“Do you think I should start making my own demons?”

Jin idly leaned back against a flat stone at the edge of the river bank as he waited for his fishing rod to stir; the fishing line was yet to move. His bait hadn’t yet attracted even a single fish. There were many of them in the river, mostly carp and eel; Jin much preferred the fattier meat of the latter, but eels were notoriously difficult to catch with rod and hook. Some would say it was even foolhardy to try and catch eels, without the use of a net. Even so, Jin waited.

Fishing was, like all things Jin enjoyed in his free time, a game of patience and tranquility.

“….” Lok paid him no heed; the demonic general, who was in the shape of a mule, slept as he usually did, underneath their cart.

“Thank you for your colorful and helpful input, Lok,” Jin sighed as he glanced upwards and eyed the distant clouds. The skies were blue and clear. It was nearing midday and the sun was climbing up its zenith. One of the passing clouds resembled, oddly enough, a fish. Another one kind of looked like a rabbit if Jin squinted hard enough.

The rod stirred in his hands and Jin tugged on it, only to realize that one of the fishes had eaten his bait, without tangling itself on the hook – a smart one. He chuckled and reeled the line back into place. Jin then attached his favorite choice of bait, a writhing earthworm, and cast the fishing line into the water. A moment later, another fish somehow ate the worm, without biting the hook.

Were they learning?

Yes, the fishes were growing more and more intelligent; in time, they would rise up out of the depths and conquer the world of the surface-dwellers.

Jin sighed, “Son of a bitch….”

He shook his head and laid the fishing rod down beside him. Maybe, today just wasn’t the day for fishing. Jin leaned back and groaned. The skies had lost most of its clouds, giving way to a seemingly endless expanse of blue. It was, surprisingly, pleasing to look at, but that was just it; Jin could spend hours and hours, just staring at the sky and it would not change. It was pleasing, but it wasn’t fun.

Eventually, Jin got bored and stood up. He reached down and took his rod, before walking back to the cart, where his companion slept in the shade. “Why’d you even take the form of a mule? You could’ve been a horse and that would’ve been better.”

Lok remained asleep.

With nothing else to do, his mind wandered back to his initial conundrum: should he create a demon, now that doing so wouldn’t cost him any souls or should he hold off on doing so and wait until creating demons wouldn’t cost him anything at all? The latter option would require a collection of almost fifty souls, a paltry amount, but it would definitely take some time to collect. Not that Jin was in a hurry; time was the one resource he had that would never run out.

While far from all-powerful, Jin – and the few others like himself – was eternal; the stars would expire and the universe would take its final breath in its heat death long before he and his kin would disappear from creation.

Still, having a demon would speed things up along quite nicely; plus, it helped to have someone to talk to when he was bored. Lok was about as talkative as a brick and about as useful as a bucket that occasionally had a bottom. But the Demon General was soul-bound to him and he to it; there was no getting rid of the sloth. Honestly, Lok should’ve just taken on the form of a cat and things would’ve made so much more sense, but no; the dumbass just had to pretend to be useful by taking on the form of a mule.

Jin shook his head and sighed. “Fine, I’ll just make one Imp and leave it in Amekure.”

Before he could even think about creating the low-class demon, however, a sharp ringing in his ears wrestled his attention away. Jin’s head snapped northwards. The ringing continued, accompanied by disembodied voices – a girl, desperate, alone, and vengeful. Jin’s eyes narrowed for a moment, searching for the source of the sound, before his lips parted and formed a wide grin.

Someone was performing the Ritual of the Crossroads in this world; someone had the knowledge on how to call on his kind. It was coming from within the Nihono Empire, but far to the Western Reaches, nowhere close to Amekure. Jin peered closer. It was a mage, it seemed; a lone mage girl, who was in over her head. Jin recognized the binding ritual magic that came with it, indicating that the little mage who was performing the Ritual of the Crossroads definitely had no idea what she doing and what she was about to deal with.

If he had to guess, the mage probably thought she was reaching out into the cosmos, in search of a familiar; instead, she stumbled upon something far darker.

Oh, this was just rich; someone was actually performing that damned ritual?

What a wonderful opportunity to add another soul to his collection!

Then again, Crossroads Contracts usually never ended like that if Old Man Gaunter’s advice was to be trusted.

Still, it should prove to be interesting and fun.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

And it was also a wonderful opportunity to get rid of the boredom that plagued him.

Jin turned to his trusty mule. “Lok, guard the wagon; I’ll be taking a short detour.”

Of course, the sloth demon did not respond, save for the slight rising and falling of its tail. Jin sighed and whispered to himself, “Ah, I swear- this fucking demon….”

Ears still ringing from the ongoing ritual, Jin weaved and dove through the strands that connected all of creation; Old Man Gaunter once referred to them as Dimensional Strings, infinitesimally small connections that linked all of time and space together, even across Universes, which was how his kin was able to traverse the cosmos and eat souls anywhere they wished. Jin was… very far away from being able to ride the Dimensional Strings into other Universes, but he was more than capable of using them to move from place to place in this world.

