Looking at the Demon Fire Worm run off in two directions, I was suddenly reminded of a joke from Earth.
One boring day in the home of the earthworm family, the little earthworm had an idea to split himself into two for a round of badminton. The mama earthworm found it a great idea and decided to split herself into fours to play mahjong with herself. A while later, the papa earthworm turned himself into minced meat to which the mama earthworm asked, with tears in her metaphorical eyes: “Why are you so dumb, don’t you know that you will die when you split yourself so finely?” The papa worm weakly answered: “…I suddenly wanted to…play soccer…”
‘Soccer? Well, it’s worth a shot.’
I pointed at the worm which looked half dead by now and signalled for Big 4 to act: “Split it into tens and see what happens.”
“Understood, Master.”
Even though he didn’t understand why I wanted to harm the worm even further, he enacted it without question. Realizing that Mo Na might get a little spooked by the sight of us harming little animals…I turned around out of concern and found her actually watching with glee. Perhaps the thought of seeing it split up like that seemed interesting to her.
‘I guess it’s just me overthinking things again, like a devil would get spooked by little animals getting hurt…’
Devils weren’t like humans at all. Simply put, they were a higher existence who possessed an inherited pool of knowledge that saved them a lot of learning time. They were born with an innately strong constitution and the ability to regrow limbs. Once they gained the blessing of an original sin, their fire resistance would rise to a certain degree. Furthermore, it caused their body to evolve from a very basic lifeform to that of a more advanced species.
No matter how one looked at it, devils were clearly stronger than humans and yet they never managed to conquer the human realm…thus humans could not be underestimated as well. Though they were born weak, they possessed infinite potential.
However, all that was a story for another day.
Having been quartered, the Demon Fire Worm lost the ability to crawl. After it was turned into minced meat, it was clearly and beyond any shred of doubt, dead. It was an interesting set of results to be sure but the overall outcome was that it proved how strong their survivability was. Moreover, this trait might just be a common ability of those living in Purgatory.
“There’s no soul?” I asked, clearly shocked. Every living creature had a soul, and this worm shouldn’t be an exception or so I thought. Upon dying however, the expected soul didn’t appear and instead, a husk of a soul could be seen dissipating into the air.
‘Don’t tell me their regeneration ability had something to do with their souls as well?’
In order to figure the whole case of the disappearing soul, I had No.3 and Big 4 make another trip back to the lava river to catch another worm. Naturally, they were free to catch whatever fascinating lifeform they encountered on the way as well.
It had to be said however, lest I be confused for some sicko, I wasn’t doing this out of sheer boredom, rather it was in order to learn about the environment in Purgatory. Perhaps the two might have sounded unrelated but they were most definitely not.
In order to adapt to their environment, living creatures would change to meet the challenges they faced. For example, pesticides, when used often and without change, might lead to the pests evolving resistances to said chemicals. Those who couldn’t survive would be wiped out and this would continue till, finally, the pests adapted.
Logically speaking, that should apply here as well, on that worm for example.
It didn’t take long for No.3 and Big 4 to return, having done the same not too long ago. As expected, they managed to catch another lifeform for me to experiment on. No.3 had two worms while Big 4 had in one hand, a worm, and in the other, he held a dark red fish and a salamander.
“Master, we caught something new.” Big 4 raised the fish and salamander as he called out to me: “While we were catching the worms, we so happened to stumble upon this fish chasing after a worm so we caught it.”
The fish in question was most likely a Fire Devouring Fish. It was roughly half a meter long, had a giant mouth full of teeth that made it look like a piranha from Earth. Unlike those carnivorous fish however, the Fire Devouring Fish had a sturdy set of scales protecting it as if it was wearing a shiny set of armor.
The Fire Devouring Fish were the nemesis of the Demon Fire Worms, and treated them as their staple source of food. Based on their outer appearances alone, I concluded that these fish most likely had a powerful attack of some sort.
“First, I want a worm quartered.” That job was handed over to No.3 because…they truly disgusted me.
No.3 immediately set about doing his job. Stomping on one of the worms to prevent it from escaping, he then ripped the other worm into quarters.
Just like the previous worm we quartered, it slowly lost its lifeforce and just as it was about to die off, I spotted fragments of its soul dissipating into the air.
‘Was the reason because it was split up into too many sections?’
