Rebirth
Demons.
They are high-dimensional intelligent beings possessing unfathomable powers.
Demonologists.
They are the ones who pay some price to a demon and borrow a fragment of its authority.
I am summoning a demon today.
I will become a demonologist.
***
Three years.
That is the time I have spent falling into this strange world.
I feel the words of the great Einstein in my very bones.
All time is relative, as he said.
The nearly three years that have passed feel longer than the entire life I lived before.
At first, it was good.
I was a clueless high-school student, dreaming and hoping while recalling the isekai stories and tropes I had seen somewhere else.
It took barely a week for that empty fantasy to shatter.
A soap bubble of a dream.
A world where even words and letters did not connect, dropped from nowhere without a guardian.
From the moment I started shouting that something—anything—would be enough, my fate was already sealed.
I had fallen into the role of a slave.
Yet perhaps there was some small mercy in my misfortune.
The reality correction that had plunged me into the abyss ironically also opened a path for survival.
I had only been an ordinary slave for a week after beginning to fight to survive in this world, but among those slaves, I was a rather high-grade one.
No matter how much the world changed, mathematical proof was a truth that transcended even dimensions.
In a world so uncivilized that even basic literacy was rare, my knowledge at the level of middle-school mathematics was surprisingly useful.
The master who bought me was the head of a merchant guild, and after working as his calculating slave for more than two years, I redeemed myself.
I became a freed slave.
I thought that day, for the first time since arriving in this world, that luck had finally smiled on me, thanks to the surprisingly kind master I found.
But that was barely stepping onto the starting line.
Status. Appearance. Money. Power.
With none of those things, I was still a bottom-of-society life.
If I had remained in the guild, maybe things would have been different, but now that I had shed my slave status and stepped into the world, my future was even more hopeless.
My looks and skin color marked me as an outsider.
The slave brand still clung to me even after my release.
I tried to learn magic, the only hope, but it was in vain.
Some said I had no talent.
Others clicked their tongues, saying I was too old to even begin.
In three years I had barely scraped past ten percent of my lifespan.
But the recent three years had changed me far more densely than any previous part of my life.
And I had realized something.
My life no longer had any downward path left.
“So… there’s nothing left but to keep going.”
To change a life as miserable as mine, I can do anything.
No, I have to do anything.
It took me a surprisingly long time to steel myself for that resolution.
I drew the diagram I had once scratched on the floor with trembling hands.
A perfect circle, inside which stood a geometric pattern and symbols.
The summoning circle of a demon.
A contract with demons that even those who had fallen to the very bottom feared.
This was the path I had chosen.
“I’m calling you.”
Starting with drops of blood falling from the cut at the tip of my finger, I began.
Even though I had no magical power at all, the power of the command in my voice resonated with the summoning circle, producing a sound like nails scraping a chalkboard.
The circle I drew summoned any random demon.
It was an easy, common summoning circle.
If fortune smiled, a capable and kind demon would appear.
If misfortune struck, a weak or violent one.
Perhaps the circle was wrong, and the demon would not protect me from harm and simply devour me whole.
‘Then my life would end right there.’
There was nowhere else to go.
No more hope to hold onto.
This was my last resort.
The end of my life’s road.
I would either break through or be blocked and stop.
That was the only two possibilities.
Squinting against the light flowing from the summoning circle, I shouted the final command.
And right after.
I felt a chill slide down my spine.
‘Me, the command…’
It wasn’t the language of this world, but Korean…?
“Cancel—!”
The light of the summoning circle faded.
In the fading glow, the entity appeared.
With an atmosphere so mysterious.
Through the gap of light disappearing from above, I saw the demon’s face.
It was beautiful.
More beautiful than anyone I had ever seen.
Perhaps even more beautiful than all the people I would see from now on.
Her brilliant golden hair sparkled with light too dazzling to be melted gold, and her features were so perfectly harmonious that even the world’s greatest sculptor could not replicate them.
Without realizing it, I stood with my mouth open, staring blankly at that face.
The demon’s eyelids slowly lifted.
As if receiving some guidance, our eyes met…
And I froze.
The golden hair that seemed warm was completely different from the cold, icy blue-silver eyes.
The gaze was so coldly mechanical that simply looking into it made one aware of one’s own insignificance.
The mind that had been entranced by her beauty returned like someone who had been doused with ice water.
Yes.
The one in front of me was a demon.
A high-dimensional being that human common sense could never measure.
An existence that could crush a human like a human might casually step on an ant, in a single whim.
She smiled.
The elegant curve of her lips was irresistibly attractive.
The smiling demon parted her lips, revealing teeth like blood, and sang a voice as cold and beautiful as falling snow.
