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A part of Zeth wondered if that would be the last demon he ever worked with again. His sprawling underground base was likely larger than he’d ever be able to fill, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever trust a demon to protect him in a time of danger after this last betrayal. Not unless he figured out how to negotiate airtight agreements with no room for exploits. And, considering demonkind had infinitely more experience than he did in that regard, he didn’t think he’d ever develop the ability to perfectly keep them contained.

At least for now, he wasn’t about to trust them to protect his life—or the lives of others. When asking them to do simple manual labor, he had all the bargaining power; he could tell them to do something, and if they made an exorbitant demand, he could simply unsummon them and perform another ritual. But when the two options were to either give in to their demands or lie down and let himself be killed, he was giving them far too much power over the situation. He’d gotten complacent in all his calm dealings with them over the past days. But those things were pure evil, and far too dangerous to trifle with.

Zeth’s thoughts were pulled away from the topic when, as he worked on patching up the third circle, another System notification came through.

[Vile Focus’s Rank has increased to 10.

+1 Skill Point. You have 14 Skill Points.]

Another Rank-up.

Just as he’d seen earlier, for whatever reason, his Skills seemed to consider closing the holes in a ritual circle’s mana field to be close enough to drawing them in order to progress in Rank. Notably, Hellfire Ritual didn’t Rank up at all, so it didn’t seem like that one had the same allowances.

But sure enough, after a little more time…

[Ritual Circle Mastery’s Rank has increased to 10.

+1 Skill Point. You have 15 Skill Points.]

The moment he got that notification, though, Zeth received another in quick succession.

[Requirements fulfilled: Ritual Circle Mastery Rank 10, Vile Focus Rank 10.

You have unlocked Ritual Circle Mastery Evolution: Ritual Nexus Mastery (II).]

His eyebrows raised, looking at that second notification. A Skill Evolution.

He’d heard of them, of course—Skill Evolutions were something exclusive to those with Classes, where maxing out their Skills sometimes unlocked new, upgraded variants to be available for purchase. And it looked like Ritual Circle Mastery had an Evolution that unlocked when he brought it to max Rank alongside Vile Focus.

There were countless different Evolutions possible for any given Skill, of course; it was just a matter of finding them. Who knew what other Evolutions Ritual Circle Mastery had the possibility of unlocking when maxing out other Skills?

For now, though, Zeth just had this one option. So he looked it over.

[Ritual Nexus Mastery (II) - Cost: 5 Skill Points

Max Rank: 20

Replaces Ritual Circle Mastery

Allows you to draw ritual circles with mana and activate them using empowered blood.

For each rank in this skill, the amount of mental effort required of you to draw ritual circles is decreased by 0.1% per point you have in the Shaping Stat.

While you are within 20 feet of at least one completed ritual circle, increases the natural effects your Stats have on your body and mind. This effect is intensified the more completed ritual circles you are near, and the more powerful those ritual circles are (minimum 25%.)]

His eyes widened as he read it. The first two abilities were just the same thing Ritual Circle Mastery did—which made sense, considering this Skill would replace it—but the last portion was new. For any normal Blood Mage, it’d only be okay; receiving a boost while around your ritual circles would be nice, but you’d have to be sitting in your prepared ritual site in order to get it. But for Zeth, who could carry ritual circles around with him, he theoretically could keep this boost active almost constantly.

Increasing the natural effects of his stats would improve the toughness boost he got from Endurance, the mana-sensing abilities granted by Shaping, the sharpened senses and mind from Awareness…And with a minimum boost of twenty-five percent, that could result in a massive difference in ability—especially as his Stats continued to grow. Plus, that boost could theoretically go even higher if he was around multiple ritual circles, or if they were especially strong. It seemed incredible.

And, really, it didn’t matter what the effect did. Because more than anything else, Zeth’s eyes were drawn most to the Evolution’s cost. Since Ritual Nexus Mastery would replace Ritual Circle Mastery, it’d start out at Rank ten. However, it would also increase the Skill’s maximum Rank to twenty, meaning Zeth would be able to Rank it up ten more times, and therefore gain another ten Skill Points. And since this Evolution only cost five, he’d be profiting an extra five Skill points if he took it.

Plus, since the Evolution increased the Skill’s maximum Rank, that also meant Zeth would be able to get even more benefit out of the part of Ritual Circle Mastery that decreased the amount of mental effort required to draw ritual circles by an amount that increased with each Rank he had in the Skill.

