Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 575: The Original Sin

The plate shattered in his hand, fragments falling and skittering across the marble floor. Magnus stood there for a moment with his chest rising and falling in heavy, labored breaths, staring down at the ruin. The anger ebbed just enough to leave behind something sharp and bitter.

He scoffed.

Straightening, Magnus let the remnants fall from his palm and turned away. "And where is our daughter, anyhow?" he muttered, irritation creeping back into his tone.

"Damned woman," he growled. "Refusing to participate and hiding Alice as well?" His eyes hardened with resolve settling in place of rage. "This can’t go on like this."

He began to move.

"I need to do something about this."

His expression turned resolute.

"I have to clean house."

...

Kaiden drew in a slow breath and let it out just as steadily.

Then he cast the spell Begin.

The world folded.

There was no sensation of movement, no violent pull or lurch, only the quiet certainty that here was no longer there. Reality thinned, peeled back, and gave way as if he had stepped through an unseen seam in existence itself.

When his senses returned, Kaiden found himself standing alone.

His first instinct wasn’t awe.

It was to turn.

His head snapped left, then right. His gaze swept the empty expanse around him, searching for familiar silhouettes, for flashes of silver hair, purple eyes, demonic tails, cat ears, anything. His heart skipped once when he found nothing of the sort.

"...Girls?" he called, the word leaving his mouth before he could stop it.

No answer.

The silence pressed in, heavier than any dungeon corridor he’d ever walked through.

Kaiden clenched his jaw and exhaled through his nose. "Tch. Figures. Luna was right."

A brief, sharp ache twisted in his chest at the confirmation. Separated. Just like they’d feared.

His fingers curled slowly at his sides, nails biting into his palms as he forced himself not to dwell on it. His mind tried, unhelpfully, to imagine them each alone in places like this, facing their own trials, their own judgments.

Then Calypso’s voice surfaced in his memory.

’If stepping away now means we can stand together forever...’

Kaiden closed his eyes for a heartbeat.

"Brief separation," he murmured, more to himself than the realm. "That’s all this is."

He straightened.

Whatever trial awaited him here wasn’t meant to break him by loneliness. It was meant to temper him. And if his girls were enduring their own paths right now, then the last thing he could afford was hesitation.

Kaiden set his shoulders and lifted his gaze again.

His heart hardened in resolve for them.

"I’ll come back stronger," he promised.

Then he took his first step forward into the unknown.

The ground beneath his feet was not stone, nor soil, nor obsidian like the abyssal dungeon he owned. It was something smoother, darker, as if matter itself had been pressed into obedience. It did not reflect light, for it outright swallowed it. Each step sent no echo, no vibration, as though sound itself had been politely dismissed.

Above him stretched a vast sky of churning darkness with layered clouds drifting in slow spirals. They were not storm clouds, nor smoke, nor mist... just presence. Heavy. Watching. As if the sky itself was thinking.

This was not the abyss he knew.

That place had hunger. Teeth. Endless corridors designed to grind intruders down through attrition and despair.

This... was different.

This realm did not want to consume him.

It expected him.

As the clouds shifted, a clearing opened in the distance, and Kaiden froze.

There, standing upon a distant rise that dwarfed mountains, was a figure so immense that his mind struggled to frame it as a single entity.

A titan.

Its body was colossal, carved from layered darkness and authority, proportions so vast that perspective itself seemed to break around it. It did not breathe. It did not move. It simply was, like a law of nature given shape.

"Is it... a statue?" Kaiden murmured. His voice sounded small even to his own ears.

Seven arms extended from the titan’s form, each held slightly apart. And within each massive hand rested an orb.

Power made visible.

The first orb burned with deep, violent red. It was contained fury coiled so tightly it seemed ready to tear itself apart.

Wrath.

The second glowed with a dense orange, rich and voracious, layered with weight and want, like hunger refined into purpose.

Gluttony.

The third shone purple, vast and commanding, not loud but overwhelming in its certainty. The color was unmistakable.

Pride.

Kaiden’s breath caught as recognition slammed into him.

Those were the exact hues his eyes took on when he entered his stances.

"...No way," he whispered.

His gaze traced the remaining hands, though their orbs were obscured by shadow and distance, as if they were hidden from his eyes. As if he wasn’t ready to witness them in their full glory. Each orb radiated a pressure that made his instincts scream without offering explanation.

"This is..." His voice faltered, awe stripping the words from him before he could finish. "This has to be related to the Seven Deadly Sins."

The realization settled like a physical weight on his chest.

"Is this the original demon?" he asked the empty realm, barely daring to think the thought. "Or something even older...?"

He had faced horrors before in his life. But none of them compared to this.

Suddenly, Kaiden understood.

This wasn’t an enemy.

It wasn’t a boss.

It wasn’t even a god, not in the way people understood the term.

This was a foundation.

Just then, a quiet chime rang out.

[Ding.]

The Demonic Pornstar System spoke, its presence settling into his awareness with unusual solemnity.

[This is not a demon, not even a being in the conventional sense.]

[This is a Source Concept.]

The words did not explain so much as affirm what he had already felt in his bones.

A truth so fundamental that reality itself was structured around it.

A principle so absolute that civilizations had built religions, myths, and systems upon fractured reflections of it, never realizing what they were echoing.

[Demons. Sins. Virtues. Judgment. Salvation.]

[All derivative. All interpretations.]

[This precedes them.]

Kaiden swallowed, throat dry. His eyes never left the colossal, unmoving figure.

"Did the Heavenly Demon come here too?" he asked quietly. "Did he have to face this?"

Another pause came.

[Yes. The Heavenly Demon encountered this Concept.]

[For thousands of years, he sought to understand what could not be grasped through strength alone. He observed. Reflected. Failed. Returned. Again and again.]

[Only after that long struggle was he acknowledged.]

[The Paragon of Sin class was bestowed.]

[It was not a reward for destruction, nor a title earned through slaughter.]

[It was recognition.]

[One could argue that the Heavenly Demon became the living representative of the Seven Deadly Sins - not as vices, but as existential forces given will.]

Kaiden’s pulse thudded in his ears.

"And now...?" he asked.

[And now, the Successor stands at the threshold.]

[He is not being tasked to inherit that mantle.]

[Not yet.]

[He is being tasked to take his first step toward earning the right to be considered.]

The pressure in the realm subtly shifted, expectant.

Kaiden stared at the seven-armed colossus with his heart pounding and mind racing.

"So this is what mastery means..." he murmured.

Standing before the thing that defined his path, and deciding what kind of monster he was willing to become.