As one would say, if you py with fire for long enough... And he has been pying with heavenly fire, of all fucking things.

  He should’ve known better than to believe her strong exterior; He knew she was walking dangerously close to the edge, perhaps on purpose, and he knew she watched Father Anders being tortured to death using Mind Magic...

  Even if he wasn’t pnning on actually breaking her Mind Shield, it must’ve looked as though he was going to just take the answer he wanted for from her mind, regardless of her wishes, and it must’ve scared her shitless to realize how easily he could’ve done it this whole time.

  The scariest monster out there...

  ...No, perhaps she had known it from the very beginning.

  “Mary, I need a favour.”

  As Mary stares up at him with a startled look on her face, he pces five contracts on her table, causing her to gnce at them, then to frown at him.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing!?” she hisses at him, “If you think I’m going to give you special treatment just because-”

  “Then refuse me, and tell me to go fuck myself,” he interrupts, sustaining her cold blue eyes unblinkingly as he does so.

  Due the very early time (he would usually be starting his training with the girls right about now) the guild is still almost empty, other than a second clerk currently staring at the stack of papers in front of her and looking as though she is about to fall asleep on top of them at any second...

  After a moment of sustaining his gaze, Mary grimaces, then takes a second gnce toward the contracts.

  “...These are all nest monster escapees,” she points out, “Near the same vicinity.”

  “I can do all of them today; You know I can.”

  She sighs. “Why?”

  “I know it is uncommon, but I was hoping one of these would have a crystal.”

  Those things are expensive, and stealing one of them would be a pain, while diving into a nest unprepared with his current mana pool when his mind magic doesn’t work on those monsters would be tantamount to suicide; Therefore, this was the easiest way he could think of in order to acquire a crystal, even if it is somewhat of a gamble.

  Mary grabs the ridge of her nose, shaking she head exasperatedly. “Technically... I could allow you to take these, since they’re near each other, and they’re low rank, but I’d have my ass burned if you don’t complete all of them before the day is over.”

  “I’ll do all five, even if it kills me,” Sincir promises, “I can hand them in tomorrow, right? As long as I kill the monsters today, of course.”

  Mary groans. “I can’t believe I’m even considering... Is this what they mean by having your brain fucked out of your skull?”

  Seeing the internal struggle behind her eyes, Sincir almost tells her to forget it and only give him one or two of the contracts, but then she begins to stamp the parchments with a grimace on her face, and he loses his chance to back out of it.

  “Do not make me regret this...” Mary murmurs as she slides them back to him and meets his gaze again, “And now we’re even for the those dishes, so don’t even think about asking for special treatment again.”

  Averting his eyes from hers, Sincir nods... It is all he can do to stop her from seeing the mess he is at the moment. “...Would it be too much if I also asked you to borrow me some money?”

  Mary freezes, her eyebrow twitching.

  ...Leaving the guild with his contracts in hand, then tucking them under his stupidly oversized shirt which smells of the st thing he wants to think about right now, Sincir heads for the nearest stable for a rented horse (no way he’ll reach all five locations in time otherwise, hence the money he borrowed from Mary).

  He grimaces once the man in charge of the pce tells him the price, expining that the horse will be considered stolen if it is not returned by the end of the day, and that no, they do not do multiple days renting.

  Still, since he has little choice at the moment, Sincir accepts the man’s obviously overpriced services... And he thought Mary was being generous with the money she lent him; It’s a good thing he wasn’t counting on her money for anything else.

  Unfortunately, going above a trot inside the city’s walls is a crime; Then again, it has been a while since he interacted with the humans’ main source of sve bor, so taking some time to grow used to the beast below him isn’t all that bad of an idea.

  As usual, his adventurer badge allows him to cross through the gates without any trouble, and Sincir heads away from the city at a increasingly high pace then, feeling the wind against his face and forcing his thoughts to remain carefully focused on the task ahead rather than what led him to start it...

  He’ll have to find a way to feed his horse at some point, though water won’t be a problem, and he can go until nighttime without food, himself, no problem.

  He’ll also have to stop occasionally to ask for directions, and being on a horse means he’ll have to stick to main roads for the most part... He’ll make do, somehow.

  ...An hour of horse riding, three very annoying stops to ask for direction, and several fence-gates ter, he finally finds his first target in the form of a fairly rge gathering of houses overseeing a vast pntation of tomatoes.

  Tying his horse to a fence near the road, Sincir curses and casts a brief healing spell over his sore ass before heading toward the nearest farmer he can see.

  “Aye,” the man greets once he approaches, “Sorry kid, but whatever ye selling, we’re not interested... Hard times, these.”

  Deciding not to take offence, Sincir simply fshes the man his adventurer badge. “I’m not trying to sell anything... You’ve got a monster problem, friend? I’m here to deal with it.”

