuscule. This was a river that stretched without boundaries and he himself was but a single droplet inside it.

The River of Destiny.

A snap sound echoed in the air and a woman’s figure appeared beside him in regal robes of imperial might. She waved her hand and the whole scenery shifted.

They appeared amidst a small bamboo forest. In the middle, there was a small shogi board and he was sitting on one side, and on the other, it was the woman.

He looked at her with bewilderment.

She smiled with regal elegance.

"Let me show you something, Marcus," she said with her voice calm.

With another snap of her finger, Mark saw multiple threads extend from his body to the empty space all around him. Especially, threads binding him to the woman before him were the thickest and most numerous.

He looked around. Other threads led to other places.

"Close your eyes and visualize those threads and you can see their sources." Her voice seemed to have a calming effect and he did exactly as she asked.

One thread connected him to a red-skinned Demoness—Dona. Another thread connected him to a scientist—Yuri. One other thread, incredibly thick, connected him to someone he was rather unfamiliar with but still felt familiar—

...Mother?

There were more threads. He focused on another one and he saw a young man.

Seo Ran Hun. Seo Jin Hu’s cousin and Mark’s previous Dream Gambler’s Mortal Puppet.

The youth was pierced with ice spears on his guts but he was walking.

The woman spoke, "Due to the demon blood inside that kid, he didn’t die. Since you took away his Hunter Ability using Dream Gamble, he became a normal person all over again and when another Demon died, the Hunter World’s Will gave the kid a new Hunter Ability. He survived by a fluke because the ability was one that allowed him to heal himself."

Mark muttered in amazement as he tried to touch the intangible threads, "What are these threads?"

Why did they connect him with others?

"They are the Fate Threads of the River of Destiny. I like to call them Karma Threads though." She blinked. "Whatever people do, for every cause, there is an effect. Relationships you build, reputation you accumulate, actions you take—everything will have a cause and its effect."

Mark just stared at the woman with intense eyes.

She smiled. "The more you invest your effort in something, the thicker the karma you build with the cause. It is a deep field to delve into, and you are too weak to dive too deep."

"Why is the thread between us... so thick?"

"Of course," She smiled. "That’s what I am here to show you."