Becoming the Dark Lord

Chapter 551: The Trickster Goddess

Luke found himself in the middle of a bustling city, right in the heart of what could only be described as a drinking festival.

"Who's next?!" Artemis shouted.

The crowd around her roared, mugs raised high, while her latest opponent cursed under his breath. She was obliterating everyone in the drinking competition.

That damn woman… I knew it. She tricked me. This isn't training at all.

No one here knew Artemis was a goddess. She blended in effortlessly, pretending to be just another wild troublemaker enjoying the festival. When the competition ended, she plopped down next to Luke, let out a monumental burp, and slammed her empty mug on the counter.

"Man, that was great. We've drunk half the tavern dry. We're almost done with my The Hangover checklist."

She signaled for more alcohol.

Luke scanned the area. People of every imaginable race packed the tables, from lizardfolk and dwarves to animal-featured humanoids and even goblins.

"This society is…" he murmured.

"Pretty diverse, yeah," she replied and pointed casually. "That over there is a half-elf woman. Gods, I love half-elves."

Before he could comment, Artemis was already on her feet, sauntering toward a waitress. She leaned against the wall, posture lazy but eyes sharp.

"Hey, milady," she said smoothly.

"H-hello. Do you want to order something?"

"I definitely do… and what about you? How about spending the night with me?" Artemis asked.

"I… sorry, I prefer men."

"So do I," Artemis answered without missing a beat. "See that guy right there? How about the two of us have some fun with him?"

Luke stood up immediately and grabbed her arm.

"Hey, hey, hey, Luke, you're moving too fast," she said as if he were the one causing trouble.

"Are you stupid?" he hissed.

"I was trying to set up a fun night for both of us."

"We've been kicked out of two taverns because of this!"

"How is it my fault the waitresses were pretty? And on top of that, that one was a half-elf, totally our type."

Moments later they were outside.

"You're wasting my time," Luke said. "Event Fifty-One is getting closer, and something tells me I need to be ready."

"Fine, party-pooper. Let's go. The labyrinth is near a nature reserve."

He exhaled sharply. "Hard to believe the first elf I ever met in my life was you."

"Not even a little bit in love with me?" she teased.

"Let's just get to the damn labyrinth."

***

They arrived at an enormous structure woven from stone and enchanted ivy. It had taken half a day of walking to reach it. Military guards surrounded the perimeter, keeping civilians far away.

"The royal family on this planet serves under us, so we don't need permission to enter any restricted areas," Artemis said. "And if they refuse, we kill them." She laughed.

"What exactly is your job in the Order, chatterbox?"

"I'm an advisor, man. Oldest member among the current Generals." She lifted her chin, proud. "A prisoner who became a counselor. See? Very wise."

"Prisoner?"

"Well, when a conqueror takes over something, you know how it is. Sometimes they don't want to waste time ruling every city, kingdom, planet or universe themselves. So they put someone trustworthy in charge. Or someone they can guarantee won't betray them. Sometimes they take a child from the ruling family and raise them as a VIP hostage in their Order. Lots of methods."

"You're… a VIP hostage?"

"A version of it, yeah. And the most VIP of them all," she said.

But Artemis's tone shifted, the humor fading. She clearly had no intention of digging deeper into that subject.

They stepped into the labyrinth.

"This body of mine has been adjusted to match your exact power level," Artemis said. "So if we die, it's your fault, buddy."

Water reached up to their knees, cold and murky. Luke squinted down the flooded corridor.

"So my training already started?"

"Of course. Lead us to the end. There's something valuable waiting there."

Luke took point. "Let's go right."

He remembered reading once that the simplest way to beat a maze was to pick a wall and never leave it.

"Help! Someone help me!" a voice cried after a few minutes of walking.

A woman stumbled into view at the next turn. "He's coming to kill me! Please—"

Luke threw a knife, and it sank into her face mid-plea.

[You have slain a Labyrinth Prisoner – Lvl 55]

Her body crumpled backward, dissolving into a gray humanoid creature, naked and featureless.

"A type of shapeshifter," Artemis noted beside him. "How did you know?"

"I didn't. But my eye saw her mana signature. Even when she looked human, the silhouette underneath was… wrong."

