Summoned Demon

Demon Sense was special!

Only they could smell the scent of souls from far away. But since what they usually smelled were merely Low-quality Souls, demons sometimes could not even be bothered to rush over. They knew very well that those were spoils left behind after other demons had fought and killed each other. If it was too far away, there would be nothing left by the time they arrived.

But this time was different. A soul capable of giving off such a rich fragrance had to be a High-Quality Soul. In the Upper Abyss, it was an absolutely rare treasure. After catching that scent, several hundred demons in the vicinity actually rushed over!

Driven by the rich scent of the soul, many demons had come involuntarily. They had simply been Attracted by the fragrance and had no idea how this soul had appeared.

When Roy arrived, he discovered that the scent was coming from inside the crater of a Dead Volcano.

There were many volcanoes like this in the Upper Abyss, but most were active volcanoes, constantly spewing magma. It was precisely because of these volcanoes that the abyssal Demon World had become a world where Magma and Flame coexisted.

However, there were also some Dead Volcanoes, though they were extremely rare. Now, hundreds of all kinds of demons were charging into this Dead Volcano in a vast stream, with even more constantly arriving.

Only after Roy dived down from the sky and entered the volcano did he discover that fighting had already broken out here! And it was an incredibly brutal slaughter!

The demons who had arrived first revealed their most savage sides and were fighting each other in pairs. Yet their battlefield had, by unspoken agreement, formed around a... sacrificial altar!

Roy was astonished. The instant he saw the altar, he recognized it as a Man-made Structure, something he had never seen before in the Upper Abyss!

You could not expect the Lower Demons here to know how to build houses. In truth, because of their Confused Bloodlines, most Lower Demons were difficult even to classify. Names such as Flame Demon, Succubus, and Shadow Demon simply could not be applied to them. Even Roy himself could not be sure what kind of demon he was. Many Lower Demons merely lived muddleheaded lives, surviving simply for the sake of survival. They could not even make basic tools or weapons, so how could they possibly construct buildings?

Therefore, the moment Roy saw the altar, he knew it could not possibly have been made by the Lower Demons here!

But the Demon World was not a place where humans could survive. So who had built this altar? Had it been left behind by higher-ranking demons?

The altar looked enormous. Aside from its raised height, the platform at its top was as large as a basketball court. A huge Magic Array had been carved into the circular platform. At its center was a regular Hexagram Pattern, and in the middle of the hexagram was a strange image that looked like an Ouroboros Biting Its Tail. Around the outermost ring of the Magic Array were indecipherable words. Roy could not recognize them, but his instincts told him they might be Demonic Text.

At that moment, the Magic Array was glowing faintly. The indecipherable Demonic Text and the patterns flickered and pulsed, emitting a faint Humming Sound, as though it had already been activated.

The fragrance of the soul was coming from the Magic Array, but strangely, Roy did not see the Light Orb of that High-Quality Soul. The array was empty.

What was going on? Had the soul not appeared yet? But if it had not appeared, how could its fragrance already be here?

Watching the demons below slaughter each other as though they had Lost Sanity, Roy knew they might be fighting over ownership of the High-level Soul that was about to appear. Although his mouth was likewise filled with saliva at the scent of the soul, Roy did not join the battle. Instead, he hovered in the air and merely observed.

Roy still had not figured out what the altar was for. Until he did, he would not act rashly.

He even moved a little farther away, in case any demons overwhelmed by frenzy came looking to fight him...

The scene below could truly be described as Rivers of Blood. As the slaughter continued, demons constantly died here. Purple Demon Blood flowed from their corpses and pooled together, looking bewitchingly vivid. The demons who survived the fighting devoured their opponents' souls, then eagerly threw themselves into the next battle.

Among this slaughter, one ferocious demon was the most eye-catching!

He was a powerful demon over eight meters tall, with the largest Body Size of all the demons present. He had four legs, a long tail, and a body covered in thick Keratinous Scales, making him look like a pangolin. His upper body was humanoid as well, but merely from the long, curved Demon Horns on his head, Roy knew that this demon had likely survived in the Upper Abyss for decades!

Demon Horns often had Rings like Growth Rings, the primary basis for determining a demon's age. This Old Demon's strength was practically unmatched among the demons, but more importantly, he held a weapon in his hand: a huge Stone Hammer. Its craftsmanship was crude, but it looked especially savage and bloody because it was covered in Demon Blood. This Old Demon also seemed to have fused his Soul Fragments into the weapon, causing the terrifying hammer to emit a faint black glow and possess a hardness far beyond anything Imagined.

Roy weighed the odds and realized that even he could not defeat this Old Demon, making him even less willing to get involved.

Wielding the Great Stone Hammer, the Old Demon massacred enemies in every direction. Before long, he stood out from the chaotic battle and became its final victor.

He let out a tremendous roar and glared around at the surviving demons. Though unwilling to accept it, they slowly retreated and acknowledged the Old Demon as the victor.

This scene was so similar to what had happened at the Hatching Grounds... The Demon World was like this. Once you possessed greater strength than other demons, they would acknowledge your status.

"It's coming!" As Roy watched the Old Demon turn around and climb the altar with heavy steps, he immediately stared without blinking, wanting to see what would happen.

What happened next nearly made Roy think his eyes were playing tricks on him.

After the Old Demon stepped On the Altar, the High-Quality Soul Roy had imagined did not appear! Instead, a Black Dot appeared On the Altar. As the Black Dot emerged, the entire Magic Array blazed brightly. The Black Dot in the array slowly expanded, forming a circular mass of Pitch-black Mist. The Pitch-black Mist enveloped the Old Demon, and upon touching it, his body gradually began to turn translucent.

In the end, the Old Demon's entire body suddenly Disappeared, and the light of the Magic Array dimmed along with it.

Holy shit, he really disappeared! Was he... Teleported away?!

Roy stared at the altar in shock. He felt that the black mist was like the legendary Space Gate or Teleport gate. Otherwise, there was no explanation for why the Old Demon had vanished completely.

The anticipated High-Quality Soul had not been Teleported over. Instead, the Old Demon who had won here had been Teleported away. Connecting everything that had happened, a thought suddenly surfaced in Roy's mind: the Old Demon had been summoned!

That was right, summoned! That Must Be it. Someone was using a special method to summon demons from hell. The offering they had sacrificed was a High-Quality Soul. The demons' mutual slaughter had been to fight over that offering! And for the victor to obtain the offering, he had to answer the summons and enter the world on the other side.

The purpose of the altar was also obvious: it was a medium for connecting other worlds to the abyss of hell!

Roy immediately grew excited. This was a tremendous discovery. No wonder the novels and movies he had seen always featured things like summoning demons. It turned out such things were real!

What kind of world would one enter after being summoned? Were there one, two, or many such worlds? Who was summoning demons, and what did they intend to do with them? Would a Summoned Demon have to sign a contract with its summoner?

And so on, and so on...

Roy had far too many questions. But this discovery was simply wonderful for someone with a Gemini Personality like him. It meant that Monotonous Hell Life had finally become interesting.

After the fragrance of the soul vanished, the surviving demons gradually left. The empty altar held no further attraction for them. But Roy remained behind. He wanted to wait for a while and see how frequent this summoning of demons through the altar was.

Besides that, Roy needed to investigate other places as well. Though Dead Volcanoes were few, they still existed. He just did not know whether those Dead Volcanoes also had altars like this one that could open Teleport gates...