CHAPTER 4: The devil contract

Oliver opened his eyes and estimated it was around noon by looking at the son's position, he then looked around and discovered he was laying down on the burnt floor. Looking around, he could see pieces of what were most likely walls that seemed one push away from falling apart.

The stone floor had burnt mass and was broken in all places, it was covered by a mountain of the broken and burned pieces from the 4 floors of the mansion. By looking at the big pile of burned material, it was impossible to guess that a great mansion stood proudly only one day before.

Oliver felt as if something important had happened but couldn't recall what it was, he was suffering from memory repression, a common case for people that survived a massacre. He looked around to find any clues that could help him remember what had happened and why he was in the ruins of a mansion.

He found a corpse that was heavily burned and as he did, he suddenly had a flow of memory of him playing with his sister, then he saw the moment of her death and his mind had a student click, and he remembered what had happened the previous night.

He had a student burst of hatred and rage.

"Those barbarians dogs of the empire, they attacked us in the middle of the night, killing my parents, siblings and even all the staff to hide their involvement in the destruction of our family." Oliver said in a tyrannical voice, his voice was filled with anger and sorrow, he did so while making an expression that looked like the one of an angered wild beast that had been starved for months.

Oliver himself couldn't understand the reason for his student outburst, after all it wasn't really his house or his family that died, so why did he feel as if they were, and why did he feel as if he was Damian?

"I am not Damian, I am Oliver Anderson." He said to himself in a strangely unsure way. As he refuted his identity as Damian, he felt for the second time since his return from the dead a pain in his head.

Oliver started convulsing while holding his head. This time it wasn't like the previous time it was a pain far worse, it was a pain that he couldn't forget, the pain of the soul getting crushed. He felt as if his soul was splitting apart, as if refuting him being Damian was refuting a part of his own existence. After suffering for two more minutes he understood, all of it was pointing in this direction, the answer had been in front of his eyes till the beginning.

By searching in Damian's memories, he could confirm that he had never died before Oliver entered his body, his soul had become one with Oliver's soul. The force that made him go save Amelia was Damian's will. By refuting his existence as Damian, he was breaking apart his own soul that was the combination of Oliver Anderson and Damian Salvatore souls. After having found a new understanding of himself he calmed down and took time to accept his new self, he was Oliver Anderson, but he was Also Damian Salvatore.

The new Damian was born, the first action he made as Damian was to dig a grave for his sister and swore he would avenge her death by 10-fold.

He prayed for around 10 minutes and started to search for the family head's safe that was sealed by doing a blood binding ritual, meaning it could only be opened by one person and couldn't be breached until Damian's father died. If someone wanted to take the contents of the safe, they had to wait for him to die or kill him, an almost impossible task as he was an 8-aura user.

Damian found it after two hours of continuously moving pieces of wood and broken stone slabs, from one pile of junk to a new one made on the side of the first. It was a 2 better cubic box with no openings. Damian bit his inferior lip, took a blood drop with his finger and drew a keyhole shape on the safe.

He had just accomplished the blood binding ritual that allowed him to have control of the safe, he did as if he was going to take an object that was in the safe and an opening appears to let him take the contents of it.

In the safe were multiple forbidden and taboo objects, he took all the content out and started to examine each object, trying to guess their uses. He took the following objects that seemed useful in his situation, a sword that seemed cursed, a dark heart in a sealed jar and 1 forbidden art book.

What the book referred to as forbidden art was dark magic, magic created by mimicking the demons' magic. Damian read the first page and a devilish smile appeared on his face and he let out an evil laugh.

The first page explained how to perform a devil contract, the first part was the most difficult to accomplish, you had to find a demon willing to make a contract with you. For the second stage, you need to extract blood from both the contractor and the contracted. The blood must be mixed, and then you will need to make a pentagram around the demon withe blood mixture. As a finishing touch, the contractor needs to infuse his mana in the blood made pentagram, and the contract will be active.

Damian was very satisfied as he had access to the most powerful type of demon for his contract, the Infernos that were sealed in the underground facility. But thinking about it deeper, he realized he had hit a wall as he hadn't learned the location of the entrance of the underground facility where they were sealed.

He had searched for a month and as he was going to stop looking for it, he found it in the drawer of the desk of the dungeon's warden.

Damian went to the location that was 5 kilometers away from the mansion, he arrived at a huge metal door that was embedded in a mountain side. The map also served as a key, so the huge metallic doors slowly opened as he got close to them.

Damian entered the facility and arrived in a long staircase that was going deep

underground, he walked for half an hour before arriving at a bigger area with another metallic door defended by two stone golems. Golems are forgotten magic creatures made of minerals, they are extremely rare as their fabrication method has been forgotten over the centuries after their creator died.

The two golems made way for Damian, who had the map, the proof that identified him as allowed to enter. He entered the second door and arrived in the prison, there were three Infernos chained upside down by magic chains that are made of condensed mana that are unbreakable.

The reason for them being chained is their incredible strength, high demons not only have powerful magic powers but also a physical strength that is 1000 times greater than their human counterpart since birth.