  The man’s eyes widen slightly, and then he nods. “They’re hiring them young these days, aren’t they...? But yes, one of ours posted the request at the guild.”

  Sincir waves his hand toward the farm around them. “I see you’re quite calm, which means the creature must be a ways from here, still. If you could point me toward where it was st spotted-”

  “Of course, of course!”

  The man’s tone having quickly changed now that the misunderstanding of his identity was solved, Sincir is led toward a nearby grove.

  “We spotted it flying above the trees near sundown st night; Then we put the animals away, sent for the guild, and made sure to stay the hell away from the cursed treeline ever since... Not that we’re usually eager to approach it, in any case.”

  Since the grove isn’t a particurly small one, Sincir grimaces. “You are positive this was a nest monster, right?”

  Most likely having understood the source of Sincir’s annoyance if the sympathetic look on his face is anything to go by, the man nods.

  “A contract at the guild isn’t exactly cheap, d... We wouldn’t have done it unless we were certain.”

  Sincir sighs. “Watch the horse for me... And give it some tomatoes, if you have one or two to spare.”

  He is not in the mood to search for some fucking giant insect across miles of trees, damn it. As, as much as he wants to simply burn the grove down and be done with it...

  After a couple of minutes of walking aimlessly, Sincir decides there is no way he’ll solve this in a reasonable amount of time without spending a good portion of his mana.

  He could try a couple of wind searching spells... If he was better at earth magic, this might’ve been easier.

  Well, he hopes those farmers don’t mind a bit of noise.

  Creating two wings of ice (more of spatial spell than an ice one, really, in spite of how it looks), and grimacing as he feels his mana beginning to drain at a rapid pace, Sincir immediately shoots up, flying up until he is able to see most of the surrounding grove within his vision.

  Then, he forms a wind searching spell above his palm, combining it with a bit of fire magic to create the equivalent of a hot air ball, and shoots it downwards, aiming at random...

  The spells feeds him an almost overwhelming amount of information about the grove below as it explodes, but more importantly, it is a loud, obnoxious thing, disturbing the wild life for many miles around without actually damaging the forest or killing anything more than insects...

  Sincir only has to cast two of them before spotting the monster he was hired to kill buzzing away from a rge three, its ugly form sticking out against the background of tress like a sore thumb.

  Not bothering with finesse in view of his rapidly depleting mana pool, Sincir immediately boosts his flying spell to its maximum speed, creating an ice war hammer in his grip as he descends toward the creature from its blind spot, then smashes the hammer over its carapace, sending it to crash against the ground as a mess of disgusting insect insides.

  Quickly dispelling his wings as he nds, Sincir walks toward the now very dead monster, inspecting its broken corpse for any signs of a crystal, yet coming empty handed even after several minutes of moving dead insect parts around...

  Eventually, realizing they are already beginning to melt, he curses.

  Well, no luck from his first hunt, it seems, but there are still four more to go...

  Mercifully, since nest monsters dissolve into nothing a while after their death, he doesn’t need to worry about bringing proof of his kill back (dealing with the treat as fast as possible is the guild’s priority here, so they’re willing to give adventurers some amount of breathing room in this case) which means he can head straight toward his next contract.

  Walking out of the grove after having flied so deep into it is a pain, to put it lightly, but at least it allows him to recover a portion of the mana he spent on those fshy spells...

  The faces of the farms who greet him once he reaches the tomato pntation again are hiriously uncomfortable, and they handle him a bag of tomatoes for the trip, while apologizing for the inconvenience of not having kept better track of the monster’s positioning, to which Sincir rolls his eyes, making it clear they should continue to prioritize their own safety, and that it wasn’t that much of a problem...

  It takes a couple of very annoying minutes to fend them off, but he does manage to maintain his politeness throughout it, and his horse appreciates the treats, if its happy neigh is anything to by, so Sincir supposes it wasn’t all in vain.

  Since he has no time to lose, he heads out as soon as the creature is done eating (having given most of the tomatoes back).

  Considering the nearest nest from the contracts he took is Insect Burrows, he expects his targets to be some form of giant insect or another...

  Talk from the farms he visits is that the monsters have been a lot more agitated tely, but if those cultists are going about inside the nest, Sincir isn’t exactly surprised more of the creatures are coming out to hunt.

  He also asks about disappearances in the area, to which he is told there have been a few, as expected.

  Typically, small communities tend to keep a closer eye on their members, making it harder for a kidnapper or converter to get their job done undetected, while nothing makes it easier for an investigator to find the source of a group of murderers then when they draw an exact circle of victims around their hideout; Those cultists were smart to take their targets from further away, or lucky, otherwise they might’ve been already found out at this point...

