Chapter 33 -

A Summoning Array was like a box of chocolates; you never knew what you were going to get.

Throughout history, Mages who used Summoning Arrays had met various fates: some summoned succubi for a night of fleeting passion, some summoned Fire Dragons that burned down their own houses, and others were swallowed whole by the Abyssal Monsters they had summoned. The types of Summoned Creatures were endlessly bizarre and all-encompassing. Life or death, profit or loss—it all came down to sheer luck.

However, there was one fundamental rule: the more Magic Materials piled onto the Summoning Array, the stronger the Summoned Creature would be. Grand Mage Simon Adrian from eight hundred years ago hadn’t been willing to sell his entire cabinet of rare Magic Materials even when he was destitute in his later years. Now that the Lord had indiscriminately dumped all of them into a single ritual, just how powerful of an entity would be summoned?

With a hint of nervousness, a trace of anticipation, and a sliver of regret for recklessly wasting such materials, Xiahou Yan watched helplessly as the lines of the Magic Array on the ground began to emit a blinding white light. The mountain of Magic Materials piled upon it rapidly dissolved into fine dust, dissipating into nothingness. The Summoning Array had been activated. The mysterious entity from the Otherworld had accepted the Lord’s offering! Once all the materials were consumed, the circular Magic Array on the ground began to spin furiously. The profound patterns the Lord had drawn with Chalk blurred into a grayish-white afterimage in the rapid rotation.

Under Xiahou Yan’s unblinking gaze, a tiny black spot suddenly appeared in the center of the Summoning Array. No, perhaps it wasn’t a "black" spot. It wasn’t black, nor was it any color that human senses could perceive. It was absolute void, absolute nothingness. It was as if all light, color, and perception were swallowed by this tiny pinhole, unable to escape. In just a few seconds, the hole expanded larger and larger, eventually turning the entire Array into a circular Void Teleportation Gate!

Then, the Summoned Creature popped... err, reached out of the gate. It was a slimy, sticky, fleshy-pink giant octopus tentacle, with every single sucker radiating an aura of eldritch horror!

Xiahou Yan’s mind went completely blank. He watched blankly as the tentacle extended from the black hole of the void, then crawled forward across the laboratory floor, leaving a nauseating trail of slime on the smooth marble. A strong premonition welled up within the Lord. "I’m probably going to fail my sanity check this time!"

Ultimately, the courage of a Transmigrator triumphed over all fear. Xiahou Yan tentatively waved his hand to greet the tentacle. "You there? Got any candy for me?" But there was no response. The tentacle completely ignored the Lord’s friendly greeting. It continued to squirm across the marble floor on its own, slithering erratically toward Adrian’s bronze statue.

The Demonic Puppet obviously noticed this uninvited guest that had suddenly appeared in its line of sight. But before its Magic Circuit could calculate any appropriate countermeasure, the pink tentacle on the ground suddenly launched itself upward. Like the most skilled rope artist, it tightly wrapped around the puppet’s cold bronze body!

Alice and Master Laurie stared at this scene in inexplicable horror. Their hands, still clutching the Magic Scrolls, momentarily lost function along with their brains. Even for an experienced junior Mage and a battle-hardened female Swordsman, this bizarre tentacle was an entity far beyond their comprehension! However, the tentacle clearly had no intention of letting anyone understand it.

After being entangled by the tentacle, the Bronze Demonic Puppet, driven by its Magic Circuit, began to struggle like a trapped beast in a cage. It frantically swung the long saber in its hand. Yet, when the bronze blade—sharp enough to silently slice through iron and split a hair blown against it—hacked viciously into the soft, squishy surface of the tentacle with tremendous force, it didn’t even leave a single white mark! As if enraged by the Demonic Puppet’s counterattack, the tentacle stiffened for a moment before violently contracting. Without any hesitation, it dragged the Bronze Demonic Puppet toward its base—right into the void on the other side of the circular Teleportation Gate!

Completely restrained, the Bronze Demonic Puppet put up a desperate fight as it was moved, looking much like a fiercely chaste maiden being forcibly dragged to bed! But its wildly flailing bronze boots only managed to leave a deep groove in the floor accompanied by an ear-piercing screech. It did nothing to slow down the speed at which it was being pulled toward the Void Teleportation Gate!

