Chapter 444: The Underworld (XX)

They did not walk far, as even from there, they could see the academy’s entrance that rose on one side of the street, almost like a second city, filled with black towers, dark glass, and banners that glowed along with the red sky.

Directly opposite, close enough that the two gates seemed to be arguing over the same stretch of stone, sat a house large enough to be called a mansion.

It was beautiful.

Not academy-beautiful.

The academy won on size and on the expensive darkness: obsidian arches, carved bone-metal rails, windows like slits in a fortress.

The mansion competed anyway.

A pale kind of crimson stone, high balconies, a courtyard of black-leafed trees arranged too carefully to be wild. Moon-sigils worked into the gates, smaller than the academy’s banners and somehow more... expensive-looking.

A Crimson Moon residence planted at the academy’s door, as if the family had decided proximity was a kind of claim.

The princess did not explain it.

She lifted a hand, and the gates instantly opened.

Gray felt the auras as soon as they crossed the threshold.

More than one.

Not all of them were in the same room, but they were in the house, thick enough that a lesser demon would have stopped in the foyer and found a reason to leave.

Gray ignored them and followed her.

A steward appeared, saw the princess, saw the ruined incubus behind her, and chose silence.

The princess did not introduce Gray.

She only said, "He stays until the exam," and that was enough to turn the house around him.

They went up.

The guest bedroom she gave him faced the academy wall. Dark wood. A bed too large for one person.

Clean robes already laid out, as if the house had known a guest would arrive before the guest did.

A window looked straight onto the academy’s outer towers

’...Convenient.’

Also a reminder.

He would sleep with the thing he came for in sight.

"This is yours," she stated.

She did not look at the bed for long.

"Do not wander the west wing. Do not touch the sealed doors. If someone asks who you are, you say you are here on my word."

Gray nodded.

"And the training room?"

She paused, then turned down the next hall.

The training room was not a guest courtesy.

The floor was black crystal shot through with red.

Weapon racks lined one wall, most of them demonic steel, a few of them older than the house.

Along the other wall, shelves of resources sat under glass and formation light: blood crystals, beast cores, bottled night-sap, dried moon-lotus, jars of refined Demonic

Energy so dense the air around them tasted metallic. There were cultivation mats woven with vein-thread.

A spear stand that was empty, because her spear was not for display.

In the corner, a pool of dark liquid steamed faintly, meant for body tempering that would kill a human and feed a demon.

Gray’s eyes moved once across the shelves.

Precious materials...

The princess caught him looking.

"You may use what is labeled for guests," she said.

"If you reach for the rest, the formations will decide you are stealing. I will not stop them."

"Understood."

She stood in the doorway a moment longer, as if the room had reminded her that she had brought a stranger into her house after kissing him in an alley.

Gray kept his face cold.

"Is that all?"

"...Yes." Her voice had regained its cold tone from before.

"Bathe. Change. Dinner is not required. If you need anything, tell the steward. Do not tell the house why you are here."

She left.

The door shut softly.

Gray walked to the window, looked from the mansion courtyard to the academy’s dark towers.

’...Quite beautiful. Didn’t expect it to be right next to the academy...’ he thought inwardly.

’I also need to pass by Eliora... though the passage there is blocked to ’ordinary folks’ or whatever they call us.’

He lifted a hand.

A thin shimmer opened at his shoulder, and Atrinae slid out of the bonded space like she had been waiting against the inside of it.

The little nine-colored snake was no longer only small in the way a pet was small.

She had a decently strong presence now.

Her cultivation was much stronger, though she remained attributeless, her scales were already shifting through colors that belonged to all the elements.

She still acted as if she had never learned that, and went straight for his head.

The cool length of her body wrapped behind his ear, then settled into his hair. Her tongue flicked his cheek, once, then again, soft and insistent.

Gray instantly smiled at her coy act.

"I was gone for an afternoon, not a year."

Atrinae licked him again, as if the correction was irrelevant.

She pressed her head under his jaw and stayed there.

Each day she did this more easily, with less hesitation, as if the bond had stopped being a contract and started being a habit she refused to break.

He looked from her to the guest shelves.

Blood crystals, beast cores, bottled night-sap... even some rare moon-lotus.

Jars of refined Demonic Energy labeled clearly enough that even a thief would know they were allowed.

Gray’s smile sharpened a little.

"Eat everything you can, Atrinae."

Her eyes lit with pure delight.

"Hiss~"

She licked his cheek harder, coiled once around his neck in a tight, grateful loop, then launched herself off his shoulder toward the shelves.

She hit the nearest formation-glass, tapped it with her snout until the guest seal recognized the house permission, and slithered through.

The first crystal disappeared into her mouth with a sound that was far too pleased.

"Slow down," he joked.

Atrinae did not slow down and kept putting everything into her mouth.

Gray left her to it.

He sat on the edge of the guest bed first, then let himself fall back against the sheets.

The mattress was better than anything in Vhar’Zul.

The ceiling was carved with faint moon-lines that caught the academy light through the window.

Across the room, glass clicked, a jar unsealed, and Atrinae made another happy little sound as something expensive vanished down her throat.

Gray stared at the ceiling.

"For how long can I use your eyes?"

Jasmine remained silent.

[...Five minutes at the maximum.]

"Five minutes... that’s plenty of time," he nodded to himself.

Five minutes of her sight was already a lot.

The draw with the princess had not been a clean measure of realms.

He had cut her field, used the mud, used Swap, used the fact that her Domain did not want to crush its own mistress.

It was a type... of dirty fighting.

The kind that worked in a ruined street and would get him killed in an academy ring the moment an instructor decided the rules mattered.

The Demon Academy would not give him a wet alley.

It would give him the strongest young blood in the Demon Realm, all of them watching, all of them eager to put a name on an incubus who had arrived with no house behind him.

There would be heirs.

There would be instructors.

There might even be an Archduke as a professor, sitting in the stands like furniture until someone interesting enough appeared.

Dante’s novel had been almost useless here.

The academy existed, and that’s everything about it in the book.

No map of the exams or list of instructors.

No warning about which vault held what, beyond the rumors Gray had bought with time and Demon Cash.

Undying Snake’s Orb.

A fragment of a dying star.

Everything else he had gathered in Vhar’Zul was noise: restaurant names, gate fees, which clans liked to announce themselves in the street.

He turned his head toward the window.

His cultivation was still too low to meet that place honestly. His Peak Saint against Monarch heirs was already a bad story.

Against an Archduke, it was a joke.

Which left the ugly option...

The Blessing of Destruction.

Although Gray didn’t know if anyone would actually recognize it, since there are problems: demons in this place that are older than actual gods.

After all, the underworld was one of the biggest armies back in the old age, where multiple gods even allied themselves with demons.

If anyone recognizes Jasmine’s aura, he’s really going to be fucked, though... he already prepared an escape.

He had marked a permanent swap mark back into the Mortal World, which meant that he could run away at any given time.

Does that mean that the demons, knowing his blessing, would stop chasing him?

No... but at least it would get him enough time to prepare a plan, or maybe not.

"Hah..." he sighed deeply.

"I really need to raise my cultivation faster..." His eyes narrowed slighly.

And to do that, he needed to get that divine physique as fast as possible. The only problem for now...

...was getting the requirements to obtain it.