Agony

He watched the human before him bend down, straighten up, and then slowly walk toward him. He could not help baring his gleaming white teeth in a grin-it would be ready soon... come on... come on... Thud.

A pebble struck him hard on the head. It did not hurt much, but almost all the other beings watching from nearby were dumbfounded. Everything fell silent.

Still rather intrigued, I said, "You're still not leaving?" I even wondered whether the fox was fake, whether I was hallucinating. Had I drunk counterfeit booze? I still suspected I had drunk too much.

Why had he not been bewitched? This was what demons did best, and they had sent the demon most skilled at bewitching humans.

And that demon, the best at bewitching, was now practically incandescent with rage.

You little... How dare anyone treat me like this? I am... I am...

Before my eyes, the orange-red fox's barely cute face suddenly contorted, twitching like a melting candle. Then its mouth stretched impossibly wide, exposing sharp, gleaming teeth, each as long and thin as Jerry's nails.

The fright instantly sobered me up considerably, and I was certain the sight before me was no hallucination. This was clearly no normal fox. Now that I had come to my senses and thought about it carefully, no animals had ever come near this place before.

At that point, what was there left for me not to understand? I did, after all, know something about these supernatural things.

I immediately ran back, shouting for Jason, and almost as soon as Jason sensed the disturbance in the barrier, he appeared in a flash.

He planted himself firmly behind me in a posture of absolute protection, looking at those disgusting, filthy things with his usual machete in hand.

Every muscle in Jason's body tensed, his veins bulged, and creaking sounds like bones grinding together came from him, as though his bones were twisting.

He looked at these things that dared invade his territory, this trash that dared offend the person he protected. Overwhelming rage and his abruptly provoked obsession triggered the source of his power. Threat-protection-destruction.

Before the fox even realized what had happened, its head was cut off with a single slash. Before dying, it let out a strange cry from some unknown part of its body, quiet but piercing, which thoroughly roused the things hiding nearby, things that had likewise already been discovered.

But they clearly did not escape either. Those nearby were chopped to pieces by the machete, while those farther away were crushed to pulp by the spatial folding Jason commanded. Even their most fundamental bodies, hidden in Hell, seemed to suffer some effects from these merciless attacks imbued with evil power.

Until only the last remained. It was an enormous brown bear, and also the strongest, so it endured two more slashes than the other animals.

His venomous gaze did not meet Jason's, but turned instead toward me, hiding inside the fence. Can't beat him? Then do what demons do best. Drive a nail into his heart, leave him unable to taste his food or sleep at night, tormented in mind.

"Look at him... ha... I was wondering why he couldn't be bewitched. So his soul..." At this point, he licked his lips, his gaze clinging to me like some sticky liquid. "Just wait. A few years, ten years, a hundred years. Sooner or later, you'll slip up in your watch."

"When that happens, I'll not only devour his soul, I'll peel off that pretty little face of his, prop it up with his skeleton, and make it part of my collection..."

Jason stopped. Scarlet blood still dripped from the machete, which was wreathed in a faint black aura.

Scared? Did Jason feel fear? That was the first thought that surfaced in the greater demon's mind, but he soon thought otherwise.

Black mist dense enough to take tangible form roared and whispered around Jason, as though alive, proclaiming the purest, most primal malice and rage.

These pure negative emotions could even condense into venom, dripping onto the ground and instantly corroding the earth, sending up wisps of black smoke.

For the first time since his birth thousands of years ago, this greater demon who had lorded over Hell felt fear. Yes, he recognized this unfamiliar emotion as fear.

Jason's skin turned ashen blue, and his fingernails grew long, black, and sharp. Then he thrust his hand violently into the brown bear's body. The demon wanted to escape, but it was too late. This projected consciousness of his actually tugged at his most fundamental core in Hell. Without a summoning, without a bargain, it was simply dragged out by brute force.

Greater demons like them, though inferior to the Seven Lords of Desire born from Hell's very origins, were still top-tier native beings of the hell dimension, commanding Hell's primordial resentment and laws of destruction. Yet he was dragged from his comfortable lair just like that, as though someone were dragging a dog.

