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Chapter 117: Demon Gene
🕑 Added 2025-08-09 14:41:11 +0000 UTCThe "monster" was, of course, Russell.
During his free fall through the canopy, branches whipping past his symbiote form, his magical senses had detected two human signatures—rapid heartbeats, elevated stress hormones, the distinctive bioelectric patterns of Homo sapiens in distress. Curiosity piqued, he'd adjusted his trajectory to investigate.
He hadn't expected them to bolt like startled deer the moment he landed.
The impact of his arrival had been more dramatic than intended. Three hundred kilograms of symbiote-enhanced mass hitting forest floor at terminal velocity tended to make an impression—literally. The crater he'd left would probably puzzle hikers for years to come. But it was the shockwave that had really announced his presence, rattling trees in a fifty-meter radius and sending every nocturnal creature fleeing in panic.
No wonder the humans had run.
Fortunately, their escape attempt was pitiful by his current standards. Two exhausted hikers stumbling through undergrowth they couldn't see properly, crashing through branches that announced their position with every step? In his Arrogance form, catching up had been trivial. He'd bounded through the forest like some primordial nightmare, each leap covering ten times the distance they managed in desperate scrambles.
Now, standing before them in all his writhing, tentacled glory, Russell couldn't help but appreciate the tableau they made. Two grown men reduced to trembling children, that particular wide-eyed expression humans got when their brains simply refused to process what their eyes reported. He'd seen it before, would see it again, but something about finding it here in the wilderness made it funnier.
The one who'd fallen to his knees—Evan, looked ready to faint. Sweat poured down his face despite the cool mountain air, and his hands shook with the particular palsy of absolute terror. His companion Steve stood frozen in a fighter's stance that would have been comical if not for the genuine courage it represented. Even terrified, even knowing it was hopeless, he'd chosen to stand between danger and his friend.
Russell respected that.
"Why are you running?" he asked again, letting amusement color both voices. The effect was probably more terrifying than reassuring—the human voice suggesting reason while the monster voice violence. But he couldn't help himself. After a morning of gene harvesting, finding actual humans to interact with was almost refreshing.
Time to defuse the situation before someone had a heart attack.
With a thought, Russell commanded Arrogance to retract. The symbiote flowed back into him like water finding its level, darkness compressing and vanishing beneath his skin until only a young man in hiking clothes remained. The transformation took less than a second, but Russell made sure to do it slowly enough for human eyes to follow. No point in having them think they'd hallucinated the whole thing.
Evan and Steve stared with the pole-axed expression of people whose worldview had just been thoroughly violated. One moment, death incarnate loomed over them. The next, a handsome young man who looked like he should be studying for university exams stood in the monster's place, looking vaguely embarrassed by the whole situation.
"I am a registered cardmaker of the Association," Russell said quickly, fishing his ID from a pocket that definitely hadn't existed in his symbiote form. Best to establish legitimate authority before their fear transformed into something more problematic. "Don't be afraid."
He held out the card with casualness, the kind of motion that suggested he did this all the time. Which, honestly, was becoming depressingly true. How many times in the past months had he needed to flash credentials to prevent misunderstandings?
Evan's hand shook like autumn leaves as he reached for the ID. Every motion screamed his internal conflict—terror at potentially offending this being who could apparently transform into nightmares, versus the human need to verify claims of authority. His face was a masterwork of barely controlled panic, eyes darting between Russell's pleasant expression and the card that might confirm safety or doom.
Russell could practically read his thoughts. What kind of serious cardmaker would come to a place like this in the middle of the night? The mountains had no known dimensional portals, no registered monster populations worth hunting. Any legitimate cardmaker had better places to be. Which meant this young man was either lying about his registration or was here for deeply suspicious reasons.
Probably thinks I'm some kind of serial killer who uses cards to hunt humans for sport, Russell mused. Not an unreasonable fear—illegal cardmakers who'd turned to predation weren't common, but they made headlines when caught. Usually in pieces.
