Demon God's Impostor: Leveling Up by Acting

The Abyssal entities circled the three heroes like sharks sensing blood in water.

They were formless and yet terrible—masses of shadow that sometimes had too many limbs, sometimes too many eyes, sometimes geometries that violated the basic laws of physics.

The palace structure groaned under their presence, reality itself protesting the intrusion of things that shouldn't exist in this dimension.

The sword-wielding hero swung his broken blade at one of the entities. It passed through harmlessly, and the thing responded by wrapping around his arm. He screamed as divine light flickered and died where it touched him, his prophetic protections unraveling against something older than prophecy itself.

"GET IT OFF!" He was clawing at his own arm now, panic overriding training. "GET IT OFF ME!"

The blonde hero tried to pull him free, her impossible speed finally finding purpose. But the moment she touched the entity, it spread to her as well, shadow flowing like living oil across consecrated armor.

"They're... they're not burning!" Her voice carried genuine terror now. "Divine fire should burn them but they're not—"

"They're not demons," Liam said, his voice resonating across frequencies that made the heroes flinch. "They're not evil or good. They're just... hungry. And your divine light looks delicious to things that have existed in absolute darkness since before your gods learned to speak."

The analytical hero was backing away, his mind racing through possibilities, searching for weaknesses or solutions. Liam could almost see the calculations happening behind his eyes—the desperate attempt to categorize these entities, to find the divine response that would save them.

"There isn't one," Liam said, reading the hero's intentions with the clarity of his evolved perception. "Your prophecy didn't account for this. The divine texts don't have a chapter on 'things from beyond reality.' You're facing something your summoners never imagined you'd encounter."

"Then... then we'll adapt," the analytical hero said, though his voice shook. "We're prophetic champions. We're designed to overcome any demon threat. We'll—"

"Adapt?" Liam's laugh was wrong—harmonically complex, layered with frequencies both above and below human hearing. "You've had three days of training. Three days to learn your powers. And you think that's enough to improvise against entities that predate your species?"

He raised his hand, and the Abyssal entities responded to his will like extensions of his own body. They withdrew slightly from the heroes—not releasing them, but creating space. Breathing room. False hope.

"Let me show you what adaptation actually looks like," Liam said.

He Phase Shifted—but again, it wasn't teleportation anymore. It was something closer to selective existence. He was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, a quantum state that even the heroes' divine senses couldn't properly track.

Five versions of him. Ten. Twenty. Each one real, each one substantial, each one radiating power that made the air itself burn with potential.

The sword-wielder tried to track them all, his head swiveling desperately. "Which one—which one is real?"

"All of them," Liam said through every iteration simultaneously. "None of them. Does it matter?"

He struck.

Not with the measured tactics of his earlier combat, not with the careful resource management that had defined his fighting style. This was overwhelming force applied with divine precision.

Twenty simultaneous versions converging on three points, each impact enhanced by Hellfire Incarnate, each strike bypassing divine defenses through sheer categorization error—the heroes' protections didn't know how to defend against something that was simultaneously demon, human, and neither.

The sword-wielder's armor cracked further. The blonde hero's speed became useless when Liam existed in every direction she could flee. The analytical hero's barriers shattered under focused assault from angles that shouldn't have existed.

[Damage Dealt: CRITICAL]

[Hero Status: SEVERE INJURIES - All Three]

[Divine Regeneration: ACTIVE BUT INSUFFICIENT]

They were bleeding now. Actually injured in ways their prophetic bodies had never experienced. The invincibility that had made them casual about combat was gone, replaced by very mortal fear.

"You're... you're stronger than the reports," the blonde gasped, one hand pressed to her broken ribs. "The priests said—"

"The priests don't know what I am," Liam interrupted. "Because I didn't know what I was. Not until you hurt her. Not until I stopped trying to balance humanity and divinity and just... became."

He gestured, and the Abyssal entities surged forward again. The heroes tried to form a defensive triangle, backs together, attempting the coordinated tactics that had worked so well against Lilith.

Liam's Sovereign of Damnation crashed into them like a tidal wave of absolute authority.

The formation broke. Not because they wanted to, but because their bodies simply couldn't resist the command to separate. Divine will met something greater than divinity, and prophecy discovered its limits.

