Evil Duchess Summons Me, the Heavenly Demon

Ephre was constantly out of breath. In proportion to that, she couldn’t suppress her rising excitement.

The power of a summoned creature isn’t necessarily related to its size or appearance, but generally, large and fierce-looking summoned creatures were naturally powerful.

Orlando’s arrogance was also along the same lines.

With a face that looked like it was directly transplanted from a reptile (this is Ephre’s perspective) and an unnecessarily large frame, there wasn’t much difference between him and his summoned creature.

Nodai.

The name he claimed to have learned through soul bonding sounded like it meant “never dying” (No Die). In reality, when engaging in duels through summoned creatures, the duo of Orlando and his summoned creature rarely lost.

As the Summoner curriculum progressed, he too was influenced by Nodai, allowing him to partially exhibit that terrifying strength even in normal situations, so how could it be otherwise?

If Ephre didn’t have a prestigious family backing her, she would certainly have faced a miserable fate at the hands of that guy whose brain was in his lower body. After all, she was prettier, more beautiful, more sensual, and even adorably delicate than anyone else in this academy.

“How amusing.”

“Huh, what?”

“A face harboring sinister thoughts, boasting as if it’s their own achievement when it’s not. Child, how can you be so brazen? Is that a human skin mask worn on your face? Perhaps woven from silkworm thread. So tough and resilient that it simply won’t come off.”

“W-what do you mean by taking off, you pervert!”

Ephre had a habit of only seeing what she wanted to see and hearing what she wanted to hear. The act of frowning and covering her chest with her arms had the effect of treating low blood pressure for those who saw it.

The summoned creature said:

“I thought you were a fox borrowing a tiger’s might, but your head is full of chicken. A chicken not even fit for a cockfight. Hmm, no, considering your impudent and bizarre temperament, you might barely be useful.”

Fox? Chicken? What’s that?

Ephre frowned but understood one thing.

Useful… appetizing…

After taking a deep breath with a “hoo-hoo,” she opened her eyes straight.

“Listen carefully, you’re a summoned creature and I’m a summoner. Understand? No matter how human-like you look, you’re a summoned creature. O-of course, while there are some with peculiar tastes, I am qualitatively different from those vulgar fellows!”

At this moment, Ephre found the night air particularly cold. This was because she deliberately ignored the fact that her face was not just red, but sweat was running down into her hair.

At that time.

Muk-Yeom Heavenly Demon frowned deeply.

Uh… uh…? Did I make a mistake? But no matter how good-looking his face is, his identity is a summoned creature… Th-that kind of thing with a person!

Swish.

Ephre flinched and closed her eyes. Hunched body and bent shoulders. While her limbs were tense, she relaxed her lips. In-hale. In-hale. She slowly inhaled but didn’t exhale. She had sprinted so much that there was a sweaty smell.

“What have you done to this lord?”

“?”

Ephre squinted to look at him.

When she fully opened her eyes, she saw him looking down at his hand with a furrowed face. It was so pale that it seemed slightly translucent (not his chest or crotch, but under his palm).

Blink, blink.

Ephre blinked with a face that would have been seductive and beautiful if she had just kept her mouth shut, then belatedly let out a faint “Ah-” sound.

“Con, cont…!”

“I already know well that your head is like a chicken’s. There’s no need to imitate it now.”

“Damn, what are you saying! I mean contract! Contract! You… no, you’re here without making a contract! It means you’re not formally staying in this material world through soul bonding! Don’t you understand what I’m saying?”

Her worried nagging was like a barrage of artillery.

It was said that the basic quality of nobility is that their face and inner thoughts differ.

Thus, Duchess Ephre outwardly created an urgent situation (it was actually urgent; if he disappeared completely, she would be utterly ruined) while inwardly spreading the wings of pink imagination.

The guy who destroyed Orlando’s Nodai without blinking an eye? A person? Wow. If he becomes my partner, I can not only crush those who have ignored me until now, but also that chairwoman who took my money and then threatened expulsion, and that Director of Planning and Financial Coordination, both of them!

Is that all?

