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Eleanora explored the wilderness while her master, Asmodeus, or Blake, as he is called now, was hunting with the three kids he had been growing up with. Deep inside she couldn’t help but desire to be at his side and see the growth of these children as well, as she had grown fond of them after these many years she had experienced life with them. However, due to her mission to scout for demons and also try to find their village, she had been quite busy.
Constantly draining bits of Mana from her master to not bother him as much, she used Shadow Sneak to sneak through the darkness of the shadows below the treetops. She had been chasing the faint traces of demonic energy in the environment, finding several groups of Imps, and quickly giving her master the coordinates to these Imp groups direction. However, she was also investigating something, as she moved deeper into the forest, she found that there was a large group of Imps all together, led by several Onis.
“What’s this…? This is not something those children can handle…” She said in surprise.
She continued chasing down the large group of Demons led by the Onis, until she found herself in the front of a large, open area… and there it was, almost a hundred large houses made out of wood, with many strange red and black crystals made into monoliths decorating the entire village. There was even a watchtower and walls made of wood with sharp rock spikes on top for wild monsters to not get inside.
“This is a… a village?”
Eleanora quickly realized there was a village in the middle of the forest, right at the end of the third layer where the greatest density of demons reached… hundreds, if not even more. In the middle of this village, she saw something just as shocking, hundreds of demons preparing, forging weapons, and preparing armors, and also roasting many creatures to eat. In there, she noticed several human bodies, from adults to children. There had been recently several cases of disappeared people in the forests, the knights and adventurers that had been seeking them had also been disappearing… these people seem to all have ended in the bellies of the demons.
Those not strong enough to overpower them nor smart enough to see through their tricks and traps would quickly fall to their demise by going deeper into the forest. The hunters had been banned from entering the forest but a few bold one’s had gone alone, only to never come back. Young children often played near the forest, some unfortunate ones were seen by sneaky and stealthy Imps, grabbed away, and eaten. Could you blame the demons for wanting to survive, or the people for being foolish? Eleanora didn’t cared for either side nor pitied either side, she was completely neutral in that regard… or so she would wish. But as she continued living with Blake as a human, she slowly became fond of this race.
This, inherently, had made her appreciate them to a small extent, which brought a lot of rage boiling deep within her heart as she saw the bodies of children being grilled and eaten ruthlessly by the demons who prepared for something. But what could they be preparing for? Eleanora scanned the village while sneaking around, completely undetected by the demons, in the middle of the village there was a large stone gate, which was currently closed. It was decorated with many beautiful red, purple, black, and blue jewels and had strange demonic markings, alongside having several magic circles engraved both in the floor surrounding the gates and also over the stone gates themselves.
It took her a split of a second to immediately guess what this was… as if the enormous demonic aura emanating from it wasn’t obvious enough… this was the Demon Gate. And it looked artificial. Eleanora knew this because she had seen both versions in her previous life. Natural Demon Gates were distortion in space and time that naturally happened or that were provoked by an incredibly strong demon, the Archdemons that ruled each layer of hell had the power to open gates to other worlds, but rarely did this if they were not given permission by Lucifer, their King.
Therefore, such gates resembled red-colored cracks in the middle of the air and would often close after a few hours or days of being opened, unless there was a powerful Archdemon fueling it with demonic energy to maintain it opened, they would close themselves in time before all demons could invade the world. However… there was the second type of gate, an Artificial Demon Gate. Such gates were often not made out by demons, but by other races. Cults that adored demons often used their carcasses and materials to make Demon Magic and Ritual Magic, creating artificial gates that opened and led to certain layers of Hell.
Such gates were capable of being opened as long as there was fuel for them, often in the form of mana, demonic energy, or souls. And based in the hundreds of wailing phantoms surrounding the gates and being feed to them… the demons were using the souls of the damned they had hunted and eaten to fuel this gate. But… did they truly made it? Eleanora quickly noticed a Gray-colored Oni with golden horns commanding the Imps to carry the phantasmal souls of the damned into the gates, all while reading a strange, red grimoire which showed drawings about this process. Such drawings had letters of this world.
“So such a gate was made by people of this world…” She thought. “But why and how?”
Making Artificial Demon Gates was an incredibly hard task, especially without someone telling the people how to make it. Such effort often took a lot of resources and not many were willing to take the gamble and randomly figure out how to make a Gate. Every so often, those that made one had already a pact with a demon, a strong and intelligent enough demon to guide them…
“The Cult related to Cassandra… Could they be behind this?”
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