“I’m not quite sure how I should be feeling right now,” Nick muttered, burning the letter to a crisp with a [Spark].

  He’d known Lasazar had a sharp mind and that he’d grasped quite a lot about his true nature over the course of their sessions. It wasn’t like much could be hidden when you were fighting for your life against otherworldly horrors.

  But he thought he’d been subtle enough in his intentions not to make it so obvious that he'd actually end up back here, summoning demons despite promising not to do so.

  “Why would he make me swear I wouldn’t, then?” he asked aloud, but no answer was forthcoming.

  The simple answer was that he’d come to trust Nick and believed he wouldn’t misuse the power he’d been given, but in that case, he could have left him more instructions, a lesson plan, or anything.

  Instead, what he was left with was an Irvinic circle, already primed to summon demons if he just fueled it.

  “Then there's the fact that this is technically a public space. What would have happened if someone else had walked in before me?”

  He shook his head. He doubted Lasazar would be so careless. There were probably hidden failsafes he couldn’t sense through the dimensional shearing all around him. In fact, it was possible that the room he was currently in wasn’t even the one anyone else would enter, given how tightly pressed the dimensions were here.

  With a sigh, he decided to finally put the matter to rest. When he saw Lasazar next, he’d ask, but until then, he’d have only speculation.

  Much more urgent was the matter of setting up his ritual, so he checked the circle engraved in the floor, using [Empyrean Intuition] to understand how it anchored in reality and how it might tear it apart.

  All those details would need to be considered during the subsequent forging process, as they left their mark even after the tear was closed, not least because the demon he would summon was very likely to fight him until the last breath rather than surrender and let itself be sacrificed.

  For a moment, Nick was struck by the realization that he was doing things the opposite way most people normally did. He was summoning demons, sure, but his goal was to use them as fuel to create something, whereas cultists usually sacrificed valuable items or lives to summon demons.

  He snorted, then chuckled before refocusing. Crouching to examine each of the runes, he dragged his fingers across the incisions in the marble, letting a whisper of mana seep out.

  Nothing happened, but that was expected. Irvinic runes required a lot of intent, and just being around mana wouldn't be enough to activate them.

  Still, he kept checking for leaks or traps. Not that he believed Lasazar would leave such things behind, since he had much better chances to get him killed during their lessons, but while he suspected the room was still in perfect condition since he last saw it, he didn’t want to tempt fate.

  This would be an ideal moment for Hone to sabotage me. If he knew what I’m about to do, he could have corrupted the circle, and I’d be at the mercy of whatever horror that called. And he would never be blamed personally, unlike what happened with poor Osmod.

  Of course, that would require knowing what he was doing with Lasazar, which he doubted was that widespread. But being paranoid never hurt anyone, so he kept checking any possible failure point.

  And not just because of potential sabotage. I still remember what almost went wrong during the early summoning sessions. A much larger demon nearly came through, and it was only because it lost interest, since the ritual was offering little power, that I didn’t have to fight such a creature.

  While some might argue that his reckless actions were so unnecessary that taking a few minutes to double-check his work wouldn't significantly affect his chances of survival, Nick was a seasoned expert in rituals, especially darker ones, and knew that the devil was in the details.

  “Heh,” he chuckled at the unintended pun, before standing back up. The circle was as perfect as possible and seemed quite receptive to serving as the centerpiece of another ritual, given the stability it conferred by the irvinic language.

  The actual sequence, once he finished setting the secondary and tertiary circles and placed all the ingredients where they should be, was to tear the fabric of reality open, let a demon through, then overwhelm it with Worldcraft and force it to wield all its corruptive power against the orichalcum.

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  That would allow him to jumpstart the melting process, which he would accomplish by pouring immense amounts of lightning mana into it. Then, the various ingredients would be added one by one, using the demonic corruption to break them down enough for the orichalcum to be able to fuse the different powers together, until finally, he’d have achieved a homogeneous compound, which he could craft into his preferred focus.

  A wand had been his initial goal, as he’d found casting with the wyvern one quick and easy, but it was more of a specialized tool. The one he was about to forge, however, would be a powerful weapon capable of tearing through the layers of reality as easily as it could channel the World’s power.

  “In a sense, it would serve as a moving nexus, though tiny in comparison to the Tower.” The symbolic significance of crafting such a thing at its very base would also grow if he modeled it after the Tower, potentially giving it natural spatial qualities without him having to waste more time searching for the right relics.

  Overall, his plan was flexible enough to cover most scenarios, yet reliable enough to guarantee the same final outcome.

  The only problem I foresee is that the demon’s presence will not only affect what I want it to, but also be spread evenly throughout every piece of magic in the room, which means the secondary circles could be damaged.

