Dorzath liked to think that the universe itself, was his parent.

He’d awakened from shattered soul fragments and festering hatred and loss, crawling up from the lowest depths of the Abyss, tearing apart the other newborn hell-creatures for the smallest advantage, quickly growing in size and power, to the point where he could dominate those around him, both new souls and hell-creatures alike.

He'd ripped his way through souls still clinging to their morality while abandoning his own if he'd ever had it. Souls didn't retain any of their memories when they passed over and he was glad to be free of that chain, something he didn't remember but could feel the way it had held him back all his mortal life. The pleasure he took at taking away everything from these cowering souls was indescribable and with every successful hunt, his dream-like body grew blacker in color and nature.

He preferred to hunt the weaker souls, watching them struggle for even the smallest of hope was something that filled some craving deep inside.

However, the Abyss pulled at him like gravity, always pulling him up higher and higher like bubbles in water and the fight to grow and survive was neverending. As he rose through the Abyss's layers, his competition grew fiercer and stronger and the 'food' grew scarce. He spent an untold amount of time, fighting with other snarling hell-creatures over even the smallest scraps of soul fragments in the Abyss.

After that endless expanse of bloodlust and violence, however, Dorzath had grown too big for the Abyss to contain, and his soul was slowly rejected. This was the beginning of his ascension, and he savored it with glee.

He'd ripped and tore, fought and stole, gorging himself on so much malice and self-loathing that his soul gained an almost physical weight, through this immeasurable metaphysical weight that he'd gathered of what the universe called sin. His weight was great enough so that when he’d eventually crossed over the divide which separated the real-space with the dream-space of the Abyss, he was baptised by the universe as a demon.

As he’d felt the strength seep into him from the ground around him, his very body was rebuilt from a black sludge-like monstrosity into the universe’s template of a demon, a two-meter red-skinned monstrosity with tiny black horns poking out of his forehead. That glorious moment of his baptism had seemed to stretch forever, but not long enough. He’d barely drawn his first breath of sharp brimstone air before he was violently attacked by a group of human slaves.

Slaves turned Slavers.

They were enslaved to Duke Xukaxoz as prisoners of war, too weak to be used as batteries, and too strong that it would be a waste to use them as food. Dorzath was quickly pushed down to the ground. A group of tier 3 humans was strong enough to overpower someone without a Job easily and even if that person was a demon, he was practically a new-born compared to their experience and Skills.

He’d screamed and roared, he’d flailed and struggled, but the branding iron had come down nevertheless. And so he was Contracted, barely a minute after he’d been baptised by the world.

Dorzath had to meekly trudge behind them as they returned with him and a veritable horde of other newly Contracted demons and imps, as they had been marched back to a black city, where he had spent nearly the next 10 cycles in training as part of Duke Xukaxozs army.

#

He’d been thrown into the Academy, a breeding ground of violence and death. The Contract that had been unwillingly forced on him had forbidden him from attacking those deemed ‘useful’. For those demons at the bottom of the food chain like him and other newly-Contracted however, they were deemed 'very disposable' and so they were encouraged to fight for dominance amongst themselves, to create the strongest soldiers possible.

After the pain of having his freedom brutally taken away from him the instant he was born, he’d thrown himself into it with relish.

Dorzath gained the Tier 0 Job Demon Student within days, and for the next cycle had enjoyed himself immensely. He’d enjoyed taking out his frustrations on those beneath them, as they took out their frustrations on those beneath them, and on and on. Halfway through his first cycle though, he had fought and killed enough that he had unlocked the Tier 1 Job Demon Warrior. That had marked a turning point in his life, the point where his destiny changed from a footsoldier to that of something greater.

He had a rare moment where the bloodlust and hunger which normally lay settled around him like a thick cloud lifted for a brief moment. And at that moment, he was filled with quiet contemplation.

He had realized then, that the root of his terrible violence he inflicted on his lesser classmates, was a quiet rage with the way things were. The fact that Dorzath, a demon, one of the fewer higher races in the universe had no control over his own life and was treated like cattle, it burned with a rage unlike anything else. He was nothing in front of the Duke, a mere pawn to throw books and training until he became something useful. His life, although he had been baptised by the Universe, recognised for his accomplishments, it was worthless.

He had been given an immortal body, but he would likely perish before he reached his 4th Job tier. The injustice, the hate for the Duke and the longing for freedom lead to him making a dangerous choice that day.

So with what little rune-work that he knew innately, he signed a Contract with himself, swearing that all of his actions from this point onwards, would be to undo the forceful Contract that he was placed under by the Duke's slaves. He carved it into his tongue and so let it remain out of sight.

In placing himself under such a Contract, he had effectively cured himself of one of demonkind's greatest weaknesses, laziness. Even Duke Xukaxoz hadn’t put it into his original Contract, for fear of his army banding together to rebel against him, and by adding some looseness into the Contract which the majority of his forces were placed under, he introduced a sense of competition and strife amongst them. In this way, the Duke created enough discord to prevent cooperation, but enough order to obey his commands.

