Using [Air Step] to dodge the demonic rodent's charge forced Nick to quickly readjust lest he crash into the stone wall.

I need to practice fighting in enclosed spaces. A battlefield is a luxury I shouldn't always expect to have.

An angry screech echoed as the creature sailed past him, its claws digging into the floor with almost no resistance.

Despite its genuinely horrifying appearance, one could be forgiven for dismissing it on account of its size, but Nick knew better. [Empyrean Intuition] told him exactly how dangerous this thing was, and he had no plans to let it live any longer than absolutely necessary.

It was, essentially, a wound on the World. A walking, breathing pustule that constantly scratched at the fabric of reality with its mere presence, threatening to one day grow strong enough to bring everything crashing down.

In its current form, it could not truly be called threatening, no more than a hobgoblin. But even beyond its malicious intent, the three-eyed rat had a destabilizing effect that meant most spells simply couldn't affect it.

Nick was briefly reminded of his frantic attempts to keep the demon in Inari's temple away from them, and he knew that while he might be able to overpower the creature with elemental magic by expending a great deal of mana, that wasn't the right approach.

"Let's see how you like this," he grunted as the creature prepared to attack again, shedding miasma like fur and cloaking the floor around it in thick, poisonous-looking mist.

Unlike that time months ago, Nick now had a new weapon in his arsenal. He took all the disgust, all the anger, and the bubbling well of primordial fear at something that just shouldn't be, and crafted a [Spiritual Hurricane] with them.

The demonic creature seemed to sense that something was different about this attack, and it screeched, the noise echoing oddly, distorting the air and bouncing off the walls in unnatural ways.

Mist bubbled up, forming a protective shell around its body, and Nick knew that if his attack failed, he'd face an even more dangerous fiend, as its fur sloughed off in patches, revealing pulsing darkness beneath.

Fortunately, he didn't need to worry because, just as souls could be affected by spiritual magic when most spells couldn't interact with them, demons could be too. At least low-ranking ones, since they still had physical bodies and emotions, no matter how corrupt they were.

The full force of his anger crushed the rodent, obliterating everything that made it.

The spell howled for several seconds as Nick kept feeding it mana, even as he felt his reserves quickly drain. The miniature hurricane captured the dark mist the demon had released, forcing it to contend against the power of his emotions, and it finally broke down under the continuous assault.

Only then did Nick let the spell fade, and he staggered back, feeling more exhausted than he had expected.

Still, the results were clear. Where once there had been a three-eyed rat, now only a crater in the stone floor remained. Not even blood or fur was left. Everything had been wiped out under his command, as he refused to let that abomination remain in the physical world.

"Damn." He muttered. "That took a lot more than I expected."

Though Nick wasn't an expert in dealing with demons—that was the whole reason he had fought so hard to win the tournament and get one-on-one training on how to deal with them—he'd expected fighting a demonic creature to be more like fighting a spirit, something like the [False Angel], if unique in its own way.

But that was wrong. The feeling of absolute wrongness he remembered from Inari's temple had quickly consumed him, forcing him to use more power than he likely needed to kill the damn thing. He'd been jittery and unbalanced from the start and was almost ashamed that a level forty-two creature could trouble him enough that he had to bring out the big guns.

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Still, it hadn't been a complete loss. First of all, he proved that, although very demanding, he could use spiritual magic to fight demonic creatures. That was worth a lot on its own.

Even if I doubt it will be quite this easy to face Lesser Demons, much less True Demons. No, the further a creature is from having emotions and a soul, the less spiritual magic will affect them, which means it might turn out to be just as useless as elemental magic. At least at the level I can muster right now. If I had a Prestige class, I bet the weight of my existence would compensate for a lot.

The second victory was the massive amount of experience he gained from killing the thing. More than a hundred thousand Exp was a lot. Frankly, it was too much.

The only times he could remember receiving such an outsized amount of Exp were when he did something that closely matched his class, or when he accomplished something worth a Feat.

Defeating a single demonic creature wasn't enough to earn recognition from the System as something truly great, but it was clearly enough to warrant an Exp boost.

It probably doesn't hurt that summoning demons in a hidden, underground chamber, under the watchful eyes of a great mage, is something very Occultist-y.

For a moment, Nick was tempted by the wealth of experience fighting demons could give him. Even ones like the Three-eyed Vermin, which wouldn't challenge him now that he knew what to expect, would significantly speed up his growth.

But that was a slippery slope he was hesitant to take. The effects a single demonic creature had on the fabric of reality were fairly minor, and he could see the ether calming down noticeably, but what about ten? A hundred? A thousand?

