Demon King Ascension System

Chapter 27: Spell Realms

As he already knew where Vera was, Blake skipped out the shouting that he usually did when he first entered Vera’s house and went straight into the basement again.

Just like last time, he knocked a few times and let himself in before walking straight to the demoness at the end of the room.

This time, when he saw the beautiful demoness, she wasn’t scribbling on the paper on top of the table, but instead, she was resting her cheek on her left hand while her right hand was repeatedly tapping her pen on top of the table. From the visible crease and frown on her face, Blake guessed that she was probably stumped on her experiment and currently trying to find an answer to solve the problem.

Since it might have been a bad time for him to come in, Blake decided that he would come back sometime later to not disturb her. But just when he wanted to turn around, he suddenly heard Vera’s voice calling out to him,

“You’re already done with the books? Isn’t that a little bit too quick even for you?”

Blake didn’t want to disturb her, but if she was the one who started the conversation first, there was no way Blake would leave her alone.

“Ah yes, I already memorized them, but since I only wanted to focus on a particular element, I didn’t spend much time in comprehending the others and decided to just memorize them for now. Besides, there isn’t much material for me to study.”

.....

“You usually do your own stuff after learning something, but you’re already back here again, I assume you want to ask something again?” Vera guessed.

“Ah... Yes...” Blake muttered while rubbing the back of his head.

“What is it? Do you want to ask me questions about the notes that I wrote about how to use those elements together? Go ahead, I will try to answer as best as I can. Maybe talking to you will help me solve this complicated mess.” Vera said while dropping her pen onto the table and shifting her whole focus towards Blake. Which made the latter slightly nervous and swallowed his saliva before continuing speaking,

“Umm... It’s not really about that book, it’s about the other book about the basic elemental runes. Do you have anything more advanced? They were too simple and I can’t find any reference that would help me think of a more complicated spell of that particular element.” Blake answered.

“Hmm... I don’t have more runes of the earth elemental spell from this realm because I rarely use them even in my rune formations. If you really want to know more about the more complicated earth spells from this realm, the best we can do is to find a demon mage from this realm and study the spells that they used.”

“Why is that? Do the earth spells weren’t very useful?” Blake asked, genuinely curious.

He had already thought of the versatility of the earth elemental spells and even though he didn’t know them well enough, Blake had made several guesses on how they could be from how the basic spells worked, but if Vera said that the earth spells were generally not good, then he would have to tone down his expectations about the earth affinity that he just acquired earlier.

Fortunately, Vera told him that it wasn’t the case.

“No, it’s not that they aren’t useful. As I said, I don’t use the earth spells from this realm. Specifically this realm.” She explained.

Seeing that Blake still looked at her with a questioning gaze, Vera then remembered that she hadn’t told him about some things yet and continued explaining,

“The runes that you’ve studied, memorized, and used so far were runes that came from this particular realm. And when you evolve and then descend later, there will be even more runes from the realm below. And of course, the runes from the deeper realm were more complicated and the spells could be considered significantly stronger than the runes and spells from this realm.”

Blake then took his time to process what Vera had explained to him before asking again,

“So, even the darkness spells that you and I used so far were only the runes from this realm?”

“Correct.” Vera nodded.

“But Vera, you already know about those runes right? Can’t you just draw them like usual and cast the spells from the deeper realm?” Blake wondered.

Blake already had several guesses about Vera’s identity, one of them being a demon that came from the deeper realms. He didn’t know what she was doing in the upper realms when she said it herself that all demons wanted to go into the deeper realm to make themselves stronger, but he didn’t have any plans to force the answer out of Vera’s mouth, nor did he had the capabilities to do so. So he just accepted it as a matter of fact and continued his daily activities as if it wasn’t an unusual thing that needed to be addressed.

So when he said that Vera already knew those runes, Vera was quite surprised for a split second, but remembering how bright her disciple’s mind was, Vera just shrugged it off and didn’t mention anything about it and just answered Blake’s question.

“I do know those runes from the deeper realm, but it’s not that I don’t want to use them in this realm, but it is because I can’t.”

Before Blake was able to ask her any questions, Vera continued,

“The quality of nether in this realm is inferior compared to the nether in the next, deeper realm, and the same principle applies to the deeper realm after that. The runes and spells from those realms required, you can call it higher quality nether to simply it, to be activated. And not only spells, but even the demons from those deeper realms would also need special treasures or tools if they want to ascend to the weaker realms since their highly-evolved bodies needed the nourishment from the higher quality nether to sustain.”

“Here, let me give you an example.”

Right after saying that, Vera stood up from her seat and led Blake to the spell testing section in the basement.

“Here is the usual binding spell that we use.” Vera then cast a basic darkness tendril binding spell a few steps away from her. The spell worked like usual, summoning tens of darkness tendrils from the ground which wrapped themselves into thin air. There was nothing unusual about it.

“But when I try to cast a binding spell from the next realm...” Once again, Vera drew runes again in the air, and Blake observed every movement of her hand, each stroke of the runes, and the order of the runes being drawn.

Just from a single glance, Blake recognized the runes to be several times more complicated and there were more runes combined together to cast that single spell. Blake noticed some of the runes used, but the other half of the runes were completely unknown to him.

Blake saw how Vera completed the overly complicated runes in about 1 and a half-second, which was crazy considering there were more than 10 runes in that single spell, but she did it nonetheless and the runes were now floating in the air just like the first spell.

However, different from the first spell where the runes flashed in the air and disappeared before the spell manifested itself, the runes that Vera had just finished drawing were staying in the air for a split second before they visibly started crumbling down on themselves and not a single spell was manifested.

“See? That is what would happen if you try to use the runes from the deeper realm in this one... What are you doing?” Vera suddenly stopped her explanation as he saw Blake recreating the same exact spell that she had just shown him once. She had seen it before when they first met, but it never bore her to see Blake doing it again right in front of her eyes, especially when the runes were significantly more complicated, but Blake was still capable of doing it.

It took him about 6 seconds to copy and draw all of the runes that he had seen Vera use just now, but just like before, Blake succeeded in perfectly drawing all of the runes.

He then saw the runes floating in the air, the same as what happened when Vera drew it earlier. However, different from Vera’s where the runes soon crumbled down after they stayed in the air for a while, the runes that Blake drew stayed in the air for a whole second before Blake felt the runes draining something from within his body.

He couldn’t think of what the runes were sucking out from his body, but he certainly felt the consequence of it where he felt all of his strength drained from his body as he fell to his knees.

Blake still couldn’t figure out what had just happened to his body as he was currently still feeling the runes draining something from his body even when he was already supporting his whole body with his four limbs.

But the moment he felt the draining feeling stopped, Blake quickly turned his head upward to see the runes that were responsible for getting him into that situation and saw the runes flashing for a split second before a fist-sized ball of darkness manifested from the runes and flew straight into the wall on the opposite side of him.

He observed the ball of darkness closely and when it finally hit the wall, Blake could see the ball of darkness explode, revealing tens of darkness tendrils inside it. And in the next second, the tendrils wrapped themselves around the wall that the darkness ball just hit and caused a section of the wall to be completely covered in darkness tendrils.

“You... You... How did you do that!?” Blake heard Vera’s voice shouting at him.

But with his body still feeling very drained, Blake couldn’t give her a proper response yet and decided to just let himself fall on his back and stare at the dimly lit ceiling while regaining his strength.