Vilastromoz had a lot of thoughts bouncing around in his head after the mysteriousness around the First Sage was seemingly only growing exponentially. However, he could always trust Jake to offer him a good distraction, as he was sitting on the terrace in Nevermore City with his avatar, very much enjoying the show.
He had kept an eye on the entire ritual, as quite frankly, he viewed the Demon Prince and everyone involved with creating that ritual as complete morons. From their conversations, they had clearly believed they were the first ones ever to think up such a daring ritual and viewed themselves as truly innovative and bold.
To the Viper, this wasn’t even among the first hundred rituals he had observed like that, each of them practically identical in nature. It wasn’t complicated at all what they were doing; it was just stupid. Most rituals like this ended with the entire thing just blowing up, while the other half ended a bit similarly to how this one nearly did: with the demon in the center mutating into something unintended.
This ritual was different, though. Not in its design but in that it had Jake in charge. His application of the special energy he possessed led to the creation of a far more powerful catalyst for evolution, but that didn’t solve the issue of that evolution not ending well for the Demon Prince. Honestly, the entire thought process behind what the Demon Prince of the Fourth Hell wanted to accomplish was flawed.
The entire point was for him to improve his Records, and to do that, he would have to absorb an item with superior Records. However, for him to consume an item with superior Records, he needed to have powerful enough Records to begin with. It was quite the conundrum, and to put it in the simplest term possible, the Demon Prince had tried to swallow something too big for him to handle. Mortals simply weren’t meant to handle the Records of a god, period.
Vilastromoz was also certain the higher-ups of the Fourth Hell knew this. Shit, the Viper himself had seen recordings of their own failed rituals in the past, so they knew this wasn’t going to work. Yet they had allowed the Demon Prince to go ahead, even after he had proven himself on the Leaderboards. Did they do so to use him as a political tool? If the Viper’s Chosen messed up and got one of their young talents killed, they likely wouldn’t demand compensation, but they could try to leverage it to request help from Jake or perhaps even the Viper himself in the future.
It was naturally also possible they simply wanted to take the gamble and see if maybe the Harbinger of Primeval Origins could do what was thought impossible. To lose a Demon Prince to figure this out wasn’t that big of a price to pay. They could always nurture many more. Meanwhile, the possibilities if Jake was successful were nearly limitless and something even the devils of the Hells would care about.
This was the reality they now found themselves with. Jake had succeeded… no, he had gone beyond expectations and done something that the Viper honestly hadn’t been a fan of, even if things had worked out.
”Did your Chosen just astral-project his own soul into the Soulspace of another?” the Wyrmgod suddenly asked as the Primordial appeared on the terrace.
”And here I thought you respected the rights to private property. Not to mention your illegal spying on residents… do we have a public relations disaster on our hands here?” the Viper asked teasingly.”Nevermore City is still partly considered Nevermore and thus my domain,” the Wyrmgod answered. ”And even if I observed the situation, due to its peculiar nature, I still remain with questions. Did your Chosen truly astrally project into another Soulspace?”
”He sure did,” the Viper shrugged. ”Mind you, this is after I told him not to astrally project his soul around like that way back in the Tutorial.”
”Foolish and reckless,” the Wyrmgod said before he frowned. ”Wait, he astrally projected during the Tutorial? Where to?”
”To the Order of the Malefic Viper, using his connection to me as my Chosen,” the Viper said casually. ”I did send him back pretty quickly, though.”
”That is… hm…” the other Primordial said as he appeared to be deep in thought.
Jake doing these things was impressive, but neither was considered impossible. Astral projection was a pretty normal ability, and Jake’s version was quite frankly shit. It was the riskiest version there was and one no one ever really used unless they didn’t know better. Projecting at such an early grade did indicate an extremely powerful and stable soul, though.
As for entering the Soulspace of another, that was not something considered impossible either, just incredibly rare, and not something people often did or wanted to do. Very specific circumstances had to present themselves to make it possible. There were also certain skills that could make one interact with the Soulspace, though.
The Minotaur Mindchief Jake encountered all the way back in E-grade was a creature that could touch upon the soul. The skill that D-grade had wasn’t quite capable of entering a Soulspace, but with a skill evolution or two, perhaps it would be possible. The thing is, more often than not, there were no benefits to entering a Soulspace, only demerits.
Anyone would be stronger inside their own Soulspace than in the real world. The Soulspace was a representation of your Records and allowed you to have power not based on how strong you were but how strong you could become. It was a simplification, but that was roughly how it worked.
With how Records functioned, outside of extraordinary cases, everyone would have more Records than their actual power presented. The only ones who didn’t were those who had reached the end of their potential, and even they always had a bit more potential to pull on and would be at a significant advantage within their own Soulspace.
