Just how high the sky stretched, Orsaga didn't know.
But that didn't stop him from trying.
The result was simple: failure.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't reach the top. The higher he flew, the more oppressive the pressure became, as if an invisible hand were trying to drag him back to the ground.
Powered by mana, his flight could even reach supersonic speeds—just the turbulence from his movements alone could shred flesh and bone. Yet after flying skyward at full speed for more than ten minutes, he'd clearly reached his limit. Beyond that point, he simply couldn't ascend any further.
So he shifted his focus and began honing his aerial combat skills in the open sky, using the creatures he encountered as practice dummies.
While it seemed like there were fewer creatures in the sky compared to the ground, the truth was quite the opposite. The air was much more dynamic—look up and you'd see all kinds of beings darting about. In fact, the density of life here surpassed that of the forest below.
With an abundance of targets, more and more spells and techniques were tested in his hands.
And the essentials of aerial combat? He picked them up at an astonishing pace.
When night fell once more, Orsaga—now bearing a few new wounds—gently descended to the peak of a mountain.
From high above, he gazed down at the vast forest below. Ever since his advancement to a Lesser Demon, his vision had been greatly enhanced. He could now see ants hundreds of meters away, and examine the ecosystem of the Demonbone Forest in incredible detail.
His strength today was incomparable to when he had first entered this place. Now, he no longer needed to worry about trivial threats—his power had reached the top of the food chain here.
There was no one he feared meeting. No one he wasn't confident he could fight toe-to-toe.
Yet, he still hadn't quite reached the final objective he had set for himself in the Demonbone Forest.
That goal would determine whether, in the future, he would feast on meat—or sip on watery porridge—in other regions of the Abyss.
Being a Lesser Demon wasn't enough to give him any sense of security.
At best, he had just barely graduated from being mobile emergency rations.
And now, the innate power buried within him—Abyssal Contract—was beginning to stir for the first time.
An unknown force tugged at his consciousness, pulling him into a realm bathed in halos of flickering light. The radiance varied in intensity, like scattered starlight—flickering, shifting, drifting without order.
Some glowed bright. Others barely shimmered.
Each point of light represented an external summoning ritual, performed by beings trying to summon creatures from the Abyss. The intensity of the glow corresponded to the value of the offerings they had sacrificed.
This space was divided by strength—creatures of different ranks were drawn to different areas.
In the region Orsaga occupied, although the entities were merely mental projections and their true forms couldn't be seen, he could still vaguely sense their relative power.
A tiny few were stronger than him. Most were weaker.
The number of light points was beyond counting. New ones appeared every moment, while others blinked out—just like stars in the sky.
Orsaga needed to pick one that suited him.
These lights came in two colors. White represented ordinary summoning rituals: the summoner offers sacrifices, and the demon fulfills their request. Red indicated summoning performed by high-ranking demons—at least Greater Demons—using their innate ability, Demonic Summoning, to call upon lower-ranking demons. This typically meant a cross-plane invasion was already underway, and the fighting had escalated to the point that even demons had stopped being greedy loners.
Passing through a red light usually required obeying the greater demon's orders to some degree—and handing over a share of any captured souls.
It didn't sound like a great deal.
But once a war had broken out openly, it also meant that many of the usual obstacles to invasion had already been cleared. You could just march in with the army, kill your way through, and take your rewards. If you won, great; if you lost, you died on the spot—no need to overthink it.
Truthfully, that suited a lot of demons just fine.
So even though joining the red points meant becoming someone's grunt and getting your pay docked, plenty of demons still chose that route.
But Orsaga wasn't interested in being someone else's lackey. So he ignored all the red points and focused on the white zone.
He didn't immediately choose the brightest lights, either. Instead, he looked for one that was just right—not too strong, not too weak.
After spending some time making his selection, Orsaga used his superior strength to shove aside several competitors and barged straight into the chosen light.
---
In that instant—
Orsaga's body, deep within the Abyss, was pulled by its power toward the summoning.
Amid the murky glow of the teleportation tunnel, he heard a prayer to the Abyss—a chant offered by the summoner on the other side, praising its name from another world.
