Chapter 31: Contact with Humans

  Belisara was bleeding. Her escape attempt had not only failed, but had provoked Sagittarius himself to intervene.

  'What's worse... I didn't even run into Justinian and his group!'

  In her desperation, she stumbled into one of the local markets. These were so-called exchanges where cultivators from the mountain traded resources and sought companions for raids.

  "What the fuck!" shouted one of the three marks adepts as the she-devil almost crashed into him.

  But she had no time to stop. The chase was on.

  'Where is Justinian?!' she panted heavily.

  She was sure he would help her, yet she didn't even know if he had heard her scream.

  Immediately after her, three devils appeared in the market - two three-markers and a four-marker.

  "There she is!" rasped Sagittarius's subordinate, seeing the blonde disappear into the crowd.

  Just like the adept before them, they knocked over the adept in their path, who had no intention of letting it go.

  "That's enough, you son of a..." he was about to start a brawl when the leader of the bandits pushed him into a nearby stall.

  "Find her!" snarled Sagittarius, scanning the marketplace.

  He had been hunting her for a long time. He had never been as close as he was now.

  The she-devil, meanwhile, tried to hide among the stalls.

  "Get out of here!"

  "Are you crazy, you idiot?!"

  The terrified adepts shouted whenever she stopped near their belongings.

  Strength ruled this place, and Sagittarius was quite well-known on the mountain.

  It seemed she had managed to hide in the crowd, but at the very edge of the bazaar... someone grabbed her arm!

  "You didn't think you'd get away, did you?" smiled the minion who had caught her.

  The girl tried to struggle, but his grip was too strong.

  "Let go!"

  She squirmed, attracting the growing interest of the crowd. Soon, the second minion and the leader himself joined them.

  "Well, finally!" the latter smiled when he saw the situation.

  In his mind were all the defeats he had suffered at the hands of this adept. But now, the time for revenge had come. He swung his fist powerfully, when something went wrong.

  His fist didn't strike as he expected but was held back, blocked.

  "What the..." he turned his head, outraged.

  Holding his elbow was... a human, smiling.

  "It's not nice to treat an adept from the same mountain like that," he said, looking Sagittarius in the eyes.

  Hope appeared in Belisara's eyes, while the devil looked at Justinian with furrowed brows.

  "Why are you getting involved in this, human?"

  "How could I not get involved? I have to help a friend in need," the young man replied without much concern. This made his interlocutor burst into laughter.

  "Get lost, pup, or this will end badly for you," he said, emanating the aura of a fourth-level cultivator.

  "If that's all you can show, I'm disappointed," the human replied calmly, releasing his own aura, no weaker than his opponent's.

  The other, gritting his teeth, wasted no more words, and soon the two clashed.

  To the surprise of the subordinates, their leader couldn't gain an advantage. It was shocking, as he was considered one of the strongest four-markers on the entire mountain.

  Just as he was preparing to use his magical technique, a new arrival appeared. Aldona ran up to the fighters, taking a guard stance, clearly showing she was ready to join the conflict.

  A tense moment followed, in which it was unknown how the situation would unfold. In the end, however... Sagittarius gave up.

  Clenching his fists, he nodded to the other two, and they released the captured girl before taking their colleague and retreating with annoyed expressions.

  "This isn't over," he hissed towards his victim before following his subordinates.

  Throughout this time, Justinian kept his eyes on him, in case of a sudden attack.

  The atmosphere was still tense as the sinister adepts left the marketplace, and only a moment later could the young man approach Belisara.

  "Are you alright?" he asked, extending a hand.

  She didn't answer at first. She stood with her head bowed, as if she hadn't heard the question at all. Tension appeared in the human's eyes, who took it as a bad sign. From second to second, the situation worsened... but in an unexpected direction.

  "Hey, what's with..." he was asking, when the she-devil suddenly sprang up and... threw herself at him, hugging him tightly!

  "T-thank you," she whispered quietly, pressing herself against his chest.

  The boy, of course, looked as if he had seen a ghost and even blushed a little, but the worst was yet to come. For he felt a terrifying energy manifesting right next to him, coming from Aldona who was watching the scene!

  "W-what are y-you doing?!"

  For the noblewoman, it was a terrible crisis - not only did some brat have the audacity to lay her paws on someone she liked. Above all, this brat... was much more beautiful than her!

  "Hmm? What's the matter?" asked the confused adept from Greedius's mountain.

