[Location: The Outskirts of Abysshaven]

[Time: The Next Morning]

The walk back to the city was silent, but it wasn't the silence of exhaustion; rather, it was the silence of observation.

Damien walked with a renewed stride. The weakness that had plagued him for days although still there, but now he had a certain jump to his steps.

His Will Core, now fused with the fragments of his fractured psyche, hummed in his chest like a diamond engine.

He scanned the grey horizon.

For the first time since falling, he wasn't just looking for threats, now he was calmly analysing this strange abyss ecosystem.

"Look at that," Damien whispered, pointing to a ridge in the distance.

A pack of creatures was tearing at the carcass of a giant centipede.

They looked like wolves, but their fur was made of wire-like bristles, and their eyes had rotted out, replaced by glowing sensory pits.

"Direwolves," Isabelle noted, her hand resting on her dagger. "But... wrong."

"Corrupted," Damien corrected.

"They are descendants of Surface beasts that fell during the Great War. They adapted to the toxicity, unfortunately, it twisted them in the process."

"Much like Gorim, only less intelligent"

He shifted his gaze to a massive, segmented creature burrowing into the ash, an Abyss-Maw Worm.

"But that thing," Damien noted. "That is a Native. It breathes this air like it's oxygen. It doesn't suffer instead, it thrives."

Calmly looking at the various species one after the other, he and Isabelle soon made their way back to the settlement.

…...........

[Location: Abysshaven – The Main Gate]

They approached the skull-wall of the city.

The guards from the previous day were back on duty. When they saw the familiar masked man and the horned half-demoness emerging from the mist, they stiffened.

There were no sneers. No demands for tolls.

One of the guards, a four-eyed elf variant, stepped forward nervously.

He hurriedly extended a jagged, rusted metal plate.

"Take it," the guard muttered, shoving it into Damien's hand.

[Item Received: Drifter Token (Region 1).] A system notification rang in his mind before falling silent once more

"What is this?" Damien asked, flipping the token. It was stamped with the symbol of a crown rotting away.

"Sanctuary Proof," the guard explained quickly.

"The Rotting King decrees that Abysshaven is a zone of commerce. As long as you hold that, you are citizens. You pay taxes on trade, and the King's law protects you from... unauthorised predation."

Damien smirked beneath his mask. "So, organised crime."

"Call it what you want," the guard said, stepping back. "Just don't block the gate."

Damien pocketed the token. They turned to enter the city, but a hand reached out from the shadows of the wall, touching Damien's sleeve.

But sensing there was no aggression in the hand, neither he nor Isabelle acted.

He looked down to see an older guard with a deeply scarred face and a single, twitching insectoid eye.

"Surface-dweller," the guard whispered. "A moment."

Isabelle growled low, but Damien raised a hand. "Speak."

The guard glanced around, ensuring his comrades weren't listening, then pulled them into the shadow of a hanging leviathan rib.

"I am Rax," the guard whispered.

"I saw what you did yesterday. You broke the Captain's mind without lifting a finger. You... you aren't like the other trash that falls down here."

"Get to the point," Damien said coolly.

"You have questions," Rax said. "I see you looking at the horizon. You want to go down."

Rax crouched and drew a crude map in the ash with a clawed finger.

"The Abyss is a pit," Rax explained.

"It is divided into Twelve Great Regions. We are currently in Region 1: The Ash Wastes."

He tapped the dirt.

"Region 1 has nine vertical levels. We are on Level 1, the surface. The Rotting King rules from the Citadel on Level 9. He is the Warlord of this Region."

"And below that?" Damien asked.

Rax shuddered.

"Below Region 1 lies Region 2. And so on, until the bottom."

"Who rules them?"

"The Twelve Demon Gods," Rax whispered, his voice trembling with reverence and fear.

"Each Region is the territory of a Demon God. They are beings of unimaginable power. Beings that rival the Gods of the Surface."

Damien's eyes narrowed. Twelve God-Rank entities. And I'm struggling to even move.

"And the strongest?" Damien pressed.

"The Heavenly Demon Lord," Rax said.

"He sits on the Throne of the Deepest Layer. Legend says aeons ago, he challenged the other eleven Demon Gods to single combat and defeated them all. He is the Apex. An existence that faintly touches the realm Above God."

'Above God...' Damien thought.

'9th Order is Demigod. 10th Order is God. So the Heavenly Demon Lord is... 11th Order? Or higher?'

"Wait," Damien interrupted, pointing to the number Rax had drawn.

"You said there are twelve regions. But in the old texts, the Abyss was said to have thirteen seats."

Remembering some books he had read about the Abyss in the Voss mansion, Damien asked in confusion

Rax froze. He stood up abruptly, looking around nervously.

"Do not speak that number," Rax hissed.

"Why?"

"Because the 13th Seat is empty," Rax whispered.

"Aeons ago, the Void Demon God betrayed the Abyss. He rejected the Chaos. He tore a hole in reality and created his own plane of existence, the Void World."

Rax leaned in close.

"The Void God is the only one the Heavenly Demon Lord considers an equal. They are rivals. Both touching the realm above God. One seeks to fill all existence, the other seeks to erase it."

Damien felt a chill go down his spine.

Based on everything that had happened so far, both the abyss and void cultists on the surface seemed to be working together

Did he really betray? Or is there some larger conspiracy afoot?!

Lost in thought, Damien couldn't help but be confused, as in the original novel, the Void demon god was one of the author's numerous off screen deaths

Unable to process what was happening, Damien just shook his head.

"Why tell me this?" Damien asked, fixing Rax with a hard stare. "You're a guard, shouldn't you serve the Rotting King."

Rax's insect eye twitched.

"Because I need a favour," Rax admitted. "And you are the only one strong enough, or at least crazy enough to do it."

"No regular abyss dweller on floor one would dare"

"A favor?"

"I cannot say it here," Rax said, glancing at the Bone Hall in the distance.

"This task is a bit special you see."

He pointed a claw at the massive skeletal structure.

"You are going to take a commission, yes? Go to the board. Look for a request stamped with a blindfolded angel seal."

" blindfolded angel ?"

"No one dares to touch it," Rax whispered.

"It is suicide for a Drifter. But you... if you are truly as strong as you look... you might survive it."

Rax stepped back into the light, his demeanor shifting back to that of a stoic guard.

"That is all, Surface-dweller. Move along."

Damien watched Rax walk away.

"blindfolded angel," Isabelle mused. "Sounds like a trap."

"Or an opportunity," Damien corrected.

Hearing the words blindfolded angel, it reminded him of a special kind of monster in the original novel that gave the protagonist and his group a lot of trouble

'The weeping angel'

However it can't be that right? If it's that then forget completing the quest, then everyone on this floor is soon going to die!

Thinking of this, Damien suddenly had a bad feeling. He ad to make sure things weren't what he thought

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