Evan's examination of the ID progressed with the careful intensity. His eyes tracked across the official seals, the registration number, the photograph that somehow captured Russell looking professionally competent rather than like someone who transformed into monsters for fun. Then his gaze hit the level designation, and his entire body went rigid.
"Silver-level!" The gasp escaped involuntarily, pitched high enough to make Steve jump.
Steve, who'd been maintaining his protective stance with determination, finally relaxed enough to look confused. "What do you mean, silver-level?" He glanced between his friend and Russell with the particular incomprehension of someone who'd missed crucial context. "Obviously he's a good person. He could have killed us already if he wasn't."
The observation made Russell hide a smile. Steve might not understand power levels, but he grasped the essential truth—if Russell had wanted them dead, they wouldn't be having this conversation.
Evan ignored his friend's confusion, practically throwing the ID back at Russell in his haste to show proper respect. "Th-this... uh... Mr. Russell, we were blind to your greatness."
The formulaic groveling of someone who'd just realized they'd been making demands of a person who could level city blocks. Russell had seen it too many times lately—that moment when people transitioned from seeing him as a young man to seeing him as a weapon wearing a young man's face.
"So what are you two doing out here so late?" Russell asked, tucking his ID away and changing the subject. His eyes took in their equipment with assessment—decent quality but showing hard use, packs that suggested multi-day expedition, the particular dishevelment of people who'd been roughing it longer than planned. "You didn't really come to a place like this to climb a mountain, did you?"
The sheer stupidity of it beggared belief. The Gray Ridge Mountains weren't particularly dangerous as wilderness went, but they weren't a casual day hike either. Two obviously inexperienced hikers, no guide, no satellite phone that he could see? They were lucky they'd only gotten lost.
Evan's embarrassment was palpable, his face cycling through several shades of red as he scratched his head. Steve, meanwhile, puffed up with misplaced pride, apparently interpreting their near-death experience as some kind of achievement.
"Yes, we are here to challenge ourselves," Steve declared, as if getting lost in the woods was an accomplishment worth bragging about.
Russell opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. There were so many things wrong with that statement he didn't know where to begin. The sheer, breathtaking audacity of these two idiots, wandering into wilderness that could kill them in a dozen mundane ways before even considering the magical threats...
Just as Evan began what looked like a more realistic explanation.
The ambient sounds of the forest—insects chirping, small mammals rustling, the ever-present whisper of wind through leaves—cut off like someone had thrown a switch. The silence that descended wasn't natural quiet but the active suppression of sound.
Russell's enhanced senses screamed warnings. The darkness, already deep beneath the canopy, thickened perceptibly. Not the honest darkness of night but something hungry, something that ate light and warmth and hope. The temperature dropped five degrees in as many seconds, their breath suddenly misting in air that had been pleasantly cool moments before.
"Something is wrong." Russell's voice carried the flat certainty of someone who'd learned to trust their instincts. "Please don't talk for now."
He swept his gaze across the surrounding forest, Arrogance feeding him information faster than conscious thought could process. Thermal imaging showed the trees cooling rapidly, as if something was draining heat from the area. The electromagnetic spectrum revealed distortions that shouldn't exist in nature. And underneath it all, barely perceptible even to his enhanced senses, a presence that made every survival instinct scream.
Evan and Steve watched him with the particular anxiety of civilians who'd just realized their protector was worried. If a silver-level cardmaker was concerned, what chance did they have?
Russell's magical senses finally locked onto the source of wrongness—a void in the forest's life web, a moving absence that left frost in its wake. Bronze level. Demon-type, shadow subspecies, probably subsisting on small animals and ambient fear. Not particularly dangerous to him, but more than capable of killing two lost hikers.
"Got you," he growled, Arrogance already flowing outward in response to the threat.
One moment Russell stood human and alert, the next a three-meter nightmare of biological impossibility loomed where he'd been. But even as the symbiote form solidified, he was already moving.
His hands—if the appendages ending in foot-long claws could still be called hands—grabbed both hikers and hurled them aside with force. They flew ten meters through the air, landing in a heap of bruised but unbroken limbs just as devastation erupted where they'd been standing.
