Devil of Devils
BLOODBORNE
My time in Yharnam was not nice. No, that is a complete understatement. It was so fucking horrible that there are no words in any language I know to describe how bad things became there for me.
You have to understand that back then I have never had to even try to have anything I desired, I grew as a literal princess that had her every need met near instantly met and I was surrounded by powerful devils and servants that would give their lives for me in a heartbeat to protect me from all threats and hardships.
Yharnam made it its personal mission to shatter every illusion of safety and security I had inside me very enthusiastically. Worse, I couldn't even find peace even in the Hunter's Dream. Oh don't misunderstand, Doll was a… well…. doll and a sweetheart besides and I am woman eh devil enough to admit that I used her shoulder to cry more times than I could count. Gehrman for all his cryptic and cantankerous ways was a fountain of knowledge which helped me become the terrifying hunter I am now and even to this day I still find use for his lessons. Finally the Messengers once you managed to look past their 'peculiar' appearance were very cute and thoughtful in trying to cheer me up and assist me in my hunts in their own way.
But as I said, things were not so simple. The Hunter's Dream was a pocket dimension created in order for the Good Hunter to respawn when they die (emphases on 'when', there is no if here) as well as a repository of tools and servants that helps them make use of the blood echoes to empower themselves and hone their skills. Most importantly though, it was a place that gave a feeling of comfort and tranquility that calmed the mind and acted as a balm to the soul, helping the Good Hunter to keep their head on straight and their sanity if not intact then at least not completely frayed. And there lies the problem because my patron's interference and my nature as a supernatural being fucked me over royally.
Ashik in all his cosmic wisdom (insert sarcastic tone here) decided that the Hunter's Dream would make a perfect representation of my Home Essence and now it is, but back then there was a tiny little issue with the place. The Moon Presence.
The Home Essence connects the recipient with a personal dimension making them God in everything but name inside it, preventing them from aging or dying and even making them capable of reshaping it to their pleasure and even summoning servants ex-nihilo. Also it makes them capable of sensing everything and everyone inside it and there lied the problem.
The Moon Presence or Flora as it was its name had entrenched itself in the dimension for decades at least and it was literally the God of the place, so when I appeared for the first time there, my Essence as well as my inherent by nature sensory abilities went bat shit insane when they registered the 20 feet eldritch abomination of flesh and tentacles chilling on the Moon.
The only reason it didn't react to me was that by its nature the thing was sympathetic and so other or distorted if you want to use nasu-verse terms that aside from a brief feeling of a gaze on my back it didn't interact with me till the very end.
For me though it was excruciating. It was like having a pike lodged in your soul preventing you from breathing and sending all your senses haywire. I had to spend hours screaming in agony before I managed to learn how to ignore it and be able to function inside the Dream.
So here I am, a spoiled little child (because 14 years old no matter what some people may think is not an age that is appropriate for someone to be stranded in a world of horrors and nightmares and be told to sink or swim) having to run through a dilapidated city that would make Black Plague era London look like a bastion of progress and stability, having to kill and kill trying to figure out the royal mess that was the whole conspiracy of the Healing Church and the origins of the Paleblood.
Yeah not fun at all and by the end I would have turned into either a drooling blubbering mess or a murderous psychopath if it wasn't for Ashik, though I still haven't truly forgiven him from playing me in order in his words 'to gain perspective and maturity through a trial by fire'.
My slaughter through this wretched place frayed my mind and soul with every second I spent in Yharnam all the while the Hunter's Dream continued to give me none of the comfort that it promised. It didn't help that until I managed to hone my environmental awareness I kept dying again and again to ambushing rabid men.
Trying to get down some stairs? BAM. An asshole with an axe carving a lung out of my chest.
Trying to take a shortcut through an alley? BOOM. A demented fucker with a butcher's knife jumps from inside a pile of trash and makes you Swish Cheese.
Walking down a fucking open street? CRACK. Some ugly piece of shit jumps from a motherfucking balcony and turns your head into paste with a Warfuckinghammer of all bloody things.
By the way whoever said that having your brain turned to mush is an instant painless death needs to have his scrotum opened with a mining drill. Repeatedly.
I didn't give up though. I fought and I fought through the monsters and the horrors. The Cleric Beast, The Monster that Gascoigne became, the Blood Starved Beast, The Watchdog of the Gods, Vicar Amelia and many more fell on my trusty Axe and with every victory more and more blood echoes were collected and then spent in increasing my skills with weapons, my senses and my magic that with every blood echo I could feel its shackles weakening.
And then deep within the Old Hunter's Workshop I found the two tools that made my life easier by magnitudes.
The first one was a skill called Quickening that gave me the ability to increase my movement speed to absurd levels and after I became really good with it I could quicken my perception as well.
