"—Archipelago? There are many archipelagos on this star. Which archipelago did she speak of?" asked the demon.

"Oh, uh—" I finally released the breath I had been holding in, and my pulse began to calm. "Probably the one all the way to the west. If you cross Nalantuo, and then cross Agai'er, and then cross the Sea of Eternity, there's an archipelago there. It's really far, so nobody here really knows anything about it, but I have a book about international languages which has a section on it."

"Oh, that archipelago," she said with a slow nod. "I have spent some time there. For much of its history it has been at war, so it was a good place to collect death, but no death I have found there has borne the burning personal emotions of a true delicacy."

"Really?!" My scholarly curiosity burst out in surprise. "You've been to the archipelago? What is it like? What do they call the country there?"

The demon wandered over to a wall and leaned against it. A fragment of moonlight peering through the holes in the ceiling dimly lit half her face, on which she bore a dull smile of reminiscence.

"They call it the Archipelago the same way you call this landmass the Continent. There are many countries there, much as this continent has Agai'er and Nalantuo and this divided country sometimes called Xili, and I spent most of my time there observing one such archipelagan state— Peizeikyou, I believe is its name now— some thousand years hence."

This last word caught my attention. Hence? Demons surely lived for a long time, so maybe it made sense for her to have visited the archipelago a thousand years in the past, but...

But that wasn't what I really wanted to know about.

"Can you tell me more about Peizeikyou? I'd really like to know!" I exclaimed.

"It was quite an interesting place," she replied with a nod. "There were, first off, far more people in their cities than in yours, and their roads thronged not only with people and horses but also— to put it in terms you might understand— with monstrous steam-belching iron snakes on which the people would travel from place from place, and though the people had long lost their knowledge of mana they had developed tools that manipulated the elements to accomplish feats that even the most powerful of modern man could not mimic. They had constructed sundials on which the gnomon moved of its own will to point the time, morning or night, and instead of lighting the nights with fire they used bottled lightning that they replenished through invisible wires hanging a hundred meters overhead."

""Whoa..." Her words struck in me utter awe. The world was so much... larger a place than I had thought!

"That aside." The demon's gaze grew suddenly stern. "Child of man, you said you were going to take revenge. So why did you not fight them?"

I shook my head. "I mean, even if I say that I want to take revenge, I don't have any qi, so what can I do? I don't even have a cultivation base. I don't have power. It's impossible for me to even get revenge in the first place..."

The demon kneeled in front of me as I lay sitting up, and she looked into my eyes, our faces only several inches apart.

"You do not have power, but I have power, and by our contract I permit you to use it. Remind yourself of how it feels to look into my eyes, these eyes that have borne witness to the annihilations of kingdoms and the extinctions of men, and you will be able to wield my power, a power grand enough to eradicate not only your enemies but even this world entire if that is truly what your revenge requires."

I looked into her eyes, her irises shining like the moon against the utter blackness of her sclera— no, that's not right. I hadn't looked closely enough when I had first seen her eyes in the cave. Her sclera were black and her irises were white, yes, but her pupils were also black, and thus her eyes appeared like a white ring in the darkness, not like a moon but like the halo around a black-hole, that anomaly of the cosmos that destroys everything it comes into contact with, including even light itself.

—And then I could feel it. I could feel some kind of power coursing through my arteries, a power that I had never felt before. I scrambled to my feet, breathing deeply, trying to channel the power, which felt like a desert wind against my skin as it shuttled around my body. I focused the power in my legs, which burned under the force, though it was a pleasant sort of burning sensation, far more pleasant than the literal burning of having your legs held over open flame. And as I focused the power in my legs, I could feel my feet lift up off the ground.

I was floating.

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"This is incredible... You have to be in the Martial Warrior stage to skywalk...!" I whispered breathlessly.

"Martial Warrior? How high is that?" the demon asked.

"...Not high enough, I guess," I said with a sigh. "I mean, it's part of the Foundation Establishment realm, which is enough to get you into the inner sect, but even Wang Wujiu is in the Martial Master stage."

"Then use more of my power," she said with a shrug. "I do not know much of how you rank power here, but I will guarantee you this: my power is so great that no child of man could even comprehend it well enough to categorize it."

I tried to pull on the source of power. It felt like pulling a boulder with a rope. The rope was more likely to snap first.

"...I don't think I can draw out any more qi," I said, though I was utterly unsure, as I could not even tell if this was qi or something else.

"I see. Perhaps our contract is too young, or you are not yet familiar enough with manipulating mana. It will come in time. Let us begin your revenge with a smaller target, then."

She stood and walked in front of me, then clasped her hands over my shoulders and once again looked into my eyes, this time with a glare so forceful that it felt as if my very soul were being exposed.

"Do not forget, child," she rasped with a stern expression that seemed to be to be something like a frown. "Arrogance is a great virtue for those who wield their own strength, but a cardinal sin for those who wield only borrowed power. You— you are the latter, and you always will be."

"I know," I nodded, and feeling an insatiable gratitude well up in me, I stepped forward and hugged her. "Thank you."

"Child of man," she whispered after a moment of silence, "Do not forget that in exchange for the life I have granted you, I will take everything you offer me. Whatever you wish to keep from my grasp, you must hold tight to your heart. So what do you think will happen to you if you offer me your heart whole?"

"That doesn't matter!" I asserted forcefully. "You're on my side, and nobody else is. Of course I'll be thankful for that."

"I see." Awkwardly, she wrapped her arms around my back, mimicking a hug. "In that case, I shall thank you as well for all the souls you shall deliver to me. Child of man, let us have a fruitful cooperation for what remains of your borrowed life."

"Yeah, uh—" I paused, since I did not know how to finish the sentence. I released my embrace and stood in front of her, trying to run my memory back over the past hour, but I could not find what I was looking for.

"What's... your name, actually?"

She opened her mouth, then closed it and frowned. She stood there for several moments, thinking deeply about something, though I did not think my question to require such thinking.

"I do not have a name in the language of man, but if I were to translate the closest title of which I have made persistent use, it would be the one who turns to the sun and sees the moon, who reaches for both yet alights upon neither," she finally answered. "I have had to massage it some, as this title, originating as it does in a language beyond your grasp, references not the sun nor moon but rather constructs that are incomprehensible for you who only ever live in one dream, yet you may consider my current name thus. It is only four morae long, yet it is so unwieldy when translated. I will likely need a name more fitting for a child of man if I am to stay here for long."

"Then..." Unwittingly, I turned my gaze away. "Should I give you one...?"

"If you so wish."

"Then... how about... Natsuki?"

"Natsuki..." She chewed on this name for several seconds. "It is not a name of the language of this land. Rather, it reminds me of..."

"Yeah. It's... well, I think it's archipelagan. I think it means summer moon. Since, you know, summer is the season when the planet turns to face the sun. And if they think you're from the archipelago, I think that makes things easier in a way, you know—"

She circled around me so that my gaze, which I had turned away from her, once again fell upon her. With a dull smile, she interrupted my rambling, saying: "Thank you, Chunxue. Then, for the fleeting moments that remain of your life, I shall be Natsuki, the Peizeikyouzhen who has crossed every land, sea, and mountain to make it here to Xili, the great divided land east of Altyn-Tagh."

"Mm..." I murmured with an embarrassed nod.