A squirrel-like creature sat high on a tree branch, nibbling furiously on the flesh of a long-dead, rotten carcass. Its spiky fur lengthened as it focused on its meal, a silent warning to any predators that might look its way. Its six clawed arms picked up a bone, gripping tightly the piece of femur and holding it well enough for the creature to spit out its acid saliva that dissolved the piece of bone, melting it into ivory sludge that the creature immediately slurped.

  It was not at the top of the food chain. Far from it, in fact, yet every predator that walked by gave it a wide berth, leaving the little scroungling to its delicacy.

  The creature, so engrossed in its meal that it lost all awareness of its surroundings, ignoring the passages of the forest predators, came to when a distant thud shook the forest, lifting the tree it stood on a little bit from its foundation.

  It raised its head, an inquisitive look on its face just as a shockwave rolled in then, heavy with so much power that it sent some trees leaning sideways, cracks running down their length.

  The creatures startled by the shockwave had barely understood what had just happened when a roar shook the air, tearing across the skies with such force that it sent trees as far as miles away shattering into flying splinters.

  The creature, sharp enough to recognize danger before it hit, scampered off the tree a few seconds before it too exploded.

  And as it fled, it swore death and destruction to whoever had made it lose its home as well as its dinner.

  ***

  Miles away, Daimen smiled gleefully as he felt the ankles of the armored guard cave inward, shattering a second later and forcing the demon down on one knee.

  Anyone else would have been surprised that he'd been able to do damage to a Spirit King, especially damage so potent as to shatter its bones. But Daimen found no reason for surprise here. Instead, he felt content, a little bit of fulfillment creeping in.

  That attack had been delivered with his full strength, emboldened by the power of his Astral image. He would have forfeited this battle immediately had the result been anything less than what it was.

  He raised his hammer and prepared to deliver another hit to its second ankle, a mad chuckle creeping out of his mouth.

  Maybe the fruit-induced madness wasn't really gone. Oh well…

  Before he could bring down his hammer, he felt the temperature lower, the natural cold ambience turning drastically colder. And then he felt himself lifted off the ground, thrown like a rag doll a second later by an unseen hand.

  Daimen found himself crashing into the base of an already splintered tree, the warped substitution for the essence of air rushing out of his throat as his back slammed hard into the tree trunk, shattering what was left of the already fatal flora body.

  He picked himself up, eyes widening as the demon gestured, telekinetically lifting up a long, thick, tree, sharpening it into a spike. Before he could react, the demon sent it speeding his way, pointed end set to open up a hole in his skull.

  A monster jumped in front of him, by some miracle taking the hit to itself as the spike drilled into its body.

  Daimen frowned and turned to the left, where the human looking demon stood with eyes closed, a grimace marring its features as it engaged in a mental battle with the two robed Spirit King demons.

  Surprisingly, they weren't having it as easy as he'd expected. Their faces were twisted up in pain, blood dripping off orifices as mental shockwaves rippled off them in heavy waves.

  He wanted to study them more, but he had his own battle to face. Monsters swarmed the armored demon, their numbers the only reason it was still pinned down.

  That was unlikely to last long, fewer as the demon casually tore a monster's head off its shoulders without looking.

  He grimaced at the sight. Powerful or not, this was a Spirit King. He couldn't let it touch him. That was a straight path to a quick and agonizing death.

  The next time Daimen attacked, he didn't rush into it. Stalking towards where his weapon had fallen, he summoned multiple holes above him and blasted the demon with the energy that came out of them, causing the creature to block with its sword. Simultaneously, he watched as it fought off a horde of monsters, casually destroying them with such ease that Daimen had to burn extreme caution into his mind lest he suffer the same fate.

  The demon had not been pushed to the brink yet, which was why it hadn't manifested its domain. It was either that or the shitty parasite was too proud of itself to consider manifesting a domain against a bunch of Spirit lords.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Either way, Daimen would make sure it didn't get the chance.

  The remains of the shattered trees were uprooted, hoisted out of their base with their roots cutting through the air like the whips of a sadistic slave master.

  The earth trembled, cave-ins opening under the earth as multiple trees were torn out of their roots. Daimen gripped his weapon, pressing its head to the ground as he sought to stabilize himself. The monsters, on the other hand, scrambled through the shaking earth as they fought towards the armored demon, who knelt on the ground, one hand gripping the hilt of their blade which had been stabbed into the earth, while the other hand was outstretched, five fingers splayed outwards against the inrushing tide.

  Glancing to the left, Daimen arched an eyebrow when he saw his new partner and its opponents unaffected by the earth’s tantrums. Three of them hovered above the ground, their feet levitating two feet from the trembling earth.

  They seemed well enough, so he left them to it.

  His hammer came up as he took to the skies, his Will carrying him like a missile towards the kneeling giant. Daimen felt the same unseen thing that lifted him up into the air earlier. It felt like a hand grasping for him, both his physical body and the metaphysical.