  The sun is long past it’s mid point by the time Sincir finally reaches his final target for the day, and his horse is quite tired, although it spend a good amount of time resting, rather than carrying him.

  He couldn’t be as fshy with every hunt as he was with the first one, so finding the stupid bugs was what took most of his time up to now... Well, according to the farmer who greeted him this time, he is in luck, because the creature hid itself under their bridge, and it has remained in there since the previous day.

  The man also tells him the creature is a frog monster, rather than an insect, causing Sincir to realize he traveled quite a bit while completing the line of contracts he accepted at the guild, and now the closest nest to him is Mud Holes, rather than Insect Burrows... Of course, had he payed closer attention to the contracts, instead of only caring that they were retively close to each other, he’d have already known about this.

  Staring at the small stream and the stone bridge cutting above its flow the man points him toward, Sincir sighs.

  “You might want to step back,” he warns, to which the farmer quickly nods, backing away from him and the bridge.

  Unfortunately, even after four syed monsters, he has yet to find a single crystal, disappointingly enough.

  Of course, they aren’t supposed to show up very often on the weaklings who crawl all the way out here, but still...

  He was born as a sve in Hell, damn it! Couldn’t his luck have changed a bit since then?!

  Groaning with annoyance, Sincir casts an electric spell over the water of the stream, knowing it will carry the spell toward his target; And sure enough, the giant frog immediately jumps into view, releasing a loud shriek as it does so.

  The sound isn’t particurly frog-like, but Sincir doesn’t have long to question the creature’s design before it shoots its tongue at him, aiming his stomach... Being too zy to dodge it at this point in the shitty day he has had, Sincir simply swats it away with a wind spell, before creating a pressured geyser of water which cuts the disgusting appendage, as well as a good portion of the frog’s head...

  ...Staring at the creature’s now dead body, he nods to himself. It took a decent chunk of his mana to be this fshy again, but his patience was already at its limits.

  A few moments ter, after a few cast wind spells to cut and spread the monsters remains in front of him, Sincir tightens his jaw, cursing under his breath... He is about to give up and walk away, when he notices something being dragged by the stream near his leg which isn’t a disgusting part of frog monster.

  Quickly grabbing his prize, Sincir smiles... The green crystal glows slightly under the sun, and it is warm to his touch; But more than that, he can feel the life inside of it, albeit faintly, pulsating against his senses.

  Leaving the stream in a much better mood than when he entered it, Sincir heads back to the farmer who led him here, who is now staring at him with a look bordering terror on his face.

  Smiling toward the man, he chuckles. “The monsters are the ones who should be afraid of me, don’t you think?”

  The man blinks, seeming to realize he had been staring, then takes a deep breath while blushing and scratching his head. “S-sorry, it was just... I thought my eyes might be pying tricks on me for a while there. Is that what a mage can do?”

  “If they are a good enough mage... Here, tell what you feel from this.”

  Once Sincir tosses the man the crystal, he stumbles, nearly dropping it, before staring at it with shock.

  “It’s... Warm, I suppose?” he murmurs after a moment.

  “Really? That’s it? No pulsating feeling? Or maybe a slight pull?”

  The man shakes his head, hesitantly returning him the crystal.

  Well... This certainly confirms he is not fully human, or he’d have felt nothing from the crystal as well.

  As far as their pn to build a Domain on this side goes, that is good news. However, there is still much he has pnned to do today, and so he leaves the man after a brief goodbye, heading back to his horse.

  After scratching the creature’s chin for a moment, which seems strangely happy to see him (maybe it’s expecting more treats, since he got something for it almost at every farm they stopped at), Sincir mounts and rides until he can no longer see any houses, before deviating from the main trail in order to enter a nearby grove.

  Tying the horse to a tree, he leaves it at a point where it can’t be seen from the trail, whispering for it to behave in his absence, as it has so far, then continues on by foot until he is sure he won’t be heard or spotted by anyone in what he is about to do...

  Once he figures he has walked far away enough, taking a deep breath, Sincir casts a mind spell, detecting for nearby animals, and then a wind one, catching a small rodent as it was about to run away.

  As a rule, summoning circles must be drawn in the blood of a living creature other than the caster, or they won’t work; Sincir feels a little bad for the rodent, but it has just enough blood to complete the small circle he has in mind, which means it won’t survive to regret its curiosity...

  The gruesome part of the work being done, Sincir pces the crystal near the middle of the small circle of blood he drew on the ground after clearing the leaves and sticks away; The effect is instantaneous, and he feels the circle coming to life as a prickling sensation washing over his skin... It’s what would’ve happened had he killed something inside of it, a signal of the circle being charged with energy.

  Being in equal parts excited and scared, Sincir steps back, taking a second deep breath as he does so.

  This... Either an agglomerate of trapped Souls, or a living thing in its own accord, his little experiment confirms that the crystal is undoubtedly alive in some way, and that it can be used as a sacrifice to summon demons.

