Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 584: I See Now

"I see now."

The words settled into the space around him with quiet understanding. Kaiden didn’t tense as the pressure thickened, didn’t brace for the inevitable pull. Instead, his mind reached backward through the loops, replaying the sensations he had ignored while chasing outcomes.

He remembered the first approach. The reckless rush. The moment the creature appeared, and he lunged at it on instinct, Gluttony barely spun up before impact. The intake had been shallow then, hurried and sloppy, power dragged in sideways while his focus stayed on distance and violence. It had felt like sprinting while trying to eat. His breath was stolen by motion and strength gained too late to matter. He’d been strong, but unfocused, swollen in the wrong places, reinforcing everything instead of what mattered.

Then he remembered the other extreme.

The greedy inhale. The imitation. Standing still and opening himself completely, copying the Bottomless One’s hollow without restraint. That pull had been intoxicating. Violent. Limitless. Power flooded in faster than thought, ballooning his body into something enormous and unstable. He’d grown everywhere at once, density packed indiscriminately into flesh and frame, until size itself became the point.

Both paths had failed.

Kaiden exhaled softly and opened Gluttony again. But this time, he did not widen it.

He narrowed it.

The particles responded differently. Instead of screaming torrents ripping free from the realm, thin, deliberate streams bent toward him, selected with care rather than seized by force. Kaiden filtered what he took in, letting Gluttony taste and discard, drawing only what resonated cleanly, what felt right. His body did not swell. His height barely changed. No grotesque expansion, no crushing weight driving him into the ground.

The power went where he told it to go.

Density layered into his legs first, compact and precise, reinforcing tendons and joints until the ground beneath his boots subtly warped under contained pressure. His core followed, power wrapping tight around spine and abdomen, stabilizing him like a living anchor. His shoulders and arms came last, not bloated with mass but honed, every particle reinforcing impact pathways, transmission efficiency, intent.

Ten seconds passed.

Then twelve.

By now, the Bottomless One had long finished manifesting.

It did not hesitate.

The hollow yawned wide, and the realm screamed as the creature fed with unrestrained hunger. Particles vanished by the oceanful, stripped clean as its bulk exploded outward. It grew obscenely fast, mass stacking atop mass until it eclipsed Kaiden entirely, then eclipsed the horizon itself.

Next to it, Kaiden looked small.

Laughably so.

But he did not stop.

He continued drawing in carefully curated threads of power, refining them, compressing them, cycling them through his frame until his presence sharpened into something dense and terrifyingly focused. The pressure mounted.

The Bottomless One’s hollow finally turned fully toward him.

The draw hit like a tidal collapse.

Kaiden bent his knees and jumped.

The ground detonated beneath him, pulverized into nothing as he launched upward in a blur of controlled violence. He tore through the air, not dragged, not flung, but chosen, his trajectory cutting straight into the heart of the void. The pull howled around him, trying to unravel his shape, to strip him down and add him to the mass.

It couldn’t.

Kaiden drove his fist forward.

Not wide. Not reckless.

Perfect.

The punch landed inside the hollow itself, against the greed that held it together. His focused density tore through the void like a spear, power detonating inward instead of outward. The hollow shrieked, a sound like space itself tearing as fractures spiderwebbed through its form.

The Bottomless One screamed.

Its immense body convulsed as stolen power began to spill free, torrents of particles erupting outward in chaotic reversal. Its arms collapsed in on themselves. Its bulk sagged, then ruptured, the hollow imploding as the very hunger that sustained it unraveled under pressure it could not adapt to fast enough.

Kaiden punched again.

And again.

Each strike stripped cohesion from the creature, ripping greed apart with intent and precision until there was nothing left to hold it together. The monster folded inward, screeching as its mass disintegrated into uncontrolled release, power bleeding back into the realm in a blinding storm.

Then...

Silence.

Kaiden landed lightly on intact ground as the last remnants of the Bottomless One dissolved into drifting particles, no pull remaining, no pressure lingering. The realm settled, calm and empty, as if the monster had never existed at all.

He straightened slowly, rolling his shoulders once as Gluttony eased back into quiet compliance.

No reset came.

No void closed in.

Kaiden looked at his hands, then up at the open space ahead of him, orange eyes steady and clear.

The seven-armed titan still stood in the distance.

Unmoving. Unchanging. Its silhouette cut into the horizon like a monument that had never known erosion, each arm raised in quiet dominion, each palm bearing a different weight. Kaiden had watched it through every reset, every death, every return, and it had never once acknowledged him. He still didn’t know whether it was alive, aware, or simply there, a rule given shape rather than a being that breathed.

He had started calling it the Original Sin at some point along the way. It was a name that felt correct, for it held the Seven Deadly Sins in its open palms.

This time, however, something changed.

From the titan’s second arm, the one cupped upward as if presenting an offering, the orange orb pulsed. It was the same hue as the light that had burned in Kaiden’s eyes when Gluttony stirred, the same color as the particles that had answered him moments ago, but denser. Older. Complete.

The glow intensified.

Then the orb shot out a stream of orange.

It crossed the distance with blinding speed. Kaiden just watched as it shot forward and sank into him.

There was no impact.

No explosion of power ripping through his frame.

Instead, the stream dissolved into warmth that spread outward from his core, settling deep rather than expanding wide. Gluttony stirred, not as hunger, not as pressure, but as something... finished. Whole. A weight that fit instead of strained, a presence that no longer begged to be fed.

A message unfolded across his vision.

[An acceptable answer.]

Kaiden barked a quiet laugh despite himself, rubbing a hand over his sternum as the last of the warmth settled into place. "I have to find an answer you like?" he muttered, glancing back toward the unmoving titan. "That’s one hell of a subjective trial."

He rolled his shoulders once, testing himself. The power was there. Different from the borrowed, system-mediated version he’d wielded until now.

His brow furrowed.

"What did you even like about my answer? I basically forgone Gluttony entirely."

For a heartbeat, there was only silence.

Then, for the first time since the trial began, a familiar presence stirred in his mind. The Demonic Pornstar System was back.

[One could argue that nothing is more gluttonous than not wanting to give up time.]

Kaiden raised an eyebrow.

The system continued.

[The Successor chose to remain small so he could embrace his lovers.]

[He chose to preserve moments rather than convert every available second into growth.]

[He valued meals shared, rest taken, warmth held.]

[Instead of consuming time to become stronger, he consumed time to live.]

The words settled slowly.

[Is that not gluttony?]

Kaiden snorted, shaking his head as understanding clicked fully into place. "Did you just call me greedy?"

A beat passed.

[The Demonic Pornstar System did no such thing.]

Kaiden chuckled under his breath and shook his head as he let his arms fall loosely at his sides. The tension he’d been carrying for what felt like an eternity finally bled out of him, replaced by something closer to quiet disbelief.

"So that’s it?" he asked, eyes still on the distant titan. "I just have to find the right answer to these trials?"

For a moment, he half-expected the system to deflect, to cloak itself in its usual absence. Instead, the response came slower.

[No.]

Kaiden blinked.

[That is not how it works.]

He turned his attention inward fully now, listening as the Demonic Pornstar System continued, its tone stripped of theatrics in a way he rarely heard.

[According to the Heavenly Demon’s research, there is no singular "correct" answer to trials such as this.]

[Only answers.]

Kaiden frowned slightly, prompting it to elaborate.

[Rushing the Bottomless One and destroying it before its hunger could mature would have been an acceptable outcome.]

[Accepting Gluttony fully, surrendering to endless consumption, and becoming a being defined by accumulation would also have been an acceptable outcome.]