After finishing the meeting with the clerk, Mud returned to the lobby. Since there were no plans until the next morning, Mud wanted to ask permission to continue repairing the town. There was a chipped bit of masonry down a back alley that had been bothering the golem for some time.

Mud's search was halted, however, by an errant thought that crossed through its mechanical mind during its routine review of recent events. 'Why did Jabrax not want me to know about the sub-basement?'

Originally, Mud had ignored that question, chalking it up to the demon's habit of attempting to upset anyone she could. However, there was a flaw in that logic. If she truly hid the information to annoy Mud, then she should have been happy when the deception was revealed. After all, if Mud simply never found out about the sub-basement, there would be no reason for the golem to get upset. Instead, Jabrax had seemed annoyed and unwilling when the truth was revealed. It was possible she simply wanted Mud to take more time to notice, but that didn't seem right.

Mud was still not overly concerned, and continued towards the Association employee. Still, it continued this line of reasoning.

Another explanation is that Jabrax was withholding a useful resource in order to stunt Mud's growth. That also seemed wrong, as there were no useful looking resources in the sub-basement, unless Mud missed something. Even then, Jabrax had up until this point not acted to actually reduce Mud's combat abilities. She only seemed to limit help when it would require a large amount of effort on her part to aid him. Revealing the sub-basement would require almost no effort, and would have served as a useful way to distract Mud in many previous encounters. No, it's unlikely she was trying to harm Mud by withholding information.

Finally arriving next to an Association civilian employee who was assigning tasks, Mud sent a mental message. "I wish to continue working on repairing the city." As the civilian nodded and began to write on his notes, Mud continued its train of thought.

If Jabrax was not withholding the information to harm Mud, then the only other reason that would fit her personality is if it would benefit herself. The only things that Jabrax seemed to desire are her own pleasure, and the death and suffering of Sapients. Within the basement was a highly unstable, extremely dangerous artifact that may or may not require regular maintenance, located in close proximity to a human population center.

"You'll be working-"

"I will not do work tonight." Cutting off the now confused looking employee, Mud quickly dashed out of the Association building, and back towards home. Through vision granted by the Domain, the Drive still appeared stable, but that was little comfort to Mud at the moment.

Shooting through the woods with the assistance of Force Bolt, Mud soon arrived at the mansion. Mud rushed down the stairs to the basement, startling a resting Jabrax.

"Jabrax, how long until the Taegul Drive fails?"

An annoyed look crossed the demon's face, like a child caught stealing a cookie. "Drat, you caught on. We still have about four days before it goes critical." Leaning back in her unseen chair, she continued smugly. "My contract only requires me to inform you of imminent threats, so I was hoping you would be so busy with something else you would fail to contain it by the time I told you. Oh well."

Regrettably, Mud had been required to make many concessions on the contract with Jabrax to avoid even bigger problems. The book on demonology had warned that ordering a demon to do too many things would simply allow the demon to avoid following orders by wasting time following other orders.

Unlike a Construct's orders, which followed a strict hierarchy where superior orders overwrite inferior ones, contract magic treated all orders as equally important. If put in a situation where it was impossible to follow every given order, the contracted demon could simply choose which order to follow. Of course, it was possible to specify certain orders to be higher priority, but that was used sparingly due to the risk of abuse.

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For example, if Mud had ordered Jabrax to warn of all potential threats, she could waste time listing off every strong creature on the planet instead of ones that are actually likely to be threats. Ordering her to list the dangers based on severity also would not work; there were countless extremely unlikely but massive in scale disasters she could use in that case. If ordered to list threats based on likelihood, she could list extremely minor but possible threats. No solution was perfect.

Jabrax would certainly have been required to inform Mud about the risk while there was still time to prevent it, Mud had made sure of that. However, there was a decent probability that some unexpected circumstances would crop up in the meantime, making dealing with the situation impossible. There was no way for Mud to make Jabrax account for events she had no way of knowing about or predicting.

That was what the demon had been banking on; that some completely unpredictable event would make her warning become too late, without her technically violating the contract. Mud would have to be more wary of this sort of deception in the future.

"How do I prevent the drive from failing?"

Jabrax sighed and walked with languid steps towards the center of the runic circle which had imprisoned her which Mud had first entered the basement. "Restore the runes to the state they were when you found me."

Mud's diligence in preserving the runework when dismantling it previously now paid off. Thanks to the golem's precise memory, the array was quickly restored to its original state. With Mud's new understanding of runes, it was now clear that the circle functioned as more than merely a prison. Weaved within the standard barrier script was embedded code which allowed for short-distance translocation of matter.

As the final rune was put into place, a rainbow light flowed outward through the runes, quickly filling the cold stone basement with a soft multi-hued glow. Mud wondered if the colors of the runes indicated some underlying connection to divine magic.

With the lights restored, Jabrax set to work. Already in her demonic form, she used one long claw to slice a long gash along her lower arm. From the wound flowed purplish-red blood. Each thick droplet vanishing in a burst of light moments before landing on the ground.

The demon allowed her blood to flow freely for a time. After nearly a minute, a glob of blood actually landed on the stone floor, not vanishing like those previous. The droplet was quickly followed by several more, forming a small puddle on the cold stone floor.

Jabrax lifted her arm quickly healing arm and turned towards Mud. "That should be good for now. It will last perhaps another month, so long as the Cherub is doing his part. He's the reliable type, though, so I doubt there's any risk of him falling behind in his duties. You can take apart the runes now."

Mud hesitated. Should it actually take apart the runes? While Jabrax had been useful as an ally and a source of information, she was also extremely dangerous. Having designed the contract that bound them together with its own muddy hands, Mud was keenly aware of the document's many shortfalls. Situations like the Taegul Drive were certain to happen again in the future.

"Mud?" Jabrax asked with a bit of worry in her voice at the unmoving construct.

After a few moments more of hesitation, Mud moved to dismantle the runes surrounding Jabrax, met by a sigh of relief from the demon.

While it's true the Mud could never truly trust its contracted demon, Mud had to admit that keeping her captive would be no better. In the case of the near-disaster with the Taegul Drive, its failure was not actually because of Jabrax. Rather, she simply had not gone out of her way to prevent it. Having her imprisoned or even killing her would not have avoided the problem.

"I was worried for a moment you were going to keep me locked up in there. It's a good thing you don't have normal emotions or-"

"Lie down and do not talk."

Enforced by the contract, Jabrax fell to the floor and clenched her jaw.

"I read a book on animal training from The Master's library when I first contracted you. The book advised rewarding wanted behavior and punishing unwanted behavior."

Jabrax trembled slightly on the ground at the word 'punishing', flashbacks to a certain pot of tea running through her mind.

"I have provided sufficient quantities of freedom as a reward for being useful, but I now understand I have been insufficient with my punishments."

Jabrax frantically shook her head, as if to indicate that Mud had been plenty thorough with past punishment.

"While it is regrettable to spend valuable time, which could be used for other constructive tasks, on your reeducation, I believe it to still be the most efficient use of the time available to me. Your punishment will continue until an hour before dawn."

That night, Mud gained three more levels in the Torture skill.