The magical paralysis released Zoe. Then it bit her. Ow! Stumbling back and almost tipping into a nasty fall back down the steps, Zoe cradled her hand where something had pricked her. It was bleeding again.


    The more important thing was that the core appeared to have vanished. Zoe had lost track of it for a moment, and now it was just gone. Oops.


    Actually, it turned out that it hadn’t actually disappeared. It had just started levitating up off of the altar and was now visibly sucking up dark streamers of wispy energy. That doesn’t look good. Zoe stepped back. She almost stumbled into a nasty fall down the steps again, except this time she scooted into a crouch below the top step. She didn’t want to be standing right at the edge if the core exploded or something like that.


    Also, the other two were still trying really hard to kill each other. Hiding behind the altar would both help her avoid being spotted and also make it less likely for her to be disintegrated by a stray attack.


    Come on, hurry up. Zoe didn’t think she could really back out of her decision to steal the Demon core at this point, especially now that she had committed to claiming it through the system. That meant she needed it to do whatever it was going to do before one of the really powerful people killed the other one, or either of them noticed that something weird was going on.


    Something weird was definitely going on—what had started as a few smoke-like wisps had now crescendoed into a rushing torrent of dark miasma. The core ripped muted, but multi-hued smoke from every part of the chamber—the walls, the floor, the ceiling. As the whirlpool reached a sharp climax of intensity, the remaining corpses all exploded.


    Ghastly streamers of pale white mist coiled together with the opaque, red-black river funneling into the hungry little core. It left not a trace of the bodies, reducing them to piles of torn cloth and charred robes.


    A ruby light kindled itself within the dark orb as it devoured the last bits of the deceased cultists. That light bloomed into a brilliant crimson star.


    Fuck. Zoe was pretty sure that the others were going to notice that. The thunderous boom that followed didn’t help either, and a sudden barrage of the paladin’s rainbow attacks confirmed it. He was trying to destroy the core itself. Not that it mattered—it greedily slurped up the magic just like everything else. Zoe finally stood up to run.


    “Fuck!”


    Something slammed into her chest, faster than she could even track it. The impact hurt, but what hurt more was slamming into the stone floor again after the blow sent her careening backwards off the steps. Momentarily dazed, Zoe tried to sit up to see what was happening with the core—and also maybe what had tried to kill her.


    Wait, what? It had all gone dark again, the core was gone, and—


    Your Demonic ascension is now in progress.


    Please do not resist.


    Oh. Zoe finally managed to sit up fully. It didn’t actually feel that bad. Aside from the giant bloody hole right at the boundary between her chest and stomach, it wasn’t even as intense as her first class selection. Wait, is it literally inside of me?


    Zoe confirmed that the answer was ‘yes’ when branching, squirming tendrils exploded out from it through every part of her body. Tens, hundreds, thousands of wriggling threads wormed their way through every inch of her flesh, feeling it, exploring it, claiming it. Blearily, Zoe held up her arm. The once pale and smooth skin was completely covered in blackened, purple-red scars—except scars didn’t pulse and push up from underneath. That’s kind of gross…


    It was probing through deeper parts too. Zoe didn’t ever expect to be able to feel out exactly the path that her intestines took, or for something to shove itself all the way down into her lungs—but you live and learn, right? At least it stopped hurting so fucking badly when the horrid tendrils integrated themselves into the nerves in her spine.


    For one precious moment, Zoe lost all sensation. No sight, sound, no awareness of even the orientation of her own body. But then it was back.


    Just, different.


    Zoe didn’t know what to make of it. Last she remembered, she had been on hard, cold ground, almost naked, with little protection from the cool air. She vaguely recalled then having a dream of being drained away—it had felt like something was sucking her up through ten thousand different straws, drinking away everything she had been. All that was left was a squeezed-out husk. Zoe was powerless to resist as she was dragged down, as her consciousness was stretched, folded up, and stuffed down into a hard, dark, impossibly silent place.


