Within a dark room, a man sat upon a throne carved from pure obsidian.
His pitch-black hair absorbed the surrounding light, and his violet eyes shimmered—not with fury, but with a curiousity and amusement.
There was no panic in his expression. Only silence, and a storm beneath it.
Everyone should be dead by now.
His gaze turned to the massive magic circle etched into the stone floor—glowing faintly, pulsing like a heartbeat.
It was the centre of the ritual he had so meticulously planned.
Then why... are four lives still burning?
He leaned back slightly, fingers tapping against the cold armrest.
This ritual… this city… everything had been in motion for half a year.
Patience, precision, preparation.
Every rune had been carved with blood. And now —
Four anomalies appeared.
They weren't supposed to exist.
He narrowed his glowing eyes.
They're interfering with my harvest.
He was Gravius Umbros, one of the Disciples of Greed—a title feared and revered across the demon world. A symbol of ambition incarnate.
They called him the weakest disciple. He was the youngest, barely past his eighteenth year. But unlike the others, he wasn't born with privilege or demonic lineage.
The only one among the disciples of greed.
He was mocked, undermined and dismissed.
But never overlooked. Because in just one year, he had risen to Expert Rank.
Greed was not a sin to him. It was salvation.
The ritual was elegant in its simplicity and brutal in its demand – a single city filled with thousands of souls, all feeding the circle.
It wasn't indiscriminate, of course. That would be crude.
No, it was precise. Purposeful.
The ritual only targeted two types of people.
Those with mana. Power must consume power, after all. The weak were irrelevant. The powerless, invisible.
Secondly, those with impure hearts? Greed and hate—perfect conductors for corruption.
They were the first to fall.
There were some exceptions—children with pure hearts. They were spared. Not by mercy, but by design.
Most of the children have an untainted soul, their mana mostly too faint.
The ritual couldn't bind to something so…pure.
But it didn't matter. No child could survive a city filled with monsters drawn to magic.
They'd be hunted. Torn apart. Forgotten.
The ritual would do the rest.
And when it was over, the circle would drink deep the essence of those sacrificed.
For the first time Gravius's eyes turned soft. A faint smile appeared on his face.
The face of a woman appeared in his mind.
For now I have to take care of four rats who have survived.
The ritual won't be completed until the whole city has no other survivors than him.
He had done too much to fail now because of some weaklings.
He has chosen this city on purpose. Lustra–it was a rich, overpopulated city with weak security. It was situated too far from borders, so it was isolated and easy to cut off.
The city's highest power was its master rank governor, who had conveniently sent his subordinates outside the dome.
All by Gravius's careful influence.
Gravius himself had also sent all of his subordinates outside the dome.
He couldn't afford to be careless now.
He got up from his seat and walked towards the magic circle in the centre.
He lightly touched the circle.
Hmm, three of them are nearby and the fourth one is a bit far.
I'll take care of those three before going to the fourth.
He tapped the runes lightly, locking on to the survivors' locations.
Let's see who the lucky ones are.
With a faint smirk, he vanished.
He reappeared atop a tall building at the slum's edge.
He looked towards the direction he felt life was from.
Below him, some distance away, were three presences. Familiar.
A black-haired boy with crimson eyes stood in front of a child with brown hair.
And a girl was lying unconscious near.
The boy with brown hair had pure white eyes without a pupil, and his claws elongated like the monster roaming the city.
His soul is definitely corrupted, but for some reason, instead of dying, he is resisting it.
He knew the three survivors. They had once shopped in his clothes store–the one he operated as a disguise.
The black-haired kid had brought the two children to buy clothes from him.
The brown-haired boy's soul was resisting the corruption fiercely.
Unusual, Gravius thought.
He wouldn't last long.
But the other two were completely unaffected. He could understand the girl.
She was an unawakened child without much, and from the interaction he had seen before, even her heart was pure despite living her life in slums.
Why is he unaffected?
His eyes narrowed as they fell on the black-haired boy.
Apprentice Rank. Yet untouched by a soul-burning ritual designed to leave no survivors?
Gravius had gotten this ritual from an ancient ruin one of his subordinates had discovered previously.
Even his master didn't know anything about it. Neither did the clan know about it.
He had hidden it from everyone due to his own greed.
According to what he had understood. The ritual was something that directly attacked the soul of a person and offered it as a sacrifice to a high-ranking spirit.
It operated on the power of laws of the world itself and was unavoidable for most people.
Does he have some special ability that protects him from soul damage?
Unlikely. Soul-affinity abilities were beyond rare.
Having a special ability itself was rare, but for it to be a soul element, it was near impossible.
Still... it didn't matter.
He was just a boy. Just an Apprentice.
Gravius watched as the boy picked up the unconscious girl and disappeared into the shadows.
Only Mark remained, standing alone near the broken shack.
Gravius watched him for a moment, his expression unreadable.
He's not worth the effort.