The instant you speak with a devil is a slip on black ice, defeat already sealing like frost. Never seek to win power, station, or wit from them; devils stand higher, like peaks above clouds.

—Excerpt from the Admonitions of the Heretic Inquisition

By order of being, a Demon King should rank above a devil, like a volcano above a winter lake. Yet the Ocean of Darkness hums with endless frenzy and ruin, a storm without shore. We can’t, like devils, spend centuries threading grand deceptions, weaving silken traps through time.

If a Demon King is blazing wrath, a wildfire that makes the burned howl till their ashes drift, then a devil is serene winter, beautiful and lethal, frost laid delicately over a sleepy field. Souls never know how near the white breath of death is, until it kisses their lips.

The Heretic Inquisition lives within human reason, lanterns bobbing on night water. They can’t grasp a devil’s essence, but they’ve studied the surface like carpenters reading grain, thorough to the last knot.

I must admit, their conclusions carry weight, like iron bells tolling. They’ve caused devils trouble, the way fire causes blisters without needing to be named plasma. You don’t need theory when the pot boils and rice cooks.

But let me state this clearly, like a blade laid on a table. Humans spar vividly with devils not because humans are strong, but because devils bind themselves, manacles hidden under silk.

Devils keep devil rules, tighter than the primordial pact that binds a Demon King, chains humming like harp strings. They won’t lie to humans. They will declare themselves devils. Their trades demand parity, scales balanced like moon and tide. They limit themselves to human reason before they speak, a handicap offered like stepping stones over a river—

“Because humanity’s sight is shallow, like a village well,” the man in a black suit said, smiling as if sunlight slipped through shutters. “Humans can’t see the future we see, nor play a devil’s rules like a qin. Even their ‘truth’ is just their own slant, dressed up as ‘physics.’ If we don’t grant a handicap, they’ll never beat us.”

He chatted cheerfully, sipping gasoline as if it were spring water from a steel cup.

Yes. Gasoline. The kind that smells like rain on asphalt.

From the first trade, this ‘Foolish’ devil drained the awful tea I brewed with a farmer’s hand. I wondered if he had taste at all, a tongue numb like winter reeds.

So, in later sit-downs, I tried him with flat cola, with camphor oil, with bitter snakegrass soda, with antifreeze, with aqua regia, with gasoline. A grim tasting flight, like a chemist’s dark cellar.

Judging by his face, Vega’s fragrant tea and my non-drinks felt nearly the same, fog passing over stone.

“Your devilish taste for mischief ruins half your deals,” I said, voice level as a lake at dawn. “Look at me. I masked myself, edged close, guided the nudge. I pulled Raven’s attention aside, and stopped the Construct from spreading across the world. That’s efficiency, like a clean cut.”

He had no quarrel with gasoline, so I pretended nothing odd had happened, clouds drifting past mountains.

“No, not for any reason,” he said, smile still carved neat as a cameo. “Cause and effect are buckets that hold only in human hands. Devils may ask for souls, but why would we need souls? We just want a fair trade, scales steady in the wind.”

As for what devils truly desire, that sky lies beyond me. I haven’t ascended as a Demon King; my sight is still rain on glass.

But I dislike sermons from above, thunder rolled from a balcony.

“So, in human words,” I said, tossing the idea like a pebble, “you lived too long, won too much, and you want humans to beat you back?”

I was guessing in the fog. He nodded, grave as a judge.

“It’s a distortion, yet not false,” he said, voice soft like snowfall. “Within human speech, it’s the most accurate phrase you can shape.”

“So it really is that,” I murmured, feeling a cold river run under the bridge.

“It strays far from our intent,” he added, sipping gasoline like tea. “But for humans to reach that much is enough.”

“Andor, do you know the ‘masters of devils’ in history?” His words lifted like crows.

“You mean myths and legends?”

“Yes. And fairy tales, and ballads, and the countless others.” He set down the cup and snapped his fingers, a spark in fog.

The light dimmed, a dusk pulled over the room like a veil. Outside turned to smeared charcoal. Inside filled with gauze-thick haze, sight shrinking like pupils in night. If I weren’t kin to darkness, I wouldn’t have seen his face at all.

This was a blind world, the realm of folly, the boundary of clumsiness, a field of scarecrows.

“Faust.”

He spoke, and a thousand mouths opened, and ten thousand voices braided—old men and infants, rain and gravel, all layered like transparent leaves.

Half his body hid inside deeper dark, a cliff over an abyss. The other half flickered with countless overlapping images, shadows stacking like pages.

He raised a hand you couldn’t tell young or withered, and snapped. A wick caught.

Color returned, as if someone pulled a curtain and let dawn through.

“Forgive me. Some names can’t be said ‘here,’” he said, voice back to velvet. “I can only speak them if I take you into my world.”

“I get it. Names carry power, like sealed blades.”

I kept my face smooth, a pond in wind. Inside, I was startled, a deer tripped by unseen wire. He dragged me into the Ocean of Darkness in a blink, and that’s no small thing.

I knew he meant no harm—if he had, fairness would’ve barred him from pulling me in. That’s part of the rules. But stepping into another Demon King’s domain equals a war drum. My hand nearly went to my infernal armament, iron sleeping under cloth.

You should warn a man first, even in fog!

“This gasoline is nice,” he said warmly, as if to soothe a horse. “In later eras, it’d be 97 octane.”

He lifted the cup with good manners, took another sip, and gave me the standard devil’s host smile, polite as a postcard. He knew I was annoyed; the smile hid a ledger.

So he keeps score. Of course he does.