  Worldcraft was a powerful art and would surely be enough to shield anything he wanted, but that would come at the cost of leaving himself vulnerable, which he wasn’t willing to risk given the dangers. No, he needed to strengthen all the layers of the ritual enough to resist the demonic corruption, and to do that, he had only one option.

  Taking a deep breath, Nick pulled out the tattooing needle and, without hesitation, jabbed it into his own hand.

  He grunted, mainly because the emotional buildup crusted on it felt oily and disgusting when touched, and he slowly released his breath before starting to draw the sweeping lines he had devised for the rituals involving containment of the energies and the actual forging.

  He had to repeat the same process three more times before he was actually finished painting, as his natural healing ability was now fast enough to form a scab over such a wound within fifteen minutes.

  But in the end, he stood triumphant over a transformed room. Almost the entire floor was covered in red designs, a combination of anchoring runes where the relics would be placed, connecting lines made of finely woven thin filaments, all empowered by spiritual mana of various kinds to enhance their durability against a demonic attack. Additionally, the overall structure gained conceptual weight by invoking the Tower itself as an anchor, a mirror, and a goal.

  It was possible that relying heavily on its metaphysical presence would cause Nick to be noticed by the wards, and therefore the Tower Master, but that would only happen if any of the three extremely complex rituals went wrong.

  Admittedly, that was a real possibility, but it wasn't one he feared after coming this far. If I have messed things up enough to draw attention, I’ll face much bigger problems, especially since that would mean the containment wards are also wrong. The demon would get me before Bluetear.

  As the final touch, he stepped back into the inner circle, the one meant to summon the demon, and placed something he knew would lure out a fairly powerful one.

  It was the oily, blackened brick he had confiscated from the two saboteurs who had tried to infiltrate his family’s new manor in Floria.

  To them, it was just a demonic artifact capable of weakening any wards the Crowleys placed, essentially stripping away the safety an ancestral home should provide. To him, it was the perfect beacon to summon an actual demon.

  He had briefly considered adding it to the relics that composed the ritual, mainly to temper the excess of divine power, but he ultimately decided against it. He was already introducing demonic energies into the entire process from one source, and adding another could risk creating an actual demonic artifact. Such a thing, while powerful, would likely lead to his exile at best and exorcism at worst.

  There are far too many priests around to risk going about with a tainted focus.

  Retrieving the brick from the iron ring took only a moment, and he let it drop to the ground in the middle of the circle, not even wanting to touch it.

  He almost expected a pulse to echo out and a Greater Demon to cackle through, explaining that he’d fallen for their grand plan, but nothing of the sort happened.

  The ritual room was quiet and still, and the only living thing inside was Nick. The fate of his focus, and his own, depended entirely on his actions.

  Without hesitating any longer, he clapped his hands together and slammed them into the circle, pouring a large amount of mana into it.

  An unholy crimson light, unnatural in its hue, shone from the floor as the Irvinic runes activated, responding to his desire and piercing through the fabric of reality to reach into the Grand Abyss for any taker of the prize he offered.

  Nick clenched his teeth as a cold feeling of wrongness spread, even before any demon appeared. Moments later, the latent potential of the World, which usually slumbered in silence, awakened and pushed back the cold, wrapping him in a warm blanket.

  Compared to his first clumsy attempts, it responded to his intent eagerly, curling up and waiting while he pushed his bait further.

  Eventually, something took notice.

  The demons Nick had fought so far were ugly, awkward creatures, furious at the universe and craving its destruction. They had been mindlessly angry, aiming to kill him the moment they appeared.

  They were demonic beings, countless in number, whose end no one would mourn. Not even their Greater Demon masters. A life as expendable pawns is no life at all. I’m actually doing them a favor by eradicating them.

  He’d hoped that by specifying his request for a demon tied to heat, forging, and casting, he would attract some kind of metallic creature or perhaps a bodiless spirit focused entirely on unleashing its unholy magic.

  Either option would have worked well. They would have improved different parts of the ritual, letting him handle the rest.

  But even a regular demonic creature, if powerful enough, would work. Nick was ready to eliminate several of them until he found one that gave him enough to work with.

  He did not expect that the response to the pull would come from something with stronger intent than his own.

  The shock of his will being acknowledged almost caused him to lose control of the probe, but he was quick to wrench it back.

  A wave of great amusement rippled through the tear in reality, and Nick feared the damn thing would actually come through, but moments later, it let go and pushed in a specific direction.

  There was little Nick could do to steer it back in its original direction, but it turned out he didn’t have to, as a less coherent force took hold of it, and he knew he had found his sacrifice.