Of course, it was practically taboo to place yourself under a Contract, the only beings who would do so were suicidal humans or foolhardy demons. Demons being the only beings in creation which were created with instinctual knowledge of runes placed within them. Dorzath knew that he was better than those weak-willed demons, the ones he'd learned about at the Academy, who'd accidentally sworn themselves into servitude to themselves. They would be bound by said Contract until a sympathetic Enchanter took pity on them, or until they grew powerful enough to resist its effects through sheer power or will.

He even had a plan when he had placed himself under the Contract, the Duke's Contract was composed of high ranked runes, with an origin ranked rune making up the core of its structure. So, therefore, all he had to do was become an Enchanter, a mage who specialized in rune-work and learn enough runes that he could undo the Duke's Contract.

He then regretted his decision to put such a simplistic Contract on himself for a long time after making it. Every morning he woke up early and his body forced him to study runes relentlessly. He only managed to take breaks when he internally rationalized that taking breaks was good for him and communicating that to his Contract mentally, which seemed to be able to subtly pick up on his mental cues, even though he'd never put that sort of function into the rune initially.

Something he hadn’t even considered was that his body had effectively taken on a life of its own at times, disobeying his every command, where to turn his head, what food to put in his mouth, even where he traveled to. But other times he had full control over his body, due to failings of the design of the Contract or shoddy construction, but he still had an irrational urge to study, either out of repetition or from his Contract he was unsure.

He was also stuck in the bottom tier of classes, unable to move up because even though he had already unlocked the Tier 1 Job Mage, there was a maximum time he could remain in the Tier zero class before being ejected into the Army or moving to a higher class. So his Contract made him maximize the amount of time he spent in each tier, learning languages before moving up.

Of course, he wasn't the first to think of this, staying in a lower class was a good way to gain skills as well as prolong the time a demon was able to remain in the Academy for, before going off to the Frontlines. If you weren't a demon that was.

Demons were literally constructed of malice and hate, able to break through into reality only by the grace of the Duke, although Dorzath had lost a large amount of respect for him. It was around the same time he'd been captured and Contracted.

Malice, hate, and Sin. A demon had to have a little of each one before being able to be reborn and then baptized by the universe. Of all the Sins they possessed and were driven by, like a constant maelstrom of energy whirling beneath their skin, was Pride. It forbade them from appearing weaker than they were, and the effect was only ignored through massive power levels or through a Contract like the one that Dorzath had placed on himself.

It was this constant burning desire to place themselves over each other, like a furnace of spite and emotion which was behind almost every action a demon made. It made them incapable of exploiting this blatant loophole in the Academy's system, meaning the Duke could leave it in place, to maximize the number of demons that entered his army who were of a higher tier.

From the perspective of a demon, this approach of waiting to further improve yourself was contradictory, as moving up to a higher tier improved you physically, mentally, as well as giving you access to more powerful skills. Dorzath was beginning to see from his language study and his study of other races cultures that that perspective was also full of holes, however, as moving up early just quickened the time it took to send a demon to the Frontlines, which unless a demon was created a genius, was just a slow and inevitable death, as a soldier was forced to fight tougher and tougher enemies.

He learned the Faerie, Common and High tongues, as well as a few Feral, although he was better at writing it than speaking it. He spoke the Deific tongue naturally, spoken by angelic, demonic and deific races. He also used the few books the academy had on the subject to learn about the different mannerisms used when communicating to other species who also used the Deific tongue, depending on what species you communicated with, the tone you spoke with put a different emphasis on certain runes, this in turn also extended to the runes each race used.

He was finally allowed to move up to a higher tier Job on the day before he was to be ejected from the Academy, allowing him to accept the Tier 1 Job of Mage, and move up to a higher job, and once at a higher job, he finally moved on from the collection of languages he'd been studying for the last several years and onto runes as he was finally given access to them. The Academy wished for specialized soldiers, each one able to perform a certain function better than their peers. Furthermore, the difficulty of learning runes was exponentially more difficult with low mental abilities, and with a non-magic based job, so there was no point in giving access to them at tier 0.

The sheer number of runes he learned was mind-boggling. He'd started with Deific, as part of his first year of training had included knowledge about the slave Contract he was branded with, and scattered amongst the useless pieces of knowledge he'd learned, was that his Contract was made up of Deific runes, the most powerful runes in existence, with an origin ranked rune, as its core. After being frustrated with his lack of progress, and after convincing his Contract that the Deific runes he'd already learned had had little effect on his slave Contract, he'd switched to learning Common runes.

The Common language was spoken in various dialects across the known universe, and due to its wide use and large population base of history and culture to draw on, the runes generated by the language were extremely strange and varied. It had been developed by an old human Emperor, as a way of unifying his wide-ranging and powerful empire, to have them all speak the same language, unifying trade and politics under one banner. After his empire had inevitably collapsed, the language spread from world to world. It was easy to learn and was designed to be a useful way to communicate. Of course, all language changes with time, causing the runes bound to the language to also change. The runes were varied, some having the same meaning or extremely similar meanings, but this had diluted the runes over time, making them less powerful, but also easier to learn and use, and for human Sorcerors they were often the only runes they could learn in their short lifetimes.

Besides, learning the runes of each language was much more difficult than the languages themselves.