The demon struck with the particular viciousness of an ambush predator robbed of its kill. Shadows given mass and murderous intent slammed into the ground with force that shattered stone and pulverized earth. Trees groaned and toppled, their roots torn free by the impact. Where Evan and Steve had stood, a crater large enough to park a car in demonstrated exactly what would have happened to merely human bodies.
"Holy shit," Steve wheezed, trying to process their near-death experience while his bruised ribs protested the rough landing.
Evan, for once, had no words. He stared at the devastation with the glassy expression of someone whose mind had simply thrown up its hands and decided to process events later, when the world made sense again.
But Russell was already responding. Cards materialized in defensive positions—Yoriichi with hand on sword hilt, ever ready. Unohana radiating that particularly unsettling serenity that preceded violence. Luffy bouncing on his heels with barely contained eagerness. Even Lily appeared, makeshift sword in hand, completing a perimeter that would shred anything approaching the two civilians.
"So... what did he discover?" Steve quietly pulled Evan's sleeve, his whisper carrying clearly in the unnatural silence.
Every card turned to look at him with expressions ranging from amusement to exasperation. Steve shrank back, belatedly realizing that whispering probably didn't work when surrounded by supernatural beings with enhanced senses.
"Don't ask questions that you shouldn't ask," Evan hissed, finally finding his voice. His eyes tracked the path of destruction Russell had carved through the forest—trees falling like dominoes, explosions of earth and stone marking each clash. it was simple and terrifying. Their camp had been less than a kilometer from here. If Russell hadn't intercepted them...
"We would have died in our sleep," he murmured, the realization hitting like ice water. "That thing would have found us, and we'd never have known what killed us."
In the distance, the battle had already reached its conclusion. These kinds of fights rarely lasted long—when the power differential was this extreme, combat became execution with extra steps. Russell stood in the center of devastation that looked like an artillery bombardment, holding his defeated opponent with casual ease.
The demon was a pitiful thing up close. "Shadow Fiend" his experience provided, though this was a particularly undernourished specimen. Three meters of living shadow given vague humanoid form, wisping at the edges where its essence couldn't maintain coherence. Multiple eyes opened and closed along its form without pattern or purpose, each one reflecting a different spectrum of light. Its mouth—or the primary void that served as one—worked soundlessly, trying to form pleas or curses in a language that predated human speech.
"It's actually a wandering demon," Russell mused, turning the creature to examine it from different angles like a biologist with a particularly interesting specimen. "But it's so weak. Only bronze-level."
made sense when he thought about it. The Gray Ridge Mountains sat in the Federation's heartland, surrounded by cities and monitoring stations. Any demon powerful enough to matter would have been detected and eliminated years ago. This pathetic creature had survived through weakness—too insignificant to trigger alerts, too careful to leave bodies that would demand investigation.
Until tonight, when hunger or opportunity had driven it to stalk two lost humans who practically broadcast their vulnerability with every stumbling step.
"Sllllurp."
The wet sound cut through Russell's analysis. He looked down to find Arrogance's head—manifested separately from his body because the symbiote was feeling playful—dragging its massive tongue across the demon's writhing form. Shadow-stuff clung to the appendage like tar, the demon's essence recoiling from contact with something even more primordially hungry than itself.
"Damn it, Arrogance, don't lick it!" Russell's disgust was visceral. He knew the symbiote didn't have conventional taste buds, but the principle remained. "That's unsanitary!"
"Subconsciously," Arrogance's voice rumbled in his mind, carrying the particular tone of a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar. "But this thing... I think I can absorb a genetic module from it."
Russell paused, curiosity overriding revulsion. He'd wondered if Arrogance's ability worked on demons—creatures that straddled the line between biological and conceptual. Only one way to find out.
"...Then give it a try."
This was why he'd left his cards guarding the hikers rather than bringing them to help. The fewer people who knew about Arrogance's gene-stealing ability, the better. His cards he trusted implicitly, but two random civilians? They'd gossip, and gossip had a way of reaching interested ears.
