Within a civilization's fortress protected by torned-titan walls, a muddy road with the essence of moss permeated the ruins of numerous wrecked buildings.
Like an ignored place, many tents from homeless people had sullied the eyes of those Usurpers, who found it hard to lend their fortune. Then again, what was the benefit for them to spoon fed the weak?
At the still firm-stone wall of scratched history, could be seen a delicate beggar leaned against the slab of stone as she sat down near the road.
One of her eyes peeked, the blue shiny stars under the hood had hooked a gaze from a typical someone.
"Oya? It seems like you're interested in me? Could you clarify why you're staring at me?" asked the beggar.
The young cultivator could only gaze in distress at the unknown beggar's hubris. He shifted his walk into the path that will probably cloud him in the future.
"I apologize for gazing at you, it's just, I couldn't free my mind from the intangible sadness within this Citadel. I truly despise it," said the youth with his palm on the handle of his sheathed sword, strapped on his hip. He looked down, his eyes then scanned the person in a ragged cloak, as the beggar began to put one of her folded legs up.
"You're thinking too hard to fill in the details of your reason, hmm? Ah, you're afraid. Aren't you? Afraid of ending like me on the side of the road with no strength nor money?" she said, mellow with soothing incantation as if she were reading a poem. Her eyes darted at the veins near his right ears, there was a small twitch. "You have two siblings, not in a great relationship with them. All of your family died, except one, you killed them, right?"
She hauled a jackpot. The youth unsheathed his sword in response with the tip barely touching the nose of the person before him.
Undaunted, the mysterious beggar took out her hood to reveal her fair skin and sharp abyss eyes. Somehow, her complexion immediately told the swordsman inaudibly that she was no mere pawn in the Citadel at dawn.
The ray of heat was seeking this unknown individual through the man; it created a mirroring shadow of the youth with striking horns pointed to his glare. Just at the timing of the sunshine to set in to see what the devil is up to again.
"M-F is my name." The beggar licked her lips as she smirked deviously. "I'm the lady, the luck, the progenitor of the dark. There are no gods who slumps, limping feeble in this slum. Your eyes tell you that you hate me, but I love you for what is to come."
MF shoved herself forward, with the blade edge kissing her cheek so colorful of anger from the glowing red hue that tainted her scrumptious long hair in the paint of blue.
Agitated, the youth sheathed his sword that already tasted the beggar's blood. "Such audacity, I heed of no such wench!"
"I know you, you don't know me. How could you understand me when you didn't heed to my chime?" MF shrugged at the man's denialism. Her scar immediately healed as if there was none to begin with. "Just so you know that I can make you heed in need with just one line~"
"Make me."
She tilted her head down in just a slight, her eyes seeped into the youth's face with a conniving smile. Alas, It only took the exact five seconds for MF to laugh uncontrollably. Amused, she laughed at the man's mind and history.
"Is there something to be humored?"
Two sharp horns akin to the man grew from the side of her head, visibly in change at the speed of what mortals could capture. A geometric line then appeared on all exterior of the horns. The feature of the horns striked a heavy similarity of someone within the youth's life.
She grinned, her face vein tightened with terror to the man, "Sylhkjiva."
"How…?" A flurry of slash was thrown in rapid succession into the beggar. Her flesh is distorted, until someone taps on his shoulder from behind. It was her.
"Your mother's name?" said MF as if nothing happened, the messy chopped flesh was gone too. "I've lived for so long that I remember every naming pattern for dishonest people like you, including their breeding tree. Isn't that right? Kashal Kalistra?"
Without ever changing his gaze, he merely replied, "You're an immortal, but I didn't sense any mana on you."
There was a grin wide enough to make her eyes squint. "Hihi, sadly enough, I'm not a 'Usurper' like you. Cultivating this, cultivating that, it's just plain elementary and undemanding." She then spun herself on tip toe playfully.
"People risked their life to attain power. Don't call it 'elementary', don't ridicule us who try to find peace on our promised land. Truly, you're sardonic, you're an immortal without any proof of existence, you shouldn't exist."
The beggar thrusted her fingers into the man's pressure points, rendering his motoric system useless for a moment before she pinned him against the wall. Both heard each other breathe clear enough to build a tension inside the youth's mind. Her modest chest pressed him, those alluring lips and eyes were one finger away from caressing each other.
"Hush." MF put her forefinger into the man's lips. "You want to protect your mother, you want your fated wealth and power. Let me guide you, so the tide can shift and rise."
"What you want me to do," said the man, still had his composure. Although he couldn't do much, getting pinned by a girl is a disgrace on itself especially for the proud dragonoid race.
The devil whispered to him a hope, a chance, a suggestion, a sinister request and mission for the man to fulfill. He couldn't deny nor erase any of her precarious lull to corrupt him, such was his unbearable lust for power.
Alas, the seed of the pact had been planted.
Both bid their farewell. In the other homeless' eyes, they were lovers. In the passing Usurper's eyes, the man was hilariously getting pinned by a plain mortal.
The next three day they met again, at the very same slum. The youth brought the devil a surprise.
"The heart of a Livil, an A rank Calamity," said the man with a box on her left palm. His right hand and right eyes were absent, a price to pay when you fought a Calamity alone while clouded with hatred to someone—himself, to be exact.
The shroud, the menace, the perpetrator to the destruction of the world along with untrusted Angels that almost eradicated 99% of humanity into a bunker size of survivor for thousands of years—the Calamities. Their presence resulted in many super demi-humans being produced by the loco geneticists due to the 'Valhalla' Project that was decreed by the surviving humans to wage an eternal war against heaven and hell.