  She looked completely different now than when Justinian had first met her. Her previously loose hair, which had waved beautifully in the wind, was now tied up and hidden under a scarf.

  It seemed she was clearly trying to tone down her natural beauty, which only added to her charm.

  "Aren't you being a bit too forward?!" Aldona grabbed her by the shoulder, which made the blonde frown in surprise.

  "H-hey..." the boy began, trying to calm down a conflict he couldn't understand. However, the atmosphere only seemed to escalate, so he soon had to stand between the women to stop them from fighting at all.

  He decided it would be easiest to escape to another topic.

  "What kind of devils are they? Why does the mountain's leadership allow such attacks?"

  His reaction made Belisara shake her head sadly.

  "On this mountain, there is only one law, and that is strength. If you can't handle yourself, you might as well not exist; the leadership doesn't care about your fate."

  The boy hadn't heard these details before and looked questioningly at Aldona.

  The noblewoman was still full of fury after what she had seen, but she nodded. The mountain of Greedius, also called the Mountain of Envy and Conflagration, had always been like this. The strongest triumphed here, and even the resources that aided cultivation were distributed in a way that reinforced this hierarchy and was geared towards finding new talents.

  The perplexed human turned to Belisara:

  "We came here on a pilgrimage, what should we do in that case?"

  "You don't have to worry about that. Greedius cares a lot about appearances, and the conditions for guests are always better than for the local adepts," she explained with a flash of resignation in her eye.

  Justinian nodded and thought for a moment. It was clear to him that he couldn't just leave his acquaintance here, whose life was in danger.

  He soon found what he considered a good solution.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  'I just hope this doesn't cause any drama...' he thought, a little afraid of the demonic noblewoman's reaction to what he was about to do.

  Soon, he sighed heavily and turned to Belisara.

  "How about you join our group? We could use someone who knows the local customs and places."

  "What?" Aldona's eyes opened wide.

  Unfortunately, her objection was of little use, as Belisara nodded without hesitation.

  "Thanks... you definitely won't regret this!" she said, smiling at him charmingly.

  Soon they gathered Felix, who was observing the commotion from a distance with a yawn, and visited the ruler of the mountain, Greedius.

  The audience hall made a rather mixed impression on Justinian.

  'It looks like someone combined the splendor of Rudnicki with the complete lack of ideas of Ignatius...' he concluded, looking at the walls hung with all sorts of nonsense.

  Some of them were paintings emphasizing the success, but also the humble origins of Greedius - here a painting of him shaking hands with Boruta, there of him heroically working in the fields as a youth.

  The devil himself was slightly paunchy, and quite unusually, his skin, which he proudly displayed by not wearing a shirt, was adorned with whole series of tattoos.

  'Some of these slogans must be his old loves, but why the numbers?' the boy wondered.

  The red-skinned devil had a large number "13" placed just above his navel - which the human took as an obvious homage to the ruler of hell. Besides that, there were also hearts with crossed-out female names, numbers like 69, and slogans like "Don't surrender" or "Never gave up."

  He didn't look particularly dangerous and lacked the aura of mystery of, for example, Eusebius, but Justinian knew that appearances could be deceiving.

  "What kind of question is that?! Of course I have places prepared for you for the holy pilgrimage!" the ruler of the mountain fumed. "Especially since such famous personalities are visiting me!" he added immediately, looking at Felix and a little at Justinian.

  After all, the human boy had really gained an incredible reputation in hell after the raids on the nobility, the incident in Ukuun, and the disaster as the Grim Judge.

  "In that case, we will be obliged," said Felix with a smile.

  "Hahaha, my home is your home! Make yourselves at home!" laughed Greedius.

  To Justinian, it looked like typical behavior copied from the "gentry," which he had encountered during his training with Rudnicki.

  'I guess this is better than Eusebius's secret plotting...' he thought, frowning.

  "Is it known yet what we are supposed to be doing?" he asked the mountain's ruler.

  "Whatever you want, of course! As I said - make yourselves at home!" repeated Greedius.

  It was absolutely clear that he had no particular task in mind for them.

  Therefore, the boy confirmed the possibility of acquiring Belisara as a local guide.

  "What, this woman?" the mountain ruler was surprised.

  Then, narrowing his eyes, he looked her up and down, after which he smiled broadly.

  "No problem!"

  Justinian felt quite awkward seeing his gaze, but he didn't want to explain himself. It was enough for him that Aldona growled something behind him when he asked his question.