The prospect of finding a Skill combination that would allow him to evolve Vile Focus, and thus increasing the maximum Rank of that Skill, with how it decreased all the requirements to perform a ritual by a percentage with every Rank…It was enticing, to say the least. There were plenty of Evolutions one could theoretically unlock for any given Skill, and though you could only pick one of them, they would all increase the Skill’s max Rank in the same way. So any Evolution at all would be incredible.

He almost wanted to just go ahead and purchase this Evolution, but he held off. Now with fifteen Skill Points, Zeth was only two away from finally being able to afford Otherworldly Excellence. And, since the requirements to reach new Ranks in a Skill increased with each one earned, going from Rank ten to Rank twenty in Ritual Nexus Mastery would be far, far harder than getting the first ten Ranks. He wasn’t sure how long it’d take him to recoup that investment.

And there was always the possibility of unlocking an even better Evolution option as he maxed out other Skills—though, considering this one’s cost and effects, such a thing was unlikely.

Ultimately, Zeth was just eager to start Leveling up again. Now that he had a base of operations, he was able to begin moving at a far faster pace than ever before.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

So for the time being, he put the Evolution unlock aside and moved to his next priority.

It was time to do something about Erza.

Currently, all the man had was a theory that Zeth was a Blood Mage. He hadn’t gotten any hard evidence that it was Zeth underneath the mask during their confrontation with the mannitors attacking, meaning presumably, his theory would remain just that—a theory. So he may run it by his companions as a possibility, but hopefully nothing more. If he did spread that rumor to the entire town, there wouldn’t be much Zeth could do about it. But if it was just the three of them…

He looked down at his three Hellfire Ritual circles, each painted onto a different cloth, each having finished going through their preparations to be concealed from a mage’s eye.

Zeth hoped to get things done nonviolently. But the key word there was ‘hope.’ If the situation took a turn towards fighting, he sure as hell knew he’d ensure he’d be the one walking out of it alive.

So, after he carefully slotted them into the pockets on his coat, Zeth prepared to depart.

When he returned to town, gazing at the area the mannitors rampaged in, Zeth took a moment to survey the damage.

In the end, a solid portion of the buildings in the area were completely demolished. And while the majority of the area still technically stood, most had suffered at least some kind of damage. Carts had been tipped over and crushed, walls had webs of cracks running through them, and roads were peppered with craters from the beasts’ heavy footfalls. The entire portion of town—probably comprising at least a fifth of the territory—was heavily damaged, showing scars of the battle that had occurred just hours before.

And all of it was that demon’s fault. All of it was Zeth’s fault for summoning him. For being too lax with his commands. He’d originally seen his work with demons as a learning experience—get used to the summoning Skill’s abilities and restrictions so that he’d be able to utilize demon forces more effectively in times of crisis. But this was no learning experience. It was a tragedy.

Zeth wandered through the streets. Aside from guards and other personnel trying to secure the area, the entire area was empty. Only the sound of crumbling rubble filled his ears.

Then, he heard something. A familiar voice.

Zeth headed down the roads in search of the voice. Was it really…?

Sure enough, standing in a cordoned-off section in the middle of a cleared-out area was Zeth’s own friend—Turin.

He didn’t notice Zeth, far too busy with his duties. Duties that were, apparently, treating the injuries of the stampede’s victims.

In the flat square, separated from the rest of the destroyed area by a simple rope tied between some posts in the ground, Turin had set up mats of hay with simple blankets atop them, where dozens of injured people lay atop. Some were profusely bleeding from various wounds, some had bones bending in places they shouldn’t have bent, and an unlucky few were missing limbs entirely. It was a grisly sight.

But Turin stood amidst the wounded, rushing between them in an attempt to offer treatment. He wrapped bandages around those who risked bleeding to death, applied medicine to their wounds, and attempted to splint the broken bones. Out of everyone in the roped-off area, he was the only one standing. Apparently, if there were any other medical professionals in town, none of them were willing to offer their services for free.

Zeth approached as Turin knelt down beside a woman who’d left the entire blanket she lay on sopping with blood. As he bent down to pass the rope, Turin finally noticed him, looking up with a mixed expression of surprise and relief.

“Oh, Zeth! I’m glad to see you’re okay,” he said, sounding out of breath. “Hey, can you give me a hand and lift this woman up? I need to wrap some bandages around her torso, and you’re stronger than I am.”

“Of course,” Zeth said, kneeling down as well. He was still confused about what this whole thing even was, but questions could wait until after these people were safe.