This scene happened far too quickly! The four tiny humans—Xiahou Yan, Chris, Alice, and Master Laurie—stood frozen in place. Like sunflowers chasing the sun, they foolishly turned their heads to follow the Bronze Demonic Puppet and the tentacle. Finally, they watched as the Bronze Golem, which had been so arrogant and domineering just moments ago, was dragged into the Teleportation Gate by the pink tentacle without any ability to resist. With a loud SHWOOP, it disappeared into the endless dark void. Then, the Void Teleportation Gate abruptly shrank and vanished, as if it had never existed in the world. All that remained on the marble floor was a smudged, dull pile of Chalk dust. After the Teleportation Gate closed, even the Array lines the Lord had previously drawn were destroyed by the surging Magic Power.

The four surviving humans stood in the messy laboratory, looking at each other in dismay, their hearts filled with a surreal sense of disbelief.

"What..." Master Laurie opened his mouth, closed it, and repeated this motion five or six times before finally recovering his ability to speak. "...the hell was that?"

"That was... our Heavenly Father and Savior," Xiahou Yan muttered absentmindedly, staring at the remnants of the teleportation array on the ground while clutching the Ancient Ritual Atlas.

Master Laurie’s face was full of question marks.

"C-Captain Alice..." Chris, the young archer who only just now had the presence of mind to process what had happened, said with trembling lips. "L-Lawrence, he..."

The female Swordsman clenched her jaw and shook her head in sorrow. How immense was the strength of Adrian’s Bronze Demonic Puppet, and how sharp was its blade! Tom Lawrence, who had borne the brunt of the attack, had been sliced cleanly in two. His lower half was still lying in its original spot, but his upper half had flown to the other side of the laboratory. The two major parts of his body were separated like an estranged married couple moving to opposite ends of the world, never to meet again!

But before the female Swordsman could even begin to mourn yet another sacrifice of her subordinate, the Lord was already roaring from the sidelines with a sense of reckless desperation. "Go! One of you grab Lawrence’s upper body and stick it back together with his lower half!"

Alice Comstock, suddenly remembering that the Lord knew the Resurrection Technique, quickly wiped her eyes and ran toward Lawrence’s upper body.

Demon Race capital, Moon Shadow City.

It was once again the annual Revenge Festival grand celebration. Tens of thousands of Demon Race citizens—sporting purple hair, pale skin, and twin horns on their heads—poured onto the wide avenues paved with black sandstone bricks in Moon Shadow City. They waved purple flags dyed with their own blood to commemorate the Demon Race Warriors who had sacrificed their lives in the Battle of the Apocalypse five hundred years ago.

Or at least, that was the official explanation. History proved that given enough time, traditional festivals often lost their original meaning. Just like modern-day Dragon Boat Festivals, where many people looked forward to having a day off rather than worshiping the Divine Spirits or mourning Doctor Sanlu. After over five hundred years, the new generation of Demon Race citizens had long begun to forget that epic war between humans and demons. Today, aside from commemorating the heroic sacrifices of the Demon Race Warriors, the Revenge Festival served a more important purpose: providing the Demon Race citizens with an excuse to drop their heavy, tedious work and indulge in a wild, relaxing carnival.

However, for the politically savvy figures of the Demon Race, a festival involving such massive gatherings obviously had other uses. For example, the City Lord of Moon Shadow City, Demon Race Second-Class Viscount Salih, had long planned to take advantage of today’s public gathering to deliver a public speech in front of all the city’s residents, touting his outstanding political achievements over the past year.

That afternoon, the Demon Race City Lord—a man in his fifties whose political career had virtually stalled, causing him to abandon himself to whiling away his days in banquets and bedchambers, growing increasingly fat and bloated—staggered onto the Announcement Platform in Moon Shadow City’s Central Square. He pulled a speech manuscript from his breast pocket, cleared his throat into a Magic Crystal equipped with voice amplification capabilities, and prepared to begin his speech.

However, like a pebble tossed into the ocean, a ripple of commotion suddenly broke out among the densely packed Demon Race crowd in the square. Baffled, City Lord Salih followed the crowd’s gaze, only to be stunned by the realization that right in the air above the square, a pitch-black Void Teleportation Gate had suddenly appeared out of nowhere!

Then, a pink tentacle reached out from the gate without warning. With a light flick, it tossed down a flamboyantly designed bronze statue, smashing it directly into the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd of demons and leaving behind a demonic trail of incomprehensibly gruesome gore and carnage. City Lord Salih had a mental breakdown on the spot.