Chapter 23
It was dusk when Zeth finished the ritual circle. He’d gotten another Skill Rank-up—this one for Vile Focus, bringing it up to six—but Skill Points were the last thing on his mind right now. He was staring down at something that cast a much wider shadow across his consciousness.
At eight and a half feet in diameter, the circle was massive, as he knew it would be. But such a gigantic, detailed circle in person—by far the most intricate one he’d done so far—it was beautiful, in a way. Like one of those floor-to-ceiling paintings he’d heard about the emperor commissioning for his palace. A work of art so grand, it made Zeth feel tiny just standing on it. Only, unlike a painting, this circle represented something real. Something that really was gigantic in comparison to him. In just a few moments, a demon would be standing in front of him.
Zeth couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. It wasn’t from fear, though. While he was certainly afraid at the thought of such a powerful entity even having him in its gaze, another emotion had overtaken that one by leaps and bounds. Excitement. The anticipation of that same powerful entity being his to command—to bring his will upon the world, to bring his will upon the people who had long since deserved suffering. A tool that existed to kill anyone and everyone he pointed it in the direction of.
He reached down with trembling hands to grab the bucket of that woman’s blood. This would be the moment of truth—what would the System say about her strength? Was she really the possessor of a powerful Class? Or just an Unclassed liar? Whether or not she was a Blood Mage, he knew the real Blood Mage—the one he wanted—was still out there. And with the help of this demon, he’d find them.
Air escaped Zeth’s lungs in a light chuckle. But slowly, his chuckle grew more and more intense until it eventually broke into full-on maniacal laughter. The blood in the bucket rippled from the quakes in his body as he doubled over, his voice echoing through the clearing.
With a shaky breath, Zeth calmed himself and stood up straight again, a wild grin still stretched across his face. If any reasonable person saw him out in the middle of the forest, clutching a bucket of human blood in his hands as he cackled wickedly, preparing to conduct powerful demonic ritual magic to summon a being from the Thirteenth Realm, there was no doubt in his mind they’d assume he was the most over-the-top evil villain out there. But his motivations weren’t so broad as destroying the world. No, such a thing would bring him no satisfaction at all. He was here to destroy a small set of very specific people. And he would accomplish that goal.
Standing in the middle of the ritual circle, he slowly began to turn the bucket over. The blood slowly flowed toward the bucket’s lip as he turned it further and further, Zeth’s breath growing heavier and heavier, until finally it spilled over the edge and down into the ground.
His eyes grew wide with glee as he saw the completion percentage of the ritual leap upward from just the slow dribble of liquid. No way that woman didn’t have some sort of Class of her own. Typically speaking, with anything System-related that cared about the strength of a person, the difference between someone with a Class and someone without one was like the difference between a mountain and a pebble. It was one of the reasons so many people intentionally forewent obtaining a Class their whole lives—bandits with combat Classes would go out of their way to kill the Classed people whenever they robbed anyone, since doing so would give such massive progress toward their next Levels.
Either way, it seemed like he wasn’t going to even need the whole bucket of this woman’s blood to complete the ritual. As he got to just about a quarter left, a notification entered Zeth’s mind.