The Devil"s Evolution Catalog Chapter 99: Duran"s Sin
According to the person himself, the occultist"s name was Duran Kefka, the legitimate son of an elder in some random mage clan; apparently, he was sent out as part of his training. However, beneath this prestigious upbringing was a veritable devil, a devil that was even more of a devil than the devil himself.
His nature could only be described as s.a.d.i.s.tic with cunning coming in at a close second. He loved to force himself onto young girls; to him, he was a superior breed of human and ordinary people were nothing more than cattle.
After taking in Ancarin as his apprentice, he was, for a time, a conscientious teacher. However, there was a sinister motive behind his uncharacteristic behavior. He wanted to summon a permanent devil servant. In order to do so, he needed the strength to suppress such a servant. If he didn"t have that, a sufficiently attractive sacrifice could also be used to lure the devil into a master-servant contract.
In other words, what he couldn"t solve with his fists, he could solve with money. Given the right price, even a king would kneel.
Naturally, devils weren"t interested in gold coins and such. Instead, they were most interested in souls; which functioned as a currency of sorts. Gold coins were able to get you everything from clothes, food, houses, slaves and even power...it wasn"t an exaggeration to say that gold was something you couldn"t live without in human society. Souls were the equivalent of gold coins for devils, in fact, they were even more important.
Notably, souls were also a source of sustenance and evolution for devils. Mankind was definitely not able to feed on gold or use it to evolve, at least not directly. Devils on the other hand, could so so with souls.
While Duran had a ma.s.sive source of souls nearby, the neighboring human city, he wasn"t audacious enough to slaughter a hundred humans just for a summoning ritual. Such a conspicuous move could be easily traced by mages who specialized in soul magic. Therefore, he decided to subst.i.tute quant.i.ty for quality.
Then came the next question, how do you increase the quality of a soul? Increasing its inborn talent and power of course! And so, the occultist concocted a nefarious plan where he would groom a talented female into a mage and sacrifice her once she got stronger.
It was then that he stumbled upon the newly graduated doctor, Ancarin. He saw in her an astonishing level of talent, and an ambitious heart that wasn"t satisfied with just being average. Ambitious people tended to be hardworking people. Take for example, Liu Bei from the Three Kingdoms era.
He dreamt of being an Emperor since young and worked towards it ever since. Despite his abysmal battle results, he persevered, never backing down from battles until finally he recruited the brilliant strategist, Zhuge Liang from which point his ambitions took off.
That is why what"s scary isn"t just ambition, but rather hardworking and ambitious people. Ancarin was just such a person, a girl who wanted to learn magic no matter what the price. Of course, this didn"t include her chast.i.ty.
Initially, he didn"t particularly feel any l.u.s.t for her. After all, he had an entire bas.e.m.e.nt full of beautiful slaves to choose from, a number of which had the talent for magic as well.
However, these girls didn"t have the drive that Ancarin did. Compared to magical knowledge, they were more interested in the young, handsome and wealthy mage. Duran naturally didn"t mind having a tumble with them but the problem was...there"s no point if they didn"t raise their power!
If their power didn"t increase, their souls would remain at the same low quality. Low quality means no devil and no devil meant that all this was for naught.
Prior to Ancarin, Duran had taken in a number of talented apprentices as well. However, they didn"t take too well to the tedium of daily meditation. Rather than the horrendously slow progression of mediation, b.u.t.tering up Duran was clearly a quicker way to fulfill their dreams.
He didn"t mind their attention initially, however as time pa.s.sed, he grew frustrated with this arrangement. Why? Because he suddenly remembered the original reason why he brought in these girls to begin with…
Before he knew it, his plan to groom these constantly bickering, needy and envious girls into suitable sacrifices ended up turning into a harem.
Reflecting back on his mistakes, he immediately demoted these girls into slaves and began to search for new prey. It was in this circ.u.mstance that he came upon the exceptional Ancarin.
Why was she exceptional? Because unlike the other girls, she didn"t waste time b.u.t.tering him up but instead focused on her magical studies. Furthermore, her comprehension ability was high. In just under a year she managed to graduate from an acolyte to an apprentice mage.
(Apprentice mages were one-star mages. Most of the time, it took an acolyte one to two years to progress from zero-star into a one-star apprentice.)
During this entire year, Duran never once made a move on her as he didn"t want to risk destroying such an exceptional sprout. Everyday, he would conscientiously teach her and stay by her side, rarely leaving the villa. Only when he truly couldn"t take it did he visit the bas.e.m.e.nt to relieve himself.
This lifestyle continued until one day, Ancarin stumbled upon the truth.
It all started with Ancarin asking for leave to visit her home. It had been an entire year since she came to his villa and she was getting homesick. Duran agreed to it readily as he knew that she would definitely come back to him. After all, this was the only place she could learn magic for free. After settling on a return time, Duran went on a trip as well.
