Angelica settled back down with the book after moving her mountain of clothes. She wasn’t making many more strides after the name revelation, so she decided to flip forward to the illustrated pages. One thing she had noticed, however, was that the words she could read seemed to be those she’d heard in her head from the various messages. Not all the words, though. Many common phrases were missing, or so she had to assume.
Imp? When did I hear Imp? she pondered after getting to the first set of depicted demons. Not that she complained while studying the little guys. They were definitely the lowest class and ranged from not-intimidating at all to creepiness incarnate. She couldn’t read the other names as she scanned up the assumed hierarchy, at least not until the last one.
“Demon Lord.” That only had one sketch, and they were one of the more human-looking of the bunch. Frankly, they didn’t look that grand, almost like a person dressing up as a demon. However, the artist, or whoever had printed the book, had shaded their entire picture and the area around it with what looked like charcoal. Was it supposed to represent their power, or maybe some radiating evil? Perhaps they were trying to redact the drawing but failed.
And was it supposed to be Ferrul? That was the only Demon Lord Angelica knew of, assuming that hadn’t been a figment of her imagination. If so, it was nice to put a face to the name.
She continued onward to the various circles, now confirmed as Demon Summoning Circles. Was there a reason there were so many? Perhaps they served different functions. She saw Imp listed again several times, often one of the few words in an array’s descriptor. Could certain circles only summon specific classes of Demons? That sounded right, since she only saw Demon Lord mentioned toward the highest-leveled ones.
There were also the words Contracts and Orders several times. Would the circles also dictate what sort of orders could be given or contracts formed? That didn’t sound right, since so far, she had found absolutely no limitations on ordering herself around. Maybe it was the number of Orders that could be given. Well, there wasn’t much point speculating until she learned more words, so she decided to move on to the circle she’d painted.
As before, there were several common words, including Demon Lord. Perhaps this circle was capable of summoning one as well. But there was one word in particular that really stood out, and it was the only time she’d been able to read the full name of the array. “Soulbound Demon Summoning Circle.” The word soul was repeated a few times in the description, so it was definitely an important caveat that she hadn’t seen anywhere else.
That was when Angelica remembered the last thing she’d said before everything went crazy that night. “I’ll give you my soul.” Had that been the trigger that had activated the circle? Was it the price to be paid? Things were starting to make a lot more sense, but it still didn’t answer one question. Why had she summoned herself instead of anything she’d called on? Angelica was pretty sure she had mentioned Demons in that same act of whimsy. Wouldn’t that have called upon one, assuming they were actually real? It felt like they had to be real after everything she’d gone through.
She scoured the description of the Soulbound Circle a few times, which was significantly longer than most. The word “name” also stood out amongst the rest. So a name would be important? That made sense, she guessed. If the Summoner was offering their soul, they better get exactly what they were asking for. And she hadn’t named anyone specific in her chant, so that could have caused the problem, but her instincts told her it was something more specific.
So she studied the circle itself for a while, focusing on the intricacies. Yet her eyes kept wandering over to the suspicious blank spot in the circle that was surrounded by what sort of looked like brackets. It really felt like something was supposed to go there. She flipped back to other arrays. Not all of them had that blank spot, but those that did all mentioned the word name. A few also had “Rank” right beside it, so maybe that could be a substitute if they didn’t want a specifically named Demon but any of a certain rank.
To confirm her suspicions, Angelica pulled up her picture of her blackened circle. And yep, she hadn’t put anything at all in that spot. Since she hadn’t put a name, nothing specific had been summoned. That sounded right. And then… it summoned her as the closest living being? Was that some sort of fail-safe? Or did the book’s author not expect anyone to mess up the most important part of the summoning? At the very least, they likely assumed the person capable of reading the entire thing.
If Angelica was both the Summoner and the Demon, did that mean she was Bound to herself? She went back and studied the Soulbound section again, doing her best to try to piece together the sparse words. And thank… she wanted to say Vissiem, but maybe Ferrul was more accurate in this case—she got a new message.
[Tongues Lv.2]
[Lucidity increased]
Suddenly, there were a lot more translated words. Actually, they were the majority now. Several were common particles that helped a bunch, and a few more complex words she wasn’t sure she’d heard yet in a message. While there was still much left untranslated, the assistance was abundant.
First, she practically confirmed her suspicion about writing the name, that was a lot more evident. Then she got a bit deeper into Soulbound itself. “Permanent binding,” really stuck out, as did “near…to break.” She could speculate that the missing word was “impossible.” And it continued on to something else important. “Demon…Summoner perish, so…the other.”
She could speculate the rest. If one died, so would the other. That was probably the ultimate condition of Soulbound that differentiated it from the rest. Not that it mattered to her, since she was both, she’d be dead regardless of however she was classified. There was another crucial piece of info. “Soulbound Circle…used once.”
That told her a lot, actually. It meant some circles could be used multiple times, and that was probably the reason hers had turned black. The circle was “dead” or useless now. Wouldn’t it make more sense for it to just vanish, then, instead of ruining her floor? She hadn’t really really tried hard to remove it, but doubted she’d have much luck. Maybe it’d stick around as long as the binding was active.
