Chapter 229: Demonization

"Huh. So that’s what happened. I know I should probably feel concerned about this, maybe at least a little conflicted...but honestly, I’m kinda thrilled," Remarked Aria in bemusement."Yeah, same here. It’s certainly a lot to process, though," I nodded, slumping in my beanbag chair as I stared up at the ceiling.

It was the next day, the 28th of July, 2169, around 3 PM in the afternoon.

I was currently at home, along with Aria. We were in the rec room, and I’d just relayed to her everything Ai had just told me about the whole Demonization thing.

After we killed Zeifas, we were inspected by a Healer, and then sent home. Before we left, we were told about what happened with the rampaging Aces that had been corrupted by Zeifas.

Backup had arrived from some of the other Sanctuaries, and the corrupted Aces were dealt with. But a lot of people had been killed by then.

Four of the Aces in Sanctuary Theta had been killed, along with seven K-Ranks that had gone to help fight the corrupted Aces. And over eight hundred civilians had died.

After we left the Union, I asked Aria to sleep over at my place. She was flustered at first, until I explained that it had something to do with my Sinner System and the Demonization.

She’d initially been fighting the corrupted Aces, but once backup arrived, she contacted Isla and rushed to the nearest location that Isla would be able to teleport to.

Isla picked her up and brought her to the Union’s facility where I was fighting, and teleported her to the basement right as I used Command to force Zeifas to use Demonization on me.

It was a gamble, I had no idea what would happen, I was just focused on getting the power boost from it and hoping that’d be enough to turn the tables.

It was a nice bonus that using Demonization temporarily weakened him afterwards. That’s probably why he panicked when I used Command.

I also didn’t expect it to be a wave of energy like my debuffs, I thought it’d be a single-target technique.

But since it was a wave, Aria got caught up in it too.

Fortunately, Ai was able to link and synchronize with her...something about us both getting hit with the same energy simultaneously created a conduit or something, I don’t really get how it works.

I’m glad it did though, because apparently, it would’ve been bad if it didn’t.

She would’ve ended up with random mutations like the corrupted Aces did, and the powers she gained would’ve been weaker and less stable.

Also, both us were only using a fraction of the full power we’d gained from Demonization, the amount that Ai had managed to immediately stabilize.

Both of our stats had gone up drastically, Aria’s Potential and MP had increased too, the stats that are supposed to be impossible to increase, at least for anyone who isn’t me.

We’d also gained new abilities, Negative Energy Generation, Super Regeneration and one other ability, I’ll get to that one in a moment.

Here’s what my current stats looks like:

HP: 1050

MP: 2000

Strength: 1050

Agility: 1500

Vitality: 1050

Perception: 1500

Power Level: 1,358,300

So, yeah, this really ended up working out for me in the end.

Also, I’m loving how tidy the numbers look. I got a ton of points through Demonization and consuming Zeifas’s corpse, this is easily the most drastic boost to my stats I’ve ever experienced.

I’m into X-Ace territory now, but my physical stats are now at exactly half of my upper ceiling, and my MP is at around two thirds. And this also means that the rate of growth of my physical stats have now reached their second slowdown point too.

It’ll be a lot tougher to keep increasing my stats from this point forward, but I’ll worry about that later. For now, I’ll just celebrate the massive boost I’ve gotten, I certainly worked hard for it, after all.

And of course, I’m not the only one who’s undergone a significant power boost.

On that note, as for Aria’s stats:

HP: 1015

MP: 1500

Strength: 1015

Agility: 1450

Vitality: 1015

Perception: 1450

Power Level: 1,240,800

Potential: 1,240,800

So, yeah, not only has her Potential increased, but it’s been maxed out. She’s going to need to train to adjust to the drastic increase in strength, speed and power, but none of her stats are going to get higher at this.

Well, unless she uses Blaze Ignition, Blaze Ignition: Flare, or the third ability we both got through Demonization.

After some brainstorming, we just decided to simply call it Demonization as a placeholder, we couldn’t really come up with a better name, everything we though of was either too lame or too edgy.

As for what it does, well, I guess you’ll find out soon enough.

Ai’s stabilization of the Demonization power made sure the two of us didn’t mutate any Demonic physical features or characteristics, which is definitely a relief.

It’d draw a lotta fucking attention if I walked around with horns and shit, so yeah, no thank you to that.

Anyway, Aria and I woke up about a couple of hours ago, we were pretty exhausted, and Ai’s stabilization efforts apparently put us in a deeper sleep, so we slept for quite a while.

Ai then explained all of this to me, and after that, I processed it all while having lunch with Aria. And after I wrapped my head around all of, I proceeded to share all the info with Aria.

She was quiet for a moment as she took it all in, but evidently, she doesn’t seem the least bit upset about it.

"So, like...I’m at X-Ace level now, right?" She asked me, looking pretty perplexed.

"Yeah, you sure are. At your base stats, your Power Level is a bit above the minimum threshold of X-Ace level, but with Blaze Ignition: Flare, you’re on the level of an Archdemon," I informed her with a smile.

"Holy shit...yeah, it’s gonna take me a while to wrap my head around that. And with Demonization, we’ll be...," She trailed off, staring wide-eyed at the wall.

"Mhm, yup," I grinned in response.

"And then there’s this, Negative Energy Generation. It’s pretty awesome, I can only use my flame Skills at close range, I couldn’t launch or shoot them, but with this, I can fight at long- and mid-range too," She replied, as she formed a ball of Negative Energy over her right hand.

"Same here. My Pulse Bullets are more mid-range, and Obliterate is only long-range if I get super pissed off, so getting Negative Energy into my arsenal definitely widens my options.

But I’d say the most valuable new ability we’ve gained is Super Regeneration. So long as our brains are intact, our heads are still attached to our bodies and our hearts aren’t damaged, we can regenerate from pretty much any injury.

It’s not quite on the level of an Archdemon, but it’s about on par with a Greater Demon, which is still pretty great," I remarked with a smile.

"Mhm, yeah, I agree! We won’t need Healers to heal us anymore, they’ll be able to conserve their Mana and focus on healing the others in the party instead.

And my Mana has more than doubled, so I can use my Skills a lot more now, and my power boost Skills will last a lot longer too.

I really wanna test out my new power and abilities in battle as soon as possible, let’s go on a raid right after we’re rested up and get used to our increases in power!" She grinned excitedly.

"Yeah, sounds good," I smiled, reaching out and patting her head.