He reached down and scooped his hands beneath the woman’s legs and back, then lifted her up into the air.

As he did, a look of worry flashed across Turin’s face. “Wait, no, you shouldn’t be doing that with your injured—”

He stopped, staring at Zeth’s arms.

“—shoulder?” he finished. “Have your injuries from that building falling on you healed already? You shouldn’t be able to carry so much weight before those wounds close up.”

Zeth blinked. His wounds had mostly healed at this point, thanks to the combination of his twenty-four Endurance enhancing his natural recovery and the Self-Destruction Skill then going and quadrupling that same healing rate. But he wasn’t sure if it would be a good idea to tell Turin about either of those things. “Uh…”

He shook his head. “Whatever. Not important right now. Here, just hold her steady while I fix up her back.”

For the next few minutes, Zeth assisted Turin in his healing efforts while his friend explained everything that’d happened. Apparently, when he heard about the disaster in town, Turin had gathered up all of his healing supplies as soon as possible and rushed down to try and help the injured. And after pulling everyone he could find from collapsed buildings, he brought them all here and got to work.

“I met some adventurers in the area who’re apparently here to serve as bodyguards to some merchant,” he said. “In total, we found forty-nine people. Twenty-six we brought here—a couple of them have already recovered enough to walk away—and the other twenty-three were…They didn’t make it. We took the bodies to another area so families can identify them.”

Zeth bit the inside of his mouth. Twenty-three lives. That was the cost of his mistake.

“But, uh, it’s not all bad,” Turin said, clearly trying to force a bright look onto his face. “With the Skill Points I got from Ranking my Skills treating your wounds a few days ago, I ended up purchasing a couple more of the required Skills to become a Healer. So, it’s not all bad. Hopefully, if I can train myself up fast enough, I might be able to get the Class sooner than I thought. If I work hard enough, maybe it’ll be soon enough that I can help give these people proper magical treatment for their injuries.”

“Yeah, that’d be good,” Zeth replied. He wasn’t sure if he liked anyone talking about that demon’s actions being ‘not all bad,’ but it wasn’t like Turin could’ve known this was an intentional attack on the town and not just some freak accident. “Just, don’t strain yourself.”

He shook his head. “You don’t get to talk to me about straining myself when a few days ago you got trapped under a burning building that you ran into, man. You said that sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do—this is my thing that I gotta do. I’ve trained my whole life to help people. Not gonna leave them to die when the time finally comes that they need me.”

He stood up from the woman they’d been working on, turning to hurry over to another patient moaning in pain.

“Th-thank you,” the woman muttered, shakily reaching up to touch Turin’s arm.

“I’m just doing my duty,” he said, tightly clasping his hands around hers. Then he began walking over to the next person. As he did, he called back to Zeth. “Go grab me a bowl of tiskum grass powder, would you?”

“Tisk-what?” he asked.

“Tiskum grass. It’s a grass native to the Elven Realm. The powder can be a powerful healing agent when combined with—”

“What does it look like?” Zeth interrupted. Being around so many people injured like this stressed him out. He was more than used to blood, but not when that blood was coming out of innocent people.

“Purple and glowing,” Turin replied. “It’s the only thing on that table that clearly looks like it\'s from another realm.”

Zeth nodded and briskly walked over to the table where Turin kept his medical supplies, taking care not to step on anyone as he made his way over. Once he got to the table—really just a slab of wood that’d been propped up so nobody would accidentally step in the valuable ingredients—he knelt down and began searching.

“Purple and glowing, purple and glowing…” he muttered to himself, glancing between the various dishes of powder, vials of liquid, and rolls upon rolls of bandages. Eventually, he spotted a powder that looked different from the others, like Turin had said, and grabbed it, standing back up and preparing to walk back over to give it to him.

But as he stood up, gazing over the rope and at the damaged town around him, he saw a trio of individuals who were walking straight over to him.

“Hey,” Erza called out, flanked by Rosalie and Alfon. His voice was low and dangerous. “I spotted you while flying around and thought I’d say hello. We’ve been looking for you.”

Zeth froze.

Stopping by the edge of the rope, only a few feet away from him, Erza glanced down at the injured people filling the makeshift beds that covered the ground, then back up at Zeth. “Come with me, will you? We’d like to have a chat. In private.”

He’d come here searching for this confrontation, and here it was. And from the looks of those three’s faces, Zeth assumed it wasn’t gonna go cleanly.