To truly learn a rune and understand it as well as use it, it had to be imprinted in the mind. As a demon, when he was baptized, as a side effect of the process he was imprinted in his mind with several runes of the Deific tongue, and although they were basic tier, they had allowed him to use a Contract on himself but then going and learning more Deific runes was extremely difficult.

Once his teachers and classmates learned that he was trying to learn runes, and become an Enchanter they had mercilessly bullied and taunted him. Especially after learning that he was nearly kicked out of the academy, or at least that was how it appeared to other demons when they looked at how he was trying to maximize his time in the Academy. The path of runes was rarely attempted, the path of Mages was powerful, but demons preferred to use their naturally strong bodies as demons to become Warriors (as opposed to weak-bodied imps, who had a strong affinity for fire magic). A Mage was more powerful than a Warrior, but many demons would prefer laziness over long hours studying and attempting to perfect their control over mana.

Even within the underused Mage class of the Academy, Enchanters were considered to be a Job with a lot of effort for little reward. There were still thousands within its class, due to the sheer scale of the Academy, and the fact that an average of ten thousand newly enslaved demons was brought into the city almost every day.

He’d learned his first ten common-tier runes halfway through his first cycle, a punishingly slow process, the difficulty of learning them was only mildly offset by the knowledge he had of the runes languages and their basic meanings. Dorzath had now qualified for the higher tier job, a Tier 2 Enchanter, but his Contract mercilessly made him maximize the full time of three cycles that he could spend in the Academy as a Tier 1 before being ejected.

On a positive note, however, he’d had less bullying for the last two cycles he spent as a Tier 1, as he was studying in class one day when a bully had suddenly set fire to a book on his desk. The punishment for not returning a book to the Library was not being able to use it for a month, it would set him back for quite a bit, as he wouldn’t be able to learn any new runes.

His Contract had commanded him to kill him, but the Contract from Duke Xukaxoz had commanded him not to as he was determined as useful, with the bully having reached Tier 1.

Dorzath was forced to compromise and had simply placed a Feral ‘Curse’ (their name for a Contract) on the bully which he’d been studying in an effort to balance out his knowledge.

The Curse was fairly lighthearted but deadly to mages. It forced the demon to sing every time they wanted to cast. For the bully, who wanted to become a Tier 2 Wizard, a mage who depended primarily on casting, the spell was lethal to their future.

They’d eventually gotten over it and became quite a successful Bard Wizard, however, becoming quite powerful in their own right, beloved by their kin and hated by their enemies for their ability to strengthen allies and weaken enemies.

After that day, when Dorzath had displayed a high level of ability far beyond that of the average Mage the bullying had stopped.

#

When he was finally allowed to get the tier 2 job of Enchanter, he was already far above his classmates, able to use runic symbols from several different languages.

After he had spent a cycle enjoying the main benefit that came with his higher class, which was that he could now absorb the knowledge contained in a rune in a quarter of the time, he had become quite well known after handing in an assignment in which he had proceeded to give suggestions to his teacher on how a real Feral tribesman would phrase the question.

He was then asked by a fellow Tier 2, who was going to be shipped to a Feral frontline, notorious for their high rate of crippling the soldiers who were sent there, to ward his armor against curses.

After that, with the small fame the soldier gained after being seemingly immune to some of the Feral tribesman's attacks, Dorzath was slowly but surely assaulted from all sides with requests, and with the favors and gems he gained from running his side business, he managed to gain access to underground books bought from Soldiers stopping through and trying to quickly sell anything they’d looted off of the enemy.

He wanted to get access to more runes from the Deific and High tongues, but he was restricted in his access and his Contract was content to just let him learn five different Feral runes which had nearly the same meaning.

Dorzath felt unsatisfied with his learning progress, knowing that he could gain access to a higher tier and more powerful runes if his Contract would just let him accept the notification asking him if he wanted to move to a higher tier. It was good practice learning the lower tier runes and it helped him with his side business, where he could now fight off Feral Curses which some soldiers had been afflicted with, notorious for their complexity.

It was an agonizing few cycles, with many of his teachers looking to him in confusion as to why he was still an Enchanter, as the requirement to become a Sorcerer was just to learn fifty different runes across two languages, and he’d already displayed ten times that many over the many assignments he’d already handed in. There were whispers of him amongst the Academy students as well as his peers of him cheating on his assignments, why else would a demon, notorious in their hunger for power be so strong and yet stay at a lower Job tier?

Just as he was entering his final cycle as an Enchanter, he happened on a book of Faerie runes which he spent nearly his entire fortune on in an auction, which then tied him over for his hunger for power and growth in his final cycle, even as he enjoyed non-lethally taking down several Tier 2s and 3s in creative ways who thought that they would be much better owners of the book.

The book was the most comprehensive one he’d ever read, clearly designed for Sorcerer’s as an educational textbook, as opposed to where he sourced most other runes from, which were the history or storybooks of that race which he normally managed to pull one or two runes and their meaning out of, whereas this Faerie book had 462 runes. Even taking account of the fact that the Faerie ‘language’ was actually a compilation of several races languages, and so they had several runes describing the same action or object, it was still a sizable increase in his knowledge.