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

That was one of the powers of the Eye of Sariel.

[Mana Sensitivity]: The eye grants the ability to perceive mana in its pure state, enhancing every skill related to energy analysis and detection.

"That's why entry here is forbidden," Artemis said. "They're bound to this labyrinth and can only leave if someone 'invites' them out."

They turned another corner. A monster waited there. Luke threw a knife. The creature dodged.

[Telekinetic Pull activated]

[Telekinetic Impulse activated]

The knife yanked backward in an arc and stabbed it from behind.

[You have slain a Labyrinth Prisoner – Lvl 55]

"Oh, another thing," Artemis added casually, studying her nails. "They all share one mind. They learn fast. It's a single entity trapped here. Like a virus. Cursed to protect the center of the maze."

***

A group of people sat around a camp in the forest. Luke watched from the bushes. He climbed a tree and conjured several throwing knives. Using [Weak Telekinesis], he made them float around him. He started throwing knives, hitting people. When three of them went down, the others ran for their weapons.

"He's here!" an old woman shouted. She raised a crossbow and fired. The bolt exploded in a flash of blinding light.

Luke sprinted aside as arrows whistled past. He slashed through the light with his kukris and spun, cutting the old woman open. She fell and transformed into a monster before hitting the ground.

More residents twisted into their true forms, creatures with four arms. Two raised their hands, forming a sonic barrier that blasted toward him while the others spread out.

Luke aimed his hand at the ground.

[Teleportation Circle II activated]

[Pentagram Teleport activated]

He stepped, vanished, and reappeared behind them in the forest. Heads rolled as he cut through them one by one. When the last body dropped, he walked between the corpses. A throwing knife whistled toward him. He dodged at the last moment. More appeared. A whole group stepped out.

"You people just don't stop," Luke muttered.

"We are done pretending," said the largest one. "You have destroyed us too many times. You will be exterminated."

"Took you long enough to make things interesting."

They shifted into his form, each holding kukris.

"Oh, now that's interesting."

"We've learned much about your style," one Luke said.

They charged. Luke clashed with his own mirrored movements and realized… they were copying him perfectly.

"Are your kukris made of metal, or are they some crazy mana construct?" he asked, driving a kukri into his own clone's chest as it transformed into a monster. Luke activated [Demonic Predator Hands] and crushed its face.

"If you won't talk…"

He pushed forward, cutting them down, but they kept adapting. While sprinting, he sheathed his kukris and swapped to his bow. Arrows pierced through the charging copies.

"Bastard!" one snarled.

"He switched weapons!" another shouted.

"I cheat against myself," Luke said with a grin as he loosed three more arrows in rapid succession.

He fired an [Acid Blood Arrow], then lunged in with his kukris, cutting down whatever stumbled out of the poisonous haze. The largest of the creatures came at him again, rushing from behind. Luke caught its silhouette in the corner of his vision and raised his blade just in time. The two of them pressed against each other, steel grinding, until the monster shed its borrowed shape once more.

It opened its jaws wide and let out a piercing, high-pitched shriek.

"Why aren't you affected?!" it screeched.

"Oh, that was supposed to be some kind of psychic panic attack? Sorry. Was I meant to be scared?" Luke asked.

The creature snarled, furious, and charged again.

They exchanged a flurry of blows. Its claws ripped the air where his face had been a heartbeat earlier. Luke pivoted and drove a kick into its chest, sending it crashing into a cluster of trees. He didn't give it a chance to recover. He sprinted after it and leapt. The monster threw up an arm to block, and that arm flew off cleanly. It staggered back and shifted again, scrambling into yet another stolen form, one with a matching limb.

"You're not getting away from me," Luke muttered, firing shadow threads as he darted through the undergrowth. He landed squarely on top of the creature.

They rolled across the mud, and when they rose, they clashed again. The shapeshifter was back in its original form, but now the missing limb had been replaced with a distinctly human arm.

Luke slammed a kukri into its abdomen, sending it tumbling against a tree trunk.

"Next time, send a stronger version," he said, and severed its head cleanly.

Three days in this place, and he was finally learning. Not just how to push the power in his eye without breaking himself, but how to deal with something that adapted to him with every strike. He sprinted toward the tallest tree in the ruined village, its trunk thick and ancient, and began to climb. At the top, surrounded by the whisper of wind through dead branches, he focused every ounce of attention into his eye.

