What Matters Most in the Twenty-First Century? Cheat Powers!

The hunger came so suddenly and so fiercely that Roy was completely caught off guard.

An emptiness like a black hole opened in his stomach, driving his mouth to frantically produce saliva. The droplets fell to the ground, raising wisps of corrosive green smoke from the surface.

But Roy had no time to be surprised by that. Unable to resist this Physical Instinct, his eyes green with hunger, he turned and fixed his gaze on the eggshell that had hatched him.

The originally broken, ugly, pitch-black eggshell was actually giving off a very "delicious" smell, announcing its presence to Roy...

It was edible, right? It had to be edible, right? Didn't some oviparous creatures eat their own eggshells after hatching?

Looking at his surroundings, Roy truly could not think of anything else that could serve as food and ease his hunger. So, he stopped overthinking it, pounced on a fragment of eggshell, stuffed it into his mouth, and began chewing fiercely.

Crunch, crunch. To his surprise, Roy discovered only after biting into it that the eggshell was not all that bad. It was like chewing crispy rice crust, and perhaps because of Lava Beach, it even had a baked flavor to it. It smelled incredibly good!

The swallowed eggshell finally eased the hunger in his stomach. Yet before Roy could celebrate, a strange memory suddenly appeared in his mind, leaving him stunned.

This memory was actually an inheritance brought by the eggshell. It was brief and told him only two things: one about his identity, and the other about his name.

The reason Roy froze was that, through this inherited memory, he discovered that his identity after reincarnation was actually a demon!

That was far too difficult to accept. When he had first discovered that his body was strange, Roy had never considered demons at all. He had guessed that he might have simply been reincarnated as some kind of monster, like Godzilla or something. Though depressing, it had at least felt novel.

But now, the situation was even worse than he had imagined...

Holy shit, was this some kind of joke!? I died saving someone! Even if the good karma from saving someone wasn't enough to send me to Heaven and turn me into a chubby, adorable Little Angel who spent every day carrying a tiny bow and shooting pretty girls on sight, at least give me another chance to be human! How did I end up becoming a Little Demon!? Not only did I fail to get into Heaven, I actually went to hell??

He ranted wildly inside, but there was nothing he could do. Even if something had gone wrong somewhere, Roy had no ability to correct it now.

"Bakelongsha... Ramos!?"

As he consumed the eggshell, this long name had also appeared in Roy's mind. If nothing unexpected happened, this should be his Demon True Name!

According to the memory, every Little Demon born from an eggshell would obtain a name after eating its own shell. This name was its Demon True Name, a mark branded upon a demon's soul. It could never be revealed to anyone else, and when a demon needed a name for public use, it generally took a single syllable from its full name.

The reason a demon had to keep its complete Demon True Name secret was that once someone learned it, they might be able to use special methods to inflict tremendous, irreversible harm upon that demon! The exposure of a Demon True Name was a grave threat to a demon's survival! It was a shared weakness of all demons!

It was like automatically generating a file on a computer. The program would automatically assign the generated file an identification label. Even among countless files, once you knew the full filename, you could accurately locate it through a search... A Demon True Name was the "identifier" the Creator gave demons! An identifier that precisely located a demon's soul!

Now that he understood this, Roy naturally could not mention his true name again. Besides, with a name that long, only an idiot would deliberately recite it. He could just use the name from his previous life.

Still, this matter suddenly made Roy realize something.

Having a Demon True Name meant that becoming a demon was already an unchangeable fact. Faced with an unknown world and an unknown environment for survival, the first thing he had to do was adapt to this change. He absolutely could not view Demon World through a human perspective. Otherwise, with one careless mistake, he might not even know how he died!

Only someone who had died once could understand how lucky it was to be reborn. Who the hell knew whether, if he died again, he would have another chance?

Therefore, whether as a human or a demon, knowing how to cherish one's own little life was what mattered most!

The eggshell was not very large, and Roy soon finished eating it. Just as he swallowed the final fragment and felt a faint sense of satisfaction in his stomach, another voice suddenly appeared in his mind.

"Custom-Made Great Demon King System activated!"

Roy was dumbfounded. Wh... what did it say!?

Before he could react, an illusory image appeared in his field of vision.

What appeared before Roy was a... panel! At its center first appeared a bizarre eye. The eye blinked at Roy with a click, and the sound immediately reminded him of his phone's camera shutter.

After blinking, the eye vanished. In its place, an image appeared in the blank space at the center of the panel.

In the image, a dark-red Little Demon was crouching halfway down. It had pointed ears, a pair of tiny horns just emerging from its head, and a messy tuft of black fetal hair. It unexpectedly looked rather adorable!