The possession was different from the morning's animals. Where natural creatures had yielded to Arrogance's intrusion with confusion but no real resistance, the demon fought. Its essence writhed and twisted, trying to maintain coherence as the symbiote flowed over it like living oil. Shadow met deeper darkness, and for a moment the outcome seemed uncertain.
Then Arrogance's nature asserted itself. The symbiote didn't just possess—it dominated, subsumed, made the demon's distinctness irrelevant. Black and red tendrils penetrated every aspect of the creature's being, analyzing its nature with the thoroughness of a scholar dissecting a text.
One second. Two. The process was faster than with natural animals, as if the demon's corrupted essence was easier to read than honest biology. Arrogance flowed back into Russell's body, carrying new knowledge, leaving behind a demon that looked somehow diminished. Still dangerous to civilians, but missing something essential.
Russell checked the symbiote's status immediately, curiosity burning.
Currently Obtained Gene Modules: [Iron Kidney], [Shadow Bloodline] [Shadow Bloodline]: Can increase stealth ability.
"So weak," Russell frowned at the description. He'd hoped for something more dramatic from a demon—the ability to phase through matter, perhaps, or manipulate darkness as a weapon. Instead he got what amounted to magical sneaking enhancement. Though considering the source was a bronze-level creature that had survived by hiding, perhaps he shouldn't be surprised.
Still, even weak abilities had applications. Combined with Arrogance's existing camouflage capabilities, [Shadow Bloodline] might make him genuinely undetectable. The synergy potential was worth exploring.
And who knows what I missed? he reasoned. Arrogance could only extract one module per creature. This demon might have had other, more powerful abilities that random chance hadn't selected. No way to know without finding more demons to sample, and that presented its own challenges.
"Speaking of which," Russell asked internally, the thought occurring as he casually crushed the demon's head like overripe fruit, "Arrogance, can you extract a gene module from a card creature?"
He felt the symbiote's consideration, like someone mentally reviewing a failed experiment. "No. I tried it just now when I possessed Pidgeot."
"Oh, I see." Russell wasn't particularly disappointed. The ability was already staggeringly powerful—being able to steal from summoned creatures as well would have been game-breaking. The mysterious space had shown unusual generosity lately, but apparently it still believed in some limits.
The demon's corpse dissolved into conceptual ash, leaving behind only what mattered. Russell's magical senses wrapped around the remnant, extracting its crystallized essence.
Bronze-level [Low-Level Shadow Fiend] (Blue)
Trash material by his current standards, but it would sell for enough to cover the trip's expenses. Waste not, want not—a philosophy that had served him well since arriving in this world.
With the immediate threat handled, Russell turned his attention back to his inadvertent charges. The two hikers still huddled where his cards protected them, wearing the expressions of people who'd exceeded their daily quota for life-threatening experiences by several orders of magnitude.
"Since we've met, I naturally have to send you out safely," he decided. Basic human decency aside, he couldn't leave two civilians to stumble around the mountains after they'd seen him in action. They'd either die from exposure or spread stories about the shape-changing monster in the Gray Ridge Mountains. Neither outcome served his interests.
"Besides," he added mentally, already plotting the most efficient route, "it won't take long to send them out using Pidgeot."
Assuming, of course, they could handle flying on a bird that looked like it had escaped from someone's nightmares. Given their evening so far, Russell suspected they'd manage.
Time to play rescue service for two idiots who'd mistaken the wilderness for a playground. Then back to gene farming—the night was still young, and he had a collection to build.
(End of Chapter 117)
Comments
Raphael Espinoza Angulo
I haven't read that fic, so I'm going to try it now, but this fic, the one with the cards, is really good. It has some filler in parts, but the further you go, the better it gets.
Book Warm
Btw I’m bout to try “anime card system” fic here, is it as good as “MOVIE TECH EXTRACTION IN MARVEL” fic ?
Raphael Espinoza Angulo
Well, a little farming doesn't hurt.