“Fine,” I said, letting steam out like a kettle. “My apologies. Next time, tell me what you want to drink. I’ll prepare it properly.”

“Then—1982 Lafite—no, you don’t have it. I’m teasing.” He laughed, a breeze through thin paper. “Don’t tense up, Andor. What I mean is, those stories are true.”

“I… should understand. Right now I don’t,” I said, fog thick in my chest.

“Exactly,” he said gently, like hands guiding a child. “As the Final Calamity, you’ll know. You’ve forgotten for now. I don’t mind telling it again—devils engrave the names of every soul who beats us upon history, letters cut into stone.”

“So King Solomon and Faust are both…”

“Yes. Both told by devils,” he said, voice ringing like bronze. “We may use human mouths or human hands, but we will carve the names of those who best us into history. In human thought—call it respect for anyone who defeats us.”

“History… Hold on,” I said, a thought striking like flint. “To you now, Solomon and Faust are the future. They haven’t happened yet.”

“Correct,” he said, calm as a lake. “Is there a problem?”

“You devils can see the future. How could Solomon or Faust trick you? Their tricks can’t beat the supernatural. If you’ve watched the reel, how could you lose?”

“I think you’ve lived through ‘future,’ while we witness ‘future,’” he said, eyes like shadowed glass. “Those two kinds of foresight differ, like river and mirror.”

“So Faust beating a devil is inevitable?” I asked, heartbeat steadying like drums.

“Not exactly,” he said, fingers steepled like a chapel. “In the futures I see, Faust rarely fools the devil ‘Mephistopheles.’ Among countless branches, he wins once—one candle in a starfield. Infinity versus a number. To humans, that single victory is a miracle.”

“Can you dodge that branch?” I asked, a hawk’s question.

“Completely,” he said. “But that’s not the heart. As long as something can happen, it is a future, a seed in soil. Devils pursue that—someone who can surpass us, even as a possibility. That is humanity’s honor, a banner, a breach beyond mortal limits. Glory worthy of inscription.”

Devils usually smile like merchants, elegant, cold, a photograph behind glass. But now he seemed almost human, a pulse rising like heat over snow. It could be a performance, a mask painted to win favor, but warmth still reached like sunlight.

“Andor, you can’t grasp our pursuit,” he said, tone gentle but firm, a reed bending. “Even if you grasp it later, you may never accept it. Why do we endlessly trade and contract with humans? Why do we seek the human who can out-trick a devil, then bind his name into the total memory of mankind?”

“That’s a devil’s obsession,” I said, exhaling smoke. “I don’t understand. Even if I do, I won’t agree. But I’ll respect it, like bowing before an old shrine.”

“That thought makes you a very satisfying partner,” he said, pleased as a cat in sun.

He looked ready to end the chat, rose like a shadow unhooked from a wall. I called him back with a word, a bell tossed across fog.

“You spoke of possibility,” I said. “Do you know a musician?”

“A musician?” He turned, amused, eyes gleaming like lacquer. “Devils favor art. Past and future, I know too many musicians, like stars over a river.”

“But I have only one to ask about,” I said, a pin dropped onto a map. “He hides half and says half, like you. He’s trying to prove a proposition about possibility—the possibility of the weak.”

He looked genuinely surprised, then playful, like a fox at a gate.

“Oh, I think I know whom you mean,” he said, chuckling. “You could call him a trickster, a storyteller. ‘Musician’ is rarer, a mask he rarely wears.”

“You know him? He’s a devil too, isn’t he?”

“If I had such a colleague, I’d be happy,” he said. “But sadly—he is what he claims. That storyteller is an ordinary human, plain as bread. He can do all that humans can do, and only what humans can do.”

“He doesn’t feel ordinary,” I said, shrugging like a bridge creaking. “And if he can do all humans can do, that already sounds superhuman.”

The devil said nothing more. This time, he was set on leaving, a sail catching wind.

“I advise you not to try killing him to see if his blood is red,” he said, words cool as shade. “My colleague, another Devil Grandlord, ‘Shimmering,’ has taken a liking to him.”

“Of course,” I said with a half-smile, blade sheathed. “Even a Demon King won’t lightly anger a Devil Grandlord.”

I waved the devil off, a farewell like a hand over water. This time, it was truly goodbye, the curtain drawn.

“Did this chat give you anything?” The devil’s whisper slipped back, a moth to a lamp, just after goodbye.

“No. Life’s not a script,” I said, palm settling on my armament. “Not every scene holds a revelation.”

I gripped my infernal armament, summoned the resonance field of authority, and cut the whisper clean, a door slammed against wind.

Chat over. Work time. The sun rises even on black seas.

The Sword Saint is traveling to the capital of the Iron Kingdom Colonna, Machu Picchu, a blade tracing steel skylines. He can’t always take back roads; a Sword Saint’s pilgrimage needs banners and bells.

To keep Gloria’s hands from itching, to stop her leaping out to duel and set sparks to straw, I’ve been strolling the streets, fog among factories. The national Arcane Engineers treat me like a thief at the window, and they hide Gloria like a jewel behind iron doors.

As for Raven, each fine adjustment she makes overturns the blueprint like a tide flipping shells. Alone, she’s pushing arcane technology forward, gears ticking like stars.

Even with my help, the workload is a mountain with snow. Before the assessment, finishing the Construct is hard, stone in the stream. Under my nudging, she dropped the plan-writing, and began guiding my hands directly, chalk dust floating like mist.

The Construct is evolving from “mass-producible for the whole world,” a river of machines, into “a unique legendary armament,” a single blade in a shrine. So far, all currents run smooth.