In addition, Faerie runes were extremely rare, as they were widely acknowledged to be the best Runes to use when enchanting Equipment and all factions were constantly in need of strong equipment, leading to their increasing scarcity. Like the Faerie runes were the most useful for equipment, the Feral runes were best used for forceful Contracts or ‘Curses’, the Deific tongue was best used for Contracts. The Common runes had so few runes that it was very useful for creating weak but widely applicable and useful equipment and Contracts and the High runes had a great number of runes and so were used to create very strong and narrowly used equipment and Contracts, like a merchant deal, or a disposable weapon like an exploding spear.

Throughout this constant process of learning, the speed at which Dorzath was learning new runes was constantly increasing. The wording of his Contract had been very vague as he’d been new to rune-work at the time. It stated that he had to do everything he could to remove this contract. At some point, when he was listening to a tier 4 Lecturer, they’d said that the higher tiers of runes were very difficult to learn and understand, and that that effort could be reduced by repeatedly learning other runes, or if it was a very powerful rune, then learning similar runes would reduce its difficulty.

While a higher tier Job was useful, he realized, he was already above an average Sorcerer's comprehension speed, only reached because Dorzath had spent such a long period at each Job tier.

The main reason for getting a higher ranked Job was access to higher ranked skills. In addition, every time you completed that Job's main activity, you would level up, improving your body, soul or mind, depending on the Job, but due to being a higher race, the increase that he gained from the levels were so small comparatively, and would remain so until he reached his Tier 4 Job.

You would also gain something the Academy called skill energy every time you increased to a higher Job tier, with more being provided at higher tiers. The skill energy allowed the Job owner to have skills relating to that Job to rise faster, as well as allow them to evolve. The amount of skill energy received was limited though, and the number of skills that could evolve was also therefore limited, another reason why demons preferred to move to a higher Job tier rather than stay at a lower one as eventually, their skills would no longer be able to evolve.

He was currently capped at his classes main skill, Rune Drawing, an upgrade from the previous lower-tier skill Rune Carving, which meant he didn’t have to actually carve into the surface of a material, he could simply trace his hands through the air above the material, creating a glowing hovering rune above the material, which would then sink into the material, creating a perfect rune.

At the higher class, his skill would be allowed to evolve, allowing him to gain access to the skill Rune Weaving, which would allow him to use rune-chains, which he could already do, with some difficulty, as well as cast runes independently of a material, which he could also already do. However, currently, if he wanted to use Runes in combat, Dorzath had to use a Rune board, which had runes imprinted on it allowing for fast activation of them, which was much faster than the minutes it took him to draw a rune in the air.

#

Finally, the time came, and on his last day in the Academy, his Contract allowed him to upgrade to tier 3.

Dorzath, on his seventh year in the Academy, walked into his first Tier 3 Sorcerer’s class with a smile on his face, he deactivated the trap on his seat and chair, handed back the offered pen with a rune to spray ink all over the user and answered every question he was asked correctly.

Pranking was something of a habit by now, as well as a test for the awareness of an Enchanter, for the stronger ones could simply sense runes that were part of an object. A test he passed and then set the rest of his peers wondering how he'd managed to usurp the control the other demon should have had over the runework, and so quickly.

#

30 days later though, Dorzath was unhappy, he’d only managed to learn two higher-ranked runes, which was impressive for a new Sorcerer, but he was no closer to undoing his Contract.

Even the Contract he’d placed on himself wouldn’t let him get rid of it, it had been carved into his tongue, so he could simply cut it off, and then regrow the tongue, but his Contract told him that that wouldn’t help him remove the Duke's Contract, and as he couldn’t do anything without it in some way improving his chance of removing the Duke's Contract, he couldn’t justify a reason to let him do so. Therefore, he was stuck with it.

He would like to enjoy the level of power he’d attained, but everyone he’d entered the Academy with could destroy him with a flick of their finger now, due to their higher-ranked classes and skills. Even that Wizard he’d cursed, had gone on to become a Sage, a tier 4 powerhouse.

He was powerful in his own way, but the Duke’s Contract was written in high ranked Deific, something that the Academy was very reluctant to hand out runes for. As he was now a tier 3 he could gain access to higher tier clients as before many would refuse to have anything enchanted by him due to the reputation loss if anyone found out they had such a low tier enchanter, which therefore increased his income.

Dorzath could also attend higher tier auctions, again he wasn’t allowed into some of the higher tier ones before due to him being such a low tier.

He was on the lookout for any high tier Deific runes being auctioned, but he wasn’t the only buyer, there were much more powerful buyers out there than him, with much greater wealth, and even if he did manage to buy one, it was unlikely he would manage to hold onto it as he’d done with the Faerie book. The forces who would like to get their hands on it would likely be at tier 4 or 5.

He continued learning the new higher ranked runes that were available to him, however, although there were a lot less than he was expecting, only twenty, and of those twenty, only five were Deific. It made sense, the Duke had introduced the Academy which helped raise cannon fodder for his army, but to gain access to the truly powerful skills, weapons, and runes that the Duke was in possession of, a demon had to rise within the ranks of the army, to ensure they didn’t continue milking him for resources without giving something back.

