Chapter 23 : Orkula, You’re Mine!

‘I accepted it before I realized what I was doing… now what?’

Returning to my dorm room with the Tome of Evil Spirits ( Or Demonic Spirits ) in hand, I couldn’t help but fall into deep thought.

If I had been a perennial bottom-ranker who knew nothing, I probably would’ve made a contract with an evil spirit just to escape that status.

But such an act would be like turning to shady loan sharks (evil spirits) just because the primary financial institution (constellation) rejected you. 

To put it bluntly, it was nothing short of a suicidal move.

Sure, making a contract with an evil spirit grants greater power at the beginning than one with a heroic spirit.

But after basking in that overwhelming power for a short while, the evil spirit demands unimaginable interest and sucks its contractor dry.

And in the end, it drags the contractor to ruin. 

Normally, messing with something like the Tome of Evil Spirits would be unthinkable—but the current conditions are actually not bad.

There were the powerful heroic spirits: the onmyoji Byakuya and Moonlight Duren.

And Iris’s solo defeat of the Grade 2 Devil Doll—Human-faced Fish—had gained her some fame, which was slowly converting into Karma.

The more outstanding achievements a constellation contractor accumulates, the more Karma they gain. 

That’s why the constellations were all desperate to form a contract with Iris.

Having finished the simulation in my head, I opened the Tome of Evil Spirits—something I normally would never have touched unless I was doing a full-on character roleplay.

The moment I did, as if it had been waiting for me, a swarm of bats flew out from the book and enveloped my body—and when I came to, I was already in the inner world within the Stigma.

“Kehehehehe! Foolish human, do you seek power? Swear a blood oath to me, the great Orkula… AAAAARGH!”

“What the hell? 

This guy’s an orc! 

Hey, contractor. 

I get that you’re playing spirit chess or whatever, but summoning an orc spirit is a bit much, don’t you think? 

It might sound like racial bias, but every orc I’ve ever met was a battle maniac who didn’t shy away from using dirty tricks.”

“Oh? A new guest has arrived. Do you know how to play chess, by any chance? Duren here is so slow at understanding the rules I was about to lose my mind.”

“Huh!? Are you calling me dumb? Look, I’ve never played this game before in my life—of course I’m not gonna be good at it!”

The inner world inside the Stigma had changed—now, there was a mansion and a tent.

It seemed that since Byakuya was no longer alone, they’d created separate living spaces out of paper for the new addition.

But seriously, isn’t the quality difference between the mansion and the tent way too extreme?

Well, that wasn’t the real issue here—the real issue was that the evil spirit Orkula had taken a surprise hit from Duren and was now furious.

Clutching his bleeding right ear and writhing in pain, the creature soon let out a furious roar, his blood-red eyes glowing fiercely.

“You dare mock me, Orkula, heir to the blood of the ancient vampires? I’ll repay this humiliation with ten—no, a hundred times the blood I’ve shed!”

“Sorry, Mr. Orc. I’ve got this habit of killing orcs on sight because of memories from my past life.”

“So you’re an evil spirit, not a heroic one. If we don’t fix that attitude now, living here is going to get a bit troublesome.”

The clash between evil and heroic spirits was something I had half intended, but before I could explain the situation, the fight broke out immediately.

Orkula began chanting a strange incantation, and dozens of vampire bats burst from his mouth, swarming toward Byakuya and Duren.

But Byakuya simply scoffed, casually waved his fan, and summoned hundreds of butterflies to neutralize the vampire bats.

The bats had the ability to absorb blood from living beings to heal wounds and boost their strength, just like vampires—but they were useless against paper butterflies.

And Duren didn’t even bother paying attention to the bats. 

She charged straight at Orkula and lopped off his other ear without hesitation.

Slash!

“Hey, I said I was sorry, Orc. My body’s been itching for a fight anyway. Back in the day, one of my nicknames was Orc Butcher.”

“Do not lump me in with those lowly orc scum! I am an Orc Vampire, inheritor of the blood of the ancient vampires!!”

Apparently, being treated like just any old orc hit a nerve—Orkula suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood onto the floor.

It didn’t seem like he was coughing up blood from a fatal wound—more like he was setting up a blood ritual.

Sure enough, the pool of blood Orkula spat out grew to the size of a small lake, and from it, countless blood-red spikes shot up indiscriminately, reducing the paper mansion and tent to rubble.

