Jin’s brows furrowed.

  His muscles tightened.

  He lifted his head slightly, and even that small movement soured his expression further as waves of pain shot down his neck and back.

  Like a living skeleton, he was basically a breathing corpse.

  And yet there was no fear left in his eyes.

  Logically, Jin knew it shouldn’t have been possible, but in his soul he knew the truth:

  He had already died back in that warehouse.

  And as his body ate away at itself, with no distraction from the pain, forced to stay in one spot, he had never felt more powerless.

  Never mind death.

  Everyone died.

  Jin had already seen it.

  He had even experienced it himself once before.

  To Jin, living for the sake of living was worse than death.

  So sitting in that lonely dark room, with those condescending crystals as his only companion, completely powerless to change anything about his situation, marked the lowest point of his entire life.

  The farthest he had ever been from his goal.

  And so he felt the fear slowly morph into rage.

  The rage that had once been dispersed and unfocused, aimed at the whole world, turned single-pointed.

  Locked solely onto the unnerving creature towering in front of him.

  The creature was human-like, but not quite human.

  It was large.

  Much larger than any human Jin had ever seen.

  At least eight feet tall.

  Disheveled. Messy.

  Its only clothing was a pair of tattered, stained pants that looked more like rags than anything else.

  Its face looked mostly normal.

  Some might even consider it handsome, for an old person.

  Wrinkled skin, but a beautiful bronze-tan color.

  Sharp eyes, a striking bright orange, like a raging fire sat inside its pupils.

  White hair and a beard, full and thick, reaching down to the middle of its bare chest.

  But where a normal mouth should have been was something grotesque.

  A mouth too large, filled with sharp teeth like razors, broken only by huge tusks rising from its lower jaw.

  And everything below the neck completely mismatched the old face above.

  Its body was absurdly muscular, like a Mr. Olympia candidate.

  Thick-set arms with four rings tattooed into its skin, rings that looked like the red circle around Jin, except with different patterns and symbols.

  The creature’s torso rose and fell heavily as it started yelling again.

  “I know you’re not dead yet, you damn demon. Answer me. Now.”

  Jin stared up at it.

  This thing looked like it could remove his head from his torso with a single slap.

  A few seconds passed.

  Then Jin’s cracked lips split open as he spoke for the first time in a while.

  “Who the fuck are you, you ugly bitch,” he said, voice hoarse.

  The tone came out shaky, betraying how he wanted it to sound.

  His throat trembled.

  Warm liquid ran down his lips, probably blood.

  His mouth felt bone-dry.

  Veins popped on the creature’s forehead like worms crawling under skin.

  Its fist balled up in pure anger.

  The temperature in the room rose fast.

  Beads of sweat sprang across Jin’s skin uncontrollably.

  The heat kept climbing until it became suffocating, pressing down on his lungs.

  Jin didn’t look away.

  No apology.

  Not a word.

  The creature loosened its fist.

  Its face relaxed slightly.

  The temperature dropped back down.

  In its mind, a bitter thought surfaced:

  This is why the soul summoning concepts must be forbidden. Just conversing with a damn demon is already punishment enough for all the lives I took to bring him here.

  “Demon,” it said, voice lower now, “my name is Ruk-Pyre. I am the Supreme Elder of the Pyre family and oldest patriarch of the sunborn orc race. But you may call me Ruk. Now answer my question the same way I answered yours.”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Why am I here?” Jin replied, completely ignoring Ruk.

  At this point, whatever Ruk wanted to know, Jin couldn’t possibly care less about.

  Ruk’s eyes narrowed.

  “Demon, you should know that the formation you are so intent on not interacting with may not be pleasant, but it won’t kill you. However, I will not give you the same courtesy. If you don’t answer my question, I will grant you a death so painful you will wish you had used your mouth while you still could.”

  Jin’s face stayed motionless.

  He didn’t even flinch at the suffocating murderous intent radiating off Ruk.

  He just squinted up at him and repeated, “Why am I here?”

  “Are you suicidal, demon?” Ruk asked, and for a split second genuine concern slipped into his thoughts.

  Don’t tell me, out of the billions of souls in the abyss, the one I picked was… emo.

  “No,” Jin said. “I just know you won’t kill me. And stop calling me demon. My name is Jin.”

  Ruk stared down at him, confused.

  Even in only a few minutes of conversing, Jin had come off as sharp.

  He should have known Ruk was capable of taking his life.

  These weren’t empty threats.

  But Jin sounded so confident—so sure—that a small, absurd thought rose in Ruk’s chest.

  What if he isn’t an otherworldly demon at all?

  What if he’s a spy from another orc family?

  It almost felt like Jin had information about Ruk that Ruk wasn’t even aware of himself.

  Ruk squinted harder at the sitting skeleton of an orc, that was Jin, angrily staring back at him.

  Cautiousness stirred in the depths of his heart.

  His body tensed slightly, and for the first time he felt nervous.

  Getting what he wanted out of Jin might not be as easy as he thought.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Ruk asked, keeping the annoyed anger in his voice even as wariness spread through his mind.

  “Because if you wanted to kill me, I would’ve been dead long ago,” Jin said.

  He swallowed, forcing the words out despite the dryness.