[Eye of Sariel (Unique)]

Description: They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. This one is a shattered fragment of it. The Eye of Sariel carries the wounded remnant of a being that was once an archangel of immense power. Over time, its greatness crumbled, reducing it to a thief of bodies, desperate to continue existing yet incapable of understanding its own purpose.

Instead of guiding the lesser beings back to their home, Sariel chose to walk among them, taking what was never his. What he failed to foresee was that among those lesser beings existed something cunning, patient, and malevolent.

A demon.

This eye is all that remains. Not redemption, only echoes.

Enchantments:

[Sariel's Identify (Unique)]: Sariel possessed an absolute gift of analysis, capable of seeing souls, systems, and hidden truths. The fragment preserved within this eye, though weakened, allows the user to analyze items and reveal deep information. However, the quality and depth of the analysis vary according to the complexity of the target, reflecting what remains of Sariel's true power.

[Rank Skill Devourer (Unique)]: Even reduced to a fragment, the eye retains a trace of Sariel's ancient hunger for knowledge and power. It can devour a Rank skill, absorbing its essence and claiming that power as its own.

Rank Skill Slot: [Echoes of Death (Rank F)], [Rank Slot Locked]

Requirement: SoulBound.

Secondary Skills: [Sensitivity to Mana], [Accelerated Regeneration], [Mana Recovery], [360-Degree Vision], [Long-Distance Sight], [Mythic Immunity: Blindness], [Mythic Immunity: Charm], [Mythic Immunity: Hypnosis], [Mythic Immunity: Intimidation], [Mythic Immunity: Panic], [Temporal Resistance], [Archangel's Eye]

The first skill, [Mana Sensitivity], was the one he was still learning to control. It pressed on his mind whenever he used it. With his left eye, the world looked normal. With his right, everything exploded into color, white, blue, green. Mana filled the air in shifting currents and hues, a second reality laid over the first.

[Accelerated Regeneration]: Your body heals at an enhanced rate, scaling with your rank.

[Mana Recovery]: Your natural mana regeneration increases by 25%.

Those two alone pushed him further into "superhuman" territory. He'd tested the regeneration already. Even bone healed faster than what Rank E should allow. Mana recovery was a blessing too, especially with how much [Shadow Mana Explosion] drained.

[360-Degree Vision]: Your eye projects full circular perception, allowing you to see everything around you in all directions.

Simple on paper. Horrible to use constantly. The headache came almost instantly, but in a fight it was priceless, especially paired with his [Demonic Perception].

[Long-Distance Sight]: You can focus your sight across vast distances, drastically increasing visual range. Maximum distance scales with the Perception attribute.

It sounded straightforward, yet turned out to be terrifyingly powerful. Luke could spot a bird barely visible against the sky and see its feathers in perfect detail. The right eye was essentially a high-definition zoom lens. Compared to his normal left eye, it felt like switching from a grainy HD screen to an ultra-sharp 8K display. The clarity was almost unnatural.

But it came with a cost. Using that vision for too long hammered at his skull. He learned to toggle other skills off to focus on one, but even then the mismatch was brutal. One eye zooming across miles while the other saw only the nearby corridor, it messed with depth, instinct, everything. Anyone else might have gone insane trying to process both at once. Luke already understood madness though, and he was learning to ride that chaos. It was like having a camera built into his skull, able to zoom at will, a personal telescope grafted to his thoughts.

[Mythic Immunity: Blindness]: The eye sees even in absolute darkness. You cannot be blinded.

[Mythic Immunity: Charm]: Charm effects no longer influence you, unless divine in origin.

[Mythic Immunity: Hypnosis]: Hypnotic skills no longer affect you, unless divine in origin.

[Mythic Immunity: Intimidation]: You are immune to intimidation effects, unless divine.

[Mythic Immunity: Panic]: Panic effects no longer influence you, unless divine.

Each one had its own terrifying utility, and Luke suspected that [Mythic Immunity: Panic] was the only reason he hadn't lost his mind with the overload of visual data.

And then there were the last two, easily the most powerful of all.