It'd definitely give him a big boost, enough to reach the higher end of mortal levels, but he didn't doubt there would be a price to pay.

It's a moot point anyway. I doubt Lasazar would agree to summon thousands of demonic creatures just to power level me.

"Well, that was quite something," the man himself said, sounding quite surprised. "You really did encounter a demon before. Everyone who meets one for the first time usually freezes up. And it's even worse for mages, given that they can sense exactly how much of an abomination these things are."

Nick pursed his lips. "Yeah, it wasn't pleasant. I could feel my instincts scream at me to either get far away from it or kill it with all I had. I used way more mana than I probably should have." He replied, staring at where his spell had carved into the floor.

Lasazar chortled at that, waving a hand, causing a ripple through the stone, which quickly reformed into its original shape. "That is the last thing you should be worrying about, Nicholas. No, you put on quite the impressive show for your first fight against a demonic creature. Very few people can claim to have been able to kill one, much less do so on the first try!"

Nick met his eyes and saw nothing but sincerity, mixed with a healthy dose of bafflement. Lasazar, it seemed, was very surprised by his success. "Were you expecting me to fail?"

The other shook his head, "The test's purpose was to see how you would react to being exposed to demonic taint. Killing the damn thing wasn't even considered, really. I expected you to struggle against the corruption it let out, fire a few spells at it, and realize they wouldn't work. I would have banished it myself after that. But you went above and beyond my expectations, truly."

Rubbing the back of his neck, Nick attempted to downplay it, "Ah, it's nothing special. I doubt I could do that even once more. I definitely overused my mana."

Lasazar's smile widened even more, but clearly, he decided it was a waste of time to try to convince him of how impressive he'd been. Instead, he gestured for Nick to follow and walked toward the other end of the chamber, where, at his signal, a comfortable pair of sofas appeared.

"Why don't you tell me exactly what you observed, and I'll tell you about the school of magic designed to fight demons, hm?"

Eagerly, Nick plopped down and quickly launched into an explanation, "The Vermin was clearly something other, a being outside the laws of nature, considering how the World recoiled from it. The moment I hit it with [Jet Stream], I knew any elemental magic would be useless unless I truly brought it to bear in great quantities. But in an underground chamber, and without preparation, that was just as likely to kill me as it was to excise it. So I went for spiritual magic. I've found great success with it lately, and I even participated in the dungeon raid on the Summer Court. The Vermin was clearly not a fae, but it was the closest thing I could think of, so I used what would have worked against them."

As was increasingly common for him, he mixed truth and lies. He truly had used spiritual magic to achieve significant results in recent weeks, such as the Blessed Hunt he cast over the grassland and his participation in the dungeon raid. However, he deliberately kept the timeline vague, making it seem like he had used Spiritual Magic against the fae when, in reality, he had not yet developed the first spell back then.

But then, some of the things he'd done, like defending against the False Rubedo, couldn't really be explained with simple elemental magic. Maybe he hadn't really lied, in that case.

"Spiritual magic was far more effective than wind, but it also had some level of corruption. Had it been a regular level forty-two monster, I could have killed it with simpler spells, but I knew from the moment I saw it that those wouldn't have been enough, so I cast one of the most powerful spells I know. And even then, to fully remove its miasma, I had to spend a lot of mana," Nick continued, finishing his explanation.

Lasazar nodded quietly as he listened, then smiled. "That is a comprehensive enough explanation. You correctly decided that it would have been far too costly to fight the Vermin with elemental magic and shifted to something more esoteric. Well, spiritual magic is an obscure art that not many outside dedicated temples bother learning after their first dives into the ether and encounters with its denizens, but it's clear to me that you have a talent for it, so you should pursue it."

Having a Prestige mage, considered a true expert in battle magic, tell him he was talented, struck Nick more than he had expected.

He'd known he was, of course. But he'd always dismissed it as a result of his reincarnation, of his true age. Yet, if very few mages, even among those trained in the Tower, ever bothered to explore the craft... Well, maybe he really was talented, then.

"But, as you noticed, even spiritual magic wasn't completely effective against it. You made up for it with extra power, which is what most mages do when they unexpectedly face a demonic creature, but there is a better method. That is what we usually call anti-demon magic, but it should be called by its real name: Worldcraft."

As he spoke, the word echoed strangely. The ether seemed to shiver, and Nick felt, for a brief moment, as if he were in front of a massive beast that he really didn't want to attract the attention of.

A second later, the feeling disappeared, but Lasazar had a knowing look. "Yes, there is a reason we call it anti-demon magic. To harness the power of the World itself is a dangerous thing indeed, but its might… Oh, very few things can compare."