Chapter 40
Zeth continued patching up the holes in his Hellfire Ritual, shifting his attention all across the area of the mana field, until he eventually finished. And when he finished that one, he moved on to drawing another. If Erza told Rosalie and Alfon about his theory, those two would be an issue as well, and he needed to be prepared. So, in total, he’d need three circles.
As he continued to work, the demon that had started all of this finished his allotted work time, and picked out one of the prisoners. After Zeth interrogated her—once again receiving nothing but mindless slurs and insults—the demon killed her and left. He was now down to three prisoners remaining.
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.