In addition, to advance to the next tier of job, a Tier 4 Grand Sorcerer, a demon only needed to learn 10 high ranked runes, even accounting for the fact that some Sorcerer's struggled more with some runes than with others just due to how they perceived the world, the Duke had still been overly generous with the runes he had offered. On the other hand, however, the Duke had likely judged that these runes were necessary to learn in order to survive on the Frontlines as a Sorcerer.

Even considering all of that, it was still a generous amount of runes. But just over half a cycle later, Dorzath found himself wanting more, as he’d learned all of the high-ranked runes available to him.

At this point his Contract had lessened in effect, it seemed that gaining mastery over so many higher-ranked runes, had given him some measure of control over lower-tier ones in the form of the Skill ‘Lower Rune Control’. He could now enjoy luxuries he hadn’t had in cycles, like sleeping in a little in the morning. He’d even visited a Succubus house yesterday, leaving himself feeling refreshed.

He’d also taken the time to design some equipment for himself, a pair of boots and a cloak with a hood. They were bright red but could change their properties slightly at his will, but more so the cloak which could morph into a jacket or a scarf, depending on how he felt that day.

He’d enchanted them with several runes, but only a few high-ranked ones, as most of the ones he’d learned were for combat use and weren’t applicable to pieces of equipment or armor, it made sense, the Duke was sending them to the frontlines, so they needed ways of defending themselves, and a Sorcerer was very capable of handling themselves in combat if given the right runes to learn.

He was well on his way to creating a Set, and a notification had popped up once he’d completed them to ask if he wanted to create a Set. Being a production job, where he could level up by weaving runes or creating items, that function has always been open to him, but his Contract had restricted him from using it, as it would do little to further its goal.

He could have made a Set and distributed it, but the army had to wear a distinctive armor, a Set all on its own which provided bonuses the larger your unit was and how high a rank you were. What Dorzath had been asked to do was etch Enchantments into them, which soldiers paid for themselves and helped keep them alive.

The Set he had made for fun and because he had been wearing his Academy uniform all this time, which gave bonuses to learning speed as well as skill growth. It was just that, now that he had some leeway with what to do with his body and his free time, Dorzath wanted to look good for the first time in his life. It was a strange compulsion he'd had for years, which had only worsened every time he caught glimpses of himself wearing grey rags in the corner of his eyes.

He had canceled the notification. He would want more items in his Set when he finally finished it, as the more items there were in the Set, the higher the bonus given. For now, they were the Boots of Lament and the Cloak of Lament.

Other demons would Lament when they saw them, that they didn’t have such a fine cloak or boots. Dorzath laughed to himself as he pictured his peers and his teacher's face when they saw what he wore.

In addition, they would know that he’d made them himself, as it was taboo to wear another Sorcerer's products yourself, it implied you were inferior, and demons were beings of pride. Dorzath had lost some of that pride over the constant years of being mocked for not being able to raise his Job, but it was back and stronger than ever after having been restrained for so long.

They would want to ask him about the process, what runes he’d used. Maybe he should show off it’s transforming features? So that way they knew he’d enchanted it with a higher rune, the Deific word for ‘Change’ to be specific. It was a point of pride to wear something with a higher rune on it, like a status symbol, which only the most powerful demons could afford to own.

He’d wanted to use that rune on the Duke's Contract, but he quickly identified the fact that the rune itself was already enchanted in as part of the script of the Contract, which allowed the Contract to constantly morph and change itself as well as switch to another part of the body if the skin it was on was removed.

Which he’d found out. After much experimentation.

Dorzath spent time on his equipment, nearly 40 days in total, he’d finished the cloak first, and with the bonuses that it provided for Rune Weaving speed, he only took 10 days to finish the boots.

Dorzath spent hours admiring himself with the clothes, trying what went well with them, what didn’t and changing their forms to see what he liked best. He had an imprinted function instead of a shape on them, so that way the boots and cloak could turn into full-body protection if he ever needed it.

He'd always wanted to take pride in his appearance, but his Contract had deemed it pointless and so for the last few cycles he'd been forced to watch as it wore the same dull grey robe to the Academy every day, only replacing it when it did little more than cover his genitals, as some demons took objection to you walking around naked.

The materials had taken two-thirds of his fortune to purchase, but he’d gotten them cheap from a Dungeon Master. He ran his hands over the fabric admiring the seamless rune-work, invisible to the naked eye, before leaving his small house, a privilege provided by the Academy for reaching tier 3.

Now that he’d reached tier 3 and learned all of the new runes they’d provided him he’d reached the limit of what the Academy could provide him. At this point, Dorzath was just enjoying the privilege of not having to be sent to the frontlines.

And that was how he stayed for an entire year, learning the occasional rune and still enchanting equipment brought to him for additional income, but his growth had slowed down considerably.

He had the option to move to tier 4 any time he wanted to and become a Grand Sorcerer, but that would mean forfeiting the rest of his time that he wanted to spend on himself. He was enjoying his time, but he knew that he was essentially just counting down at this point. In just over a cycle he would have to join the Frontlines, and he wasn’t cut out for fighting, he’d known that when he was offered the Tier 1 Job, Warrior.

