Chapter 8: Interlude – The Demoness

The demoness watched Jake as his breathing evened out. It had been four days since she was brought to this world, yet she couldn’t get over how fortunate she was to have been bound to Jake. Her mother had forced her [Nascent Soul] into a relic, severing it from her body in a last-stitch effort to save her from a fate worse than death at the hands of a rival sect.

Her mother had divined a future for her that would be full of love and happiness. She would only have to accept the pact when it came, or her Soul be doomed to wander the void. Her soul stuffed into a relic, she had very little concept of that time; millennia likely passed between then and the day Jake bound her.

How many hands the relic passed through as people could not figure out the purpose she would never know, but she was certain Jake had no idea what the ritual was. His thoughts seemed to believe he was summoning a familiar from the void, but in actuality he was binding a servant that was already there in the circle. [The Framework] seemed to deem her as such, and it wasn’t far from the truth, but she had doubts that it would continue to classify her as a familiar in the future, as familiars were meant to be lesser, subservient creatures to the one that bound them. What would happen once they became equal?

Just who obtained the relic, and why would they give it to someone so weak? A bound demoness is a prize some of the most powerful existences would fight to obtain, let alone one with a race as rare as hers; that was part of the reason her mother had to go through such lengths to save her and obscure what happened to her. Instead, it appeared to Jake she was freely given; a bonus item for joining this Alliance, like his beginner spear-staff. These are questions that would have to be answered later, if ever at all: Jake was unable to even contact his patron, for the time being.

Her initial interactions with him were mostly tests. As she danced around while he spoke with her, she was seeing if he demanded some level of respect or decorum. When she lit the ‘mail’ on fire, she was testing his temper, and finding out what lines she could cross. Jake showed her that he truly felt that they were equals, and unless she did something truly harmful or something that majorly inconvenienced him, he likely would not even bother reprimanding her.

The demoness glanced over at the [Mana Crystal] Jake bought for her. The young man’s dedication to self-improvement and devotion to his goals were admirable, yet they were only exceeded by his best trait: his heart. He lacked any guile, and he was hard on himself, but all his efforts and hard work were completely for the purpose of helping others be the best they could be. His desires were merely to make others be the best they could be, but what about himself?

Reality was hard, and such selflessness was rarely rewarded. Instead, it was punished by those that would take and take until nothing was left. The poor fool had worried that he might have summoned a sex demon as a reflection of his soul; yet he was still looking at the beast specialization for his summons, just so that he could bring out the best in his future team he had not yet met.

The idea that he would summon females for servants and enjoy them had not even crossed his mind. He hadn’t even imagined that he could probably close off his side of the thought-sharing connection. She felt bad for not trying to let him know, but she was just too used to it now to go back, on top of it being a challenge to communicate this fact.

Still, the poor young fool was growing on her. While Jake spent every waking moment thinking about self-improvement, almost every other thought was filled with thoughts of her. She preened at the true praise and appreciation that he sent over the bond, noticing all the little things she did, and even things she hadn’t realized that she was doing.

She loved the amount of attention he gave her, and without any ulterior motives. She had often received plenty of attention in the demon realm, but all of it was feigned interest in her activities for obtaining her favor. They didn’t really care about her, but Jake was genuinely interested in learning everything he could about her.

Jake had thought that she deserved a reward, but what about him? Aside from sleeping and about a couple hours each day, every other moment was spent either preparing for or thinking about the dungeon and how to improve. She had used her knowledge of manipulating energy learned as a [Nascent Soul] cultivator to be able to use small amounts of mana and create spells, to which Jake was able to master rapidly. She was quite impressed at the rate he learned, having touched mana for the first time a day before she met him. She could tell that he had amazing potential.

And she wasn’t fooled by the idea of him needing some time to relax for himself, watching movies and TV shows: she knew that a majority of the reason they were watching movies was for him to share his favorites and culture with her, because he could tell that she enjoyed it.

She simply had no way of telling him that she was mostly happy that he was taking a break, or that it was simply because he was sharing something with her. Okay, so maybe she really enjoyed that five elements one. The fact that the balding washed-out hero was able to completely defeat the villain without even being aware of his existence was positively delicious.

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The Demon Realm didn’t have movies just for fun, or at least she hadn’t seen one, so it was interesting to see. When she took her first steps of cultivation, she was barely 10 years old. Most of her time from that point on was spent absorbing heavenly energy and learning about cultivation, hardly interacting with others. Her talent was way above average, even among demons; her heritage helped her succeed and outpace her peers. Nearly a hundred years had passed and she had just reached the nascent soul realm when her clan was attacked, leading to her need to escape. She had been lucky to reach the [Nascent Soul] realm when she did, otherwise her mother would have been unable to help her escape.

