I was standing in the castle courtyard in front of the keep. The deep darkness of moonless night was covering everything. Four covered cargo carriages stood at the courtyard. Muffled voices were coming from some of them. Soon a squad of darks accompanying twelve people dressed in ragged, dirty clothes cuffed together with chains came from the other side of the courtyard. Prisoners walked calmly without struggling as they probably didn't know what was waiting for them.

"This is the last group from the castle dungeon. We already brought a group from a city dungeon and dungeon at the military district. We have seventy-five of them."

I immediately frowned. 'Tchh, with their heavy punishment, probably most of them are murderers. Such a crime rate is really shameful for my city... Wait, a portion of them are also captured enemies, so guess it's in the norm.'

Darks loaded prisoners into the carriage. I waved my hand and shouted for them to start moving. Sound whips ruptured quiet night as carriages started to leave through the gate one by one.

The emotionless voice of Leader came from behind me, "I hope that you know what are you doing. If we had a better option, I would have never allowed this." He was frowning and crossing his arms.

'I wonder why. I bet he is not unhappy about sacrifice itself, but about me gaining such powerful tools to control the city.'

All of the carriages already left, leaving a cloud of dust from the road behind them. I ignored Leader and spread my wings before rushing towards a dungeon.

I arrived well before the carriages and entered the portal. Around me was an unknown circular room with red glowing runes covering the whole floor with occasional circles placed in regular intervals. Soon after that, Biifrons appeared in a red flash.

"What is this room ?"

"Just a little bit of magic to maximize profits from sacrifice."

'Pchh, when I wanted something for him, he wasn't so proactive, but the moment he gains some profit...'

There was nothing to do as carriages hadn't arrived yet, so I kept standing. The room was silent as both me and Bifrons weren't speaking. I started to feel awkward. A few more minutes passed, and I decided that I would go out to check if the carriages had arrived.

"Open a portal out. I will go check where are the prisoners."

Bifrons snapped his finger, and rainbow lights formed into an oval shape of the portal.

After a relatively long time of waiting, carriages finally arrived. Rose, sitting at the foremost carriage, jumped out, dusting her clothes from a dusty road out of the city walls. Then she waved at me while other darks started to pull prisoners out of the carriages. They looked around, some of them remained calm, but some had worried expressions.

"What do you want with us?"

"They want to make undead out of us."

"No, we will just sacrifice you to the demon," I said with a joking tone. The prisoners immediately tried to run, only to fall due to chains. Some of them attacked darks guarding them. Blue bolts started to fly towards prisoners. Prisoners were falling towards the ground foaming out of their mounts one by one as bolts hit them.

Most of the prisoners were already stunned at the ground except for a few of them that didn't panic for whatever reason. Rose looked at me with eyes saying, it's your fault, "Why had you told them the truth. It just added more work for us..."

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"Look at it this way. They would have found sooner or later. They are not so stupid that they would think we brought them to this place without any nefarious intentions. So this way, they are at least already stunned. So grab them and throw them into the portal!"

Darks dis, as I said, throwing all prisoners through the portal. Then we entered the portal too.

Arrogant remark of Biforns welcomed me, "Next time be faster. My time is expensive."

Then he pointed towards a large circle in the formation, "Move them to the focus points... Or as you dummies would call it a big red circles."

Even the prisoners that were not struggling before started after their gaze fell upon a Bifrons.

"Ahh, let me be! I am innocent!"

"You will suffer for your sins!"

"Please, I will amend for my crimes!"

Darks ignored their pleads and dragged struggling prisoners towards circles. Blue bolts of [Stuning Bolt] flew out of darks hands, stunning prisoners in circles.

"Now get out of here, mortals! You stand in the way of magical formation." Bifrons shouted and released a wave of magical energy. One of the darks even fell to the ground in terror.

Rose sweating under the presence of Bifrons, opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but I was faster. "Leave. He has a probably good reason for us to leave."

I walked towards a flickering portal.

Bifrons voice echoed again, "You are contracted with me. You will not cause a magical disruption. At least you will be maybe able to learn it, and be ably to do it yourself next time without me needing to spend my valuable time."

Most of the dark already rushed through the portal with a visible fear on their faces. Rose left as a last, leaving only two of us inside.

"Use your eyes and watch how is energy moving. This is not magic that can be learned through the system. This is the primordial magic of higher beings. You will probably not be able to understand it just from watching it, but you have to start somewhere.

"It will be basically like cheating the system. When someone dies in a dungeon, he releases celestial energy collected in their soul during their life. The system will collect it, take more than half of it as a provision and then put the rest of it to some kind of internal account as dungeon points.

"This out of the system magic will intervene with it. It will collect that celestial energy manually before the system and feed it to that account without a system taking its provision, basically increasing a DP collecting effectivity."

I nodded, "You used to be a lot less talkative in the past. Did someone secretly brainwash you?"

"I just realized that the more I empower you, the better will be your status and your status is closely connected to mine. Also, I don't mind talking if it's about an interesting topic."

Red magical energy burst out of the Bifrons, whirling around the room. Soon change happened, and energy started to fuse, creating bubbles around the prisoners. Then rest of the energy in the air formed into tendrils. Each of the tendrils moved on its own towards a different unconscious prisoner and latched to the bubbles.

Bifrons raised his hand, and a web made of fires spread through the ceiling of the entire room. Drops of lava started to rain above prisoners passing through bubbles. Drops of lava hit prisoners. Their skin immediately turned black before melting. Soon after, their skin their flesh melted too. Tendrils connecting to the bubbles brightened up, sending light pulses toward Bifrons.

The last prisoner burned to death, and magical bubbles together with tendrils vanished.

"I need more sacrifices to reach a city." Bifrons crushed my hopes to resolve the issue quickly.

'Maybe sacrifice other prisoners? Or maybe secretly kidnap some people from the streets? No, they are my citizens... Wait for a second. I can get people from other places. But I doubt they will just agree to sell me their prisoners. They would be looking for a complex scheme in that. I can try to kidnap their citizens, but the potential repercussions are severe... Yes, for now, I will use other criminals from my city. There should be plenty of scumbags in the city, hiding somewhere.'

"I will gather the rest of them. It will take at least a week."

I walked towards a portal, but I stopped the middle way. "What is with that formation on the floor? It looked to me like it did nothing."

"Hahaha", Bifrons laughed, "That is just a decoration to confuse stupid mortals... And what did you find by observing my magic?"

I thought for a few moments before answering, "You mentioned that a system automatically collects the energy released after death. From that, I can deduce that the bubble part was probably to isolate a system from the target, preventing it from consuming that energy. Then that tendril part was to transport that energy, and finally, that ceiling was probably just a flashy way to kill the prisoners."

"Well done."

I finally stepped through the portal. As I entered a portal, I managed to hear Bidrons quiet murmur, "She really is after her father..."