Those damn lowlifes who act nice while casting me as the villain! Those who still badmouth me just because I slapped them a bit when they were talking behind my back! Being treated as a villainess just because they tripped over my foot and had a food tray placed on their head—it’s all over!

Suddenly, she realized the man was looking at her with narrowed eyes.

He distorted his face as if facing something disgusting (it was a very subtle difference, but somehow she just knew).

Ephre belatedly realized her own mouth corners curled like a crescent moon and her slightly parted lips, then she frowned and cried out loudly, “Waaah!”

“Nooo! You don’t have to make a contract with me, just don’t die! You, you… I don’t know who you are or where you’re from, but you can’t just disappear like this, right? You don’t have to make a contract with me… really, it’s fine, but…”

It wasn’t easy to force it out. She wiped away the barely seeping tears with one hand while subtly extending the back of her other hand to him, as if wiping away tears from the other side. A completely natural movement.

Ephre’s heart pounded.

It’s going well…!

“S…”

Suddenly, he closed his eyes and inhaled.

♦♦♦

I divided a split second into dozens of parts and contemplated.

I first felt something strange when I arrived in this world, the second time was when I tried to leave the magic array, and the third time was when I burst the wrong part of the spirit creature…

I had exerted my power intermittently, but it was so minuscule that I didn’t even notice.

But now that I was trying to move in earnest and began to utilize my internal energy, I got the impression that my “existence” was fading accordingly.

How should I put it? Should I say that this world itself doesn’t recognize the existence of me, the Heavenly Demon?

I was extremely uncomfortable, as I had just turned my eyes away from the distant dream of reaching a realm I hadn’t ascended to before, and instead focused on exploring this new world and its mysteries. It was like when those plum blossom swordsmen from Mount Huashan came at me with their so-called secret techniques, colliding their Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Swords twice… no, times five.

In other words, there was no clear harm, but it was extremely annoying, like a mosquito.

What to do.

There was no way to know whether expulsion or disappearance from this world would mean returning to the original martial world, or as that insidious child said, returning to nothingness.

Considering her snake-like dark intentions, it seems that ordinary summoned creatures return to their original world, but I am clearly a stranger from a different place. In a sense, I could even be called an intruder.

Like those barbarians who once crossed the desert and severely tormented the northern parts of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, and Liaoning.

The difference between those mutton-lovers and me was whether we chose to wander voluntarily or not. Now I was in danger of being forced to wander… to leave forever.

‘It must be tested.’

Inhale. I received the energy of the atmosphere after a long time. I directly absorbed the energies in the air through my lungs and channeled the energy into the eight meridians and blood pathways throughout my body, including the lower dantian.

Crack. Crack-crack-crack!

A terrible pain came as if my body was being reconstructed, as if bones, flesh, and muscles were being rearranged, but it was bearable enough.

Above all, I couldn’t shake the thought that this soul bonding or whatever it was seemed exactly like the “gu poison” that the old generation of the Divine Sect used to employ.

“…Phew. Indeed, so that’s what it was.”

It was quite excellent for a temporary measure. I looked down at my now clearer body and clenched and unclenched my fist.

Though I had been demoted several levels below my true ability, I could buy time well enough. They say that in all matters of the world, the more urgent it is, the more you should take the long way around.

At the very least, it’s not too late to think about it after spending a night. That is, if it’s not a matter of life and death (at least, my breathing now is extremely calm).

“Wha, what, wha… What… what was that? How did you just do that?”

“Let’s save the explanation for later. Isn’t the night deep? Animals that don’t follow the natural order will inevitably face backlash later.”

“Huh, what? The night is deep… Oh. You mean we should sleep. But still, how… Is that so? Are summoned creatures in human form somehow different? Damn, what is it?”

The woman irritably scratched her red hair where moonlight was breaking. Even her disheveled appearance could be called seductive, but knowing her rotten inner self, I didn’t show it.

“Sigh… I get it for now. If I lose you, it’s really the end, but I can’t help… No! I was really worried about you, so I’ll wait for today. But you might try to disappear again anytime, right? Let’s go to my room for now. At least if you’re beside me, I can respond immediately. What? What’s with that expression?”

I stood with my hands behind my back under my long robe and took a couple of steps back.

“Because I can see a highly disrespectful intention.”