Now fully manifested in the world as though summoned, the greater demon could easily destroy every living thing within hundreds of kilometers, even while still restrained by the laws of the world.

His enormous, distorted body towered before Jason, making Jason seem somewhat outmatched instead.

I paced frantically, but I also understood that I could not offer much help. I remembered there seemed to be some leftover holy water, salt, silver bullets, and the like in the basement, so all I could do was hurry there.

But the greater demon, born with an innate understanding of power and the workings of logic, was trembling. At his full strength, he noticed something wrong with Jason almost instantly.

The power within him was not demonic power at all. It was something of a higher order: a small fragment of power belonging to the Great Old Ones beyond the heavens, from the dawn of the universe, the original source from which the Necronomicon had first been born. That existence was so great as to be utterly beyond their reach, yet Jason actually controlled its most fundamental power, something even the Necronomicon could not use, and could make it his own, unrestrained by the laws of the world. Why?

The filthy eyes on his enormous body shifted. His body was bloated and hideous, devoid of any human shape, like a small mound of flesh bubbling with lava.

This was something he did not understand, and demons were killed by what they did not understand. He did not understand why Jason possessed such power. There were barriers: humans could not obtain demonic power, demons could not possess human souls, and angels had both, but were bound by rigid rules.

Jason was human. His flesh and soul were fused together. He had a soul, which proved he could not possess such immense power, unless... unless, from the moment his soul was born, a Void Mark sharing its origin with the Great Old Ones had been branded deep within it. This was resonance on the level of existence, not a pact or a curse.

When power poured into his body, it would not trigger rejection by the laws or bodily disintegration. Instead, it would fuse deeply with his flesh and soul, becoming part of his existence.

Moreover, he had been resurrected by the Necronomicon, so the same source of power already existed within him. But even so, accepting such immense power should either reduce him to ashes or corrupt his mind and cast him into Hell. This was not a restriction. It was inevitable. Yet he was standing right before him, alive.

Suddenly, it thought of that human's figure, and an incredible idea surfaced in his mind. That special, precious, powerful soul, impervious to violation and bewitchment, incomparably steadfast-it was naturally suited to serve as an anchor. Him. It was him. So that was it... so that was it!

Ultimately, he was still human. He could withstand a fragment of the Great Old Ones' power without going mad entirely because of this anchor. He had formed a simple yet incomparably strong link with that anchor. That soul served as an anchor to keep him from being consumed by darkness, while he used the anchor to maintain control over its most essential nature, making it the foundation for wielding his power.

But the connection between them could not possibly be so pure. Protection? Humans always thought too much, then found themselves controlled and driven by all manner of thoughts. That was how humans were. They were intelligent, and this was a flaw they could not change.

But that was as far as he got. He had almost understood Jason's true nature, but he also understood his own fate.

After that human ran out of the house carrying a gun, the instant his eyes flicked toward the human, Jason began to move. The demon no longer had time to think so much. His powerful desire to survive still drove him to fight Jason.

The abilities to corrode souls, distort flesh, alter thoughts, and destroy minds were useless against Jason. Jason wielded the abilities to warp dimensions and tear time better than he did. Incredibly, only his physical body could contend with him, and only the flames and lava from Hell could injure Jason.

He did not know how much time passed before his core was crushed to pieces, and the thing demons used in place of a soul to drive their bodies and sustain their thoughts abruptly vanished.

This demon would never know that Jason had once suffered torment no soul or consciousness could endure. At some instant, this wailing consciousness seemed to drift into some dimension and form a barely perceptible connection with a certain power.

Humans could still go to Hell or Heaven after death, but when demons died, they became nothing but pure energy belonging to darkness, which should instantly disperse and return to Hell. Yet it did not. That power circled twice over the demon as he slowly became a pool of viscous liquid, then Jason drew it back into his body.

Demons had no means of communication unique to them. Soon, a hot piece of news spread among them: an existence capable of defeating a greater demon native to Hell, powerful enough to rival the 72 Demon Gods, had even once been human. Among demons, he became a topic they discussed quietly yet could not help discussing. From then on, even hundreds of years later, no one would dare provoke the being in Crystal Lake.