The Infernos were not fed as they don't need to eat biological matter like all of the over living organisms, they can feed on dark energy that they extract from their environment and survive for a maximum of a thousand years.

Damian got close to one of the demons and proceeded on putting him down, the demon looked like a 30 years old human apart from the black horns that came out of both sides of his forehead. The demon seemed to be in some kind of hibernation and was snoring heavily.

Once the demon was down, he took out the 15 imperial daggers that were made of the purest silver that could be found in the whole empire, and attempted to draw blood from the Inferno. As he had guested, 3 daggers broke while trying to pierce the demon's hard and thick skin. Damian collected the demon's blood that was dripping from the wound, he successfully created using a fourth dagger.

He mixed his and the demon's blood in a silver covered bowl, he then made the pentagram around the Inferno and infused some mana in it. The magic circle started glowing in a crimson red and the demon started fading while a rune mark appeared on his left hand.

Damian felt as if someone was marking him with a hot iron, suddenly his vision changed, and he was in a white space that didn't seem to have an end. The space turned pitch black and a red hellish shape that looked like a giant wolf made of hellfire appeared a few meters from him. It looked at him with the eyes of a predator who had it's prey completely worn out and cornered. It seemed ready to devour Damian at the moment he left an opening, the wolf suddenly leaped forward and engulfed Damian in an action so fast that Damian's eyes couldn't even follow the monster's movement or escape it.

He found himself in a pit of hellfire, the fire wasn't burning him. It was much more painful, it was like someone was eating him at the cellular level, he felt his leg gradually being eaten away and fell on his forehands. What he was experiencing was the main ability of the demon, gluttony, it allowed him to consume other beings to create dark energy.

Damian was almost completely consumed, and as his consciousness started to fade away he remembered how his sister had been killed and the promise he had made to her, the fire stopped eating him way and his bodiless head starting emitting an aura that was far more blood freezing than the aura from any aura users. It was the aura of a high demon, his body started reappearing at a fast-pace, and he broke through the illusion that was surrounding him.

What he had experienced was the same thing every high demons experience at birth and the reason for their low number compared to over demons. At birth all high demons obtain a power, but it is not as easy as just receiving it, the power will exercise itself as an illusion on the newly born demon and if the demon can't break free of it dies.

It is what can be called natural selection, the demon not strong enough to die and those that survive become world calamities capable of fighting armies alone. Damian was no exception, he had just passed near death's doors, and he could feel that if he hadn't escaped the illusion he would have really died.

After receiving the gluttony ability, he took one minute to fully regain his stances and started the same process with the other Inferno that looked like an old man of 80 years.

This time the ability was mind manipulation. It was an ability that could only work on speeches with a certain degree of intelligence, it allowed to awaken one of the seven capital vices in intelligent beings and to create illusions.

Damian's seven sins were awakened one by one with an adequate illusion which had the purpose to make Damian succumb to his vices. In order not to be taken over by his vices, he constantly reminded himself of his sister and of his revenge, and passed the test successfully.

Damian repeated the same steps for the last demon and arrived in a white room with 3 different doors. The left one seemed blessed by heaven, the middle one looked like a normal door and the right one looked like the door to hell.

Damian took the right door and successfully arrived in a second room that was gray colored and had 3 different doors that all looked like normal doors. He went to open the middle door but as his hand was going to touch the handle of the door he felt bloodlust coming from it and opened the left door.

The last room was covered in black and had two doors spared from each over by 1 meter, he could feel a great power coming from behind the two doors and didn't know with one too high a peak. Suddenly he had the solution, he walked straight into the wall at the middle of the two doors.

He had fought off the way the door functioned in the two first rooms, each door led to 2 deadly places and one was the right one and brought him in a room with only 3 doors when there were supposed to logically be 4 counting the one he just came from. The doors were not real doors, they leaded into different spaces that were not spatially speaking behind the door but were contained in the door themselves.

In the last room he had felt the exact same energy coming from behind the two doors, not from the doors themselves, meaning the energy was literally behind them and not inside the space they led to. Another clue was the fact that the middle door was missing, leaving a 1-meter wall portion between the two doors.

As Damian traversed the wall the illusion started to fade, and he felt that his vision was becoming clearer, so clear he could see very small details on objects and felt like he could see objects from a kilometer away. He could not only feel his vision clearer but all hearing and smell had been improved, after the second one on his right hand. A third mark had appeared under his eye and glowed red for 10 seconds before only being slightly visible when looking at him from 30 centimeters away.

Damian suddenly felt very tired and couldn't help it and fell into a sleep after struggling for 5 seconds against his tiredness. He awoke and felt like a new man, he felt the dark energy flowing through his veins and the particles in the air, it was like he had become one with the world around him. After staying in stasis for twenty minutes, he finally came back to himself and put away the broken silver knives in the dimensional ring he had taken on his father's corpse before burying it next to his sister.

He went back to the surface and looked at the sky above him, it was now night-time and the moon was shining in the sky with a reddish glow, signaling the beginning of the legend of the devil contractor.

TO BE CONTINUED…