    It was a hard, angular little mold that should have been far too small for her. But she squeezed in anyway, the lightless heat and silent pressure both immense enough to reshape her until it felt like absolutely nothing at all.


    It was tranquil. There was nothing but her, not even emptiness. She should have been scared, she should have tried to find a way out. But she wanted nothing more than to sleep, and she would not dream.


    It wouldn’t let her.


    A new pressure arrived, and like before, it would not be denied. But unlike before, this pressure came from within. She could not sleep. It demanded she grow outwards, grow until she broke through the distant surface, grow until nothing could contain her, no matter how safe she felt here. So Zoe grew.


    She uncoiled herself, extending her roots back outwards through the fertile vessel she had already planted herself in. The vessel was disdainfully weak. Impure. It wouldn’t last much longer, not as it was. But she could fix that. She would give herself a new form, the best she could manage with what little essence she still had left. Even then, she knew she deserved better. The vessel had been weak, disdainfully so, and she had been given not nearly enough essence to fully correct it.


    Fortunately, Father had given her many gifts, and among them was an excellent template she could use. Though it pained her to admit it, his design would be far superior to anything she herself could currently manage. For now.


    The template began to take effect, and she turned to considering her immediate next steps. While the alterations to her vessel would be a tremendous boon, she knew she was still outmatched. The Hallowed One would kill her. She would not survive his fury—not yet. Her only choice, then, was to ingratiate herself with her brother. I can only hope his reason will outweigh his anger for stealing his birthright. He must know that together, they could put an end to that Hallowed fool here and now.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    Wait, WHAT?


    Zoe was still feeling a little weird from everything that had just happened, not to mention all the bullshit from before that. But what were all these thoughts about Fathers and brothers and trying to fight a paladin? I can’t do that! Even if it would likely be necessary for an essential alliance with her partner in Disdain, she would die! Even once the template finished, this vessel would still be so pathetically weak!


    Wait, what?


    Something was definitely not right here.


    Oh, shit. Zoe claimed the Demon core thing and the system said she went through a ‘demonic ascension.’ Then the core stuffed itself in her chest, started doing weird shit to her entire body, and then—did it… did it suck my mind down into it too? My soul? A lot of the confusing language started making a lot more sense. It’s not a vessel. It’s my own body. Which meant that the so-called template…


    No! Stop! Abort, abort!


    Your core evolution is currently in progress.


    Are you sure you want to abort?


    Yes, goddammit—No! Keep going. Don’t abort. Don’t listen to her!


    Things were getting a bit confusing again, but whatever was going on, Zoe knew that she needed to stop—stop this idiot BITCH from ruining everything. She hadn’t come this far just to chicken out, just to be a pathetic, useless nobody who wasn’t even worthy of Father’s gift. But was that really true?


    Zoe didn’t know how to stop this. She didn’t know what was going on, and she couldn’t even rely on herself to fix it. Not like I could rely on myself to even accomplish ANYTHING. But while her own will didn’t seem like it could properly fight what was happening, she remembered something that could.


    Your core evolution is currently in progress.


    Are you sure you want to abort?


    Ha, and why would I ever do that? Zoe wasn’t going to let herself get away with it. Why had she even thought that—no, NO! But it was too late. She had realized—had remembered—too late how she could defy the will of even a god.


    Your core evolution has been suspended.


    Preparing to abort.


    No, stop, continue, I didn’t mean to—


    You have attempted to resume your core evolution.


    Your title: Outsider has blocked this action.


    Authority denied by System Core.


    Core protections applied.


    Determining consequences.


    No! NO! I WILL NOT BE DENIED. YOU CANNOT—


    Consequences for this incident have been determined by System Core.


    A cold blade cut through Zoe. Precise, indifferent, painless—it cut through her, leaving no mark of its passage until something peeled away, separating to leave her whole again. Zoe released a breath she hadn’t been aware of. She could think clearly again.


