The Demonic Games (Disgardium Book #7): LitRPG Series by Dan Sugralinov (e book reader free .TXT) 📕

before my eyes, leaving behind a black crystal in a disgusting sticky sludge:

Despot’s Heart

 

Unique event item.

 

Destroy the heart to banish Despot from the Cursed Chasm and send him back to the Inferno, but remember — the life of the loser is worth nothing in the eyes of the demon princes. Disincarnation awaits Despot.

 

Health: 10,000,000 / 10,000,000.

 

In shape, the crystal looked more like a cluster of anthracite icicles than a heart. It seemed dead already, cold to the touch. I had already long since come out of Clarity, but the world around me had changed subtly: the substance beneath my feet no longer moved, but seemed to be waiting in tense expectation. Despot no longer stamped either, and the deep pulsing and strange crackle had also silenced.

Now I knew why the monster wasn’t tearing down the wall to get to me; he would be tearing his way inside himself. And now I knew the demon’s secret: Despot couldn’t be killed by even the most powerful raid. The only way to destroy him was through cunning.

I clenched my fist around the black crystal. A long, drawn-out breath echoed through the corridor. Squeezing the heart in one hand, with the second I began to beat against it, taking away hundreds of thousands of health in damage — it was a fragile thing.

The silence exploded with a roar from Despot that seemed more like the screech of a mortally wounded bird scratching its claws on glass. The noise twisted my stomach, but I kept beating on the heart, watching as its health fell into the red.

The room’s walls shook and covered over with trickling droplets, as if they were crying. I heard the gigantic boss collapse outside the walls, the scream turning to a wheeze. With my hand held above the heart for the final blow, I stopped. 3.1% — two or three hits.

Whether from curiosity or intuition, I felt an urge to fly closer, see what happened to Despot when he was banished to the Inferno. I carefully struck my head out of the room, which seemed to be melting like a snow fort in the spring. The boss was stretched out in the corridor, head back and mouth open, his clawed fingers weakly scratching against the stone floor, but no longer melting it. On the contrary, the claws were snapping. The chitinous spines on his head had also cracked, sticking into the ceiling.

The demon was expiring. The fire in his belly dimmed with each breath. As if feeling my eyes, he turned his head, blinked. Tears of magma rolled down from his eyes, hissing. This creature of the land of Disgardium, twisted by chaos and sent to the Demonic Games by the princes of the Inferno, was dying. A little longer and he would return home.

Despot lay immobile, not trying to attack. Either it was just my imagination or there really was a glimmer of plea in the depths of his eyes. Suddenly, I didn’t want to kill him anymore. Firstly because there was no pleasure in killing a defenseless foe; on the contrary, it made you feel like a loser. Secondly, if this entire labyrinth was something akin to a part of Despot, then the demon’s death might cause the place to fall down and bury me under the wreckage.

“Hey, Horns, I did try and solve all this peacefully from the start, you know,” I muttered.

The demon kept looking straight at me, frozen, waiting. I froze too, ready to break the heart if Despot tried to attack me, with five seconds of Clarity in supply. But the monster shifted, breathed in and out, kindling his internal flame, then raised himself on his arms, holding onto the wall, and knelt down before me.

Despot, Demon, level 531 Gate Guardian, has surrendered.

 

Level 531 dungeon Despot’s Labyrinth completed!

 

Attention! Despot, Demon, level 531 Gate Guardian, wants to become your ally.

 

If you refuse, Despot’s incarnation in the Cursed Chasm will die, and the demon will return to the Inferno.

 

Attention! Pets of the ‘ally’ class make their own decisions. You can give them orders, but you cannot control their actions.

 

Attention! If you accept, Despot will become your ally for the time of the Demonic Games only, at the end of which he will return to his lair and continue to kill contestants in future Games.

 

Accept? Refuse?

 

Yes! The heart in my hands began to pulsate, brightened a little and started restoring. The demon rose from his knee. Fire flickered in his eyes, not out of hatred, but something more friendly, and… mischievous.

Unlocked event achievement: Tenderhearted Demon Fighter!

 

Demon Despot, who has defended the interests of the Inferno in the Demonic Games for centuries, lost to you in battle and was ready for death. One hit and you would have absorbed a portion of his power, learned some of his skills and gained his aura of Hellflame, but you showed weakness. You had mercy on the demon, forgetting that these creatures are corrupted by Chaos and are deadly enemies to all sentients of Disgardium!

 

Attention! This achievement is an event achievement, and is active only for the duration of the Demonic Games.

 

Reward: Tenderhearted Demon Fighter perk.

 

Tenderhearted Demon Fighter

 

In battle against demons, you cannot deliver a killing blow on the first attempt.

 

The ‘reward’ was harsh, but didn’t particularly bother me. When trying to deliver a killing blow in Clarity, the second strike would land almost in the same instant as the first.

It was a risk to agree to spare Despot; the system might have not given me the victory at all and taken away my experience. Thankfully, the designers had at least some sense of justice. There was no loot, but notifications flooded my logs…

Experience: +5,310.

 

You leveled up! Current level: 2.

 

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