Reborn to Devour: A Demonic LitRPG

The Portal ended and deposited me onto rocky ground at a strange angle. I tried to swing my arms to catch my fall but failed to keep my body from slapping against the sharp surface. Slowly, I worked my way up to my knees and pushed myself up to my feet.

Pitch blackness surrounded me now that the fiery Portal closed behind me. I used [Torchlight] to illuminate my surroundings. It was a low-ceilinged room with a singular connecting tunnel, just high enough that I could stand in but little more. Black miasma coated the floor, the light of the magical torch unable to penetrate it. I kicked at it, the wisps followed the arc of my foot before it settled back down on the floor.

I moved toward the room’s exit. Deep, unnatural scratch marks of similar width to my own claws marred the surface of the tunnel walls.

I pushed my [Torchlight] a few paces ahead of me in the hopes that whatever dwelled in here would assault the light first. While I walked, I checked the timers of my injuries and cursed to myself.

Only seconds had gone down on the timers before they froze entirely. The Dungeon froze recovery and made it impossible to regenerate naturally.

Notice

Hunger grips you all.

Instantly, a large icon of teeth ripping into flesh appeared on my screen. Pain formed a pit deep inside of my stomach like I swallowed nails. My stomach roared and a wave of pain nearly knocked me off balance.

Single-minded desire took over my body. The little lizard inside my mind demanded that I do not do anything until I eat something. My senses unconsciously already shifted to complete that goal. My nose sniffed the air for the smallest trails of flesh and blood. A forked tongue slithered out of my mouth to do the same.

I pressed down the tunnel with as much speed as my crippled body to manage. My arms dangled stupidly at my side, piloted by nothing else but the momentum that my body sent them in.

All the while, the hunger only grew. My stomach ripped me apart from the inside out. Health began to trickle down from the bar, something that I could not afford in my already perilous condition. My mind shifted back to those noodles that I ate, wishing that I had them now. The imagery only served to punish me further.

Then, a flicker of something across my tongue. Something that tasted of iron. Something that tasted of salt.

My eyes glazed. I found flesh. I tasted flesh just further ahead.

I sprinted ahead at full speed like a bullet train. My vision narrowed and my tongue acted as my conductor to my meal. Saliva formed and leaked out of the sides of my mouth to splash the ground.

I felt hundreds of cuts against my feet. Halting, I lifted one of my feet to see that these small, ant-like creatures were dug into my flesh. I stomped down and killed the creatures, but continued to feel new pains.

It was only then that I noticed that the shadows of the walls weren’t shadows. Swarms of tiny insectoids swirled angrily on every surface of the cave. They dropped from the ceiling and eagerly scurried down the walls at the scent of my blood.

[Burning Rain] activated and hot tar burbled from the ground. The insect creatures died in the hundreds, only offering a miniscule amount of XP as reward.

The incessant bites and tar dropped my health lower. Desperately, I opened my mouth and bit into the wall. Creatures flooded into my mouth and began biting my tongue and cheeks. Some spilled further forward to bite my throat. With one loud crunching sound, I activated my [Sanguine Bite] and recovered a small amount of health back from all of the dead beasts.

It wasn’t good enough. I still hungered. The severity had only increased. Like a vindictive punishment crafted by Hades himself, the bugs only recovered enough health through my ability to keep me alive. But, it didn’t fill up my stomach. The mass of bugs dissolved into nothingness somewhere between my tongue and my stomach. A few pebbles from biting and scraping my teeth against the tunnel wall tumbled into my stomach as an insult more than anything.

I walked forward while dragging my open mouth along the walls. I crunched and bled and starved. The intensified hunger brought an increased depletion of health which required more eating which failed to reach my stomach which intensified my hunger that brought an increased depletion of health which required more eating which failed to reach my stomach which intensified…

All I could do was laugh bitterly at this situation. Bugs spilled from my mouth and disintegrated from bite wounds and blood flowed ceaselessly from my legs.

Noodles with human flesh in it. Why didn’t I eat it when I had the chance?

Rage fomented inside of me; mindless and primal. Charles, “Senior Brother”, the three proctors, and everyone that had ever even remotely annoyed me. But most of all, myself. I let the attention on myself get to my head. Fame was something I never experienced before and to know that so many people wanted me dead made me believe that I was already worthy of taking them on.

Yet, I wanted to persist. Not only to survive this Dungeon and pass the challenge set before me, but to prove that I was worthy of the bloodthirst and the attention and the challenge. My reputation, my future battles hinged upon my success.

The tunnel opened up into a far larger room than the one that I started in. The light from my skill barely managed to illuminate the craggy ceiling. Swirling shadows showed the endless marching of millions of bugs hunting for prey.

A crunching sound beneath my feet gave me pause. I scooped a handful of bugs with my mouth and looked down to see crushed bones on the cave’s floor. They were the right length to have been from a humanoid. They were picked clean of flesh outside of a few sinews that remained stubbornly attached.

Flesh that was still relatively fresh.

“How lucky for us, a meal arrived just in time,” a voice said. “Right before our duel.”

“Look, his arms are already broken,” a second voice chimed in.

I looked over to see a pair of demons that were sitting atop a pile of bones. A drowned horse with seaweed for a mane and a scaly bird with a human face. A puddle of water surrounded the bones like a moat and kept the biting insects from swarming their body. Their eyes dilated from the sudden light that I brought with me.