He would probably survive for a time, and maybe even make the leap to tier 5, but his path would end there.

The jump from Tier 5 to 6 was so far that it was said to take most Tier 5s waiting a hundred years at the peak before they were able to make the jump. It was really something that Duke Xukaxoz, was at Tier 7, supposedly the limit of tiers. He was supposedly powerful enough to fight against Greater Gods and win, although he hadn’t been seen fighting any battles in hundreds of years, as his very presence not being on the Frontlines was a deterrence against all-out attacks from the enemy.

In addition, this wasn’t the only Hell, and Duke Xukaxoz wasn’t the only Duke, there were supposedly tens of other Dukes, although they were each located very far from each other, where their domains wouldn’t come close to meeting.

The universe was a big place.

When he’d heard that information in a lecture recently, Dorzath had done a double-take on the stupidity of his decision to try to remove his Contract which was invented by someone as old and powerful as the Duke.

#

So Dorzath was feeling gloomy. He hadn’t gone to the Academy that day, he had a meeting with a client which would provide much more value towards him meeting his goals.

Dorzath shook his head, even now with the influence from his Contract almost gone, he still fell into the old habit of evaluating the value of doing something by how much benefit it would bring to his goals. He was very tempted to just turn home and creating a barrier and lie wrapped in blankets for several days.

Suddenly a voice intruded on his thoughts, as he was passing down a busy street in redtime, the time of day when the sky was more red than black.

“Ho there! Interested in becoming master of yourself? Interested in unlimited wealth and military power? Yes! You Sir! I’m talking to you! Please talk back! Can you hear me! God, I’m lonely!”

It stood under one and a half meters tall, with brushed black fur covering its limbs, it had a round body and face.

It was an Incubus, a male pleasure demon, an evolution of an imp, a hell-creature who’d crawled out of the Pit with not enough soul fragments to receive a full baptism, but had received one later on in its life after obtaining enough. It wasn’t a pure-blood demon and so would never be able to fight on the Frontlines, and so was delegated to menial tasks for the rest of its life.

“Yes?” Dorzath turned towards it, mildly interested, and this wasn’t the pleasure sector anyway, so it probably had something good to say.

“The third Dungeon Master expedition is about to begin, in just over a cycle and they are recruiting!”

It handed him a flier, very glossy with a drawing of a hooded demon at the front of it laughing. Dorzath wasn’t sure why maybe it was enjoying the pile of naked humans behind it or the pile of gold.

“Remind me again what the mortality rate was for the last Dungeon Master Expedition?”

The Incubus’s face fell visibly as he muttered under his breath.

“90%”

Dorzath sneered, this Incubus was clearly trying to swindle him, it was more due to luck than anything else that any of the Dungeons had managed to succeed. That rate was more than five times greater than the Frontline yearly death rate, and in addition, he was a Sorcerer, he would be able to survive much longer on the Frontline as he would be given the easiest missions in exchange for powerful equipment and the fact that Sorcerers could teleport a team of soldiers out of enemy lines and so were one of their main priorities when choosing who to protect.

He strode away as he admired the way his Cloak of Lament billowed dramatically as he left. Behind him, the Incubus cried out pitifully at his leaving back.

“Wait! Please wait! The expedition has changed, deployment has been improved immensely with covert appearance behind enemy lines! All DM candidates will also receive an extra year of specialised training and education at the Academy!”

That last sentence had caused Dorzath to come to a halt. He slowly turned on the Incubus who had been trailing him while sobbing pitifully.

“If I was interested, would I be able to leave the course before I finished it?”

The incubus’s head bobbed back and forth frantically as it answered.

“Yes, yes absolutely, in addition to that the benefits of being a Dungeon Master are truly incredible if you survive, there is a very short progression path from tier 4 to 5 and one of the DM’s from the first expedition has already hit tier 6!”

Surprising. That was very fast, supposedly the first expedition was just under 30 cycles ago. So the Dungeon Master went from tier 3 to tier 6 in 30 cycles. That was blisteringly fast, and even with the high previous death rates, Dorzath started convincing himself that this was a good idea. In addition, the Contract, now diminished in influence to a voice in the back of his head, also agreed with him.

#

Half a cycle of time passed, in this period Dorzath had managed to acquire two Faerie high ranked runes at an auction and from a sweating demon soldier who looked to be happy he took it off of his hands.

The educational year had been taxing even for him, who had the ‘Advanced Memorization’ skill, but he was glad the army had included it. There was so much vital knowledge, geographical, political, as well as about the myriad species that a Dungeon could have.

Dungeons were like low-level gods, they took the belief and soul energy in some cases, from the people or things that entered them, their ‘followers’ and used that to grow in strength, size and the creatures they controlled. In doing so, they didn’t harm the people that entered them, they could stay within them for an indeterminable time, as long as their basic bodily needs were satisfied.

One of the DM’s of the first wave, who we were told to look to as an example, had built a habitable city in his Dungeon, which was then populated by local humans, and in doing so had reached incredible growth levels.

