Chapter 633 – Demon Magic

“Demons as a race… how should I put it? They’re practically the opposite of us witches. We witches are born filled with goodness. Other races are born as blank slates, with the freedom to choose good or evil. Only demons are born brimming with malice.” Lilith looked up from the card, gazing at the gradually darkening sky with a thoughtful expression.

“That’s certainly true!” Sylph took out a medium-sized planting pot, filled it with clean water, then dropped in a giant-leaf water fern seed. After infusing the pot with some Hybrid Magic energy, it grew to three meters tall within minutes, its unfurling fronds sheltering the patch of grass where they sat like an umbrella.

“Although demons are villains to the last, their evil is different from that of bad people in other races. Think about it—they need souls to survive, need souls to advance in rank, as naturally as we need air to breathe, or as naturally as the giant-leaf water fern needs water and Hybrid Magic energy to grow.

It’s this innate predatory instinct that makes them natural enemies of all other living beings.” Sylph sighed. “Sometimes I wonder—are they, too, simply prisoners of their own nature?”

“They have absolutely no concept of morality. How would they even know right from wrong? Even if they are prisoners of their nature, they’d never be capable of having the thought that they’re prisoners of their nature. Still, there is this feeling that they truly deserve death, and yet you can’t quite bring yourself to hate them.” Vasida haphazardly tucked her wind-tousled hair behind her ears.

“How can such a race even exist in this world? If only there were no Abyss, no demons being born! When it comes down to it, it’s all because the Abyss spawned this deformed race! That cradle of sin, forever reeking of rot—that’s the true source of all tragedy.”

After speaking, Lilith seemed to recall something and turned to Mo Lan:

“Moira, regarding the origins of the Abyss—is there anything about it in this incubus’s memories?”

Mo Lan shook her head. “He’s only three hundred years old. The demon race doesn’t exactly have historians or researchers studying their past. He doesn’t know much about the Abyss’s origins either. But the Abyss itself is truly far more terrifying than the demons.”

“What about demon magic?” Vasida asked. “This card doesn’t seem to contain any knowledge of demon magic!”

Mo Lan sighed. “So far, I haven’t found anything suitable for us to learn.”

This was what troubled her.

This incubus actually possessed quite a few magical abilities.

His core abilities were Lust Charming, Dream Colonization, and Pain Conversion.

Lust Charming referred to bewitching a target through appearance, gestures, gaze, scent, and voice, plunging the target into an inescapable state of infatuation and carnal desire toward him.

Dream Colonization could implant a nightmare seed into a target while they slept. As the nightmare seed took root and sprouted, the target’s dreams would gradually transform into a labyrinth of lust. The longer they remained lost in the labyrinth, the more severely their soul would be corroded by lust, and the weaker their body would become—until the body died and the soul was harvested.

Pain Conversion could transform carnal pleasure into extreme agony at a ratio of 1:100, enabling the incubus to torment and ultimately kill the target during intercourse, then harvest their soul.

Beyond these, he also knew intermediate soul magic, intermediate disguise magic, and intermediate dark magic.

Within intermediate soul magic, there were three spells: Intermediate Soul Contract, Intermediate Soul Harvest, and Intermediate Soul Furnace.

Soul Contract allowed a demon to brand a mark upon a target’s soul. Once marked, if the target died, their soul would not be protected by the laws of the world to await reincarnation. Instead, the world’s laws would classify it as a fallen soul, to be absorbed by the demon and become part of the Abyss’s power.

Soul Harvest allowed a demon to directly seize and kill the soul of a dying creature—though only souls filled with malice and wicked desires could be directly harvested.

Soul Furnace was a crucial spell for demons to refine souls and extract the energy within them.

Within intermediate disguise magic, there were three spells: Perfect Human Form, Memory Theft, and Mass Hypnosis.

Through Perfect Human Form, they could use soul fragments from someone who had signed a Soul Contract with them as material, weaving a flawless disguise for themselves—physically identical in every way to the soul fragment’s owner.

Then through Memory Theft, they would steal the memories of a harvested soul and mimic its mannerisms and behavior.

Finally, through Mass Hypnosis, they would make everyone believe he was a kind-hearted “stranger from a distant land.”

With this sequence of operations, even a demon fresh from crawling out of the Abyss with zero knowledge of other races could seamlessly blend into a crowd.

As for the dark magic, the spells the incubus knew were fundamentally combinations of lust and dark elemental force.

Rather than calling it dark magic, it would be more accurate to call it dark-lust magic.

There was the Dark Lust Touch, which could create semi-transparent tentacles that inflicted tenfold pleasure on any body part they contacted while simultaneously draining the victim’s life force. There was the Heart-Eroding Love Lock, which caused those bound by it to develop a pathological attachment to the caster while becoming unable to make contact with anyone else. And there was the Crimson Night Veil, which could envelop an entire building and double the carnal desires of anyone who entered.

So many magical abilities, each with effects both extraordinary and astonishing—all types of magic Mo Lan had never encountered before.

But unfortunately, whether it was the incubus’s innate core abilities or his intermediate soul magic, disguise magic, and dark magic, none of them could function without the energy of malice and wicked desire.

The incubus’s core abilities and his dark magic were inseparable from the power of lust.

Without extreme lust, Lust Charming, Dream Colonization, and Pain Conversion simply could not be cast, and the Dark Lust Touch in the dark magic repertoire would be reduced to nothing more than the most ordinary Dark Touch.

As for soul magic, while casting it only required the demon’s innate bloodline power and not much energy from malice or wicked desire, whether it was Soul Contract, Soul Harvest, or Soul Furnace—all would corrupt one’s own soul, causing it to fall.

These spells were really no different from holy light magic or faith magic—the price was even steeper, the consequences even more severe.

Holy light magic and faith magic overwhelmed practitioners with too many chaotic thoughts; one had to completely abandon personal emotions and maintain absolute rationality to avoid descending into madness and disorder.

And these demon magics either required corrupting one’s own soul—needing the soul to fall before they could be cast—or demanded that one actively cultivate malice and wicked desire within oneself, with the end result being soul corruption all the same.

Whether it was one’s emotions or one’s soul, both were essential to maintaining an independent, lucid sense of self.

Trading these for more powerful magical effects was, to witches and sorceresses who valued selfhood above power, no different from suicide.

What they needed was to grow stronger as themselves—not to be swept along by power, becoming slaves to it, stripped of all identity.

With regret but resolve, Mo Lan struck demon magic from her study list.