Demon Evolution System

Chapter 1

The Outlands never let you forget where you were.

The air tasted wrong—metallic, bitter, threaded with a heat that clung to the lungs no matter how shallow you breathed.

Miles' arms ached, his shoulders screamed, and every step made the leather straps of the supply bags bite deeper into his skin. He adjusted the straps biting into his shoulders and kept walking.

The pack on his back was heavier now, stuffed with butchered demonic beast parts—claws, hides, bone plates—and three sealed canisters of raw mana crystals harvested from the beasts they’d killed earlier. The crystals hummed softly against his spine, their unstable energy leaking heat through the insulation. A porter’s job wasn’t glamorous. It was survival through endurance. Carry what others didn’t want to. Bleed quietly if necessary.

Ahead of him, the raid team moved with practiced ease. Five Awakeners in combat gear, their auras brushing the corrupted air aside as they advanced. Ryan, the group leader walked at the front, broad-shouldered, brown hair tied back, sword resting casually on his shoulder as if the Outlands were nothing more than an inconvenience.

Behind him were Lena with her twin daggers, Cole carrying a heavy shield etched with runes, and the twins—Jax, a long-range specialist and Jace the mage, who joked even while scanning for threats.

Miles was the sixth and he was just the porter.

They didn’t slow down. They never did. Yet Miles was struggling to keep his pace with them for he knew that lagging behind was an invitation for the lurking demonic beast to mark him as the weakest target.

The vast desolate land which was in ruins and carried the strong stench of danger stretched ahead in broken waves of corrupted earth. Cracked stone. Blackened soil that refused to grow anything but thorned weeds twisted with demonic residue , several collapsed buildings .

Once, this had been a residential district and human settlement. Miles could still see it if he tried hard enough—the outlines of streets swallowed by ash, the skeletons of apartment blocks warped by demonic heat, traffic lights frozen mid-cycle as if the city itself had died mid-breath. Now the land pulsed faintly with corrupted mana, the air tasting metallic and wrong, thick enough that even breathing felt like work.

It has been twenty years since the first few dimensional cracks appeared in various locations on earth. These cracks were direct passage to the demonic realm and monsters such as goblins, orcs, kobloids, dragons and other creatures that were originally thought to be just a myth or fantasy imagination began to pour out of these gates, roaming the planet and creating havoc on mankind.

Thousands of people lost their lives and the number of deaths would have continued to rise and humanity would have lost hope of survival if the awakeners hadn't appeared.

When the dimensional gates appeared, all living things were exposed to mana. However, only a few special humans with potential could control this mana which also granted them special abilities.

The awakeners fought against these monsters for the survival of the planet and won. Some of the cracks were closed but the war didn't end as more crack kept reappearing

Humanity had built a new civilization and abandoned cities that were already lost.. Consequently, more humans awakened special powers to kill these monsters who decided to continue raiding these dimensional cracks before another monster outbreak which could be devastating for mankind.

As a result, hunting the roaming monsters in the abandoned cities now referred to as the outlands and raiding gates became the most lucrative profession of awakeners.

Even years after the first Cracks tore the world open, the land hadn’t healed.

“Hey, Pipsqueak! You are moving at a snail’s pace again?” Ryan’s voice cut through the wind like a whip. His brown hair stuck to his forehead in sweat, and his amber eyes gleamed with a mixture of irritation “Are you planning to fossilize back there?” Ryan drawled. “Or are you just enjoying the view?”

Miles adjusted his grip on the straps, muscles trembling as the mana crystals inside the bags clinked faintly. He kept his gaze forward. Kept his breathing even. “I’m moving,” he said and hurried his pace struggling to catch up with the group walking ahead of him.

Ryan snorted. “You call that moving? He stepped his boots crunching on corrupted gravel. “If you keep slowing us down, I swear I’ll—” He didn’t finish the sentence.

He didn’t need to. The cruel and wicked smirk on his face did the work for him.

Miles gritted his teeth, forcing his arms to lift the heavy bag of mana crystals collected from the last skirmish. His knuckles whitened around the straps. “I’ve got it,” he muttered, not looking up.

Ryan snorted. “Sure you do. Just don't make me say it again.”

A couple of the other members of the group snickered.

Miles felt their eyes on him—measuring, amused, detached. Spectators to a routine they’d seen too many times to bother intervening. He was already used to this kind of treatment all the time from awakeners.

Suddenly Miles' boot slammed into a protruding rock. The impact sent a jolt through the ground and straight up Miles’ arms. One of the bags slipped and mana Crystals spilled. Sharp, glowing fragments scattered across the dirt, their soft blue light stark against the blackened soil.

Miles’ breath hitched once. He dropped to one knee, hands flying, fingers numb as he scooped the jagged stones back into the bag. Each crystal pulsed faintly with condensed mana—valuable, fragile, worth more than his life to the people around him.

The commotion attracted the attention of Ryan and other members of the group.

Instantly,Ryan's face twitched in a furious expression and he marched towards Miles and kicked his chest, not hard enough to break anything. Just enough to remind him.

“You clumsy bastard,” he spat, crouching just enough to loom into Miles’ space. “You know how much these are worth?”

Miles didn’t answer as he was coughing in pain as a result of Ryan's attack.

Ryan hissed and grabbed Miles' hair “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

“Ugrh—” Miles groaned in pain.

"Shut the hell up, you useless trash. You have just one simple job….”Ryan paused for a few seconds to glance at the crystal and he shifted his gaze back to Miles before repeating his previous remark with a disgruntled look on his face..''Just one simple job and yet you can't carry it out properly. Now we're going to waste more time because of your stupidity and clumsiness so you better pick up all those damn crystals or I'll make you suffer more pain than you are experiencing now." Ryan declared in a determined tone as he glared menacingly at Miles as he spoke.

Miles glared back at Ryan but he was too weak to fight back so he just eventually succumbed.