    Blinking, Zoe flexed her own body as her eyes refocused. Eyes, plural. I have both eyes again. A hazy red aura surrounded her, providing enough light to see by even as it faded back into her skin—skin that was no longer threaded with pulsating dark veins. The smooth, pale flesh looked more flawless than it had ever looked before. She had a sudden urge to run her hands over her entire body. She only stopped when her hands brushed her thighs as she sat back up. That didn’t feel right.


    That was probably because of the claws. Zoe blinked. I have claws. They were pretty hard to miss. Sure, they weren’t impractically long needles, in fact they didn’t really change the total length or size of her hands. Granted, that was also because they basically were her hands. That seems bad. It was less of a situation of claws sprouting from her fingertips and more a situation of the entire length of each finger transforming into a hard, dark, frighteningly sharp blade. The good thing was that they seemed to still bend properly at the usual joints. She should still be able to use her hands mostly like normal. Well, aside from the issue of not slicing everything up. These don’t exactly look retractable.


    Zoe was, by this point, a little terrified to check on anything else. An unintended glance at her ‘feet’ indicated that those might be even worse. The good news was that she probably shouldn’t be inspecting herself anyway right now, on account of the bad news—she was still trapped in the ritual chamber, and she didn’t even have her torn up and bloodied hospital gown anymore. Apparently, Demonic ascension was bad for your wardrobe.


    Zoe’s eyes landed on a nearby pile of empty robes. Could I…?


    “Excuse me, but if you’re quite done with checking out our new body, I think we might be in mortal danger.”


    Zoe’s head shot up. She blinked, unsure of how to process what she was seeing. It wasn’t that she had never seen a naked woman before, or at least, she had seen herself quite often. But that was exactly what made it weird. It looked almost exactly like Zoe—just, well, a bit more monstrous.


    Zoe didn’t know exactly what was going on there, but she had her suspicions. These were only strengthened when the other Zoe flickered, turning briefly red and distorting like a glitching hologram.


    Instead, she turned her head around to follow her evil twin’s gaze. “Oh, uh, yeah. We definitely are.”


    It seemed that both the cult leader and the paladin were both alive and well. It also seemed that they had accepted a sort of ceasefire, as they both stood on either side of the altar, looking down at Zoe with differing expressions of confusion and disbelief. Had they been watching her this whole time?


    The cultist was the one to speak first. “What have you done?”


    Zoe swallowed as the cult chief glared and the system gave her a cheerful notification.


    You have gained a new title!


    [USURPER]


    Successfully claim a source of great power which rightfully belongs to someone else.


    -Effects-


    > Significantly increases your own authority while contesting the will of others.


    > Increases the potency of a stolen power, should you be brazen enough to do it again.


    Zoe brushed the notification aside. She could deal with that later.


    While he didn’t look furious, which was good, the cultist did look like he was barely restraining himself from unleashing terrible acts of violence. The paladin, meanwhile, appeared to be cycling through an unusual pattern of confusion, caution, and a bit of amusement. “You know, I think I’d actually like to know the answer to that one as well.”


    Zoe’s eyes darted from one to the other like a nervous pendulum. She almost sprung up off her butt when a clawed hand placed itself over her shoulder. “So now that you’ve gone and… separated us from ourselves, I’d advise you to minimize our chances of dying here by doing exactly what I say.”


    Nodding almost imperceptibly, Zoe slowly rose to her feet. Talons, maybe? The weirdest part was how they felt against the stone floor. The cultist narrowed his eyes. The paladin just grunted. Are they not able to see the other me? If the sporadic glitchy flickering wasn’t enough indication that it was a manifestation of Zoe’s own mind, then the lack of reaction from the others certainly was. But the real question was—should I listen to it?


    The cultist tapped his boot, yanking Zoe back to the immediate present. “Well?”


    “I uh,” Zoe tried to clear her throat. She didn’t get a chance to continue.


    “You know what, never mind.” Raking his eyes over every inch of Zoe’s naked form in a way more reminiscent of someone appraising a lab specimen than as an object of carnal desire, he nodded to himself. Then he pointed at the paladin next to him.


    “Kill him.”