Demon Summoning (Part 2)
"Your Majesty Matthias! The south gate has fallen! You must evacuate at once!"
"The south gate? There was an entire detachment stationed there—how could it possibly fall so quickly?!"
"Th-that is... there is no one left. According to the scout who barely made it back from the front, there were not even any corpses..."
"Those miserable bastards...!"
That left only one explanation: desertion in the face of the enemy.
How much gold had he poured into them? And yet, the very moment battle was joined, they threw down their arms and fled before the enemy's advance? Ha... no, he was looking at it the wrong way. His army was nothing more than an unruly mob of masterless drifters and cutthroats. In truth, this outcome was only natural.
"Y-Your Majesty..."
As Matthias stood there in a daze, his retainer pressed him urgently, clearly desperate to leave. The man was not acting out of loyalty; he simply knew that if his master did not flee immediately, his own life was forfeit. Matthias had long known this retainer possessed not an ounce of true devotion, but witnessing it so starkly drained what little vigor he had left.
"No. I cannot let it end like this. I am the rightful king of the Lion Kingdom...!"
After everything he had done to seize this chance, he refused to let it slip away here. By any means necessary, he had to become the King of Lion—
BOOOOM!
"Gaaah?!"
A thunderous roar tore through the chamber as the wall detonated, flipping his world completely upside down. A shower of pulverizing masonry slammed into him, racking his entire body with agony.
"Cough...! Wh-what in the world...?"
Fighting through the blinding pain, Matthias forced his eyes open, but the room was thoroughly choked with thick clouds of dust and pulverized stone. Until moments ago, the interior had felt relatively peaceful compared to the bedlam outside, but that fragile quiet had shattered. The clamor of shouting soldiers—allies and enemies locked in butchery—flooded his ears.
A massive hole had been punched clean through the wall.
"Haha... damn it all."
The royal palace's outer ramparts were built of pristine quarried stone and reinforced with high-tier warding magic; a conventional attack could never have breached them. That meant someone stood outside who was capable of treating royal fortifications like cheap parchment. Matthias might have been able to handle one or two such foes himself, but the real crisis was that the enemy had already reached the heart of the palace. Even if he struck down that intruder, dozens more would pour through the breach, and his own forces were hopelessly outmatched in both numbers and caliber.
Did my retainer... run away?
Well, with the battle so decisively lost, no mercenary would willingly die alongside a lord they had served only for coin. Matthias knew that had their positions been reversed, he would have fled without hesitation. How utterly pathetic.
He did not want it to end like this. He refused to let it end like this... yet there was nothing he could do. Everything was over. The royalists swarmed just outside, and he had nothing left to his name. If only he could sell his soul to a demon—
Flash!
"...?"
A sudden, brilliant crimson light bathed the chamber.
Startled by the thought that the enemy had already breached the room, Matthias snapped his head around. Yet no one stood there. Instead, an ominous, dark-red anomaly hovered in midair, pulsating with light.
A jewel...? No, that's an eye.
The blast had thrown dozens of tomes from the study's bookshelves, scattering them across the flagstones. Among the debris lay a single volume inscribed with a magic circle. It blazed with a lurid crimson glare, and hovering directly above its open pages was a glowing eyeball, bobbing gently in the air. A floating eyeball was unnatural enough on its own, but the intricate geometric arrays rotating lazily around it rendered the scene downright eldritch.
"Th-this magic circle is..."
When an unfamiliar magical phenomenon manifested, standard survival instinct dictated that any non-mage turn on their heels and flee. A mage, on the other hand, would reflexively erect defensive barriers. What kind of fool would stand idly by, having no idea what horror a spell might unleash?
Yet Matthias had no luxury for caution. To be precise, he refused to indulge in such hesitation. From the moment his gaze met that floating eye, an instinctual certainty gripped him.
This was a demon summoning spell.
It summoned one of those abominations said to appear before those consumed by ambition, granting their deepest desires in exchange for devouring their souls. Fine. Things could hardly get any worse than this. And demons, if the lore held true, craved blood above all else.
Squelch!
"Ghh, nrgh...!"
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Matthias drove the point of his blade deep into his own palm and swept his arm outward, splashing fresh blood across the glowing circle. Blood was the fundamental cornerstone of demonic pacts. Offer blood rich with the summoner's soul, mana, and life essence, and a demon would answer the call to forge a contract.
Of course, the caliber of the summoned entity depended entirely on the quality of the offering. Tainted, low-grade blood would summon only a bottom-feeder like an imp, rendering any meaningful wish impossible. What conceivable power could an imp bestow? But Matthias was certain his blood would never yield something so pathetic. At the very least, he prayed for a High Demon—
KABOOOOM!
"—?!"
His vision was suddenly drowned in dark crimson.
For a fleeting second, Matthias feared his eyes had ruptured, but it was merely the violent light surging from the summoning circle that flooded the room. More than that, the oppressive mana coiling around him was unmistakable. In all his years as regent, having brushed shoulders with countless powerful mages, he had never felt magical energy so spine-chilling, viscous, and suffocating.
It was a demon.
"Ah... ahhh..."
As the bloody glare gradually receded, a towering figure stood where nothing had been moments before. The study was in utter shambles, yet the entity's sheer presence rendered the ruined surroundings completely invisible.