  Soon they went to the caves prepared for them, which seemed... absolutely comical.

  "How can you even create something like this in such a terrible environment?" the boy asked his companions.

  The high standard contrasted so much with the poor surroundings, where devil-adepts fought over dirty hovels or the chance to rest, that it was jarring.

  Nearby, two cultivators of the second mark of Ki Gathering were fighting.

  "Do you feel sorry for them?" asked Aldona, who followed his gaze.

  The human shook his head.

  "They choose their own destiny. However, I wonder what the point is of creating a society in this way. Aren't the mountains supposed to train devils to be the elites of this dimension?"

  The noblewoman smiled sadly, then sighed. One of the fighters had just gained the upper hand and quickly used it to end the duel. Then, without any ceremony, he slit his opponent's throat.

  "Aren't elites created in precisely this way? It may surprise you, but it is Greedius's mountain that is considered the best at developing adepts." Here she paused for a moment, as if weighing her words. "That is, those who survive the training."

  Justinian watched as the blood of one of the devils slowly soaked into the ground as its owner lay motionless. Seeing such a senseless death, the boy could only clench his hands in anger.

  "And what's it all for? With the death of an individual, the potential they could have brought to society is lost," he stated. "Even if he was a poor cultivator, perhaps he would have been an engineer, or a solid educator."

  He was aware that some things are hard to change, but the senselessness of the suffering all over the mountain was striking.

  Aldona sighed quietly.

  "And why do you follow your religion? Wouldn't it be easier to stop long ago and try to build a new life? You won't bring the dead back to life, and it's very possible that you yourself will die."

  Justinian looked at her in surprise. There was concern in her eyes, not reproach.

  "I only want to fix a situation I found myself in against my will. I don't follow an idea for the sake of the idea, like strength for the sake of pure strength," he said quietly.

  Aldona looked at him with a sad gaze.

  "This is where the differences between us emerge. For you, righting wrongs is important, but for many devils, the only thing that matters is strength - following the ruler of hell."

  In her soul, she added one more thing with pain.

  'Regardless of the price they have to pay for it.'

  Shortly after settling into the cave, it was confirmed that the entire area was a very dangerous environment. Devils often fought with each other over resources, which meant it was better not to leave the designated area for the delegation.

  Justinian observed this with furrowed brows, as the sounds of an argument came from inside the cave.

  "...really Aldona, just..." said Felix, the greatest talent of the dimension.

  "Just shut up! You're to leave me alone!" the noblewoman interrupted him.

  Whenever Eusebius's adept tried to talk to her, she would always get angry, much to the young genius's distress.

  In such situations, Justinian had no intention of intervening; he would simply go out so as not to be accidentally drawn into the conflict.

  "Are they always like this?" Belisara asked him, pointing to the cave.

  In her hand, she held a bundle of things she had brought from her hiding place nearby. The young boy could only shrug his shoulders. The adept of Greedius soon sat down next to him.

  "How have your last few months in hell been?" she asked, looking him in the eyes.

  At first, he wanted to say "average" and complain about the terrible fate that befell him whenever he tried to help someone. But then he remembered that Belisara had been in a much worse situation when he had recently met her, so he put it differently.

  "Full of opportunities to get to know, ahem... the local customs," he shook his head.

  The she-devil laughed at that.

  "I think I know what you mean. When we first met, neither of us probably imagined such a path."

  With that, of course, the boy had to agree.

  'Winning the tournament before, the raids at Rudnicki's, Ukuun, and being the Grim Judge...' he contemplated, '...I wonder where else my path will lead me.'

  Seeing him lost in thought, Belisara smiled at him warmly.

  "I'll leave you with your thoughts," she said, patting him on the shoulder.

  The boy's heart beat a little faster from that smile - after all, the she-devil was very beautiful. However, he was quickly snapped out of his mood by the appearance of Aldona. The young noblewoman, like all the other she-devils for that matter, was very territorial and immediately began to glare at Belisara.

  And so, the team of one human and several devils moved into the mountain of Greedius.

  A few days later...

  "We have to participate in missions to the human world?" asked a surprised Felix Faustus.

  "Greedius apologizes profusely, but apparently Boruta insisted and requires that the representative adepts perform at least one official task during the pilgrimage," explained Belisara.

