"Child? Demons have families?" asked Li, slightly confused. From what he knew of Elden World lore, demons were created, not born. They spawned out of primordial chaos, making them inherently destructive creatures.

"Not quite a child. Not in the human sense of the word. But in the sense that this personage became blind and all too forgiving, yes." Zagan's eyes flashed with fiery red tinged with equal parts anger and wistfulness.

"This personage has spent now seven centuries roaming this world, consuming mortal, monster, and demon alike. Countless souls have passed through him, and with them, all the emotions packed within. Hope. Despair. Rage. Happiness. Love. Hate. And yet, it was two and a half centuries ago that the fieriest soul of all was witnessed.

Demons are born from spawning pits that lie within the earth, festering and solidifying pure chaos. From birth, we are conditioned to seek more of the chaos, and as such, we feast upon each other as beings of chaos to grow stronger, but above all, we seek the chaos brewing within mortals, for nothing exists that is so nourishing.

Naturally, a demon spawned closest to En Arkennan, the Heart of Chaos, the source of all spawning pits, will be more powerful from birth. This personage was born directly from the heart when its tendrils could spread through the entire vastness of this world.

After the gods themselves defeated us and sequestered us to the West, the roots of the heart have receded, and successive generations of demons have grown weaker. More isolated. Demons spawned in the fringe lands close to human civilization, to the 'Hinterlands', as you call it, are even weaker.

Imps. Firehounds. Creatures not worth mentioning. Not worth devouring. Yet it was here, within a razed human village, that this personage encountered that soul. An imp leading many of its kind in desire to take over land and power.

Its desire was intense. Fueled by vengeance for its fallen and ambition for more, it held within its soul the embers of greedy desire that this personage took a liking to, thus the imp was taken in, guided, for soon enough, its misguided ambitions would be squashed under the might of adventurers."

"And this was two hundred and fifty years ago?" noted Li. "That would make this imp, the Burning One, quite young."

"Still a whelp, he is," said Zagan. "And yet, in some ways, that whelp has more wisdom than many. This personage took in the imp in the wake of the third invasion's failure, when the Elven hero wielding armor and weapon made for slaying demons from realm unknown defeated us.

This personage was herald of greed then as well, and yet, knew that power to reach the title of Burning One was beyond his potential. Thus, he sought another with more potential, a 'child' if you so desire to call it so, to nurture into the next Burning One to bring demonkind victory."

"Looks like you were successful overall. Your imp is now the burning one, and I should say is far more dangerous than any that came before it," said Li.

Zagan paused to contemplate Li's words. "Yes. This personage has raised the mightiest Burning One yet, but there is no pride. Only regret.

That insatiable ambition in that imp's soul never faltered, growing only brighter and stronger as it evolved from imp to demon mage, from demon mage, to archdemon, from archdemon to Dark Archon.

With that ambition came a willingness to sacrifice everything. All tradition. All lessons this personage taught. From the beginning, the whelp was never attuned with the primal ways of our kind. Spawned weak and isolated from the heart, its mind was far more open.

It accumulated power slowly compared to its stronger kin, but it compensated in other ways. It sought magics of all kinds. Disguised itself as mortal and tricked beings all across the world for knowledge and power. With that knowledge came tactics, spells, and ways foreign to demonkin, and it used them to devour demons that seemed far stronger than he.

This personage did not approve. Power should be consumed with one's own might. The rite of devouring should not be tainted by petty mortal tactics meant for the weak to muster themselves against those naturally mightier than them. And yet, this personage could not truly reprimand the whelp, for then a century of nurturing and potential would have gone to waste.

Until that is, during the fourth Rite of the Swarm one hundred fifty years past, a tipping point was reached. The whelp had grown mighty enough to join the upper echelons of demonkind, and it served directly under Asmodai, the Burning One of the time.

Yet as the swarm moved, the whelp only faced frustration. Anger at the old ways of sending hordes of lesser demons to their deaths for no tactical benefit. Anger that no Heralds would listen to it, even ones more free minded such as Gluttony and Lust.

And when Asmodai insisted upon dueling the Shining Hero for the right to devour the mortal, it was the whelp that stood against the decision, believing it foolish that a general should sacrifice himself when siege and plague tactics would weather down the mortals over the years.

With Asmodai's defeat and the dissolution of the Swarm, the whelp exiled itself, believing the old ways impossible to mend. This personage could not have imagined that half a century later, the whelp would return powerful beyond measure having attuned itself with the power of the Abyss, demanding to call upon the Rite of the Swarm once more."

"A young upstart, eh?" said Old Thane. "I imagine there was much resistance against his call to arms."

"Much," nodded Zagan. "The whelp took to traditional rites. It challenged all seven heralds to prove its supremacy, and it did, even when we used our Herald Shards against him. At that point, this personage, bound by tradition, could not object. The whelp had gained the privilege to call for the Rite of the Swarm, and it did, and with that authority, began to corrupt my kind with the ways of the Deep, seducing all hordes but mine own, Wrath and Pride's, and this personage served as its herald until he saw reason to break from his accursed servitude through you, Great One."

Zagan gave a little bow of his canid head to Li.

"Very interesting," said Li. He knew that the demons of this world essentially followed the lore of Elden World. Beings of primordial chaos that feasted on the chaotic emotions and energies around them. They formed a fighting society where they devoured each other to get stronger and reach their peaks, and the strongest among them could call upon a mass invasion of mortal lands.

The heralds, as they were called, were the seven strongest demons under the demon lord, or Burning One as it was called here, and they each had a shard of chaos within them that represented a crystallization one of the seven follies of mortals. Each herald thus had an unique and formidable power depending on their shard.

If this current Burning One could best seven heralds, then it was definitely in the realm of a level 100 monster. That alone was not that impressive. The Darkbeast Hand could easily squash a level 100 monster with its boss tier stats. Whether this Burning One had other special aspects to it like boss tier stats or a broken boss ability would determine if it was going to be a legitimate threat or not.

But most of all, what did worry Li was the fact that its power was not its own. It had gotten them from something beyond itself.

"In the end, it all comes down to where the Burning One got his strength, because evidently, it is not entirely his. Tell me, Zagan, about the Abyss."