Choice

Looking at the pile of stones and mud before him, Orsaga opened his palm.

Since it was a spell from Bloodline Awakening, it required neither an incantation nor any preparation. A Blood-red Fireball roughly fifteen centimeters in diameter, radiating High Temperature, instantly formed and floated above his palm, illuminating everything in the cave.

Whoosh!

At his command, the fireball shot out on its own and slammed into the obstruction blocking the cave entrance.

Boom!!

A sound like a bomb exploding echoed through the cave as Blood Red flames splashed in every direction.

After Orsaga withdrew his magic power and extinguished the flames, what came into view was a Big Hole roughly three to four meters deep. Based on his memories of blocking the entrance, one more shot should be enough to blast through all the obstacles and open the passage.

So he condensed another fireball, nearly identical to the previous one in size and temperature. The difference was that he did not use the Fireball Technique this time, instead violently compressing Bloodflame into a sphere with mental power.

Boom!!

Another explosion rang out. Once the flames died down, Orsaga began examining the results of this round.

It was about two meters deep. There was only a little of the obstruction left!

However, he did not immediately continue. Instead, he estimated the difference in power and consumption between using the Fireball Technique and directly compressing Bloodflame into a sphere without using it.

Without the Fireball Technique, its power was roughly half as great, while the consumption was around four times higher—a difference of nearly eightfold.

After that, he found another spot and tested his other spells and newly acquired Talent Abilities, gaining a rough understanding of his current strength.

Once he had recovered the magic power and stamina consumed in the experiments while sitting amid the wreckage, he licked his lips, rose with a smile, and headed deeper into the forest.

The second step was to find out roughly where he stood in the food chain of Howling Forest...

The demon, who looked like a werewolf covered in a shell, felt his Life Force being drained away. The unwillingness in his heart gave him the strength to attempt one final struggle.

But how could Orsaga possibly let him have his way after noticing his intention?

With a weak, feeble shriek—

Orsaga's tail, which had already pierced through his chest and hoisted his body high into the air, twisted violently. Accompanied by the High Temperature of Bloodflame, it directly cooked his internal organs from within until they were partially done, then shook them apart.

Killing him instantly!

The opponent had been a Lesser Demon, somewhat stronger than the Ape Demon from before.

But unlike before, Orsaga's strength had undergone a qualitative transformation. An opponent who once required a fierce battle to determine victory no longer had any value as a combatant!

From beginning to end, Orsaga had not even used his hands. A quick-cast Bloodline Spell, Soul Impact, had injured the demon's mind and left him dazed. Then Orsaga's tail shot out, pierced his chest, and drained his Life Force, forcibly weakening him until he could only hang from Orsaga like dried meat.

Casually tearing an arm from the corpse, Orsaga's mouth—which had originally been proportioned much like that of a normal human—split open nearly to his ears, revealing a row of sharp teeth. He then viciously bit into the food in his hand and tore off a large chunk of flesh.

He carried his snack as he wandered onward, eating as he went...

As for the corpse hanging from his tail, it had already been drained into a dried husk. He casually tossed it into the grass to nourish the flowers. After all, whether one was a demon or a human, one ought to care for the environment!

Since leaving the cave, he had been wandering for quite some time. Along the way, he had encountered more than a dozen Lesser Demons, seven or eight Infant Demons, and over a hundred Demonized Creatures native to Howling Forest.

Unlike demons, whose kind was native to this place, the ancestors of those Demonized Creatures had mostly come from other planes and remained here for various reasons.

Their descendants absorbed the magic power of the Bottomless Abyss, drank the Abyss's water, ate Abyssal plants and animal flesh, and endured Abyssal corruption. No matter what their original temperaments had been, they all became bloodthirsty and evil.

The Demonized Creatures in Howling Forest varied greatly in strength. The strongest were probably at the Lower Demon level, while the weakest were slightly weaker than Infant Demons. However, they all shared one trait: they reproduced fairly well. Otherwise, they would have long since been slaughtered to extinction by the endless demons!

Yet after wandering through Howling Forest for half a day, Orsaga had not encountered a single demon, Demonized Creature, or even Demonized Plant at the Lower Demon level.

His plan to exchange a few blows with a Lower Demon had come to nothing.

He calmly stepped over a pile of stones, and his tail suddenly shot out behind him. Ignoring the opponent's environmental camouflage and optical invisibility ability, it struck a vital point with extreme precision, piercing directly through its brain and killing the Demonized Creature that had been hiding among the stones.

