Almost all of the student's of her class were already trying to form the "erase glyphs" glyph, this was a vast improvement over the class that she taught last year. Just remembering that disaster made her sigh.

Last year she was so unfortunate that a whole of ten children of noble houses were in her class. She hated teaching them. Arrogant, pathetic brats that most of the time didn't even had any talent. Though last year one of the nobles was a stark contrast to the others in his class. Quiet, patient and had a knack for glyph alchemy.

Teaching in the first place wasn't what she wanted to do at all. Though her circumstances as a diabolist made this position too wonderful to refuse. No risk of being hunted down by the templars, getting free materials for glyph forming and best of all, she commanded respect.

Granted, not the kind of respect she would like to get but this was adequate.

Lifra thought "Maybe this year will be more interesting because of the imp? Though I still don't think this is the course of action we can take. I know how ruthless devils are, after all, I deal with them on a regular basis."

"Imp's are easy to deal with, that is correct but why do we nurture him? I get that our benefactor gave us a lot of information about powerful glyphs but is it worth nurturing a devil? And not to mention, there is also a demon in there."

"Supressed as it may be, what if it breaks out?"

Lifra shook her head. "The director seems to trust the benefactor atleast somewhat, so I will too. The benefactor seems to have a plan. I wish I knew what this plan was. Hopefully, this imp won't ruin my position."

"Though who in the hells is even the benefactor? Always appearing with a mask, suddenly presenting a glyph of a school I don't even recognize and instructing us to give it to someone who has multiple souls in their body?"

"Actually, when I carefully think about it, the director probably doesn't trust our benefactor at all yet is going along with the plan because the benefactor seems to be far more powerful than we are. Or maybe the director is curious what is going to happen if he goes along with the plan or-?"

Lifra eyes suddenly sprang wide open "Or does he plan to take this unique glyph for himself?! Is this why the director wants to "test" the imp? After all, the benefactor probably doesn't want to give such a unique glyph to someone incompetent, so that way the director would have a chance to convince the benefactor to give him the glyph."

Due to her expertise in dealing with devils, she guessed it. Outsmarting devils, even the lower ranked ones, isn't easy after all.

"Yes.., yes that would make sense. So is that the plan? But it is still so risky, we still don't have anything on the benefactor, not even a name. Well, we do have one, but it is most likely a fake name given to satisfy us. We never heard of a "Resdoric" before. Someone this powerful would have made an appearance atleast somewhere."

"We searched every single record but there is simply no one noteworthy among the name of "Resdoric"."

Havenheart's thought process was cut short when a certain half elf walked up to her to report his success.

She nodded and said "Good job, now that you have passed the basic glyph forming test, a reward is to be given to you. Here"

She opened a small white portal and a glyph in the form of a tiny white box flew out.

"This is the glyph "tiny white glyph box". This glyph allows you to store up to three glyphs in it safely. Nothing will happen to the glyphs inside as long as the tiny white glyph box glyph is not destroyed. I recommend you to place the glyph on the place where a vital organ is, such as your heart. After all, if you are hit there, then the glyph box is the last of your concerns, or alternatively on a spot where it" Havenheart explained.

The imp inside the half elf's body nodded, took the glyph and placed it upon the place where one of his lungs were.

The imp thought that the heart was too obvious, so he chose the lungs. Not many fighters aimed for the lungs. Knees, arms, the heart and the neck were far better spots to attack a foe.

Havenheart faintly smiled, this was a good spot. She spoke up once again "Before you go. This academy has a point system. Points can be used to trade for information on certain glyphs or materials for said glyphs. And lastly, points can be aquired through completing task on the task board. The task board is a board where tasks for the students are given. These tasks can range from collecting unique materials, to trading information on glyphs among students, to defeating monsters in the wild."

"Needless to say, there are tasks that give more and less points. Collecting materials in the wild brings you less points than defeating a monster or a mutated animal for example. The more points you get from a task, the more difficult the task. The task board is outside, before the entrance to the academy. Understood?"

"Yes teacher." answered the imp.

"Now, off you go then. Go to the directors office. Your test has probably been prepared already."

The imp nodded and quickly hurried off in an excited manner.

----------------------------------------

The halls in the academy were all empty now. It was a comfortable silence. Every time he went passed a classroom, voices could be heard. He didn't know why he felt that it was so nostalgic.

The only place where he could ever remember being was hell, and hell most certainly wasn't silent.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

It was always busy where he was stationed. Especially the damned souls being tortured was an often occurance.

For the devils, including him, it was like music to the soul. Especially if the devil knew the soul being tortured through a bargain that it made with said soul when it was still alive. It felt like your superior would tell you that you did a good job you know? Not that it ever happened, atleast not to the young imp.

The first time he tempted a soul into promising it's soul to hell, he got punished because he didn't manage to do it sooner. But that was alright, the punishment wasn't harsh at all. Only mopping the floor of a busy building for a week.

Of course at that time, the imp was furious! He tempted a soul into giving itself willingly to hell and he was punished?

It didn't make sense to him at that time but then he understood. It was a lesson every superior taught in hell.

No matter how good of a job you think you have done, a devil superior would do it a thousand times better.

This lesson taught the devils to be humble and never to overestimate yourself.

Arrogance is a tool to be used, not to be used by.