"This isn't possible," the analytical hero was muttering, his voice taking on a manic quality. "Prophecy doesn't lose. Divine champions don't fall to demon lords. The texts say—"

"The texts are wrong," Liam said simply.

He raised both hands, and his hellfire erupted in a sphere that encompassed the entire hall. Not burning the heroes—not yet—but surrounding them with flames that existed in multiple dimensions, cutting off escape routes that included directions like "sideways through reality" or "backward through time."

The heroes were trapped in a cage of primordial fire, facing an enemy who had transcended everything their summoning had prepared them for.

"Please," the blonde hero said, and the word carried such desperation that for a moment, Liam almost hesitated. "Please, we're not—we didn't choose this. We were just normal people. Living our lives. And then we were summoned, told we were prophetic champions, given powers we don't fully understand—"

"And you used those powers to break her," Liam said, his multitude of voices converging on a single point of absolute cold fury. "You hurt Lilith. You were going to kill her. And you did it casually, like it didn't matter, like she was another obstacle in prophecy's grand design."

"We were following our purpose!" the sword-wielder protested. "That's what champions do! We—"

"Your purpose is genocide," Liam interrupted. "Your divine mandate is the systematic extinction of an entire species. Men, women, children—everyone. And you accepted that. Embraced it. Became willing executioners for a prophecy that demands mass murder."

He let his power build, channeling Essence in quantities that should have been impossible, drawing on reserves that seemed limitless now that he'd transcended normal demon classifications.

[Current Essence: 28,340 → INFINITE]

[Essence Regeneration: EXCEEDS EXPENDITURE]

[God-State: STABLE]

"So now you face a choice," Liam said, his horn catching light from the hellfire, his Abyssal armor reflecting nothing. "The same choice demons would face when your crusade began. Submit to extinction, or fight beyond hope against an enemy stronger than anything you've ever imagined."

"We'll fight," the analytical hero said, though his voice shook. "We're champions. We don't surrender."

"Good," Liam said. "Because I wouldn't have let you surrender anyway."

He attacked with everything.

Phase Singularity let him exist in multiple positions simultaneously while Divine Void slowed the heroes' movements to crawling speeds within localized distortions. Hellfire Incarnate burned not just their bodies but their divine essence itself. Sovereign of Damnation imposed commands that their bodies obeyed even when their minds resisted.

And through it all, the Abyssal entities fed, draining the divine light that made the heroes special, consuming the prophetic energy that had been layered onto normal humans who never asked to become instruments of genocide.

The sword-wielder went down first. Too injured, too exhausted, too fundamentally unprepared for this level of combat. One of Liam's simultaneous selves caught him with a strike that shattered his sternum, and he collapsed, coughing blood.

"Stay down," Liam commanded with Sovereign of Damnation, and the hero's body obeyed even as his mind screamed to keep fighting.

The analytical hero tried to coordinate with the blonde, attempting some kind of desperate combination attack. Liam watched their divine synchronization, analyzed it with perception that now operated on a level beyond normal cognition, and simply... disrupted it.

A pulse of targeted Essence, and their coordination broke down. They weren't working together anymore—they were two individuals, fighting separate battles, their prophetic teamwork reduced to chaos.

The analytical hero raised his hands for some kind of final technique, divine power gathering in concentrations that would have been devastating if completed.

Liam Phase Shifted directly into his personal space and drove a hellfire-wreathed fist through his solar plexus.

[Divine Core: DAMAGED]

[Hero Status: CRITICAL]

The analytical hero's eyes went wide. Not with pain, but with understanding. With the sudden, terrible recognition that he was dying. That prophecy wasn't going to save him. That divine champions could fall to sufficiently powerful demons who'd transcended the normal rules.

He collapsed, still breathing but no longer combat-effective.

That left the blonde hero. Alone. Injured. Facing Liam's twenty simultaneous manifestations and a dozen Abyssal entities, all focused on her with absolute intent.

"I yield," she whispered. "Please. I yield. I'll—I'll abandon the crusade. Tell the other heroes to stop. Whatever you want, just—"

"You hurt her," Liam said, and his voice was gentle now. Almost kind. Which somehow made it more terrible. "You broke her armor. Shattered her arm. Made her bleed gold while you yawned like it was boring. Like she didn't matter."

"I'm sorry—"

"You're not," Liam said. "You're scared."