"Yes, yes! This amount of 'void' has enough resources for me to tinker with!"
Her fingers were upon the open box as she introduced her existence to the morbid pulsating heart. How vile, how ridiculous, how powerful is this small thing containing unknown genes from an unknown realm.
MF was able to program, alter, and overwrite DNAs along with any RNA available to any variable she desired, but an attentive brain doesn't come with the book. She needed to extract the information of other living beings or organisms to gain the full knowledge of their complex structure. So to forebode, the act of kindness doesn't exist in the devil's dictionary, and something simple and fun had ensued within the beggar's imagination.
She injected the heart with a 'present' for the man, while also absorbing some of the resources for herself. MF gained the variable schematic of the Livil, an A rank Loner Calamity, a canine-like giant predator who hunts and hides, yet their prowess makes them harder to hunt because of their steel-hard muscle tissues.
'Tungsten Muscle Coating' DNA schematic acquired.
'Immense Growth XL' DNA schematic acquired.
'Motoric Instant Transmitter' DNA schematic acquired.
"Keep the enchanted heart close to you, meet the guard of this society, kill the woman named Vuvier Selasja. With this, you will attain the power to protect your mother from anyone except you, your limbs will regrow anew, your mind will harden into obsidian." The fake beggar bared her manic smile.
But the man isn't a fool, he immediately came prepared to ensure his own life at all cost. "I want you to pledge the 'veracity oath'."
A ritual of honesty created by the deity of death, the most dangerous and convincing oath ever been made, a wrongdoing to the pledge would result in a horrifying death right after 4444 different kinds of torture.
To convince the bloodlusted youth, MF closed one of her eyes, as she showed her kindest smirk. "My speech is my snake, my dishonesty will strike my heart to be the pale lake, my oath will bear its fruit with me as the roots."
A black crest appeared on the back of the lady's right hand. The proof of the pledge for not telling lies. It convinced the man although not to the fullest because of one suspicious thing.
"Why is the oath different?"
"Oath is an oath, no matter the content, it still shows that I haven't lied a single thing to you."
"The content is important. Regardless, I'll take your head if you're playing tricks on me."
"Sure, sure, go ahead and waste more time regrowing your limb with expensive material," she said, as she sighed. "Gosh, this is why I don't like a single thing about Usurpers at all."
The man didn't talk back in the end, as he strived towards the path that was laid before him, to kill this Vuvier Selasja. People will definitely question specific instructions given to them, but for someone whose mind is obstructed by petty tricks and lies, they will follow the guide perfectly until the end.
Vuvier Selasja was a guard for Tidal Citadel. It was once upon that time when she mistaken MF as a perpetrator of a dark cult because of some psychological tricks the devil had done to the other guardsmen. The guard didn't know that her actions had severe consequences, especially to the bearer of thousands types of grudges, and now that petty karma was on its way to tax her life.
Kashal, who was bewildered, got to the place where the guardians of the Tidal Citadel were hustling. An outpost located at the east of the behemoth fortress of civilization. He asked numerous people, even to the point of requesting a meeting for the senior guardian. He waited briskly for four hours until the one-armed youth met face to face with his fated target.
"So, Mr. Kashal, is there something personal you want to ask of me?" asked Vuvier at the end of the table he was at.
The horned man put the box on the table. In quick slash succession, the pitiful guard's head kissed the ground, unconnected with her body. The present the fake beggar gave was cracking in red open veins.
"Such a shame, such a shame," said the devil still in the slum. "How fickle you're to abuse, those who's blind for power will meet its end engulfed with excruciating terror. Heh, what a classic."
The devil gained a new power without putting in any effort. Because those who deal with the devil will pay a hefty price, and the one who benefits the most from the whole cascade was the sneaky evil.
An explosion, smoke arose. A demonic entity had risen from the outpost. The face of that horrid entity can be seen at the height where sky transportation used to be. Morbidly, the harbinger of death hurled its conjured dark sword the size of an apartment near it.
Many Usurpers had rushed to the scene unknowingly of the mighty experimentation that had been done.
The titan's obsidian muscle-like exterior had deflected many strikes from numerous spells and weaponry thrown, searing the earth like a hot iron being left on the clothes. Innocents and evildoers are mixed in the blender of mortality where everyone is the same.
The black crest disappeared without causing any damage to its bearer; it proved that the trickster didn't tell any lies.
MF faced away from the chaos as she showed her euphoric expression to the world. "This is not a moment, this is a movement! Where hence the fault from the tide had ceased to ever move them! So filthy it stinks! So gritty it sinks! THIS FEELING! THIS IS WHAT I'M LONGING FOR! HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Her first grandeur-scale trickery was successful; it set MF destiny to be a part-time devil and a full-time hustler. Although she was able to perform this kind of spectacular act for the first time, it took hard-work and research to get to where she is now, and it's only the first step to world domination.
Unnoticed by her, a few Usurpers cladded in armor stared at her suspiciously because of the maniacal air.
"Ahahaha, I'm sorry lads." She immediately hid her complexion by stretching the hood and walked away while slouched. Nobody suspected her behavior because there is no mana within her body, and a manaless individual couldn't do much according to the mundane logic of the world.
"That was scary, too scary, there are thirteen gazes, no! Fifteen! Abwabababa… Scary."
And it seemed like it was a bit too much for our little devil to began overtaking the world—for now.