This was due to the second reason why it was stupid to enter someone else’s Soulspace: the suppression. A Soulspace was one’s domain, and anything foreign that did not belong there would be suppressed and pushed out or destroyed. So even if two people were equally powerful, if the fight suddenly switched to a Soulspace of either of them, that person would have an insurmountable homefield advantage and easily destroy their opponent.
The Soulspace could most easily be likened to the divine realm of a god. It was the domain of the person it belonged to, and within it, they would be far more powerful while everyone would be suppressed. So, for the same reasons as why one wouldn’t ever want to enter another’s divine realms, neither should one enter other Soulspaces.
That is… unless one was so powerful, any such suppression in other domains proved meaningless. This was what Jake had effectively done. His soul was simply at another level, and even if he astrally projected into another Soulspace, he didn’t really care about anything and did whatever he did in there.
The reason it was still risky, though, was that if the Demon Prince had died, Jake would have lost whatever he astrally projected for good. Which definitely wouldn’t have been good,
”His soul is truly not normal, is it?” the Wyrmgod questioned after a good while.
”Nope,” the Viper smiled.
”Do you expect the Hells to begin making their move soon? I know the Order has maintained a strong working relationship with them, even in your absence,” the Primordial continued. ”We both know that his accomplishment is related to his Bloodline, and the Demon Prince will surely return to the Fourth Hell and report everything that happened in detail.”
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”Oh, without a doubt, they’ll do something fun,” Vilastromoz shook his head. ”They owe Jake now, especially the Demon Prince, whom I’m sure will be given quite a lot of attention going forward.”
”They will undoubtedly want to propagate his Lineage,” the Wyrmgod agreed. ”I am also thinking… has your Chosen considered what the impact of what he has just done will be?”
”Not at all,” Vilastromoz said with certainty as he grinned.
”I see. Either way, I am still interested at some point in the future when he has matured more into his powers,” the Wyrmgod said as he turned to leave. ”Before, I was unsure if he would even be open to the suggestion, but now that he’s opened that door himself, my doubt has lessened significantly.”
The Wyrmgod disappeared as Viliastromoz shook his head. Jake indeed didn’t know the impact of what he had done. No, not the achievement itself or anything related to it. It was the mere fact he had even agreed to the ritual in the first place.
Before this, he had only ever done rituals for himself. Even if it ended up benefitting some factions, he hadn’t been asked by them to do it. This time, he had effectively done a commission using his abilities as the Harbinger of Primeval Origins. He had shown the multiverse that was even a possibility he considered, which also communicated he could use the ability purposefully, with its limitations perhaps not as severe as first hinted at.
In summary, Jake had sent a message to all the major factions of the multiverse despite not knowing he had done so. Or maybe Jake did and the Viper had underestimated his Chosen and the hunter’s ability to understand the multiverse’s political landscape.
Jake had naturally not thought about this at all. He had just seen a really interesting and cool ritual and agreed to do it, never considering the wider implications of his actions. But was that really his fault? It was just everyone else reading too much into things and making them way more complicated than they had to be.
Still standing in the ritual chamber, he waited patiently as the newly born Cerulean Demon Lord regained his bearings. Jake could understand why it would take a while. He probably had a lot of system notifications to deal with, so Jake also took the chance to check out those he had gotten himself.
Firstly, there was an interesting one, as he wasn’t sure he had ever gotten an ”experience gained” message that looked like that before.
You have successfully conducted a ritual leading to the creation of a Cerulean Demon Lord – A new kind of creation has been made. Bonus experience earned
He had other notifications that talked about rituals, but not in this fashion. It was mainly the conducting part… probably because this was Jake’s first group ritual where he had been in charge. Something he had feared would hurt his experience gain, but seeing the next few messages, that didn’t appear to be the case.
’DING!’ Profession: [Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper] has reached level 263 - Stat points allocated, +35 Free Points
…
’DING!’ Profession: [Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper] has reached level 267 - Stat points allocated, +35 Free Points
Five whole levels for a ritual that only took a couple of hours. That was damn efficient leveling, if Jake said so himself, and it put him even closer to level 300, which was the next milestone he really looked forward to, as that would mean meeting the First Sage directly.
He had naturally also gained a few race levels with the profession ones.
’DING!’ Race: [Human (C)] has reached level 276 - Stat points allocated, +45 Free Points
…
’DING!’ Race: [Human (C)] has reached level 278 - Stat points allocated, +45 Free Points
All in all, it had been quite a fruitful endeavor, and even if he had to spend a bit of his special Jake Juice, it was such a tiny amount that the levels he had just gained nearly made up for it. He almost wanted to see if he could do another ritual sometime soon, but he also got the feeling that wouldn’t be smart. Not like it would reward even close to the same amount of levels, due to the uniqueness of this one. He also wasn’t sure where to find ten legendary Demon Lord Hearts.
