Chapter 182: Hellspective

The sensation of being pulled into another realm in my body was akin to a feeling of being forcefully pushed into a hole way too small for my size. Thankfully, it only lasted for a moment, before the sight of the Bishop's house was replaced with smoke and fire.

The floor beneath my feet was gone. I was in free fall, and the ground was far, far away. I beat my wings to hover, took in a full chest of sulfuric air, and looked at the sight surrounded me.

The air was warm, but not scorching. Not far above me, I saw the stone ceiling—the floor of the higher layer of Hell. Below me spanned a smoke-shrouded plane. Here and there something burned in it, too far from me to tell what, or who. Wind howled, throwing handfuls of ash in my face. In a distance I saw flocks of monstrous birds circle, hunting for something on the ground, or for each other.

And just at the edge of what I could see in the smoke, there was an enormous circle of walls that surrounded a seemingly bottomless round pit in the ground. There was nothing to be seen in there, though the darkness and smoke, but plenty of things were moving on the walls. Just above this pit, there was a vast hole in the ceiling. As I watched, several figures fell from it, and several birds immediately dived after them, snatching one and tearing the soul apart before it could reach the wall's level, only for it to reform a second later.

I recognised this place. Pest teleported me near the so-called City of Dis at the Fifth Circle of Hell. It wasn't actually a city, but a natural gathering that happened at every layer near the places where the Abyss, as it was called, pierced the Nine Hells. Predators gathered to snatch whatever prey that fell down the Abyss while they had their chance.

The lower you went, the fewer souls fell, and the less food there was—but the competition was fewer, too. The Ninth Hell was a notable exception to that, though. You didn't have to be as fast there, since this was the bottom. The Fifth Hell was in the middle, and Dis was still pretty popular as far as places were.

It also was, as far as places in Hell went, relatively organised. There was a picking order and a big gut who threw all who didn't do what he said into the pit. At least, the last time I went there. In the ever-changing Hell, even though I wasn't away for long, this could've become different already.

Either way, noisy places like Dis weren't something I needed at the moment. I needed a quiet place to evolve, somewhere where people won't bother me, with enough defences that they would have to work to go through, even if they did after all. Dis had resources—EXP—but was too noisy.

I threw a volley of wind blades at the gaggle of hellrodactyls that drew close to me with an unmistakable hunger in their beady eyes and flew off, away from the Abyss.

Didn't matter where, just far enough into the desolate wasteland that it'd be utterly empty.

I couldn't fly too far, though. The space was tricky in Hell. No matter how far you went, eventually your road will bring you back to the Abyss. One could say that Hell was round, except… was it? I never felt like the lower layers were smaller than the upper ones. And the horizon, at the few layers where the air was clear, seemed endless.

In here, it was shrouded in smoke. Another mystery I won't bother to find out.

When I descended closer to the ground, I saw the source of occasional flames—stone cubes, as tall as two men, each burning thanks to the magic that permeated them and placed there by the hand of the same mad sculptor who made the rest of Hell. The stone the cubes were made from was called flamerock. Plenty of things in Hell were made from it—hence the abundance of random fires.

I flew until I saw a place where the cubes were stacked upon each other, creating a crude dome. It seemed like a man-made construction, but whether or not it had an owner, I liked it. The flames won't hurt me, but would make random demons think twice before getting closer, and the dome itself was a cover.

Yes, I decided to stay there.

As I approached, I noticed more defence measures. Long bone spikes protruded from the ground, some of them with pieces of previous intruders. I flew over them and made a circle around the dome, but there was no sign of life I could see in it or anywhere close. So far from the Abyss, a rare soul ventured into the wastelands.

I set inside my mental projection. It bypassed the stone walls with ease, and even in the realm where souls were a material thing, still stayed as much of a concept without dimensions as it was in the mortal realm.

Through it, I could see insides of the dome. Crude stone furniture, bone decorations and the inhabitant of the place himself—a gnarly bug-eyed demon with long horse-like ears. The fire that heated the insides of the house didn't bother him at all. He sat with crossed legs on the stone bed, and his thoughts were… far away, in the realm of dreams and fantasies, so detailed that for the demon, it was like living a second life. A much better life than here.

Finding refuge in one's fantasies was one way of getting anything nice in Hell… Too bad for the hermit that I liked his house. Maybe I will do him a favour and kill him enough times to send him straight to the Wheel of Reincarnation.

I returned the mental projection and landed near the entrance. Been a while since I last killed demons.