A year of being cooped up in that villa had nearly driven him stir crazy. All his time had been spent on teaching Ancarin, leaving no time for him to hunt for fresh prey. Playing with those broken toys of his in the bas.e.m.e.nt was no longer enough to satisfy him. Ancarin was an enchanting girl and had a chaste body, but now wasn"t the time to touch her…
Like a rampaging horse, he made sure to have his fill of women before heading home, with a girl in tow…
As for why he brought this girl back with him, it was because she once tried to steal something from him and had even tried to fight back when he caught her.
Even after he forced himself on the bandit girl she didn"t submit to him, and instead resisted even more. His patience finally snapped and he decided to kidnap her back to his base. Along the way, he used every trick in the book on her, their tumbles lasting an entire day at times.
In actuality, this trip wasn"t as fruitless as he had originally thought. Other than the bandit girl, he picked up a certain wallet as well, which to his surprise, held exactly what he wanted.
It was a strand of blue hair that held a trace of demonic energy on it. For someone who was in the midst of preparing to summon a devil, there could not be a more fortuitous find than obtaining a devil"s medium.
Having been away for some time, Duran hadn"t adjusted his mindset back to that of a conscientious mage teacher. After their usual magic lessons, he left in a hurry, eager to toy with the bandit girl once more. However, unlike the previous times, he didn"t make sure to guard against Ancarin.
With a question still hanging over her head, she wanted to approach him for clarification, but upon noticing his unusual hurried behavior, she decided to follow him out of curiosity…
And thus everything was exposed. By the time she realized that her teacher was a deviant who enjoyed forcing himself onto women, it was too late for her.
Now that she knew about his true ident.i.ty, there was no way he could let her leave. In that case, there was no point in maintaining this facade. He forced her into a relationship while dangling the carrot of magic lessons in front of her, while at the side, he began the preparations for the ritual.
The first summoning ended up in a complete failure; he could sense the hair forming a connection but the other party simply wasn"t in the summoning zone, and his mana wasn"t enough to forcefully tear through the dimensional barriers.
Therefore the first ritual failed, however he wasn"t particularly upset about it either. Rather, this only intensified his interest in the hair"s owner. To him, a devil that could leave a medium of itself in the human world couldn"t be just any old devil.
A lot of devils would leave a summoning medium of theirs in different worlds in order to increase their chances of being summoned by a mage who specializes in summoning magic. If the target of the summoning was too strong or was already dead, there was a chance that his offspring would be summoned instead.
It was precisely this reason that led him to believe that this particular devil was special. Thus, he decided to put this aside for now and wait for a more opportune time. In the meantime, it was back to paradise once more now that the cat was out of the bag.
For Ancarin, it was the beginning of a never-ending abyss. On top of her forced meditations, she had to endure his constant abuse. In order to prevent her from retaliating, he made sure to only impart her the basics of meditation and acc.u.mulating mana without any spells to go along with it. His reasoning? One shouldn"t get distracted while building their magical foundation…
Truth be told, this was a valid reason and was a common occurrence during the initial stages of learning magic. It was like those wuxia novels where the student would focus on his internal techniques first before learning any sword techniques.
A good foundation is needed to build a skysc.r.a.per. This was the same with magic as well.
In order to increase his chances of summoning his devil servant, Duran set up a magical array for reconnaissance purposes. The moment the devil in question entered a summoning zone, the array would give off a faint blue light. Thus, several months pa.s.sed without any reaction from the array.
It was only after a month into Ancarin"s pregnancy did the array suddenly react. After such a long wait, it was finally time for him to summon his devil servant.
His heart pounded with excitement as he made his way to the prepared ritual room. The preparation had already been made long beforehand, and all that remained was to bring Ancarin to the ritual room in the bas.e.m.e.nt.
With the completion of the ritual what greeted him was a strange looking devil, which at a glance, looked like a l.u.s.t demon yet didn"t have the unique characteristics of one. Even though its face was that of a peerless beauty, as an occultist, he knew not to be fooled by a devil"s appearance. Some devils were able to manipulate their appearances in order to beguile their targets.
Thus, he had never considered the other party"s gender. Instead he believed in the supreme quality of his sacrifice.
After several months of training, Ancarin had become significantly more obedient. She had basically mastered all the positions and had even learnt to take on a more proactive role. Based on this alone, one could say that she had been stained with the sin of l.u.s.t.
A mage"s soul was completely different from an ordinary person"s soul. With a one month old fetus in her, Ancarin"s body essentially housed two souls within it, raising the quality of this sacrifice by another notch. Not only that, the fetus was born of Duran"s seed as well. This act of sacrificing his own flesh and blood could be counted as the highest grade of sacrifice ever.
Thus, he had the utmost confidence in his choice of sacrifice. After all, which devil could resist the lure of not only a sacrifice of the highest grade, but also the chance of being able to stay in the Western Human Realms permanently…
He had this all planned out in his mind: the devil would readily accept his sacrifice and in a moment of bloodthirsty frenzy, consume her, piece by piece while she was still alive. After which, it would enjoy the rare delicacy of a dual soul body.
Unfortunately for him, the devil he summoned had to be me…
Footnotes:
Credits:
Special thanks to Steve Granger!!