  “I don’t know how long you’ve been watching me, but I’ve had a lot of time to think here. And during that time it occurred to me that whoever was responsible for putting me here, your priority was to get me into that red circle you called a formation, by any means.”

  Jin’s eyes stayed locked on Ruk.

  “Now if I died of starvation before I entered it, then so be it. But there’s a reason you’re coming to me now, just as I get closer and closer to death. The truth is, you don’t want me to die. And if I had to guess, whatever investment you made into that formation outweighs letting me die.”

  Ruk’s jaw clenched.

  His brow furrowed.

  Jin kept going.

  “And not only that, there’s a reason you want specifically me to enter it. Otherwise you wouldn’t have waited so long, hoping I’d eventually give up and step in the formation out of boredom or pain.”

  He let the statement sit for half a second.

  “Because if you could just grab anybody you wanted for your formation, why wait all this time for me? Why not move on and pick someone who would be tempted by the crystals, or too weak to hold out? You would’ve saved so much time if that was the case.”

  Jin’s voice stayed hoarse and weak, but the logic came out clean.

  “So that is why I believe you won’t kill me, Ruk. Based on your actions, I can deduce you need at least two things to be true. One, you need me alive. And two, you need me in that formation.”

  Ruk’s brows furrowed even harder.

  His body tensed.

  A new emotion flickered across his face—not purely anger, not purely annoyance.

  Something closer to fear.

  Jin caught it.

  Under usual circumstances, Jin wouldn’t reveal so many cards at once.

  He wasn’t arrogant.

  He didn’t want Ruk to think he was smart.

  He didn’t want him any more cautious than he already was.

  Cautiousness led to vigilance, and vigilance by Ruk against a much weaker Jin would only lead to him suffering.

  But control mattered.

  And right now, this was the only leverage he had.

  So he pushed.

  “I didn’t answer your question before because it was a stupid question,” Jin said. “Am I a lunatic? Maybe. But if you give me the options between submit or starve, I will starve every single time.”

  His eyes sharpened.

  “I don’t want to die. And if what you say is true, that the formation won’t kill me, I might even enter it.”

  A pause.

  “But it will only be after I have enough information. So I will not be the one answering to you.”

  Jin’s cracked lips curled slightly.

  “You will answer to me.”

  He lifted his chin, even as pain stabbed down his spine.

  “So, Ruk… why am I here?”

  The pressure in the room shifted.

  The temperature started to rise again, but this time it wasn’t just heat.

  It felt like the air itself was warping.

  Jin could feel his skin shrivel, tightening and wrinkling under it like he was being cooked alive.

  Ruk’s eyes stayed calm.

  His demeanor stayed relaxed.

  No anger.

  No caution.

  No fear.

  His lips curled into a wide, terrifying smile.

  He looked happy.

  Fuck, Jin thought.

  I misjudged him.

  He’s a lunatic too.

  Ruk’s fiery eyes locked onto Jin’s, like he was trying to stare straight into his soul.

  Jin was right.

  Ruk couldn’t kill him.

  Too much had been invested to drag an other-worldly demon like Jin into this world.

  Too many people had been sacrificed to make it happen.

  Even now, Ruk’s “Supreme Elder” position was basically a formality he held onto by being the strongest and oldest living sunborn orc.

  In truth, he was practically banished.

  He had led the family into ruin trying to get Jin here.

  He had sacrificed everything—his standing, his followers, even his own vitality.

  And now, on the brink of death, the thought of doing everything he did just to kill Jin made him cringe with physical pain.

  But what else could he do?

  Jin refused to enter the formation.

  Jin stared back at him, not backing down.

  Ruk’s smile widened.

  Then he started to fade right in front of Jin’s eyes—his body dissolving into dark purple smoke.

  The smoke flooded the room in seconds, swallowing the walls, the table, the crystals, everything.

  Then it condensed.

  All of it pulled into a tiny purple ball floating in front of Jin.

  The ball shot forward like a bullet and slammed into Jin’s chest.

  Jin’s body jolted.

  And yet, somehow, Ruk’s voice still came through loud and clear, like it was inside Jin’s own mind.

  “You said some powerful words for someone so weak,” Ruk boomed inside his head. “Prove your resolve, and I will answer your questions.”

  A pause.

  “But if it hurts too much… enter the formation. It will be much more pleasant in there.”

  Ruk had decided on a test.

  A gamble.

  If Jin failed completely, both of them would die on the spot, and that would be that.

  Ruk wouldn’t have to live with the consequences of his failed plan.

  And if Jin couldn’t withstand it, he would crawl into the formation anyway, and Ruk would get what he wanted regardless.

  But a small part of Ruk, buried deep, quiet, almost ashamed, hoped Jin would pass, even though he knew how impossible it was.

  Because on the infinitesimally small chance that Jin passed the test, Ruk would get to personally bear witness to the rise of the strongest sunborn orc to ever live.

  Ruk pushed the thought away immediately.

  I’m getting old. Getting soft. Letting a few words cloud my judgment to this degree. The number of orcs in all of history that could pass this test don’t even reach three.

  If this demon, without a single concept, or even an ether core, could withstand the test long enough to even make it to the formation, that alone would be an unprecedented accomplishment.

  The test was going to be very, very painful.