Night fell heavily over the metropolis, pressing down upon the sprawling capital like a dark, suffocating weight.
Far below, the last traces of daylight disappeared between the crowded buildings, while long, ink-black shadows stretched across the cramped top-floor room.
The single oil lamp on the table trembled whenever the wind slipped through the gaps in the old wooden window, throwing restless bands of gold across the stained walls.
The boy sat quietly beside the small wooden table.
His back remained straight, but the tension in his shoulders revealed the intensity of his thoughts.
His fingers tapped a slow, rhythmic pattern against the scarred surface, each gentle knock echoing faintly through the otherwise silent room.
In his mind, he kept replaying the scene from the bookstore earlier that afternoon—specifically, the posture, the attire, and the sharp, arrogant demeanors of the high-tier noble scions he had observed.
He remembered the way they had moved through the crowded aisles as though the entire establishment belonged to them.
Their clothing had been expensive without appearing ostentatious, and their expressions had carried the effortless confidence of people who had never been forced to question their own importance.
Every action of theirs exuded an air of absolute authority that only centuries of unyielding lineage could breed.
The boy’s tapping gradually slowed.
“The scions I observed today,” he finally said, breaking the silence.
His voice was barely above a whisper, yet every word was measured and deliberate.
“Their presence is too distinct, and their personal guards are far too vigilant.
Attempting to target or replace anyone from those prominent circles would carry an unacceptable risk of exposure.” “A surprisingly pragmatic assessment,” Mammon’s dark voice echoed within his mind, carrying a low rumble of cold approval.
The voice seemed to rise from somewhere beneath the boy’s thoughts, ancient and calm, like distant thunder buried beneath layers of stone.
“Those pampered dogs belong to the high ducal houses of the central territory.
Their genealogies are documented down to the last drop of blood, and their shadows are constantly monitored by high-ranking spellcasters.
Trying to impersonate one of them at this stage is nothing short of suicide.” The boy lowered his gaze to the table.
The oil lamp illuminated only one side of his face, leaving the other half hidden in shadow.
“Which is why targeting them directly is foolish,” he replied.
His dark eyes narrowed slightly under the dim light of the lamp.
There was no frustration in his expression, only the quiet concentration of someone methodically removing dangerous possibilities from a list.
“What about the lower fringes?” he continued.
“Are there minor noble houses—families with just enough status to hold a legitimate recommendation for the Royal Academy exams, but small enough that their internal movements go completely unnoticed by the capital’s elite?” “Of course,” Mammon chuckled.
The sound was faint, but it carried an unsettling depth.
A wave of ancient memory began to unspool within the boy’s mental space, revealing names, territories, family structures, and fragments of forgotten political knowledge.
“Consider houses like Vane, Hollant, or Corvus.
They are minor baronies positioned along the desolate border territories.
They possess valid seals for the academy’s upcoming admissions, but their political influence here in the core city is practically non-existent.” The boy considered the names for a brief moment.
His fingers stopped moving entirely.
In the silence, he weighed the strategic implications of each house, examining every advantage and weakness with detached patience.
House Vane carried too many uncertainties.
House Hollant possessed slightly more visibility than he preferred.
But House Corvus was distant, obscure, and sufficiently isolated from the center of power.
“House Corvus,” he murmured softly.
He offered no further explanation.
Instead, he allowed a heavy, calculating silence to settle over the room.
The intricate operational details of his impending scheme remained locked firmly within his own thoughts, protected behind layers of caution and deliberate secrecy.
Outside, the capital continued to breathe.
Distant footsteps passed through the streets.
Somewhere below, a door slammed, followed by a muffled argument and the clatter of a cart rolling over uneven stones.
Yet inside the cramped room, the boy remained still, his mind already moving several steps ahead.
At the first light of dawn, the boy left the inn.
The morning air was cold and damp, carrying the lingering smell of soot, rainwater, and stale cooking oil from the lower streets.
He pulled his coat close around himself and threaded his way toward the outer rim of the city, moving through alleys and narrow roads where the early crowds had not yet fully formed.
As he traveled farther from the central districts, the capital gradually changed.
The elegant stone buildings and polished facades gave way to cracked walls, sagging roofs, and crooked wooden structures that leaned dangerously into the streets.
He navigated deep into a decaying, impoverished district near the southern wall.
Here, the grand stone architecture of the capital gave way to rotting timber and cobblestones covered in grime.
Dirty water collected in shallow gutters, reflecting broken fragments of the gray sky.