”My lord?” one of the demon ritualists asked after a while. The Demon Prince took a moment to respond as he opened his eyes again and rolled his shoulders. Rather than respond to the demon, he looked at Jake instead.
”My apologies. There are a lot of things to take in, and the metaphysical representation of the Cerulean Devil still remains within my Soulspace. It will take a while to fully absorb but with the contract in place…” the demon said as he looked deep in thought.
”I would reckon you got a pretty smooth ride for the next evolution or two,” Jake shrugged with a smile. He would be like Jake and Sylphie in that he didn’t have things like race quests but would just be able to evolve as long as his class allowed it.
”That is likely,” the newly-born Demon Lord agreed as he volunteered some information. ”My racial skills have mostly all changed, but my class remains the same. One thing is clear, though: I am a fully-fledged Demon Lord now. With all the perks and downsides, there comes with that.”
”Is that a good or a bad thing?” Jake questioned.
The Demon Prince just smiled. ”Think of Demon Lords as being to demons what a True Royal is to an ectognamorph, albeit in an admittedly far less extreme fashion. It’s viewed as a higher race of sorts, though it does also come with a certain set of expectations.”
”So, it’s overall good, got it,” Jake nodded.
”Good indeed,” the Demon Prince shook his head with a smile as he looked at Jake seriously. ”You have given me a boon I have no idea how to ever make up for. No, not just me; the entire Fourth Hell owes you. It may be late to ask, but what does the Chosen desire? I realize we failed to ever discuss payment for your work.”
”Hm,” Jake said, having totally not forgotten he should probably get paid. ”How about this… you owe me one.”
Jake truly didn’t need anything. However, a favor could hold a lot of value in the future, especially if the Cerulean Demon Lord rose to power as one would expect of him. One had to remember he was in third place on the Era Leaderboards, and that was before his evolution. Now, Jake didn’t doubt he would have done even better, though it was doubtful he would have beaten Ell’Hakan, much less Jake.
”Owing you is but a given,” the Demon Lord shook his head as he considered for a moment before taking out an odd emblem of sorts. When he did so, Jake saw the alarm on the faces of the ritualists, but none of them said anything. ”For now, take this.”
”What is it?” Jake questioned before he accepted it.
”The crest of my clan. With it, you will be treated like an honored guest in at least the first four Hells. Moreover, if you ever find anything you desire from us, feel free to use it and contact us, and I swear on my Path that I shall do my utmost to assist you,” the Cerulean Demon Lord explained.
”I see,” Jake said as he chose to accept the crest as he got an idea. ”I may not find a need myself, but if I have a comrade who can benefit, would I be allowed to give it to them instead?”
”What you use it for will be to your sole discretion,” the Demon Lord just said. ”I am well aware that chances are we have nothing to offer that the Chosen of the Malefic Viper cannot obtain himself, outside of particular things unique to the Hells or items that could only benefit demons.”
”In that case, I may just find a use for it,” Jake nodded. Yeah, chances are, he was just going to hand it off to Irin or something. As the Demon Prince had said, Jake didn’t really need anything they could offer, and even the unique alchemical ingredients the demons had a monopoly on, he could still just buy as part of the Order if push came to shove.
”Anyway, it was a pleasure doing this ritual with you all, even if things didn’t exactly go to plan,” Jake said after they exchanged a few more pleasantries. ”Good job, everyone. I told you we would make history.”
It seemed as if it was only when Jake said this that the ten demon ritualists who had assisted with the ritual truly realized what they had been a part of. Only now did they realize they had indeed been part of a ritual that may have been entirely one-of-a-kind and would truly go down in the history of the multiverse. It was no understatement to say that the Cerulean Demon Lord was not the only one who had their entire future changed on this day.
Jake didn’t say anything more as he allowed everything to sink in, and he exited the basement, the Demon Prince escorting him out. He didn’t lead Jake out of the mansion itself, as he wanted to remain hidden for now, something Jake understood. The Demon Prince had changed quite a lot physically, going from being just about Jake’s height to now being two full heads taller, and that wasn’t even counting the horns. He looked a lot more like the Cerulean Devil, that was for sure. Especially the part where he had turned way more blue.
Walking out of the demon mansion, Jake felt pretty happy about how things had gone as he considered where to go next. That was when he realized this had been the last item on his Nevermore City bucket list… which meant there was really only one more thing left to do.
It’s time to head home.