  The truth was that she too was expected to participate in these tasks. It was a popular way to acquire resources for cultivation on this mountain, and many devils had no other choice but to perform minor tasks for the humans who summoned them.

  "Why is this even important?" interjected Justinian, who had heard about such summons in his kingdom before.

  "It's a matter of the balance of power between the ruler of hell and the great order," explained Felix, yawning. "Every soul that summons a devil increases his strength and weakens the heavenly ones."

  Aldona, standing nearby, was looking somewhere into the distance. She looked as if she had known about this before, unlike the rather surprised Belisara and Justinian. The boy, in particular, seemed affected by these words.

  'So the teachings of the Church of Justice are absolutely true in this context!' he fumed inwardly.

  Ever since he had landed in the 66th hell, the legends of the king of names and symbols had made the greatest impression on him.

  'The prophecy of the holy war before... also that story about destroying the dimension to truly rule the 66.6 hells.'

  The boy had no doubt that increasing the power of someone like that was a real catastrophe.

  'Maybe if I managed to... deal with... a few fools who sacrifice their souls, I could contribute to curbing this practice?' he thought, ambitiously looking for an opportunity to do good.

  He also had a problem with his surroundings on the mountain, which the devils accompanying him seemed not to have. More than once, he had seen a whole group of devils preying on the weaker ones, extorting hellish money or obedience from them.

  'The problem is that after the pilgrimage to Eusebius's mountain, I learned not to act rashly...' he concluded.

  He still remembered the devil children who were frightened with his image as the Grim Judge and the entire stands cheering against his just verdicts.

  Ultimately, he could only sigh heavily.

  'I can't turn away when someone is being harmed, but I should do it in a thoughtful way. My priority must also be revenge.'

  For the past few days, he had been seriously thinking about the murder of the muted man.

  'The fact that, besides the grain from that dimension, that villain was also here confirms that the attack had a lot to do with the 66th hell,' he gritted his teeth in anger.

  Even though many months had passed since that event, the mere memory of it brought forth a desire for murder in him. The sight of Teresa, killed without mercy, tormented him in his dreams, as did the nightmares of his brother suffocating in the smoke.

  'I'm still too weak...' he shook his head, slowly getting up from his bed.

  The night outside was still quite young, and he intended to spend it training with his saber. At least that much he could do before being called to perform Greedius's task.

  A few days later, before midnight in his cave, Justinian was setting up the so-called "Summoning Kit" - it was a collection of off-the-shelf tools, manufactured and sold in hell, which allowed for an easy connection to be established between a human performing the forbidden ritual and a devil who was willing to help.

  This serious kit included things like scented candles, supposedly enhancing the spiritual bond with the human world, as well as ready-made pentagram patterns to draw, and also... vials with a strange gas that made the user's voice much lower and more fitting for the image of a devil from human legends.

  With the "Instructions for Reluctant Devils" in hand, setting it up wasn't too difficult for the human, and after about twenty minutes, sitting in the pentagram, he was ready for his first summoning.

  'I'm close to the breakthrough to the fifth mark of Ki Gathering, I wonder who I'll get. From what I've heard, the more important the person in the human world, the stronger the devil that is sent to them.'

  The boy closed his eyes and, according to the instructions, repeated the formulas in his mind that supposedly influenced the establishment of the connection. After five minutes, he felt a strange sensation - as if his spirit was leaving his body, and he himself was being pulled through a strange tunnel to a distant place. He knew it was the feeling of passing through dimensions, as his physical trace was left in another place - thanks to this, after uttering a certain spell in his mind, he would be able to return to hell.

  "It really worked!"

  "Of course it did. Did you think Apollonius would lie to us?!" - the first thing that greeted Justinian in the human dimension was a conversation between several men, quite young, not much younger than the boy.

  He had previously assumed the demonic form of the grim judge, which he had presented earlier on the Mountain of Research and Development, so as not to appear to the summoners as an ordinary human.

  "Pathetic insects, I am a great devil!" he uttered the standard greeting from the manual.

  The reaction of the three people who had summoned him was quite diverse. The two who had been discussing earlier were very impressed and even bowed their heads humbly in admiration. Their companion, standing a little behind them, however, behaved differently - much more instinctively. Because of this, the room soon began to fill not only with the stench of sulfur but also with the stench of shat pants.

  Justinian, feeling that he wouldn't last long in such terrible conditions, asked the scoundrels about the essence of his visit.

  "What do you want in exchange for your souls?!"