Chapter 18: The Return of the Old Demon
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Roy initially wanted to stay here to see when the old demon would return, but he did not expect that the wait would last seven days.
Of course, seven days was only an estimate. Roy could not tell exactly how long he had waited. In short, it was quite long.
During this period, Roy realized that the opening of the altar was not occasional. On the contrary, it was pretty frequent.
The magic formation on the altar would emit light every now and then, and then all kinds of unique scents would emanate from the void.
Upon observing the phenomena for a couple of times, Roy gradually realized that every time the magic formation activated, people were communicating with the Abyss of the Demon World by providing offerings to attempt to summon demons. Offerings like the high-quality soul in the first offering were rare. Instead, the stench of blood typically filled the air in the void.
Roy guessed that it was highly likely that the stench of blood was from the summoner using fresh blood or internal organs as offerings.
But although the stench of blood could also attract demons, it was not as alluring as using souls. After all, demons frequently smelled blood during their hunt for prey in the Abyss and had smelled enough.
Therefore, mundane offerings would not attract powerful demons but only monsters or the weaker and smaller demons. Even so, the offerings had to be sufficiently b.l.o.o.d.y. If the stench of blood was not strong enough, even the monsters would disdain it, resulting in the magic formation quickly dimming soon after activation.
This indicated that the summoning had failed.
Apart from offerings being unattractive and the short activation time of the magic formation, the scent of the offerings faded quickly due to the deactivation of the magic formation. During this period of observation, Roy noticed that there were quite a few attempts to summon demons that failed.
If communicating with the magic formation required magic power, then failure was probably because of the weak magic power possessed by the summoner.
This made Roy conscious of the fact that most of the demon summoners were likely only dabblers. Not only did they possess weak magic power, but they also did not understand what demons really wanted!
Of course, the blame could not be placed on these summoners, as even the dabblers had managed to summon demons successfully. At least, this was what Roy had observed during his wait. A total of twelve monsters and three little demons that were attracted and entered the magic formation were successfully teleported. In particular, the three little demons could have hatched in the same batch as Roy. If not for the T-Virus, Roy would not have skipped the long growth phase and directly proceeded to the maturity phase. The other little demons were not so lucky, and they had to go through the usual growth phase.
However, during the growth phase, the little demons did not have it easy, facing difficulties in hunting for prey and surviving, so only the ones loitering into this area would be attracted by the scent of blood and respond to the summons. It was the same for those monsters. It was precisely because of these weak demons and monsters responding to the summons that led to the low success rate observed by Roy.
Those unsuccessful dabblers aside, the small group of lucky successful ones probably thought that they had mastered the summoning technique and noted it down. The circulation of these notes resulted in people using increasingly distorted techniques to summon demons.
After all, there were absolutely not many people who truly understood the Abyss.
Inferring from these hypotheses, the summoner that attracted the demons with the high-quality soul and had them select a winner through fighting could have been the only one who truly understood how summoning demons worked! He just did not know from what kind of world the summoner came from.
During the time Roy was waiting, some of the demons and monsters that were summoned returned sporadically. These returnees usually had satisfied expressions, probably because they had managed to enjoy the offerings. But there were also those that looked very miserable. They had injuries from head to toe, and some had even lost limbs, possibly the work of a stronger enemy. Despite making it back alive, such injuries were often indications that they could not live long in the Abyss, and they would quickly become the prey of other demons and monsters.
Roy could not help it and killed two wounded low-rank little demons. However, the souls he harvested showed up in the system as ‘incomplete low-quality souls’!
This meant that those demons might have suffered injuries in the summoning process and lost part of their souls!
What happened? Roy was secretly relieved that he had not hastily entered the magic formation. This was not something he had antic.i.p.ated.
He felt that he would only know after the old demon returned because the old demon, like Araniya, was someone who had mastered the demon language. Looking at how familiar he was when entering the magic formation, it should not have been the only time that he had responded to a summon, so he definitely knew what this demon summoning was about.
As for how to communicate with this old demon, he could only take it one step at a time.
On the seventh day, a black spot appeared in the magic formation without warning. The black spot quickly expanded, and a gate appeared. Afterward, a large shadow appeared in the magic formation.
The old demon finally returned. However, upon his appearance, his large body immediately fell headfirst into the magic formation, causing a loud thud. The volcanic ashes on the volcano wall rustled in the air with this huge vibration.
The old demon looked quite miserable. It was the worst situation that Roy had seen during this time!
One of his demon horns had completely broken off, resulting in purple blood flowing from the top of his head onto his face. His stone hammer was missing, and his tail was also broken. Hundreds of big and small wounds covered all over his thick h.o.r.n.y scales, and the most severe one was the two-meter-long wound on his abdomen. This wound seemed to be cut by a sharp weapon, and it was so bad that his internal organs fell out of his body and hit the ground.
Roy was shocked to see how horrible the old demon looked. With such fatal wounds, how did he even return alive?!
Roy was certain that the old demon had experienced a fierce battle after being summoned. However, the old demon’s injured state provided Roy with an opportunity to communicate with him, so Roy jumped down from the volcano wall and went onto the altar.
In fact, while Roy was coming down, the old demon had already struggled and crawled out of the magic formation on the altar. The old demon probably felt the need to leave the magic formation quickly in case someone summoned a demon again. What was he going to do if he was summoned again? The old demon was already badly wounded, and responding to another summon was akin to suicide…
After the old demon crawled out from the magic formation, he naturally noticed Roy moving closer to him. Despite his bloodied face, the old demon still roared threateningly at Roy.
He thought Roy was here to eliminate him, so of course he was not going to be polite.
But despite his fierceness, his roar could not help but reveal a tremor, exposing his inner uneasiness.
Roy recognized that uneasiness, so he did not waste any time. He went up and used demon language to say, “Answer… my quest… ion. Otherwise, you will… die!”
Roy was not fluent in the demon language since very few demons could communicate with him. However, the demon language had an advantage in that it could quickly let the other party understand what the speaker wanted to express.
As Roy spoke, he drew his claws across the hard stone floor. Although he did not leave any claw marks, it created a zizi sound and sparks to appear from the friction. He used this to let the old demon know that he had the ability to kill him easily.
Looking at Roy’s extremely strong muscles and claws, the old demon knew that he was not a match for Roy in his injured state despite Roy being only a quarter of his height. The old demon could only lie down now! Therefore, the old demon quickly compromised and used the demon language to ask Roy, “What do you want to know?”