For Orsaga, who possessed Energy Vision, invisibility-type abilities were meaningless unless they exceeded his observation range or were immune to the effects granted by Energy Vision. They were not even as practical as the most basic Fireball Technique—at least that could put on a fireworks display.

+77 Evolution Points

Raising his head to look at the sky, which had already grown more than half dark, Orsaga frowned and thought with some dissatisfaction.

This is too inefficient!

Compared to the riverbank, where demons packed together in every direction and wildly slaughtered one another face-to-face, where all he needed to do was kill every living thing that entered his sight—

There, he could freely unleash the purest violence of Slaughter.

Howling Forest was more like a massive hunting ground. Its dangers came more often from places the naked eye could not see.

The sky, trees, ground, grass, underground—predators lurked everywhere one could imagine. They concealed their presence in the darkness, ready to launch fatal strikes at any moment. A casual step into the mud might reveal several venomous insects capable of spraying Venom that corroded bone. Even a flower might release poison to bring down its prey before extending its tentacles to strangle it.

It could be said that the two had completely different characteristics. One trained demons in frontal combat, while the other tempered the malice and viciousness in their hearts, training them into mature hunters capable of killing prey amid all kinds of complicated environments and conditions.

In practical terms, this was a gradual and progressive approach that greatly benefited a demon's growth. There was nothing wrong with it. It allowed them to handle external invasions and mutual Slaughter with greater ease.

But this posed a small problem for Orsaga. For someone who only needed constant Slaughter to grow, and who could make up for his own shortcomings as long as he had Evolution Points, the creatures in Howling Forest all fought alone, hiding here and there like guerrillas.

They were extremely inconvenient to find!

After searching for ages, he could not find much prey. He could not slaughter to his heart's content like he had by the riverbank, and could only slowly play hide-and-seek, greatly prolonging his time needed to grow.

Orsaga had also considered setting the forest ablaze and holding a grand jungle barbecue, but after trying it out, he ultimately abandoned the idea.

Although his Bloodflame could burn the surrounding plants, all those plants were Demonized Plants with magic power of their own, allowing them to resist the flames to a certain extent. As long as Orsaga continuously supplied magic power, they could naturally be burned. But once the supply stopped, the flames would quickly go out. There was simply no way to spread the fire from plant to plant and turn it into a forest fire.

There was another problem as well. Even if he burned those demons to death, Orsaga would still need to find their souls one by one. That was utter nonsense. By the time he got there, those souls would probably have already benefited someone else.

This also exposed one of his shortcomings: he had no ability to collect souls remotely on a large scale. Although he could burn those souls to death and leave them forever silent, he did not yet possess the ability to harvest them from afar. At most, he could use magic power and the strength of his own soul to bind them one by one.

According to what he had learned from Inheritance Memory, ordinary demons needed at least the strength of a Lower Demon to harvest souls from a distance. Even then, the target could not be too strong, or it would be impossible to collect it and fierce resistance would be encountered.

As for how to harvest the souls of the strong, demons generally had three methods. First, beat them to death and seize the soul directly. Second, trick them into signing a contract, then use the power of the contract to harvest it. Third, find a way to corrupt them with one's own power; once they became one's puppet, one naturally gained the ability to harvest them.

Now, Orsaga had two choices before him—two paths of development.

The first was to actively respond whenever someone in the outside world wanted to summon an Abyss Creature. By relying on the power of an Abyssal Contract, he could use the Abyss's power to travel to another world and find a way to make some gains before being expelled.

The biggest problem with this option was that only a ghost knew who was summoning him on the other side, or what the actual situation there was.

If he arrived only to be bound inside a Magic Circle and see several mages smiling at him while holding research tools, that would be fucking awkward!

Every day, countless demons made a fortune through otherworldly summons, while countless others fell victim to entrapment and became precious Raw Materials unique to the Bottomless Abyss!

Take a gamble and a bicycle might become a motorcycle; take a risk and even your underwear might get stolen. It was a technical job that depended somewhat on luck, and Orsaga had no desire to try it without at least some confidence!

The other option was to steadily get by in Howling Forest. The efficiency was somewhat slower, but at least there were gains. Besides, no matter how strong his opponents were, their upper limit was only the Lower Demon level. Orsaga felt that even if he could not defeat them, he could still escape. As long as he was not surrounded and beaten by a Legion of demons, there should be no lethal danger.

After three seconds of deep consideration, Orsaga made a brave choice.

He would stay in Howling Abyss for now. Walking too recklessly and getting himself killed would not end well!

Although a demon's nature made him yearn for Slaughter and long to wreak havoc and Destruction across other planes, the memories of his Previous Life as a human also told him that using his brain more often would never put him at a disadvantage.