Thankfully, Byakuya flew in on an origami crane and rescued me just in time—otherwise, I might’ve been impaled by those crimson spikes as well.

Since this was the inner world within the Stigma, physical injuries weren’t a concern—but mental damage, especially the kind that affected consciousness, was far more terrifying.

“Wahahahaha! How does it feel to taste Blood Thorns, a 7th-rank blood magic?”

“Meh. For a 7th-rank spell, it feels a bit bland.”

Moonlight Duren, who had vanished within the red thorns, reappeared without a single scratch on him.

While heroic and evil spirits weren’t strictly stronger or weaker than each other—they were more about nature and affinity—it was clear that Duren was far superior to Orkula.

It was obvious—he was literally using only the shaft of his spear, not even the blade, to beat Orkula like a dog on a hot summer day, and we were all watching it live.

Even when Orkula tried to retaliate using blood magic, Duren gave him no chance—relentlessly chaining his attacks.

In the end, Orkula had no choice but to fall to his knees and declare surrender.

“F-Fine! I give up! I lost!”

“Surrender already? Just when I was starting to loosen up—what a shame.”

“Oh, you thought I was gonna say that? Die! Blood Piercing!!”

Pretending to kneel, Orkula suddenly fired a barrage of blood-red spikes from his mouth, aiming straight for Duren’s throat.

But Duren simply spun his spear like a windmill, deflecting every single blood spike, then resumed beating Orkula to a pulp with the shaft of his weapon.

“You are the same dirty orc I know who uses any trick to win, you bastard! I thought you’d be different since you were all dramatic, calling yourself an ‘Orc Vampire,’ but you really can’t hide your bloodline, huh!!”

“AAARGH! I-I’m sorry! No more, please… GHHK—!!”

Only after Orkula was completely beaten into a pulp and collapsed from exhaustion did I climb down from Byakuya’s origami crane and approach him.

Then I asked Byakuya to make a cross and some garlic out of paper—which, honestly, was a bizarre request.

Sure, Orkula was both an orc and a vampire, but in the world of Pantheon under the Constellations, garlic was just a normal vegetable, and although there were countless Constellations, Jesus didn’t exist.

However, since I was the master of this inner world within the Stigma, those garlic and crosses were imbued with imaginary power.

In fact, once I tore off the skull-bead necklace around Orkula’s neck and hung the paper garlic and crosses on him, I could clearly feel that he was suffering in a whole different way.

With Orkula weakened to such an extreme, I bit my index finger and used every last bit of my remaining Karma to engrave a sigil—shaped like a collar—on his neck.

Sigillum.

“GAAAAAAAHHH! You damn human! W-What the hell did you just do?!”

“Oh, nothing much. Just placed a binding curse on you—one you won’t be able to break even if you die and come back. Orkula, was it? You’re my subordinate now—no, my slave. Now, your first command: squeal like a pig.”

“How dare you order m—oink oink!”

“Second command. Explain exactly what you meant by that ‘blood oath’ you talked about earlier.”

“Ugh… A Blood Oath is a contract that grants an Evil Spirit Contractor the right to use blood magic… in exchange, they take on a debt of blood—three times the cost of the magic they use.”

“So you’re basically a predatory loan shark, huh? Alright then—how much can we cut down the interest?”

“P-Pardon? I don’t follow…”

“I said, how low can you reduce that 300% interest rate? Don’t play dumb with me.”

“W-Well, obviously… 100%! Any lower and I’d be taking a loss. And if those losses pile up, the rank of my existence could deteriorate…”

“Well now that’s an interesting story. Cut it down to 50%. And just so you know, that wasn’t a request—it’s an order.”

Reducing the interest to 50% meant that whenever I used blood magic, Orkula would have to pay for half of the cost himself.

Naturally, that was an absolutely outrageous demand, and his face visibly turned pale.

But with the Sigillum—the second one I’d carved, right after the one I placed on Titanium—now activated, Orkula had no choice but to obey my command.

Because the power of the Sigillum is to transfer ownership of the inscribed being directly to the caster.

Of course, there were all sorts of limitations and restrictions. 

If I recklessly used it on beings far more powerful than me, I’d just end up wasting Karma—or worse, becoming the slave myself.

But this time, thanks to Duren softening him up with a thorough beating, I was able to pull it off successfully and safely.