The second one was the most important though.
The Third Umbilical Cord.
The moment I touched it I felt a massive wellspring of power expanding my reserves and giving me access to a good 25% of my magic. I was ecstatic, I naively thought that with my magic now partially free, my mission would become a piece of cake and for a while it was but then came the Hemwick Lane.
There are no words fit to describe the nightmarish sights I gazed upon to that thrice accursed place. To give a small amount of perspective, me, a Devil born and raised in the Underworld half way through the area fell on my knees in horror and I prayed to God for salvation. Both my own and for the thousands of poor souls that suffered in this hellscape.
Looking back, I think it was then, surrounded by the dismembered and 'harvested' corpses of all these innocent people that I truly started to break.
The rest of my time through Hemwick Lane is a blur. I killed and killed and killed until everything capable of movement will never be able to do so again and with 25% of my expanded magic reserves free I made sure to give thorough homage to a quote I had read on the internet once 'Kill it with fire and if it doesn't die, use more fire'. By the time I was done with the place I had turned it in the biggest bonfire Yharnam had ever seen.
The Head Witch died screaming while being erased by my PoD encased Kirkhammer.
After I thoroughly emptied my stomach all over the ground I empowered myself inside the Dream and used a pass that was given to me by a whore I had helped find sanctuary in the Oedon Chapel to find passage to the Cainhurst Castle.
The very air and even the bedrock was steeped with an aura of despair, pain and misery and even the beasts roaming the place were moaning mostly in agony than in hunger and rage as I was used to.
Killing Logarius by this point was not particularly challenging and my talk with the Queen was more than a little enlightening. Oh while glad that I killed her warden, she was very high strung and evasive at the beginning hiding behind a veneer of royalty but by this point I was completely done with the bullshit and I needed answers so I acted.
A small use of PoD later and her helmet was erased from existence to her wonder. Then I threatened to do the same to her if she didn't answer every question I had. It was from her that I learned about Queen Yharnam, the Paleblood, Mergo and even the disgusting practices of the nobility of Cainhurst as well as the even more horrifying genocide commited by the Church.
Don't get me wrong, the Cainhurst nobility were not in any shape or form innocent and if it was only them that were killed I would have understood, not agreed with them but I would have accepted it. But to kill a whole fucking city of mostly innocent people just because of wounded pride was way beyond what I could even rationalize much less accept.
The Queen's blood given to me as a show of gratitude empowered me and awakened in me the ability to shape and control blood which while it sounds counterintuitive considering that our blood needed to be inside us in order to live, my formidable healing factor that had been supercharged by all the questionable fluids I have taken within me (it sounded less dirty in my head) made it a viable battle technique instead of a creative suicide attempt.
Leaving Cainhurst Castle, I finally had some targets of investigation.
I went to Bryngerwerth, talked to Willem and found myself face to face with an Eldritch God for the first time. Rom, the Vacuous Spider.
It was one of the hardest battles of my life not because of its battle prowess but because of its cry. Its words were not meant to be heard by us poor three dimensional beings and with every letter I felt my mind and soul strain and vibrate in protest all the while concepts and meanings bombarded my brain with abandon.
It was hard, the pain was excruciating but I managed to emerge victorious after many deaths.
You would think that after killing one of the entities responsible for the beasts that plagued humanity that things would have become better but nope. It seems I couldn't catch a break.
The moment I transported myself to Yharnam from the Dream after my fight, the Moon turned blood red and every beast went into frenzy. Everyone foolish enough to be out at that moment became a meal for the beasts.
I couldn't tarry any longer. This nightmare had to end.
I entered the Advent Plaza and killed the One Reborn, that nut job Micolash and even managed to kill Mergo's Wetnurse.
It was there that I found the second part of the Third Umbilical Cord. My powers once again expanded and I now had 65% of my magic unleashed. One more and I knew that I would be at 100% and stronger than ever.
Leaving Mergo's Loft I headed to the Cathedral Ward in search for clues and it was there that a moment of inattention landed me in the Hunter's Nightmare.
This dimension was a near identical imitation of Yharnam and opposite of the Hunter's Dream that gave (to everyone else but me) a feeling of peace and tranquility, it gave a never ending feeling of madness and despair. It affected me badly and I knew that if I stayed there for too long then I would be lost in my own negative emotions never to escape, so I run as fast as I could trying to find the source of this feeling.
For the Hunter's Dream the tranquility came from the Moon Presence so obviously I had to find and kill whichever God was in charge of this place.
I hunted with every smidgen of skill I had gained in the time since I walked through the accursed portal in Ashiks's office.
I killed countless Hunters and beasts, I killed Ludwic and acquired the Holy Moonlight Sword that contrary to its name it didn't produce holy energy but cosmic one so I could wield it and after I explored the Research Ward and I unfortunately had to kill the babe that was Lady Maria, I found myself in front of a fishing Hamlet.
