Luke summoned his Spectral Beast. The black thread unfurled from his abdomen, lifted into the air, and coalesced into a creature shaped from pure [Wraith Form]. The Abyss King materialized beside the corpse of its former physical self.
“Looks like your trick actually worked, human,” Franky muttered, eyeing the serpent.
“Now I have a pet snake.”
The massive dark serpent, made of smoke, shadow, and living night, regarded him with two glowing yellow eyes, recognizing its master. It hissed, tasting the air, its fangs glinting. Luke kept it under strict mental control for safety, refusing to let it switch into autonomous mode just yet.
“It’s a little smaller,” Franky noted, comparing the two bodies.
“Probably because of my core.”
His Spectral Beast was Rank F, and it had devoured a Rank D core. The power had compressed, resulting in something slightly weaker than an Abyss Prince but still carrying the full suite of the Abyss King’s skills.
I need to evolve my beast’s core as fast as possible.
Luke had only wanted to test [Form Devourer], and the results exceeded expectations. After experiencing the entire fusion ritual himself, he understood the risks more clearly. He couldn’t just feed it any random core; the process mirrored the same volatile fusion he endured. A single mistake could kill him.
[Form Devourer] essentially recreated the core fusion ritual inside his soul, which made it dangerous. But some things were becoming obvious. It was far safer to use cores from creatures he personally defeated. Perhaps it had something to do with experience points or soul imprinting. He couldn’t be sure. But instinct screamed a warning: Only devour what he killed, and preferably what he killed alone.
Since he had to defeat the creature again inside his soul, choosing something he couldn't handle physically would be suicide. Still… the realization stirred something primal inside him. Any beast he killed could become his Spectral Beast. Whenever a new and interesting monster appeared, he could take it for himself. A true predator.
“Kneel,” he commanded, releasing direct control and letting the serpent operate autonomously.
The smoke-serpent hissed, eyes drifting across the cavern, lingering on its own massive corpse. Then it turned to Luke. Slowly, deliberately, it lowered its head to the ground in submission.
Luke leapt onto the serpent’s skull, standing proudly atop his new mount.
“Come on, Franky,” he said. “Let’s hunt every last serpent in this place.”
The enormous beast roared in agreement and surged forward through the abyss, and Luke rode into the hunt on the back of his newly claimed monster.
***
Vaelor pulled his consciousness fully back into his physical body in his own universe. He found himself standing in an office buried under piles of paperwork. He rose abruptly.
I actually spent all that time with two Primordials. And one of them was the Primordial of Darkness?
Even he couldn’t quite believe it. He had fulfilled the dream of every demon god. He strode out of the office without hesitation.
“Lord Vath’Ironak,” one of his assistants said, standing as Vaelor passed.
“Lord Vath’Ironak,” the assistant repeated, hurrying after him.
Vaelor walked straight through doors using intangibility while the poor assistant scrambled behind him, opening and closing them in a panic.
The w-demon quickened his pace.
“Lord Vath’Ironak,” the servant said again, suddenly at his side. “My lord, is something wrong? You never interrupt your work like this. Please, tell me what needs to be done and I will handle it.”
“I’m not doing paperwork today,” Vaelor replied.
“No?”
“In fact, I won’t be doing that kind of work for a while. I’m going to my forge.”
Vaelor vanished and reappeared within a massive castle on another continent, perched atop a frigid mountain. This was his personal refuge, a place no one visited except him.
“A cloud of smoke with many eyes,” he repeated aloud.
During the brief conversation he’d had with Luke Moon, he had asked for the creature’s true appearance. And Luke had given him only that description. A gigantic black cloud filled with grinning white eyes. A shape that seemed eager to expand.
“It shouldn’t have manifested like that,” he muttered.
Vaelor was a scholar above all else, a specialist in Spectral Beasts. Long ago, eras ago, he had been trapped in a forest where the creatures first appeared. Spectral Beasts came from another dimension, something ancient and native to regions of reality bordering the Void.
They began as small hauntings slipping into the physical plane, feeding on the fear of sentient beings around them. They adapted. And eventually one among the brood would grow strong enough to possess a beast and cross fully into the physical world. They existed to destroy and to hunt. They functioned like ants, thinking as a colony.
When they attacked Vaelor’s country, he had been the only survivor. He lived only because he used their own power against them. He seized control of a Spectral Beast and severed its connection to the "queen", redirecting the bond to himself. That was why the black thread linking soul to beast no longer reached into their dimension. It bound to the one who dominated it.
For eras, Vaelor studied these creatures, trying to map their hauntings. What began as duty became obsession. He wanted to eliminate the equivalent of their queen bee, the commander behind them all, the one he named the Apex Typhon. If Spectral Beasts were predators of all life by nature, then above them existed an Apex. He cataloged the four types of Spectral Beast in order of power: Specter, Sinister, Nightmare, and Typhon. The more a Spectral Beast devoured, the stronger it became. And the Typhon was the most dangerous of all.
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