An arrogant devil gives off an air of superiority in front of mortals, which is very useful because the mortals then think that you can easily grant their wishes. But an example where showing arrogance is a stupid decision, is when you are in front of your superior of any kind.

Whether it is your devil superior or a potential teacher, never show any hint of arrogance in front of them.

Especially with potential teachers or simply those that have something you want, being arrogant is beyond stupid.

What is the point of being arrogant, if you pass up an opportunity to advance in the hellish hiarchy?

Just remembering this made the imp feel grateful that his superior taught him this lesson.

As he thought about all this, the imp arrived at the door of the directors room.

When he entered after knocking on the door, the director was already expecting him with a smile.

The imp saw an iron cauldron that resembled a coffin besides the standing director.

"I take it you are ready for the test?" the director asked.

The imp nodded.

With a faint smile and a certain glint in his eyes, the director took out a few materials while pointing at the coffin like cauldron. He said "The test consists of two parts. The first is to form a necromantic glyph. This glyph is a glyph that is classified as "adept". You have only five tries to form it or you fail."

"The glyph is called "corpse stasis". The glyph throws you into a condition where most would be certain that you are dead. Atleast if you are proficient with the glyph. It allows you to breathe so little where nobody would notice it. Your heart and pulse nearly stop, but not completely. Your skin becomes more pale, to mimic that of a corpse.

But the real use of this is that if you have enough proficiency with the glyph, you can survive for days within a completely locked off environment, which normally would be impossible due to the limit of air."

"Now, begin!"

The director finished speaking, he let go of the materials in his hand, which naturally plopped onto the ground.

The imp ran to the materials to greedily pick them up. After he picked everything up, he began to dissolve the materials that he threw into the cauldron.

There were three materials, the first was a leg of a creature that he couldn't recognize.

It was similar to a goat but then again had spikes all over it. The leg was dark brown in color.

The second material was an incredibly unusual flower. The peduncle was chalk pale while the petals were of a sickly green color. The flower looked disgusting to the imp. It was a mix of rotten flesh and a flower.

The third material was a rotten human heart. Nothing else to say to it except that it's smell was incredibly vile.

The imp began to disassemble the materials though the rotten heart's smell distracted him a little.

He began with the leg because it looked the most complicated, so he wanted to train on it first so that he wouldn't fail after he disassembled the other two parts.

And he was right, the spikes on the creature's leg were incredible difficult to disassemble into smoke. They were very robust and had no visible weakpoint, at least to a novice like him.

He spent a good ten minutes on trying to find a weakpoint within those damn spikes.

Only after he injured one of the threads, he found one weakpoint of the spikes.

"Damn it, this is one hell of test. I am already failing at the stupid spikes, why is this so hard?!" the imp felt frustration.

While the imp was frustrated, the director was pleased. He thought long about what creature's corpse he should use. It couldn't be impossible for a novice like the imp, so that his benefactor doesn't complain but needed to be almost impossible for a novice.

The corpse of a spiked Wrixae was perfect for this purpose. It was a monster that looked exactly like a goat, just with the extra protection of very durable spikes and very dangerous horns.

Though the fast development of the imp suprised even the director. The imp had difficulties disassembling the leg but he disassembled a few spikes already. The spikes were the most difficult part!

The director chuckled lightly while thinking "No wonder the armies of hell are as feared as they are. Devils are specialized in finding weak points. Whether it is a human's psyche or the weak points of objects, they are professionals. Though I didn't think that a lowly imp would be able to find a weak point in the spikes of an wrixae as fast as he did. I begin to become more and more cautious of the danger that devils represent each time that I look at this imp."

Twenty minutes past. The imp was still disassembling the leg, though he nearly disassembled the spikes.

When he finally finished with the spikes, he found out that the hide of this damn beast was also extremely durable.

He took a deep breath before continuing. The hide of the beast felt leathery but as durable as metal. The imp carefully examined the hide. He noticed that on the hide, there were very tiny hills and the bottom of said hills were far softer than the hide. This was probably were the spikes were located.

Yet the difficulty was still there. The soft spots were very small and thus difficult to hit properly. And not only that, because of the sloppy destruction of the spikes his threads were injured. So he needed to bear the pain and as if this wasn't bad enough, the injured threads weren't as effective as before.

But still, after another ten minutes passed he manged to completely process the hide into smoke.

Luckily for him the meat of the creature wasn't durable at all. After he processed all the meat, only the bone was left.

Unfortunately for him, all his threads were so damaged that they simply broke when he tried to process the bone, even though it wasn't too hard to do.

The imp had a grim look on his face. This was far harder than he imagined. And this was only the first part of the test.

The director spoke up "Your threads are completely damaged and you are probably tired since it is pretty late right now. We can continue tomorrow if you want? Or alternatively I can give you a balsam to regenerate your threads"

The imp thought for a while but declined the latter offer. He needed to rest. He was now in a mortal body, he couldn't work day and night like in hell. He asked where his dorm was.

The director told him where he could find it and gave him the key to his dorm.

It was on the second floor, located somewhere on the right. It was the room 98.

When he entered, Orson was already there, lying on the bed. Although his mortal master gave him a weird look, the imp couldn't care less. He quickly undressed himself and crawled into the bed.

He was dead tired. He deserved his rest.