“You can’t eat those,” the bird hissed mockingly. “We’ve tried.”

They looked at each other warily as my health increased through the death of the swarming creatures.

“He’s vampiric,” the horse said to the other one.

But I wasn’t paying attention to what was being said. My eyes were fixated upon the size of the horse and the poultry-like physique of the scaled bird. Saliva coated my tongue and my nose hallucinated the odors of the Chinese restaurant.

“Let me eat you, meat and noodles,” I said through crunching bites of bug. My mouth hung open to allow the punctured carapaces to clatter out of my mouth and turn to smoke.

The pair leapt from their pile. Water bubbled from the puddle and moved to cover the entire floor in water. The bugs that swarmed my feet were washed away in the flood as the water rose to be shin-high. The open cuts on my feet and lower legs seeped from the wounds and polluted the water with my blood.

A flying kick from the scaled bird was blocked by a limp swing of my arm. The broken limb flew at a strange angle behind my back and made my entire left side burn with pain.

They remained airborne while the horse rose from the thin puddle of water. Seaweed tried to surround me while the horse struck me. I slashed the potential restraints with my [Flaying Tail] and met the horse’s fist with teeth.

I clamped down hard on the limb. The taste of blood and dust filled my mouth and leaked down my throat. It spilled into my stomach and momentarily allayed the crippling pain inflicted by hunger.

The horse kicked me away with a powerful hoof. I slid across the ground and just outside of the range of the scaled bird’s attack.

“Why did you move him?” The bird hissed. “My stomach is burning.”

“I didn’t see you,” the horse spat in response and held onto their injured arm.

In the seconds it took them to argue, I took to the air. The scaled bird screeched and flapped their wings. They followed me up and met me near the ceiling. I kicked off the ceiling and crashed into them, sending us both careening down into the water.

Before we could smash into the rocky ground, a wave reached up and snatched us out of the air. The bird and I were separated and I was slammed on my back under the shallow pool. Seaweed tried to bind me to the ground. I tried to slash at it to cut it away but it seemed to bloom around me endlessly.

I bit and rolled and bled through the tangle of seaweed until I managed to press my feet into the ground and surface. I gasped for air and vomited a stream of water from my throat.

The horse looked even worse than it had when I first saw it. Green veins could be seen pumping toxins throughout their body.

“You, what did you do?” The horse wheezed through troubled breaths.

I rushed forward to finish off the horse. The bird plunged from above and clawed at me with their talons. I bit their leg and they squawked, earning another scratch across the face.

I took to the skies and smashed into them with my shoulder. We fought the entire ascent. They clawed into my unguarded torso while I bit into their neck. We smacked into the ceiling. Their hands wrapped around my wrists and the bird took the chance to plant their foot on my chest, creating some separation. I spat in their face. Their flesh sizzled and they croaked in pain as the toxins seeped into their eyes.

“I need to eat!” The bird screamed through the acid.

They yanked on my arm as hard as it could with one hand while chopping at my shoulder with the other. The weak, broken joint pulled apart. My health dropped to 0 and [Too Angry to Die] activated. Blood poured overtop the acid, allowing for another stack of poison to go unnoticed. The bird plummeted to the ground with its two prizes in tow.

I turned off my light and slipped up into the darkness of the ceiling to eat enough bugs to survive and prepare my next attack.

I heard the bird land atop their nest of bones and coo softly over the feast.

“Quickly, eat and regain your strength,” the bird implored its comrade.

The horse coughed and splashed into the water as they fell to their knees. They stumbled through the water like a wildebeest with a leg trapped in the jaws of a crocodile.

“Wait, don’t eat it!” It screamed at its companion with revelation.

Like a predator that could smell weakness and death, I plunged down from the ceiling at speed. I landed directly on the back of the horse demon with my mouth wide open. The bones in its back cracked and broke, temporarily stopping it from acting to defend itself. Hungrily, I tore into the horse with my teeth, ripping off and swallowing large chunks of flesh before its life expired. Even after it died, I kept eating. Until I heard the screeching of the bird.

“What a cruel test of resolve,” the bird cawed in frustration. “Your flesh subsides my hunger, but rips me to pieces in a new way. What is it that I am to do to prove myself worthy?”

I focused my mana to replace my wounded limb. I flexed my good arm to try to work out the tightness that the injury delivered. Though, I was surprised to see that my claws were still broken on my new arm.

“Ah vampire and a regenerator?” The bird questioned with equal amounts awe and jealousy. “You must have someone that loves you.”

“Explain what this place is,” I ordered.

“A training place for enlightenment,” the bird answered in the unhelpful speech of a cultist. They took another bite of my polluted flesh and swallowed it. “A place to test your resolve and overcome to impress the great being that oversees it. Now, leave so that I may continue to reach enlightenment.”

“I’m still hungry.”

“What?” The bird questioned nervously.

The bird flapped its wings to fly away, but I swung at it with my good arm. A metallic sheen surrounded it as I activated [Iron Fist]. Their body went rigid and fell back to the ground. I smashed into its face with another strong punch. A satisfied grin crossed my face with each powerful fist that struck the bird in the head. I kept swinging until long after it had died, enjoying the return of my punches too much.

I lifted the bird’s broken corpse and moved it to my mouth. My teeth dug into its flesh and filled my stomach with relief. I ripped as much as I could from the bones and left a carcass on the slick rocks below.

“I’m still hungry.”