However, after a time a Dungeon is attacked by the forces of nature, as apparently they are somehow an offense against one of the Greater Gods, one of the omnipresent ones, and so he sends his servants to attack Dungeons periodically. That happened in this case and the city was destroyed, but the monsters in the lower levels which were vastly stronger than the city were able to repel the attacking force. Nevertheless, the city was destroyed and nobody ever settled in the Dungeon again, at least not in large numbers like before.

That Dungeon Master accomplished quite a large number of incredible things with his ideas, and Dorzath planned on copying most of them.

Another DM hadn’t included any monsters in his dungeon, just building a massive maze, with traps to extend the time the ‘adventurers’ spent there, with the occasional treasure chest in there as well to incentivise people to come back.

Dorzath learned a great deal and was slowly preparing to leave the Dukes Hell for the first time, closing up any outstanding contracts, and buying any trinkets or base materials he thought would be useful.

He also designed his third piece of equipment, a belt that had a pouch. Unoriginally the pouch was several hundred times bigger on the inside than the outside, and as the idea was so unoriginal, he decided against giving it the name Lament.

#

Finally, the Duke cut his learning time short as his advisors realised that they would be needing a much greater number of resources than they were initially forecasting. They were expecting that once the Dungeon Masters had reached tier 5 to be using 50% of their resources to supply the Frontlines with whatever they needed or required. This mostly included specialty weapons or disposables which would be a waste of the armies time to collect and manufacture, but could be produced instantly using the power of a Dungeon.

They were expected to stay in constant communication with their assigned General after a brief settling point however as they’d had a case in the past where a DM had severe trouble producing blight steel, as his Dungeon was a Feral/Forest type, and the General had run up against an Angelic horde and was nearly wiped out. They didn’t have to tailor their dungeons to suit the army's needs specifically, but some flexibility was required.

Unfortunately, this would require a blood-binding, an ancient ceremony which would allow them to communicate over long distances via thoughts, as Dorzath and the other DM’s were to be placed behind enemy lines.

The General wouldn’t have access to his thoughts, but Dorzath still felt uncomfortable at the thought of being bound to another demon. However this was an equal contract, and the General couldn’t force him to do anything, but he would have to obey his superior officer's orders as part of the Dukes Contract.

On their final day, our teacher of class D - 23 a DM himself, but tier 5 so he was able to leave his Dungeon for extended periods of time, told us all a very crucial piece of advice.

“Try not to kill.”

Dorzath thought about that one for a while. The teacher had warned them against killing too many challenges, as it would bring attention down on them. Dungeons did occur naturally through meteor showers, and there were several thousand of them per planet, but in the beginning stages before they formed consciousness, they were extremely incompetent, and it was rare to see someone killed by one on the first or second floors, even if they were Tier 0.

Dorzath knew that he would have to hold himself back from interfering too much, he couldn’t make his monsters or traps too strong, or else people would believe that his Dungeon was one which had something sentient controlling it. That had a higher chance in resulting in him being reported to the higher-ups of a faction, who would quickly realize that the DM was a demon and in an effort to cut off their supply lines would destroy him and his dungeon.

#

Finally, the day arrived, and as the sky went from a cold black to a warm red in Hell, Dorzath, first of his name, was named Dungeon Master and implanted with a Dungeon core fragment, obtained from one of the enemy Dungeons.

He and ten others were shunted one at a time into the gap between spaces by a Tier 6 Rulecrafter, one of the Generals aides. The gap was untraceable and also unfortunately fairly random. Dorzath knew that he was being sent in the general direction of a collection of human worlds, but he could land on anything.

With a nod of respect to his peers, Dorzath was swallowed up by a silver crack in space.

He felt pulled in several directions, with cold tentacles, hands and other appendages coiling around him. He kept his eyes firmly shut as you could turn insane by what you saw in the Gap. Dorzath didn’t resist and slowly felt pulled out of the collection of appendages as he floated softly to his destination. Time passed like treacle, and then with a pop, he was outside.

He felt his Cloak of Lament coil around his entire body quickly, in response to an external threat being detected. He opened his eyes hesitantly, hoping that he hadn’t appeared in a nest of vipers or something similarly disgusting.

Ah.

He was in space. He could sense beyond his Cloak to a limited extent, and the space outside was devoid of air. He tapped the necklace on his neck, which popped open to form a bubble of glass around his head, with his Cloak accommodating so he could look around.

There was a cluster of rocks, no, meteorites floating nearby. He took a step forward with his Boots, which had an Enchantment to produce a small cloud of air when he stepped, either to avoid a large fall or to evade or for something like this, as it turned out.

Dorzath drifted to the center of the mass of rocks, stopping in the center. He reached out and took a small chunk of rock, slicing it in half with his claws and started tracing above it. A Rune looking like an open lidless eye sprang into existence after a few seconds. It was wide open and glowed with a strong purple light. It sank slowly into the rock and released a blinding light. Slowly, the stationary and inert rocks floating around him started moving towards him.

It was a high ranked rune, from the High tongue, ‘Gravity Sink’ it was a combat rune and one use of it was to send out tethers to things in the surroundings of the user, pulling the objects towards them and creating a shield, it was useful to set it up as a quick defense before weaving something more complex. The same effect could also be accomplished with lower-ranked runes, but for a greater cost and with less effect.