She might be over a hundred years old, but it was nearly the same one year lived out over and over again, absorbing the energy of the heavens, only occasionally leaving seclusion to interact with her mothers and reading tomes containing heavenly truths; her father long gone, dying protecting her clan. Her time with Jake was much more amusing, even if he was a bit of a workaholic bore.

She was so happy for this slight vacation without a care in the world, that she was sad that it was going to come to an end. If she was going to be able to help protect and help Jake progress, she would need to start working hard on restoring her former glory. But she had held off on absorbing energy, and restoring her body because part of her did not want the bond to be repaired. She had barely gotten over the loss of her clan; from her perception, it was like her mother and clan died just a few days ago. She also wasn’t looking forward to Jake changing how he treats her once he learns she is actually old enough to be his grandmother, and she didn’t look forward to unpacking all of her emotional baggage.

From Jake’s thoughts, she just knew he had dozens of questions about her origins, but held off from asking them to her because explaining the answers with gestures would be an exercise in futility. For now, she waited until he was asleep to try coming to terms with her family’s demise so that Jake would not feel her turbulent emotions, but she may easily slip thoughts or plans of such once the bond was reinforced.

Because Jake was so weak compared to what she was, her existence was forced to be reduced to the point where she could barely interact with the world, let alone have a proper connection with Jake in order to form the servant pact. She guessed that her previous power would put her at over level fifty as measured by [The Framework], and she was bound to a level one that had never killed before. She had slaughtered her first den full of creatures similar to goblins when she was only eleven years of age.

This framework seemed to force a template on Jake’s soul, and push him on a certain path to power. In a way, she was quite angry at [The Framework]: thanks to whatever it did to him, he could not enter the path of cultivation, at least not like how she knew. Still, she did not learn the truths of the universe, of their reality for a hundred years for nothing. She would bend the system to her will, and she would get it to help him do something that at least resembled cultivation: forming a proper mana core.

Being a cultivator, Fhesiah had originally started the path of cultivation by clearing out her meridians or channels, and awakening her [Dantian], her spiritual sea of heavenly energy. Her people would call this level of cultivation as the [Qi Condensation Realm]. She guessed that upon completion of this, [The Framework] would judge such a person as level one. They would then grow their [Dantian], gaining levels as their sea of heavenly energy grew in size.

The next stage, what [The Framework] deemed level ten, would be [Foundation Establishment] to cultivators, where the sea of heavenly energy would evolve into a metaphysical [Spiritual Temple] that she would build, containing her [Spiritual Sea]. She would refine and improve her body using the heavenly energy, which was a part of this metaphysical temple, as well. [Foundation Establishment] would end at level 25, where they would form their [Cultivator Core] out of their [Spiritual Temple] and [Spiritual Sea], as well as their knowledge of heavenly truths, or Daos.

They would then grow their [Cultivator Core] once more with heavenly energy, leveling until reaching the peak, which would be level 50 according to [The Framework]. It was at this point that she would evolve the [Cultivator Core] once more, with her soul enshrined in it instead of her body, creating a [Nascent Soul]. With that, even with her body destroyed, she could continue to live, like she had done previously; so long as her soul was not destroyed. Thanks to this, she could use heavenly energy, as well as the knowledge provided by her mother, to recreate her original body and start over once more. There were stages beyond even this, her mother and father being well over what [The Framework] considered level one hundred. Yet that was not enough to defeat the rival sect.

Right now, she was recreating her original body, and the meridians, or channels. Once completed, she will recreate her [Dantian], and she would then become a level 1 Cultivator, according to [The Framework]. Until then, her body would slowly gain corporeality and grow in size. She smirked; she couldn’t wait to play around with Jake. If Jake waited longer before he summoned her at a higher level, she wouldn’t have been limited as much, and maybe would have been able to create her body nearly right away.

The demoness was still glad that Jake summoned her when he did, at level one, though: now she could put him on the right path. If Jake summoned temporary beasts and joined a party like he planned, he would be at the whims and mercy of their capabilities, and just have to hope for the best that they were as competent or half as talented as him, and that they had his best interests in mind. No, she had a much better and exciting idea. She would make sure he summoned humanoids of the permanent type, and women so that he could have both a party he could trust and won’t take advantage of him, but also the number of wives an inevitably powerful man should have.

After all, her mother had many sister-wives, and this is normal among the powerful in the Demon Realm, and among cultivators. Fhesiah also knew that Jake yearned for family but had no relatives to speak of; he would need to start a family from scratch, and what better way than by having many children? She knew Jake had both the talent and the drive to become one of the best summoners in existence, and she would be there to make sure he made it there, without him being taken advantage of. She would also make sure he would become a little more interesting.

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