In the wild lands of Samael, the emperor could be seen trecking through the forest alone.
However, anyone who knew anything about the demon continent would know that this was highly unusual.
Typically, wilderness such as this does not form on these lands, as the continent is mostly comprised of wide open planes.
If one inquired about how this wilderness had come to be about, they would find the answer to be rather fantastical and unbelievable.
Abaddon had grown it.
After he actually went outside, he changed his interest from destruction to learning.
Upon his most recent evolution, he was gifted with the affinities of some of his wives.
He was still a novice when it came to some of them, so he figured that this would have been a good a time as any to get in some practice.
First up, was Eris’ nature affinity.
It admittedly took a large amount of concentration before he could use it.
He wasn’t particularly sure of the reason why, but using this ability was more taxing than it should have been.
Even though he had the affinity, it still felt like he was struggling to use it’s power.
It was almost like the two of them were incompatible with each other, and he wondered if it had something to do with his physiology.
After all, he was a monster of death and destruction.
Bringing life, plantlike or otherwise, felt like it was beyond the scope of his genetic makeup.
Even though he was able to grow all of these trees, it had taken way more out of him than it should have.
‘I’ll worry about this later.’
Abaddon made a gesture with his hands and the entire forest that he created was… erased?
All that was left behind were the stumps that were lodged within the dirt.
Interestingly enough, they looked like they had been cleanly cut by a well sharpened blade although there was no wood in sight.
It was clear that he had absolutely no difficulty in using Bekka’s void element.
Now that there were no longer any obstructions blocking Abaddon’s view, he could sea his destination.
Leviathan’s ruined city by the sea that was the site of his battle with Satan.
He walked along the devastated surroundings until he was mere inches away from the expansive ocean in front of him.
Pausing, he closed his eyes and took in a deep breath and savored the salty ocean air before he made a flicking gesture with his fingers.
BOOOOMMMM!!!!
Without any resistance, walls of water sprang up from the sky and recreated a famous story from Exodus in the old testament.
Abaddon leapt down onto the watery earth bed below and took in the scene he’d created.
Glancing inside the water on either side of him, he could see the fish inside inspecting him curiously before inevitably swimming away as fast as possible.
‘Funny.’
Abaddon walked along the sea floor for miles.
If you asked him why he was doing this, he would tell you that he didn’t really know himself.
He just felt a compelling force that called for him to immerse himself in these waters, and because of everything that had transpired earlier he did not ignore it.
Suddenly, that feeling culminated when he stepped on a particular patch of sea floor.
His senses were screaming that something was underneath him, and it was very special in origin.
And whatever it was, it was quite big as well.
Finally, the dragon let the gargantuan walls of water fall onto his small frame.
Currently, Abaddon was standing on the bottom of the sea floor.
11 kilometers beneath the surface, where even sunlight does not reach.
Were he human, he would have died the second the pressure of the water fell on top of him.
Abaddon left his unfairly beautiful form and changed into an unholy frightening monster with five heads and the lower half of a serpent.
At 95 meters tall, he looked like a horrifying sea monster that was the bane of existence for every sea creature and fisherman alike.
Abaddon had no problem seeing in this pitch black and icy darkness, and he focused his eyes on the sea floor underneath him.
Boom!
Abaddon took a massive fist and punched hard into the sandy earth beneath him.𝞸𝑣xt.𝗰
He continued to worm his massive fist deeper and deeper until he finally struck something hard and smooth.
Grabbing hold of it and pulling it from the earth, he realized that what he had found was something he didn’t believe he’d ever seen before.
It was an enormous blue stone, that shone with a faint blue light that lit up the ocean floor around him.
Or at least it did for a few seconds.
For some reason, Abaddon could feel energy leaving the stone at an alarming rate, and there didn’t seem to be anything that he could do to stop it.
Soon he was holding a black stone that seemed to have no real significance other than being slightly more pretty than diamond.
He contemplated infusing his own energy into it to bring the glow back, but something within told him that doing so would blow this entire gem into tiny shards.