The new area I found myself in was filled with traps and enemies but my swanky new weapon made short work of them. The 'Boss' fight not so much.
The screams of rage and anguish from the orphan of Kos brought my diminishing sanity to the brink and it was only the fact that my PoD was so effective that I managed to silence the poor creature before it was too late.
Consuming the last part of the Third Umbilical Cord restored my energies, healed my wounds and I could feel the shackles surrounding my powers diminishing until only a thread remained and I knew at that moment that the only way for me to be free was to deal with the fucker chilling on the Moon.
Talking a deep breath to steady myself, I used the lanterns to return to Yharnam and more specifically, Iosefka's Clinic. I knew the end of this mission was nigh so I wanted to say goodbye to the little girl I helped before I left this wretched place once and for all.
What I found inside there was the straw that broke the camel's back. Every person I had sent in this place for safety and most importantly, the little girl I came to meet had been turned into abomination by a bitch wearing the church's garbs.
At the beginning my mind couldn't register the sight before me, and then the guild came. It wasn't enough that she had lost both her parents in a single night and left alone in a Town of Horrors, my blunder and naivety in trusting the Iosefka pretender with her safety led her to a torturous end that to this day I can't forgive myself for.
After that every single thought and emotion ceased inside me and only rage remained. No, rage is not a good enough word to describe the extent of my emotional state back then. Wrath is the right word, all consuming, soul destroying, apoplectic Wrath. And my magic complied.
A 50 feet tall and 25 feet wide pillar of crimson destruction consumed Iosefka's Clinic and everything else in its radius leaving only a crimson winged avatar of destruction behind.
Taking to the air I flew above the Church's Headquarters and after supercharging a ball of PoD I let it go. The explosion was probably seen from miles away and when the dust settled when once was a massive complex dedicated to the Healing Church now only a gaping maw of a crater existed.
Satisfied for a moment, I jumped through the first available lantern I could find and landed inside the Dream and in front of the previously barricaded area of it, the Grand Manor that I spend so much time enhancing my weapons was burning merrily behind me and only a standing Gehrman with the Burial Blade in his hand between me and my goal.
[FLASHBACK]
Standing before the horrified face of my 'Teacher' I could only feel annoyance. There was someone I had to kill and this cockroach was obstructing me from my goal.
"Step aside mortal, there is a God in need of good ol' Death"
"I am afraid I cannot allow that Rias, you will have to get through m-" before he could finish his sentence a literal tsunami of Destruction consumed both him and everything in the same direction bringing complete deathly silence.
"Done!" I said monotonously, every hint of humanity I may have possessed completely absent.
Walking through the Gates (or what was left of them I suppose) I came face to face with Flora, The Moon Presence and the most hideous abomination I had ever gazed upon. It was black as night with a skeletal form and a 'head' that consisted of disgusting tentacles.
Even in my maddened state I could feel its desire to bind me like it had Gehrman in order to further its goal of killing and harvesting every other Great One it could find and consume their power. It only pissed me off more.
All this suffering, all this torment just because a self important little cunt wanted to ride a power high. Well, if this filthy little beast wanted to have a taste of true power I was happy to oblige. After all, my brother had made sure carve in the skulls of both Gods and Men how terrifying the Power of Destruction truly is. I had to make sure to further his great work to all those that didn't know, starting with Flora.
[END FLASHBACK]
I came to at some point later floating in a sea of white with snippets of what I did in my rage flashing through my head.
I could no longer sense the Moon Presence and for the first time since my first death I felt a measure of tranquility.
Instantly, the environment started changing. Below me hard ground appeared and above me a starlit moonless sky encompassed the rest of the world. Aurora Borealis in the distance.
Slowly, green lush grass appeared and from there came trees and flowers, followed by lakes and mountains creating an environment of peaceful nature untouched by the hands of man.
Directly below me and on top of the tallest mountain was a high-backed throne with the Holy Moonlight Sword resting on its ride side and the Burial Blade on its left.
Descending myself on top of the throne, I got comfortable and after gazing to my domain for a few moments, I felt my eyes starting to close, finally able to find some measure of peace.
I slept for a while.
.
.
.
.
.
Well, this is it for now guys. The next chapter will describe the next 1-3 worlds she travelled. Probably. See ya around!
LuluViBritania: Because if she had the PoD from the beggining then it would be a curbstomp instead of a challenge. Bloodborne on first glance is a horrifying world and the Great Ones are powerful but they have nothing on the sheer power bullshit of Highschool DxD.
Draco0905: No man, she was mostly joking around. Though she is proud of her power she won't suddenly turn into a Young Master from a bad Cultivation manga I assure you.