  Daimen shook it off, drawing a growl from the demon. He smiled at the feeling of frustration that wafted off the creature, and moved closer, his hammer poised to strike, when the world suddenly went white, sound and visuals disappearing into a white void.

  When he came to, he found himself lying in the center of a crater, blackened and wafting with hot smoke. Daimen's whole body ached, with his chest hurting the most. He looked down, and there, right at the center of his chest, was a six-inch wide hole through the chest of his robe, baring his fried skin to the world.

  His head snapped up just as a monster leaped through the air, claws extended and wings tucked in as it dove towards the other side of the crater. Through the ten-foot deep hole he was buried in, he watched as a tentacle of blue white light, crackling with destructive power, struck the monster mid-air with a loud, thundering roar, setting its fur on fire and sending it careening back to where it had come from.

  Lightning.

  That was not good. If the demon had stooped to wielding the powers of its host, then that meant it was letting loose. Something tugged at his mind, though. That strike had come from a Spirit King and had hit him dead center, likewise with the monster. That should not be. A straight-up attack from a Spirit King should have vaporized him, leaving scant ash to drift into the wind.

  Unless…

  Ahh, Daimen nodded as he leaped over the hole, landing on its lip. He regarded the demon as it weathered and prevailed against the horde of assaulting monsters, shredding through house-sized creatures like a tornado through a town made purely of wood.

  It was back on its feet, its sword a conduit for the tongues of lightning that crackled around its surface, flicking from metal to flesh and then to the next victim.

  But as Daimen looked closer, he noticed that the lightning barely did any harm to the monsters. Burns and searing marks, true, but no boring holes or vaporization, as it should be. The only source of death raining against the mind-jacked horde was its weapon and its telekinetic powers. There was no mind to scramble, since all belonged to the prisoner. The monsters were simply vessels for the will of their infernal leader.

  Daimen moved. His hammer was gone, likely melted on contact with the lightning that had earlier coursed through his body. But he had more, courtesy of his fallen enemies, so he simply summoned another one.

  “So that's how you mind infernals were curbed,” he mused as he dragged the ten-ton weapon behind him. “I should have seen it earlier, should have realized it sooner. Karma is a bitch, after all. There was no way it was going to let your parasitic race grow unchecked.”

  The demon turned towards him as it split a monster in twain. Its form, giant and metallic, cast an intimidating shadow over Daimen, made all the more effective with the blood dripping down its form.

  Daimen wasn't intimidated, though. Rather, he smiled.

  “What dost thou ramble about?”

  Daimen arched his eyebrow as he regarded the hulking creature. “Your power system, of course. You know, I once thought that despite wielding no innate great affinity, the Mind Clan was perhaps the greatest of the demon clans. If not, at least among the greatest. But that was a false assumption on my part, I apologize. No, your clan does not belong to the top. You are simply thieves, robbers unable to fully use what they have stolen.”

  Silence was his response. Instead, the demon gestured, and again he felt the metaphysical hand grasping for his body… and his soul.

  He smiled. “Your failed attempt only serves to prove my point. The mind is your domain. Complete possession of the body was never your purview,” he glanced at the prisoner who hovered in the air, now battling the last of the white-robed demon. The other lay collapsed on the earthen ground, a large pool of blood leaking from every orifice on its body. “He gets it… with the monsters. Take over the mind, and you remain powerful. Take over the powers of your victims? Now that's the domain of Soul which, last I remember, was not beholden to Mind. That is why your… body does not function as well as a full Spirit King should, and why your telekinesis does not seem to work on me. Your race was never meant to fully possess other beings. You want to hold my body, yet to do that, you need my soul subjugated. But how can you do that when my soul is bigger than yours… or more precisely, the body you inhabit?”

  The demon did what it should have done since the battle started. It grappled for his mind, to capture it, enslave it. But Daimen, a veteran of more than three dozen mental battles against Mind Demons, whose minds he'd cannibalized as he slayed them, growing stronger and stronger, was not so easily dominated.

  Unlike the Soul, he could not easily shove off the demon's mental grasp, but what he could do was to hold it off, withstand its assault long enough to execute his plan.

  He stopped twenty feet from the demon—careful to hide the grimace on his lips—and looked through the armor, through the body he could not see, and into the humanoid soul that blazed bright in his sight.

  Its intuition must have spooked it, because it ignored the assaulting monsters, taking a quick step towards Daimen. It became a blur, a mirage that he found very difficult to follow, but follow he did.

  The Demon arrived a foot before him, its sword a blazing conduit for death and destruction to his senses as it cleaved down for him.

  Daimen spoke then, authority the demon did not possess, could never possess, leaking through his lips.

  “Break.” He commanded.

  The demon froze.

  And then he slammed his soul-coated hammer against the blood soaked armor plate.