Lordling Fen scrambled backward across the toxic ash covering the pavilion's floor, his opulent, silver-threaded robes completely ruined by the filth.
He explicitly did not care about the fabric; he was entirely consumed by the desperate need to put as much distance between himself and the Supreme Flesh-Crafter as humanly possible.
Having just secured the stabilization of his flawed Venom-Macaque and surrendered his rare Blood-Mending Leech, the young noble bowed so deeply his forehead scraped the stone.
"I offer my eternal subservience to your dark arts, Supreme Patriarch," Fen stammered, his voice vibrating with absolute, mortal dread.
"When my Macaque's core inevitably degrades from the stress of its new tier, I will return with triple the tribute! I swear upon my bloodline!"
In the Demonic Path, forced ascensions explicitly eroded a fiend's latent genetic potential, causing their overall grade to plummet.