"Th-this is what I look like now?" Roy stared wide-eyed at the image that had apparently been taken as a "selfie."

Fine, whether it was adorable or not could wait. Roy noticed that there were several function options at the top of the panel.

The first was [Beautify]. When he reached out and touched it, a series of tools popped up on the left side of the panel. These tools included [Doodle Pen], [Eraser Pen], [Coloring Pen], and several other special brushes.

Besides the Beautify function, the top of the panel also had [Color], [Effects], [Text], [Collage], [Filter], [3D], [AE], [Save], and many other functions. The instant Roy saw them, he could no longer stay calm. He kept reaching out to touch and inspect them, only to finally discover: Holy shit! What kind of Great Demon King System was this? Why did it look like some kind of combination of PS, 3D Max, AE, and several other programs?

His cheat power from reincarnation had come online. That was a good thing, but what the hell were these bizarre functions?

At the same time, a set of attribute descriptions suddenly appeared beside Roy's Little Demon selfie.

[Name]: Roy

[Race]: Demon

[Bloodline]: A mixed bloodline of at least four kinds

[Demon Name]: Bakelongsha... Ramos

[Form]: Juvenile Form (Premature Birth)

[Rank]: Lower Bottom Tier

[Attribute]: Dark

[Strength]: 14

[Speed]: 12

[Demonic Energy]: 9

[Vitality]: 13

[Loaded Material]: None

[Skill Ability]: None

[Innate Ability 1]: Peering Soul

Description: After a creature dies, you can easily discover where its soul is.

[Innate Ability 2]: Demon Blood

Description: The Demon Race is bloodthirsty and warlike. Whenever you enter a battle state, you can easily fall into a frenzied state. In addition, Demon Blood grants you good affinity with Negative Energy.

[Innate Ability 3]: Soul Devouring Addiction

Description: The Demon Race is naturally fond of devouring and playing with souls, becoming addicted to the pleasure and exhilaration brought by devouring souls.

[Items]: None

[Current Souls Held]: 0

[Evaluation]: An overly complicated bloodline will limit your potential ceiling. You were not even able to obtain innate power from your bloodline, and your premature birth has made you the weakest existence among those of the same rank... Cannon fodder. You're beyond saving. Farewell!

After seeing this attribute evaluation clearly, Roy did not even know what to say.

When he had first been reborn as a Little Demon, Roy had still felt a trace of novelty. But he had never expected this Little Demon body of his to be so weak, making it rather hard for him to accept.

Premature birth? I actually became a premature baby? No wonder the Demon Eggs around me hadn't moved yet, while I came out ahead of them. Heaven really wants me dead!

Although the system's evaluation said he was beyond saving, Roy still wanted to struggle a little. He felt that the first thing he needed to figure out was how exactly to use this system.

Fortunately, although the system looked somewhat complicated, it was actually fairly simple to operate. Before long, Roy finally figured out how to use it.

The first page, Roy's selfie, was a Main Body that displayed all of Roy's current states. What Roy needed to do was create materials through drawing, define those materials, add effects and colors, then use the Collage function to integrate them into his Main Body and upgrade himself.

But to carry out these operations, he needed something very special: souls!

For example, if Roy wanted to add a pair of Demon Wings as wings, he first needed to use the Doodle Pen to draw those Demon Wings. Then he would use the Text Function to define them, stating that they were a pair of demon wings that could be used for flight. If he wanted to give the Demon Wings special abilities such as flames or frost, he could use the Effects function to achieve that. Finally, once the operation was complete, he would consume an equivalent amount of souls to save it, and Roy's Main Body would immediately grow a pair of Demon Wings exactly as he had designed.

During this process, drawing materials and adding effects did not consume anything and could be done however he pleased. But at the final step, when he needed to save, souls were required!

The more detailed the material, the more complex the definition, and the more dazzling the effects, the more souls it would consume upon saving—and the higher the quality of souls required!

Simply put, this so-called Custom-Made Great Demon King System was actually PS, one of Asia's four great forbidden arts. Anything you could imagine, you could draw, then materialize through an equivalent exchange of souls. No wonder the system was called custom-made...

Roy had no problem with drawing. Before reincarnation, he had worked in Art Design, so that was no obstacle for him. But obtaining souls was going to be troublesome.

This was a difficult opening! Where was he supposed to get his first soul?

Just as Roy was thinking this, the purple moonlight in the night sky began to grow brighter. The radiation became stronger, as if it were some sort of signal. Large numbers of Demon Eggs on the beach began hatching one after another. The Little Demons inside smashed open their shells and crawled out in succession, and the entire beach abruptly changed from silent to noisy, filled everywhere with all manner of strange roars...