His entire frame radiated a dark-red luminescence, as though he had bathed in stale, coagulated blood. In striking contrast, his skin was as stark and pale as a corpse, creating a grotesque dissonance that seized the heart with terror. Piercing yellow irises gleamed like a lion's eyes stalking prey from tall grass in the dead of night, compelling Matthias's body to shrink back in primal dread.
A heavyweight...! Even without specialized knowledge of demonology, Matthias knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was no mere High Demon. This had to be an Archdemon—a legendary terror that even the bearer of the purest blood could only hope to summon through miraculous fortune.
I... I possessed that much potential...? I knew it! I was destined to be king all along!!
"Demon! I demand a contract!"
Ugh... my stomach is churning.
The nausea was so violent that the slightest lapse in concentration would have sent me retching, a sour, acrid taste constantly rising in my throat.
[WHAT IN THE SEVEN HELLS IS THIIIIIS?!]
I'd rather die than go through that again.
Getting dragged into that void felt like someone had grabbed me by the scalp and yanked me through space, and everything that followed was even worse. My insides and outsides felt as though they had been flayed and flipped inside out while I was still breathing, like being spun through an industrial centrifuge.
...Where the hell even is this?
Taking in my surroundings, I found myself standing in the middle of a total disaster zone. A massive breach had been punched through the stone wall, and the floor was littered with pulverized masonry, shattered furniture, and stray debris. Well, leaving that creepy, blood-red void was a relief, but why on earth was I here—
"Demon! I demand a contract!"
"...?"
Who is this clown?
A middle-aged man with "I am a villain" practically stamped across his forehead was dripping blood from his palm while barking absurd demands. A demon? Demanding a contract? What kind of lunatic nonsense was—wait. Right. I'm the demon.
"I shall grant you my soul! Therefore... become my strength!"
"Your strength?"
"Hk..."
I had only meant to ask for clarification after being abruptly told to become someone's muscle, but my demonic voice resonated with such unnatural, chilling dread that the man flinched as if struck. Well, even I startled myself sometimes whenever this voice rumbled out of my chest, so I could hardly blame him.
"Y-yes...! Become my blade and slaughter my enemies!"
Wow, points for courage. If I had been standing face-to-face with an absolute monstrosity like Faust, I wouldn't have stayed on my feet, let alone barked orders; I would have dropped to my knees, shivering and begging for mercy. Yet this guy held his head high and kept talking.
"...Is that so."
I roughly grasped the situation. That magic circle from earlier had been a demon-summoning array, and this man had cast it. Let's see... the medium should be...
Ah, there it is. The summoning medium... wait, what?
Catching sight of a book resting near my feet that radiated a potent aura, I glanced down, assuming it was the conduit used for the summoning ritual. But this wasn't a summoning grimoire at all. It wasn't a summoning spell; it was a curse.
Thinking I might have misread it, I examined the arcane formula again, but there was no mistake. This was unquestionably a curse. Having poured countless hours into playing Noah and grinding my soul away on its development team, I knew the game's lore, systems, and hidden easter eggs down to the smallest detail. There was zero chance I was mistaken. Even the lingering consciousness of the original Faust inside me was asserting with absolute certainty that this was a curse.
Specifically, it was a subjugation curse: a vicious spell that sacrificed the caster's soul to summon a demon of matching stature and forcibly bind it to obey their commands.
...Of course, Faust was technically me now, but that was beside the point.
Wait, why aren't I cursed?
The spell should have taken hold the moment I materialized, yet I felt completely unaffected. What went wrong? The summoning itself had succeeded without a hitch. Could it be that even though the spell managed to pull me through, Faust's raw metaphysical mass was simply too colossal for a binding curse to latch onto? More importantly, this man—whatever his name was—was nowhere near powerful enough to invoke an entity like me through this curse formula. He couldn't even match a fraction of my tier. Yet somehow, I had been summoned anyway.
Uh... I have way too little information here.
"Quickly, strike down my foes—!"
"Matthias! Surrender quietly—... what in the?!"
Who is it this time?
Before my summoner could finish barking his orders, a blonde woman came vaulting through the shattered breach in the wall. Long, pointed ears poked conspicuously through her golden hair, and the recurve bow clutched in her hands made her class blindingly obvious.
A Hunter Elf.
Decent burst damage, but plagued with abysmal health, terrible mobility, and practically nonexistent stagger resistance—a class that had drawn endless forum complaints from frustrated players—
Twang—!
"...?"
The instant I sensed an overwhelming surge of disgust and hatred rolling off the elf, an arrow shattered against an invisible barrier less than an inch from my face, its splintered fragments tumbling to the floor.
Huh? Why was an arrow flying at—oh. She shot me.
Well, at least it didn't hurt. Actually, calling it painless was an understatement; I hadn't felt a single thing.
"What do you think you are doing, wench?"
"Emergency!! Matthias has summoned a demon!! The battle isn't over—do not lower your guard!!"
Completely ignoring my question, the elf screamed a warning to whoever was waiting outside. Yet her lack of an answer didn't mean she was ignoring me. Her sharp, fiercely focused eyes remained locked on my every twitch, her arms and legs taut as coiled springs, ready to evade or counter the moment I made a move.
Look... I literally haven't done anything yet...