Maybe, with five hundred or so souls in his collection, Jin could ride the strings all the way to other worlds within the same Universe, but that was a bit far off – for now.

One moment he was standing in a nameless road in the Eastern Reaches of the Nihono Empire and, the next, he was standing outside a mage’s tower. It was small and decrepit, covered in overgrown vines and old moss. The courtyard was cracked and decayed, grey withered stone, battered by the elements. The lack of strong emotions, negative or otherwise, indicated the lack of people; there was only one person living here, the one who reached out blindly into the void and caught his attention, instead.

For a moment, Jin could almost picture the tower at its heyday, but it was an ugly thing that really should’ve been demolished long ago; the only reason it still stood was because it was still technically a mage tower. To destroy one was to declare war on all the mages in the world, not something the Nihono Empire, despite having access to legions of Cultivators, was going to risk.

But, it seemed, to Jin, at least, that this mage tower was long since forgotten. The little mage girl must’ve ventured here, seeking lost treasures, ancient tomes, and founts of knowledge and power. Well, she definitely found something.

Jin cloaked himself in glamour and outright intangibility. Mages with their crazy traps and tricks were a pain to get through, unless he removed himself from the dimension altogether; even then, magic was one of the few things that could actively give him and his kin a headache. It wasn’t a threat, per se, but it was annoying when turned against them.

Floating into the decrepit and decayed tower, Jin could not help but notice the scattered books all over the floor, the shattered artifacts, melted wax, and the hideously voluminous amounts of salt that was sprinkled everywhere. There were symbols etched in withered paper, ancient spells and incantations that would’ve made no sense to non-mages. Jin, however, could understand all of them, though much of it was just spell formulae and outdated rituals that have long since been replaced and streamlined by the more modern mages. Some of the stuff on the floor still required blood sacrifices and whatnot.

The ringing in Jin’s ears continued as he drifted up the steps.

The nexus of powerful magical energies that called out to him caused the very air itself to shimmer and refract; it was as though time and space itself was twisting and breaking. The act of calling out to those like him had an unfortunate side effect of eroding the fabric of reality, even if Jin lingered in the same dimension. Still, it was strange how such eldritch knowledge came to be in the little mage girl’s hands. The Ritual of the Crossroads was known to every universe, but its knowledge was restricted or outright forgotten; those who knew about it usually did not live long. There were those who spent their whole lives searching for clues on the ritual, venturing deep into ancient and accursed places, reading occult tomes and drinking from founts of dark knowledge, but never found anything in the end.

As for how it was spread… Old Man Gaunter probably had something to do about that.

He and those like him, after all, were not creatures of the mortal plane. No one really knows where they came from or how they came to be. They weren’t truly alive, but neither were they dead; they weren’t gods, for gods had a purpose to their existence and duties that bound their choices as opposed to Jin’s kind that lacked any sort of responsibility, but neither were they demons, though Jin and his kin did have power over the interdimensional creatures. To call on them was to reach out blindly and hope the ringing annoys one of them enough to bother. But, it was almost always a guarantee that at least one of them would answer the call; humans and mortals in general were just too interesting to ignore and his kind were nothing if not suckers for interesting things.

Jin reached the top of the tower, where the little mage girl, who was definitely just a kid as she didn’t look to be older than fifteen, knelt at the center of the Symbol of the Crossroads, etched in salt and ash. The air thrummed with dark magic. Black candles burned with eldritch flames and intensified as he approached. The girl couldn’t see him – no mortal possibly could. But Jin’s presence had a profound effect on the ritual. The Crossroads Symbol hissed and released a queer white steam. The skull, held between the little girl’s two hands, cracked and shook in her grip.

“I call upon thee, Lord of the Crossroads, Bearer of the Black Mark, Beast of Darkness, to humbly request thine assistance….”

Jin breathed in and noted her desperation, her anger, and the hatred that burned in her heart. This was an all or nothing affair for her, wasn’t it? The kid was ready to die, ready to sacrifice everything for vengeance, wasn’t she? Jin frowned, but approached nonetheless. He didn’t want to deal with children; none of his kin ever dealt with children, no matter how interesting they were.

But, Jin mused, the little mage girl was desperate enough to perform the Ritual of the Crossroads; it would be extremely rude of him to just leave and never answer on account of her age. And so, Jin released his glamour and made himself tangible again. He walked towards her, his footsteps thudding on the dirty, wooden floor. As he neared, the black candles roared and melted. The child gasped as the skull in her hands disintegrated and turned to ashes, before flowing towards Jin – a soul sacrifice. A very low-quality soul was bound to the skull and the clever little thing thought to use it as a form of barter.

Good enough, Jin supposed – now he had thirteen souls, though the last one could just barely be called that, given its lesser state and lack of personality. It must’ve been bound to the skull for eons, slowly losing all emotions and memories that made souls taste good. Still, a soul was a soul.

The child turned to him and her emerald eyes widened. Jin grinned and walked towards her, dread wings billowing and howling. Above them, dark and heavy clouds converged. “It’s not every day that an innocent soul, such as yours, calls to me in need and desperation; what do you want, little one?”

“I… I want you to kill the Emperor!”