Unable to deduce much more, she kept flipping. The pages were more informative, but at the same time, more infuriating. All the broken sentences quickly gave her a headache, a pain in the butt since she could have just easily skipped them, but now her brain really wanted to figure them out. That forced her to skim ahead more since a lot of it felt like it was treading on what she already knew or assumed.
She didn’t get much new information until the word Essence popped up repeatedly, but it had few context words around it, so she didn’t linger long. However, toward the end of the book, there was certainly something interesting. “Warning: Demons…stronger…time.” Demons get stronger over time, alright, made sense based on what she’d experienced, but the next phrase was what really caught her eye.
“Demon Growth System.” Was that the messages in her head? Some system that worked to make Demons stronger? While she still wouldn’t exactly call herself a Demon, if she was given this weird system after being accidentally summoned, there was clearly no reason she also couldn’t take advantage of it. The idea both freaked her mind a bit, but was also a tad reassuring. Having it labelled was oddly comforting. Essence was also mentioned again, but she was unable to figure out how it correlated.
Angelica got to the end of the book and debated flipping through it again from the start with her updated Tongues level. The idea alone made her a bit wary, since her head was already hurting. C’mon, Demon Growth System, give me headache resistance! No such luck. Maybe she’d wait to read through again until after her Tongues levelled enough for everything to be literate, not that she knew any other ways to improve it at present.
If there was more info on how the growth system worked, she’d be far more interested. There were no plans for her to do other summonings in the immediate future. But if she assumed the book was written by Summoners rather than Demons, it’d make sense that they didn’t know the intricacies. Before she could commit to any course of action, the dryers dinged, so it was time to load up her clothing and ship out back to her apartment.
“Walk back to your apartment at a steady pace while not dropping the bags.” As just a bit of further testing, and because she was feeling a bit more tired compared to the earlier trip, Angelica gave herself that order. Just as she expected, her legs pretty much moved on their own without even needing to be thought about, and anytime she felt like the giant bags might touch the ground, her body was suddenly motivated to jerk them back up, feeling like she’d suffer somehow if she failed in her task.
[Might increased]
She got that notification just as she rounded into her apartment’s parking lot, a little reward for the muscle-straining exertion. Angelica could definitely get used to this: able to push herself through arduous tasks and gaining benefits in the process. Now that she knew the caveats of the Orders and Contracts, there’d be no downside as long as she was careful, right?
Back in her apartment, she couldn’t help but appreciate all the new space on her floor now that the laundry had been picked up. Angelica didn’t want to just dump the clothing back in those spots, but the idea of actually folding it and putting the garments away properly irritated her already prickly mind. But she could just give herself an Order, right? The thought of not actually having to put in effort to complete menial tasks tickled her.
But she wouldn’t do it right away, and she set the bags on her bed for now. No, Angelica had been through too much these past few days, so she needed to indulge in at least a bit of laziness before anything else. The past year of unemployment had corrupted her, so she could only complete a few responsible tasks a day before being drained.
And, when was the last time she’d checked on her webcomic? Her daily ritual had been broken by the trash-collecting, so she definitely wasn’t going to let that happen two days in a row. As usual, she went straight to the publishing site as soon as her computer slowly hummed to life. Nice, two new readers, quite a few comments, and, oh, a direct message?!
Angelica eagerly clicked to her inbox. Maybe it was a proper publisher reaching out saying they wanted to sign her work. Probably not, but a girl could dream. No, it was a message from one of her usual commenters, still a neat thing that they’d felt so inspired to reach out in such a way. However, the message was rather short and to the point. “No chapter today? :c”
Eh? That shouldn’t have happened. Angelica posted a new chapter of Merlina’s Boutique every four days. Some artists on the site posted every day somehow, but the staggered schedule allowed her to take time with the comic to make sure it was just how she wanted, as well as allowing her to work on commissions or other art. It also allotted time for laziness if she just wasn’t feeling it, which happened somewhat often.
Going by the schedule, the newest chapter should have been posted the day before, which she hadn’t been home for, so that fault was obvious. However, she scheduled her chapters for automatic release well in advance, so had something failed there? She checked the scheduled postings and found the page completely empty. The artist had failed to keep her posting schedule right in her head, apparently.
It wasn’t a wholly irregular occurrence, but normally she would have been home to catch the error, and because of her absence, now a whole day of silence had gone by. In the grand scheme of things, especially with her relatively-small audience compared to the major publishings, one missed day was virtually nothing. But to her, she’d disappointed at least one fan, and that was unacceptable.
“I’m sorry, Tea_Drinker27. I will never fail you again!” She needed to make good. Of course, that meant posting a chapter right away without delay. But not just that, she’d post another one as an apology. However, when she looked at her measly backlog, two chapters was all she had banked. So that would drain her stock entirely, and she’d have to commit to ensuring there was another chapter ready soon to get her schedule back on track.
And commit she would. That was when she thought of a devilish idea, how she could force the motivation into her and ensure she kept her goals. “Angelica, draw the next three chapters of Merlina’s Boutique!”