CH621

Unlike the gates he was used to, either taking one to another plane of reality to act as a shortcut or else connecting two separate locations by making a hole in space itself, the interstellar one he’d been dragged into acted more like a tunnel filled with branching paths, letting Ben catch glimpses of what he suspected were separate worlds, even if the views beyond gave him few clues to verify that fact.

Different times of day, slightly different colours of sky hinting at different atmospheres and even stellar bodies such as the glimpses of strange suns and moons if the exits were angled right for him to see it, all if it paled in comparison to the same landscape he was seeing among everything. Brutal, desolate lands, devoid of any obvious hints of life beyond the demons that already made it home, with those either shoving through or fighting amongst themselves on the planets they’d stolen.

Each view was sickening in a way that would have made him laugh at the irony if not for his current situation. During the first wave, his actions had earned him the job option of world killer, but from what he was seeing, they’d have likely already done as much to the planets they’d held themselves even without his input. The only difference was that he’d wiped away the blight that had doomed the rest of it.

He had no one to share that observation with though, nor much time to appreciate it himself. Even if it wasn’t as instantaneous as the gates he was used to, it was only a few minutes of travel before they’d reached their mysterious destination, leaving Ben suddenly confronted with a deep, crushing force.

At first he couldn’t breathe, made worse by the hand that still held his throat, but through that he observed his surroundings, trying to get a grasp of what he’d been dragged into and the madness of what waited beyond.

Not just getting glimpses, being on a whole new world let him see far more than he had just moments before.

The lands looked devastated, but not completely. There were occasionally tufts of grass and moss that could be seen, telling him that there were likely bits of non-demon life hanging on, there had to be to feed them all unless their goto option for food was either invading worlds or pure cannibalism.

It was apparent that there were some simple structures around too, nothing approaching the level of even the simplest of structures his world or Earth held, instead being simple dirt hovels for whatever minor bits of privacy and protection from the elements they would provide.

But those were just the small features, something he had to assume would be consistent across every demon world given the races’ proclivity to violence and destruction, they were nothing compared to the other structures around.

It was something he’d only been able to catch glimpses of as he was carelessly dragged along, but out of the corner of his eye he could see the portal he’d come through, as well as everything that lied beyond it.

Along with a dozen other portals stretching across who could know how many planets, he could see strange, transparent containers filled with inky darkness, a huge one at the center of them all but each one picking at his sacrilege, almost blinding him to what sat farther back in his curiosity.

From where he was, it appeared to be a massive glass structure with hints of movement within, the most complex thing he’d gotten his eye on compared to anything else around that was forcing him to re-evaluate some of his other assumptions.

Even if he didn’t have a good view of it, he could see it largely arched around the gates while being a few stories tall, the sort of thing he couldn’t imagine the demons creating and forced him to question if they had depths he hadn’t seen. Perhaps some did in fact grow into builders and makers when they gained their intelligence and the others let them do as they pleased or maybe they kept slaves from the planets they conquered and put to work. It was impossible to say without more information and as things stood there was no guarantee he’d live long enough to get it. He couldn’t escape the one holding him and the weight bearing down on him from all directions was oppressive enough that he was sure he’d struggle under it even if he escaped. All he could do was fight against it as he forced his body to finally take a breath.

With his first breath, it was instantly easier to take a second and to continue on from there, even if it came with a new concern. Integrated demonic body had leveled up, a skill he hadn’t leveled in ages, seemingly for no reason at all. Was merely being on a demon world enough to help it tip over its edge? He didn’t know, but it did come with a bit of clarity which allowed him to notice something else that should have been obvious right from the start.

He wasn’t the only one feeling the pressure.

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There were demons all around them, each looking beaten down by the air itself and it made Ben remember the memories of a demon he’d looked at in the past, with it having felt even worse before it had escaped through the gate than he had upon arriving there while it even affecting the one that held him. Whatever the feeling may have been, it was indiscriminate, harming all of them under its effects, even if the direction he was being dragged was making the feeling grow stronger with each of his captor’s steps.

Still, he’d regained some clarity of thought, enough to realize a far bigger emergency as he sent a small burst of mana through one of the necklaces around his throat, destroying the enchantment on his personal job crystal and letting him breathe a small sigh of relief for having done so before his possessions had been gone through, either after being stripped or eaten depending on how things went for him. The demons had access to the status system, there was no helping that, but at the very least, he wouldn’t be the one responsible for them getting access to all of the additional benefits that would come from taking a job as well, with that small sense of peace lasting till the next notification.

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