“Bleed the other worm dry, I want to see if it will die.”
It went without saying that it would die in the end; that wasn’t the point of the experiment however. The moment the last drop of its blood left its body, the worm died as expected and an intact soul popped out of its body.
Looking at the intact mass, I roughly had an idea of what was going on here. However, just to be sure, I had No.3 continue the experiments. No.3 fetched the last surviving worm from Big 4 and then I had them bifurcate it before bleeding it dry.
Upon dying, the worm produced two souls. Unlike the first soul, they were slightly smaller in size and significantly weaker. Judging by their faintness, any further damage to them would most likely result in dissipation.
‘So that’s how it worked, their soul split along with their body and that soul can only support one splitting before dissipating because of its weakness.’
With that, the worm experiments came to an end and all that was left was that fish. Being an offensive oriented creature, what was most likely a Two-stars Fire Devouring Fish, immediately started off by baring its teeth at me as if it was threatening me.
“Big 4, I want you to see how hard are its outer scales.”
“Mhm…help me hold this.” Big 4 handed over the salamander who had never once given up on struggling before grabbing the Fire Devouring Fish’s tail with his left hand. Using his right, he clawed its scales directly. Immediately, the sparkling scales shattered under his razor sharp claws, revealing a pinkish layer of meat along with crimson-red blood.
With its scales broken, the Fire Devouring Fish started wiggling about violently in a desperate bid to bite the devil who injured it. Unfortunately for it, that was all for naught. It didn’t even take the Four-stars Big 4 much effort to dodge all its clumsy attacks.
“Master, the strength of its scales are about the same as your shields.” Big 4 answered as he fingered some of the torn off scales.
The results of that hardness test was shocking, to say the least. ‘Its strength was actually comparable to my exquisitely crafted shields?!’
“Place that piece of scale you got in your hand into its mouth and see if it bites.”
Acknowledging the order, Big 4 did just that and the brainless fish bit down as I had expected, without any hesitation whatsoever.
Upon contact, the first bite left a serious scratch on the scale. After a few more bites, it actually broke the scale in half!
‘These fishes truly had a strong set of choppers! Those scales of theirs aren’t too shabby either.’
In conclusion, my experiments had shown that Demon Fire Worms had regenerative abilities and were able to split themselves. Their attack power wasn’t high but they were great at running away. The Fire Devouring Fish possessed an astonishing bite strength and sturdy set of scales, making them the perfect nemesis for the Demon Fire Worms.
The worm’s splitting and regenerative abilities were most likely a result of the Fire Devouring Fishes hunting them down. One bite from those deadly teeth would most likely kill them. Thus, in order to survive, they adapted those two defensive abilities where one half would stay behind to distract the enemy while the other half ran away and recovered.
Truly, this was a case of survival of the fittest: unless one adapted, one died.
“Kill that fish.”
Big 4 immediately stabbed his right hand into the fish’s belly and ripped out its innards. However, even after such a grievous wound, the fish refused to die and instead it bit down viciously on Big 4’s hand. Unfortunately for that struggling fish, there was no way it could ever win in the first place.
Five seconds later, the fish was officially dead and its soul popped out in response.
“Mo Na, you can have these souls.” Rubbing the little scamp’s noggin, I smiled at her gently and continued: “That’s if you still have room for them of course.”
“Mo Na still can eat some more!” With a free meal placed right in front of her, it would be remiss of her to reject it and thus she happily gulped down the souls with a grin on her face. Having finished the meal, her eyes closed slightly, a look of pure satisfaction written all over her face. “Mama, those things were really tasty.”
“As long as you like them, there will be more to come.”
“Then can I eat this as well?” Asked the ever curious little scamp as she pointed at the corpse of the fish discarded by Big 4. “That looks tasty.”
“You’ll have to pass on the meat, the souls are meant for us.” ‘Raw fish? My baby girl, aren’t you disgusted by it at all?’
“Kay.”
We came to this foreign land known as Purgatory by accident instead of our true destination, Abaddon. Till now, we still weren’t familiar with this new environment; it wouldn’t be a stretch to call us blind at all. Furthermore, there were no signs of devils nearby and the harvesting rate of Red Lotuses weren’t ideal either. That meant that in the long term we would have to establish relations with the local powers in this place. Thus, this day of experimentation came about. Knowledge was the key to victories after all.
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