The air was thick with the scent of damp wood, refuse, and smoke from weak morning fires.
At last, he stopped opposite a secluded, stone-walled orphanage.
The building stood apart from the surrounding homes, enclosed by a weathered wall darkened by age and moisture.
Its narrow windows were clouded, and its heavy entrance door showed signs of repeated repairs.
It was not entirely abandoned, but neither did it possess the warmth or care that should have surrounded a place meant to shelter children.
The boy stepped into the deep shadow of a narrow alleyway and pressed himself against the cold stone wall.
From there, the orphanage remained fully within his line of sight.
He began his surveillance.
For nearly three hours, his sharp, unblinking eyes methodically cataloged every single movement entering and exiting the premises.
He watched the timing of the doors, the paths taken by the caretakers, the moments when the nearby street grew quiet, and the occasions when passing strangers paused near the building.
He never moved more than necessary.
His breathing remained even, and his posture blended naturally into the darkness of the alley.
Though the cold gradually seeped through his clothing, he ignored it.
The discomfort was insignificant compared with the value of the information he was gathering.
His mental ledger recorded the data with absolute precision: exactly twenty-four young orphans of varying ages, three overworked caretaker staff members, and one elderly, visibly greedy headmaster who spent the majority of his morning counting donation coins behind his office window.
The headmaster’s hunched figure appeared repeatedly behind the grimy glass.
His fingers moved greedily over the coins, pausing only when he believed someone might be watching.
Even from a distance, the man’s possessiveness was obvious.
He guarded the money more carefully than he appeared to guard the children.
Having gathered the baseline data he required, the boy quietly melted back into the alley.
He waited until the movement around the orphanage shifted, then slipped away without drawing attention.
His footsteps carried him through the decaying district and back toward the inn, where the streets gradually became more crowded and noisy.
When he returned to his room, he shut the heavy wooden door behind him and bolted it.
The lock slid into place with a dull metallic click.
Only then did the boy allow himself to relax slightly.
He sat back down at the table and reviewed his current arsenal.
The room had grown warmer beneath the afternoon sun, but the air remained stale and close.
Dust floated through the thin shafts of light that entered through the window, settling over the rough wooden floor and the edge of the table.
“My basic mind-influencing spell is far too crude,” the boy remarked, staring down at his pale palms.
He slowly turned his hands over, studying the faint traces of mana beneath his skin.
“It relies purely on faint suggestion.
If I encounter anyone with a slightly trained willpower, the disguise or compulsion will crumble instantly.
I need a far more potent matrix.” “The spell fails to deliver power because you are constructing it with Divine Runic scripts,” Mammon explained.
His tone was laced with familiar disdain, as though the very idea offended him.
“Divine symbols are basic, rigid, and wildly inefficient.
You relied on them simply because those crude, self-taught fragments were the only magical language you happened to absorb in your early survival.
They require excessive energy yet yield pathetic results.” The boy’s expression remained calm, though his eyes sharpened with interest.
“And Demon Runic differs?” he inquired flatly.
“Demon Runic is the true language of authority,” Mammon stated coldly.
“It does not beg the world’s laws for permission; it commands them.
As a Demon Emperor, mastering every dialect, script, and language uttered across this realm—be it mortal, divine, or demonic—is merely a baseline requirement of my existence.” The shadows in the room shifted.
Mammon’s presence seemed to gather along the floor and climb the side of the table.
The darkness lengthened across the wooden surface, condensing at the tip until it formed a sharp, ink-like quill of dark mana.
The quill hovered above the table for a moment, motionless and precise.
Then Mammon began to write.
With flawless precision, the ancient entity drew two intricate, concentric magic circles directly onto the wooden desk.
The lines appeared black at first, then began to pulse with a muted violet glow.
Each curve connected perfectly to the next, forming an elaborate pattern of jagged angles, ancient symbols, and tightly controlled geometry.
“Observe the architecture carefully,” Mammon instructed as the black ink hummed with compressed power.
The boy leaned forward.
His attention became absolute.
He followed every stroke of the quill, memorizing the direction, depth, and spacing of each symbol.
“The outer circle—Circle One—is forged entirely from high-grade Demon Runic characters.
It acts as an absolute structural anchor, forcing the target’s cognitive consciousness into submission.” “And the inner circle?” The boy leaned closer, his eyes memorizing every line and jagged angle of the unfamiliar glyphs.
The light from the magic circle reflected faintly in his pupils, giving them a cold, unnatural brightness.
“Circle Two is an amplification matrix,” Mammon revealed.