He knew that if he moved forward just a bit more, he would cross into the foreign plane.
But he didn't.
Instead, he stopped midway through the portal.
With a mere thought, Orsaga activated the Dimensional Projection – Simulacrum, a special ability he had evolved when he became a Lesser Demon.
A minuscule fragment of his soul tore away, forming an avatar of his true form that appeared on the other side of the ritual.
[Ten seconds...]
That was how long the teleportation tunnel would last.
If he didn't fully cross over within that time, he would lose the summoning circle's coordinates and be forcibly ejected back to the Abyss.
---
In the dead of night, on a barren plain—
A massive bonfire illuminated the dilapidated remains of an old structure.
This had once been one of the kingdom's most notorious prisons, abandoned after a new facility was built elsewhere. It hadn't been maintained for years, and the atmosphere now was thick with death.
The blood of beasts and men had been blended with reagents and used to draw magical runes etched into the ground.
The final design—a massive circular magic formation with a six-pointed star at its center—covered nearly half a football field. At its heart was a heap of corpses, dozens of muscular men pulled directly from the royal death row. Every one of them had been well-fed and kept in peak condition.
All had been killed by wounds to the throat, and their blood was still fresh—clearly, they hadn't been dead long.
Dozens of black-robed cultists, their bodies fully shrouded, stood encircling the ritual. At their center stood a bald, middle-aged man, chanting incantations.
Nearby, a mounted force of nearly two hundred soldiers watched from a distance. Every one of them sat tall atop a fine-blooded warhorse, clad in gleaming, well-maintained light armor and armed with expensive knight's swords. Judging from their uniforms and discipline, they were clearly an elite knight unit.
"Your Highness, I think these cultists are completely insane," murmured Baron Duren Abber, glancing at the bizarre ritual with barely concealed disgust. "We'd be better off appealing to the Principality of Lithmere for military aid."
Prince Jaemar stared at the still-dormant magic formation, torn with hesitation.
After a moment of silence, he finally shook his head. Just as the baron dropped his head in disappointment, the prince spoke.
"Give them twenty more minutes. If nothing happens by then, kill them all. We'll tell the Church we purged a group of heretics—including the wanted warlock Tharion Vale."
Duren's heart settled. As both a noble and a knight, he had never had patience for such blasphemous sorcery. That he had tolerated this ritual at all was only because of loyalty to his prince. Truthfully, he had been itching to strike them down since the moment they arrived.
Now that Prince Jaemar had spoken, the baron—who had never believed Tharion Vale could summon any real power to turn the tide—began subtly stretching his limbs, ready to lead the charge the moment time ran out.
Off in the distance, Tharion seemed to sense the murderous intent behind him. Cold sweat formed on his brow.
"Damn it! How could this fail?!"
More than a decade ago, when he was still a penniless commoner, he had stumbled across an ancient corpse in a ruined cave near his hometown. There, he had found a grimoire—at least several centuries old, dating back to the Church's great purge. It was filled with forbidden knowledge, some powerful, some bizarre, all utterly captivating.
Though he had missed the ideal age to begin formal magical training, Tharion had a natural talent for spellcraft. Driven by obsession, he poured years of effort into studying the tome, eventually becoming a formidable warlock.
Though the Church had eventually picked up his trail—due to a few sloppy mistakes—he had managed to elude capture and lived freely ever since.
Recently, he heard of the war raging between the Principality of Mardain and the Principality of Yharnis, and he came with his cult to scavenge the battlefield for corpses for his research.
But after a chance encounter with Mardain's crown Prince, things had taken an unexpected turn.
To his surprise, the prince was actually looking to use arcane rituals to reverse Marton's defeat.
A method to turn the tide?
Well… there actually was one in that grimoire. The ritual was extremely complex and required numerous rare materials, many of which he had been unable to obtain even after years of searching.
But what if... what if he let them collect the materials, and then used the ritual to save the kingdom? Afterward, he could reinvent himself, earn a noble title, and live in luxury...
Once that thought took root, it could not be stopped.
______
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