For a moment, he thought about contacting his youngest daughter for any possible information she might have.
But after that unfortunate incident with his eldest children a few weeks ago, he told himself that he would only use telepathy when it was absolutely necessary.
As such, he eventually decided to store the gem inside of his dimensional storage for now and discover more information about it at a later time.
With his investigation yielding no fruit, Abaddon patched up the hole in the ground before he coiled up on the sea floor and sat silently in the icy darkness.
He closed all twenty of his eyes, and started thinking about next steps for the future.
Now that he had evolved again, he had an entirely new set of conditions that he needed to complete in order to evolve a fourth time.
And really, there was no time like the present to see what they were.
‘Let’s try this then..’
Just as Gabbrielle had taught him, he turned his gaze inward and focus on seeing his innermost roots.
As soon as he had done that, he was standing in an entirely black inner world.
The only thing around was a manifestation of himself, and his soul that was floating a few feet away.
“Odd… it looks a bit different from the last time I did this.”
The last time he came in here with the assistance of Gabbrielle, his soul was a mass of purple light encased in glowing white chains that was around the size of a continent.
But after evolving… it was as large as an entire planet, with parts of it now golden in color.
At a glance, it was around the size of earth and even seemed to rotate on some kind of axis.
He realized that if anything, it was likely a good thing and decided not to spend too much time thinking about it before moving on to find his conditions.
“I hope I won’t have to participate in anymore wars for a while, my people are tired…” He muttered.
He found his first condition waiting at the top of his planet-like soul.
And he had absolutely no idea what the fuck it meant.
1. Become a spirit dragon.
As an avid lover of fantasy in his last life he was more than familiar with the concept of spirits.
However, since coming to this world he had yet to hear a single peep about them.
Leading him to believe that if anything, they probably did not exist.
But if this condition was telling him that was what he needed to become, he knew that they had to be out there somewhere.
He just wasn’t sure where to begin his search for answers.
Dropping his gaze further downward, he found that his second condition was even more dubious than the first.
2. Conquer an underworld.
Abaddon liked to think that he’d gotten pretty strong in the year that he had come to this world.
So much so that there were hardly any forces left in this world that were capable of subjugating him.
But he had never once let any of his power go to his head.
He knew that when it came down to it, he was not yet ready to go against the gods.
Not the ones that mattered anyway.
As a result, this condition had come as a massive shock to him.
But after taking a moment to calm down, he realized that he could not allow his resolve to be shaken just because a task appeared daunting.
He would find a way… any way, to come out alive and victorious in battle.
His first two conditions were so shitty, that he didn’t even feel like looking for his third.
If it was up to him, he would have left this space right now and called it a day.
But his people and his family were counting on him, so he couldn’t afford to be unaware of his next steps.
3. Kill and eat Jaldabaoth’s chosen with at least 30% of your citizens still alive.
By this point, he would have given anything for a new war.
Hell, he would have run off to wage millions with no one but himself if it meant that any of these could be rewritten.
His eyes continually re-read the last portion of the condition.
‘Atleast 30%.’
This meant that whoever or whatever was coming was capable of taking everything from him if he was ill prepared.
He… couldn’t remember the last time that he had been this angry.
He had never in his life felt so….violent.
Again, these gods and their incessant interference, it was all so revoltingly infuriating that he would give anything to pull their spines from their backs.
Why could he not be allowed to live as he wished?
Why must some egotistical higher being always come and interfere with his life and happiness?
What had he done to deserve these fates?!
Unconsciously, Abaddon’s real body began to react to his emotions.
A smoldering heat started to come off his scales in waves, and it boiled the water around him for hundreds of miles.
But right now, he didn’t care about the damage he was causing to the local ecosystem.
His mind had been swallowed by the rage he felt from those so called ‘gods above’.
‘Savor your lives while you can still cling to them you miserable wretches! Even if I should have to chase you to the very last light in creation, I AM GOING TO KILL EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU!’
As his anger reached a fever pitch, he set off an earthquake on the sea floor that would be felt across the entirety of this world.