  A crystal of this size... Considering the amount of power he is feeling from the circle at the moment, he’d compare it to a dog, or maybe a pig, in therms of Life Force? Not exactly the most efficient way to go about things, considering how much work he had to go through in order to grab it, but if his hideout was inside of a nest, and he had months or years to gather as many crystals as he could...

  ...Summoning a Demon Lord might not be out of question.

  Sincir shakes his head; Truly, the stupidity of mortals knows no bounds. He doesn’t doubt the cultist under Insect Burrows might be pnning something of the sort for their final event, and considering how long ago those disappearances started happening, he might not have much longer to stop them...

  Sincir is about to destroy his circle, when a thought crosses his head; Since he has gone this far, why not go all the way?

  That rodent won’t come back to life even if he stops now, in any case.

  Although he knows the name of a couple of quasits, from Varzath’s memory, Sincir doesn’t bother with a named summon, or with a compulsory one, simple sending a general invite in the form of an open portal by completing his summoning ritual.

  “I offer thee blood and sacrifice, met under the rules of creation, taken by force and freely given; Answer my calling, creature of fire and destruction, so we may share of a single part, and conspire against those who have turned away from the pain of the forgotten,” Sincir whispers, stepping into the circle and spilling his mana into it order to create the connection necessary for it to activate his summoning.

  With how much energy he is offering, Sincir doesn’t expect anything particurly threatening to come out, and sure enough, not long after the st word has left his mouth, a fme appears in the air before him, soon taking the form of a green quasit, who smiles with slightly sharp teeth as it meets his gaze.

  “Ah, hello, human boy...” the creature murmurs, cackling as it does so, “I don’t know who thought you such a ritual, but I’m grateful for the chance to smell something other than sulfur for a moment... Tell me, what is the price for your Soul?”

  Sincir narrows his eyes at it, not answering.

  So, it can’t tell he is something other than a normal human at a gnce... But then again, it is a mere quasit; not exactly a paragon of strength among the ranks of demons.

  “...I’m not going to offer you my Soul, creature. I’m not stupid.”

  The quasit snorts; Clearly, it believes its presence here proves otherwise.

  “Very well then; I’m also willing to accept wine, bear, meat, or jewellery... Anything of valuable I might be able to take to the other side with me, including that pretty little body of yours. The price will depend on what you seek...”

  The creature raises an eyebrow at him; Since it must’ve have been summoned for a reason, it is waiting for his wish, so that it can decide on a price for it.

  Sincir sighs. He wasn’t pnning on actually going through with the ritual, so he didn’t prepare anything of valuable to offer, and of course, his body and Soul are out of question... Well, he still has a couple of the coins Mary lent him for the horse.

  Taking them out, Sincir flips one of them toward the flying quasit.

  “I’m only looking for a small piece of information about your side of things; Would another nine of these suffice?”

  Inspecting the copper coin in his grip, the quasit grimaces. “Ten copper for some information...? What could you even-”

  “Do you want them or not?”

  Raising his gaze from the coin, the quasit narrows his eyes at him.

  “...Ask the question, and if it is a simple piece of information, as you’ve cimed, I’ll accept the deal.”

  Sincir takes a couple of seconds to considers how exactly he wants to phrase his question, as he doesn’t have a second crystal to repeat the ritual with.

  “Is there... Somewhere in Hell, is there still a Domain of incubi and succubi? And if so, how long has it stood for, since its creation?”

  The quasit blinks, its slitted eyes showcasing clear confusion over his question, and Sincir feels his heart stopping.

  “...Those were two questions,” it says after a moment, “Ten coins won’t be enough.”

  Sincir grimaces. “I’ll suck you off before you go! Just tell me!”

  The creature grimaces back. “Look, I am not into little boys... Ugh, fine! A Domain of whores, yes, there is one, and st I hear of it, it had been around for a while... Couple thousand years, at least.”

  As soon as the creature finishes speakings, Sincir feels the coins slipping his grip and flying toward it, as the contract in between them is fulfilled...

  Ancient magic, out of the control of either of them.

  Having pocketed the coins, the creature smiles at him. “I’ll tell you what... Yer interested in a hot night? Bring me something alive - a cat or a dog will do - and I’ll give you the name of a succubus who’ll blow that little brain of yours out of your skull-”

  “A couple thousand?” Sincir asks, his heart having nearly stopped inside his chest.

  The creature grimaces. “That what I said, ain’t? The magic would not have worked if I had l-”

  Sincir waves his hand, breaking the circle and causing the quasit to disappear as it had appeared; in a fsh of fire.

  Then, he screams in rage from the top of his lungs, blowing the circle in front of him to nothing with a fire spell as he does so.