“I will ask.”
A tone devoid of any emotional fluctuation, emotionless.
That voice, which reaffirmed what it meant to be a demon, declared that a boy had met a girl.
“Are you my summoner?”
The same mask-like smile and voice as before.
And the same inorganic eyes that did not see her as a living being.
It did not matter.
I had not summoned her to be a friend.
I answered the demon’s question politely.
“Yes. I called you.”
“Wonderful. But from now on, you must be more careful.”
Clearly.
Something had gone wrong.
“It seems I… used the world’s language for the command…”
“When was the sacrifice…?”
A momentary silence.
“Sacrifice?”
“…?”
It was not the language of this world—the problem was the sacrifice?
A sacrifice? Why?
The goat head placed on the wooden table I had made to look like an altar.
The sacrifice demons most loved.
“I gave a very expensive one…?”
“World…?”
I felt a strong sense that the conversation was drifting off track.
She must have felt the same.
“Um… um, is this not Earth?”
A spark of emotion finally crossed the demon’s transcendent yet relaxed and beautiful face.
It was bewilderment at the fact that something had gone terribly wrong.
***
The shock was brief.
Before long, I was able to have a serious conversation with the demon, who had quickly regained her composure.
By pretending I had not noticed that she had been flustered, I was able to speak freely—the social skills I had learned by rolling around with my body all this time.
Anyway, I poured out my past days, and the demon listened with deep patience.
And when she offered confirmation, I could not help but be startled.
“You were summoned from Earth?”
A story that was difficult to believe easily.
But as a demon, it was a possible story.
My thoughts soon concluded that it might be possible.
As someone who had also experienced the world’s transfer, I could not deny it.
Moreover, the fact that demons were high-dimensional beings beyond humans was certain.
Just from seeing her transcendent appearance, one could sense it.
And it seemed even she might not be unable to return to Earth.
Perhaps the world we did not recognize was simply a space a little apart for them.
I trembled with the demon’s incomprehensible power.
Hope was right in front of me.
But when I finished speaking about my wish to find a way back to Earth, the demon negated my desire with a single word.
“It is impossible.”
“Why…?”
“The summoner is not yet ready.”
What did that mean?
I was prepared to give everything.
Even if my soul was stolen and handed over to the demons after death, with the country I was in now, I would seriously consider it and eventually nod my head.
A demon’s power was so vast that even an ordinary human could not contain it. Grow. Become strong. Enlarge the vessel. Raise the level. That was why I had come this far, right?
At those words.
The inorganic, non-metaphorical eyes that had looked like jewels were embedded with no life—finally showed a biological glow.
It was a gaze that dispelled any doubt that the demon was real.
The demon extended her hand.
She offered the reins of an unbroken horse.
“You have nothing to be disappointed about. I will give you the power you need to move forward.”
I took it as if mesmerized.
“…A contract.”
At my words, the demon smiled.
And she slowly raised her hand, allowing a thin thread of red blood to form at the tip.
“I shall become your contractee, one who hears my name.”
A drop of blood fell from the tip of her finger along with her voice.
The circular summoning circle I had drawn.
Her blood overlaid the blood I had sprinkled on the circle.
“My name is Seir. The one who grants polite wishes.”
The demon accepted my wish, received my sacrifice, and demanded no price from me.
***
It felt like I had dreamed it.
A time like a dream on a summer night.
When someone says they were charmed by a demon, they mean feelings like this, right?
‘I will keep watching you.’
If you want to summon me, remember my real name.
In the empty room left after Seir disappeared, I chewed over the words she had left behind.
Then, suddenly, I realized that I had changed from before.
‘This… is magic power.’
A feeling of indescribable unfamiliarity from my back.
The contract document that symbolized the contract with the demon, and the magic power Seir transmitted through it.
I tensed up and carefully, calmly moved the magic power.
A black magic power with a tar-like point rose in a swirling manner, responding to my will.
It was in the palm of my hand.
The magic power I had longed for.
It was not much yet.
The magic power transmitted through the contract document was only enough for a cup compared to the vast sea of the contract document beyond which lay Seir’s power.
Perhaps what Seir meant by level was not that I could pull up the entire sea at once.
It was still a distant goal.
However.
“Finally.”
I had reached the starting point.
At the edge of a cliff.
It felt like a miracle that I had caught hold of the rope.
What I had to do from now on was learn how to handle this power and raise my level.
And I knew the solution.
As Seir had said, I had come here to chase the answer.
The source of mystery.
The place where all answers—honor, fame, the unknown—resided.
The Abyss.
I had reached the starting line, possessed the strength to run, and seen the goal.
So now it was time to run.