With small bursts of air from his boots, Dorzath moved together with the large mass of rocks, as they moved together at the same speed. He floated in the air meditating to suppress the violently shifting dungeon fragment inside of him, while he was surrounded by a ship of rocks. He had an artifact picked up from a Faerie slave, which measured the largest local mass, and pointed him in its direction.

He continued on through the black void, oddly reminiscent of home at night if it weren’t for the freezing cold that accompanied it. Hell was never cold. It was a stark reminder to Dorzath that it would be many cycles before he could return home, even for a brief period.

After several days of constant meditation to conserve his mana usage while also keeping the dungeon fragment suppressed, the pain had grown from a dull ache to biting cold, that he felt deep inside. Dorzath just had to bear with it, he had to wait until he found a suitable location before being able to grow his dungeon core, but all the while the pain grew more intense.

Dorzath had hoped to stagger his arrival so it wasn’t too close to the arrival of the other demon DMs. They had learned from every previous Dungeon Master expedition, and while not failures, the amount of successful Dungeon Masters was still extremely low. The one thing that was drilled into him over the last cycle was that if his Dungeon was discovered to be owned by a demon before he reached tier 5 then he had a 90% chance of being destroyed. Dungeons were created all of the time, so it wasn’t too strange that ten were created at almost the exact same time across the universe, but it was best not to create those types of patterns in the first place.

Finally, an outside influence started to draw on his cluster of rocks as they were pulled into a planet's gravity. Dorzath helped the process along, using his Boots of Lament, and within the hour the temperature within his makeshift rock ship started heating up as they entered the atmosphere. He cut off the mana that he was still supplying to the ‘Gravity Sink’ rune and around him, the rocks flew away into different directions, while Dorzath followed after them with another function of his Boots, ‘Hover’.

He saw that the meteorites all landed in a general area, and chose somewhere within the invisible lines that he drew for the area that he could land in that wouldn’t be suspicious for a Dungeon to appear there.

Dorzath chose a town, with an abandoned stone church on the outskirts, and hovered slightly above it, several kilometers above it, concealing himself with the Cloaks function ‘Change’, and ordering it to make him look like the sky. He took out a protective artifact as well as a piece of rock.

Supposedly this rock was a part of a destroyed palace, owned by a renowned earth mage, a Nation Crafter. The interesting property of the rubble was that when imbued with even a small amount of mana, it gave the owner an incredible amount of weight, making it a useful protective artifact, although it required the user to keep both of their hands on it at all times.

When Dorzath activated it, it greedily started sucking in his mana and he immediately lost control of his mana. He was violently flung down towards the ground, the protective barrier barely defending him from the heated air, which quickly caught fire. He desperately tried to angle himself towards the roof of the church, releasing minute bursts of air from his Boots, he’d wanted the impact to look like a real meteor but he’d also heavily underestimated the speed at which he was traveling. He still barely hit the church, obliterating one of the few remaining upright pillars still standing.

He plowed through the broken slabs of stone flooring, powering through, deep into the ground.

When the protective barrier ran out of energy, however, Dorzath with great effort let the rock fall through his fingers and he lost his incredible mass. The stone became inert and lifeless once he stopped supplying it with mana through direct contact.

Dorzath looked around at the hole he’d melted into the ground, only several meters wide and deep. He tapped on a few balls which he brought out of his belt. It was a pain to have to dig into the ground to develop your Dungeon, so it was easier to have someone do it with manual labor. Or something like what he'd just realized.

The balls opened up as spindly metallic legs opened up out of the sides and the rest of the body shaped into shiny drills as if made of a liquid and not the silver-colored metal that they were.

Dorzath had obtained these wonders off of another Faerie craftsman, this time a contractor instead of a slave, so he’d traded the maker an enchanted hammer. It was one of the Faerie mutations, a mix between a monster and a pureblood, actually a fairly common occurrence as the purebloods were prolific breeders, one of the few things which meant they were still alive. The Faerie was ball-shaped but could manipulate its metallic body to produce massive arms or tiny tweezers from its body, it had made a deal with one of the Generals, which allowed it to live under the Generals protection. It had built up a small brood, maybe it would create a new race all of its own, but it would only be supplied with protection as long it continued creating useful artifacts, similar to the ones Dorzath had traded from him.

They were made of a shape-memory alloy which returned to their design once supplied with mana.

He’d already told the little things how he wanted his first floor to be, they would just take the time needed to do so.

Finally, in the tenth cycle of his life, Dorzath sank to his knees, placing his hands on the crystal shard sticking out of his chest. He accepted the System notification to ascend to Tier 4 with the Job Dungeon Owner.

The shard in his chest brightened to a searing white light, while Dorzath threw back his head and screamed from the searing pain.

Name

Dorzath

Race

Demon

Tier

3

Job

Sorcerer

Level

20

Skills

Rune Weaving (3)

Language Mastery (2)

Rune Comprehension (2)

Lower Rune Control (1)

Material Shaping (1)

Detect Danger (1)

Oppression (1)

Mana Control (2)

Ward Equipment (1)

Intensive Memorisation (1)

Higher Runes

Change - Deific

Gravity Sink - High

Spells

Rune spell: Binding Ethereal Chains (2)