“It takes the raw mana you channel into it, compresses the flow through demonic geometry, and multiplies the spell’s final output without requiring you to expend additional stamina.” The moment Mammon finalized the dual-ring structure, a heavy, suffocating aura radiated from the wood.
The air in the room seemed to thicken.
The lamp flame bent toward the magic circles, shrinking as though the surrounding darkness were drawing the warmth out of it.
The table groaned beneath the pressure, and the shadows along the walls stretched toward the newly completed matrix.
Unlike the stiff, cumbersome nature of the Divine Runic symbols the boy had cobbled together on his own, this demonic double-ring matrix felt wildly volatile, impeccably structured, and terrifyingly efficient.
Recognizing the immense tactical advantage sitting right before him, the boy asked Mammon to teach him the specific Demon Runic characters necessary to overwrite his utility spellwork.
He spent the next several hours in absolute focus.
The world outside gradually changed as the day passed.
Sunlight shifted across the floor, disappeared behind the neighboring rooftops, and was replaced by the dull orange glow of evening.
The inn grew noisier around him, but the boy paid no attention to the muffled voices, creaking stairs, or distant sounds of dishes being carried through the corridors.
He wrote and rewrote the demonic glyphs in his mind until the strokes became second nature.
At first, the symbols felt hostile and difficult to grasp.
Their angles resisted his memory, and their structure seemed to change whenever he tried to force them into familiar patterns.
But he persisted.
Again and again, he reconstructed them mentally, correcting each line until the unfamiliar script gradually became clear.
When he finally began replacing his old Divine Runic formulations with Demon Runic scripts fueled by his own internal energy, the practical improvements were instantaneous and staggering.
He tested his basic movement enhancement spell first, inscribing the new demonic matrix internally.
The moment his mana engaged the runes, his body moved with terrifying swiftness.
His burst speed instantly doubled, yet his physical muscles felt zero additional strain or fatigue.
The change was so sudden that the room seemed to blur around him.
One moment he stood beside the table; the next, he was near the wall, his coat barely stirring in the wake of his movement.
He looked down at his hands, not with surprise, but with quiet satisfaction.
Next, he focused on vertical mobility.
Channelling energy through the refined dual-ring structure, he bent his knees and jumped upward.
His boots cleared the high ceiling beam with ease.
For an instant, his body passed through the narrow space beneath the roof, his fingers nearly brushing the aged wood.
He landed back on the floor without making even the faintest rustle of sound.
The floorboards did not creak.
The lamp flame did not tremble.
Only the faint pulse of mana beneath his skin confirmed that he had moved at all.
Finally, he cast his basic shadow concealment spell using the newly acquired demonic glyphs.
Dark energy gathered around his feet, flowed upward along his legs, and spread across his torso.
Instead of merely dimming his outline as it used to, the darkness wrapped around his dark coat like a dense, light-bending cloak.
His figure gradually vanished into the room’s shadows until even the faint reflection of the lamp failed to reveal him.
For several moments, there was nothing where he had stood.
The structural perfection of Mammon’s dual-ring matrix had elevated every single one of his basic utility techniques into lethal, high-efficiency tools.
As night returned once again to the capital, the boy stood in the center of the dark room, flexing his fingers as the residual dark mana vanished smoothly beneath his skin.
The city beyond the window had become a vast sea of darkness broken by scattered lights.
Rooftops overlapped one another in uneven layers, chimney smoke drifted lazily through the cold air, and distant voices rose and faded beneath the quiet sky.
He looked down at the fading lines of the magic circles etched into the table, feeling the cold, refined power humming steadily through his blood.
The sensation was different from the rough energy he had once relied upon.
It was cleaner, sharper, and far more obedient.
It did not feel like a tool he was struggling to control.
It felt like a blade resting perfectly within his hand.
With his movement parameters radically enhanced and an advanced compulsion technique ready at his command, every single component of his plan was finally locked into place.
Three days remained until the Royal Academy entrance examinations began.
The boy stepped toward the small window.
The wooden frame was warped with age, and a thin draft slipped through the gaps, brushing against his face.
He looked out across the endless sea of rooftops toward the distant, quiet profile of the orphanage near the outer wall.
The building was barely visible beneath the moonlit sky, but he knew exactly where it stood.
He knew its walls, its entrances, its occupants, and the habits of the people within.
The cold moonlight caught the edge of his pale face, illuminating the sharp, dangerous calm in his eyes.
Then, slowly, a quiet smile touched his lips.