Chapter ten

A lot had changed in the year that had passed since Lucifer had discovered his Devil heritage, First and most notably had been his and Shiro´s new accommodations.

As they had left their shabby cave after the coyote incident, not only due to the bad memories associated with the place. but also because Shiro no longer fit into the small cave they used to snugly sleep in.

So as soon as Lucifer had gotten his emotions in place after a while of resting with Shiro, he had immediately chosen to grab his furry bag of meat and leave.

It had taken Lucifer and Shiro months of sleeping in shifts and defending themselves from all sorts of strange Magical Creatures. Everything from a giant snail with acidic slime covering its body and an almost invincible defense to tiny green snakes whose venom made both Lucifer and Shiro experience the worst trip of their life.

Those months of survival taught Lucifer that almost everything in this strange forest was either a strong predator or prey that had evolved to possess some rather vicious defense mechanisms.

So when Lucifer stumbled upon an enormous clearing with a great lake, He had evolved from the naive and stupid man to a cunning, ruthless devil that would use any means at his disposal to survive and conquer any and every challenge Mother Nature threw at him.

And the means that he used to achieve this?

Demonic Runes.

After months of studying and experimenting with them, he had realized that different runes took a different amount of Demonic Power to fuel a full-blown spell.

A quick example would be the Demonic Pierce, It took him less than a second to draw the rune with his wand motions to ignite the spark, but its strength varied massively from how much Power he pushed into the spark to ignite the flame.

The lowest level he managed was a small beam that pierced about a cm into a tree trunk, and what seemed to be his max limit after all the exercise with the spell seemed to be about a meter after he had cast it at his max power into a massive oak tree, leaving a clean hole right through its meter-thick trunk.

After countless experiments with hundreds of runes, he also discovered that there were runes that he simply couldn't fuel to activate the flame.

An example would be the rune he craved the most to use, the Demonic 'Teleport' simply wouldn't activate, something that frustrated him to no end as he had never managed to recreate the accidental apparition he had undergone on his first day.

But his knowledge of the use of demonic runes wasn't his only improvement, as with frequent visits into his Mindscape had paid off by further deepenening his understanding and connection to his Demonic Power

As he could now manipulate the misty demonic power through his body, increasing his senses and peak human psychical prowess to truly inhuman levels.

This nifty skill he had created had saved his ass from many sticky situations over the months and had made the task of drawing some of the more complicated demonic runes a much more efficient task, as his increased physical attributes directly increased his wand movements.

It had been eight months since he had stumbled upon the clearing with Shiro, and over this period of time he had done his very best to create a permanent defendable home for him and Shiro, and he had after deliberation chose to go with a black Castle to symbolize his demonic heritage and he was in a magical world so why not go big?

He had at first been a bit stumped on what to make the castle out of, as he felt like he would make a mockery of his status as a Devil if he had a lumber castle, not to mention that it simply wouldn't be sturdy enough to endure the destruction a curious beast could bring if it stumbled upon his home when he wasn't home.

That issue had been solved as he simply raised the lake floor up, making a large island breach the surface of the water, further raising the island made the more sturdy bedrock surface and raise up into an enormous slab in the middle of the lake.

With his source material now made, he had started utilizing his Magic to slowly excavate the slab of bedrock into a rather large castle, including four towers, a grand hall to accommodate Shiro, a private bedroom, a large study, and a large surrounding courtyard that he had covered in earth as he planned to make a grand garden.

He had left the majority of the castle in an uncarved state as he had no use of guest bedrooms or any form of library as he simply had no books nor guests to bother going through such a grueling task to carve out and decorate the rooms for now.

We now find Lucifer sitting on a throne in the innermost center of the hall, a now horse-sized Shiro laying in front of him with its massive head resting in his lap.

His hands slowly caressed Shiros now-massive mane as he started contemplating his next move now that he had secured a proper base of operations and had moved on from the struggling to survive part to becoming this area's undisputed king.

"I really want to learn about the art of ward crafting, and talking to another wizard or witch, picking their brain on their brand of magic truly is tempting" he sighed as he pondered upon the issue of him not knowing where on earth he was, he, of course, had suspicions but nothing that was beyond simple speculation.