Pushing open the door, Dignitas laid his eye on what seemed to be a lavishly decorated bedroom. He didn't bother focusing on the exterior aspects of the room, as he figured the castle wouldn't keep important things in the open.
He took a few minutes to scour the room for anything that demanded his interest. Needless to say, there was none. Aside from a few mischievously placed spike traps (that he managed to dodge thanks to Death's Vision) in the walls there really wasn't anything that would prove useful.
"On to the next room, I guess."
Deciding that he was done with his little investigation, Dignitas made way for the door, thinking he could enter another one to look for clues.
"Wha–what the hell?!"
The moment he pushed the door open, he was immediately shocked by the environment outside. Instead of the simple castle hallway that seemed to stretch for hundreds of meters, now he was inside an oddly familiar place.
From a castle quite literally belonging to hell to this. Dignitas couldn't help but gaze around.
The door that once led to the hallway now took him to his bedroom. He instantly recognized the dirty, untidy desk in the corner of the room. Textbooks that he refused to throw out even after finishing college piled up, making the somewhat large desk table feel crowded. Right beside it, there was an office chair, one that Dignitas' sister had gifted to him.
His laptop was also there, as it was where he would often write down his story.
"Curious. What was the point of bringing me here?"
Instead of looking for a way out right away, Dignitas poked around his old bedroom. It had been more than a few months since he last saw his home, so there was this feeling of longing to see it again.
"Pfft. It's been forever. I can recall sitting on this chair for hours, just typing away."
With a huff, he sat down on the worn out chair, and spun around in circles. He stopped a few minutes later, having gotten sick of it already.
"Hmm? The laptop's on."
Dignitas peered into the laptop screen, which seemed to be showing a document containing the chapter he planned to finish before he was killed.
The document seemed to have stayed there, waiting for him to return and continue writing.
"Seeing as I'm here… I don't see a reason as to why I can't just finish the chapter."
***
"Am I seeing this… right? The Past Door isn't showing me a traumatic moment, or even a significant moment in the human's life. Yeah… it's like… he doesn't have anything else exciting that happened. But really…typing away at a computer? Is that really the highlight of his life? I need to check again."
Malphasia made a motion of typing with her fingers. One moment later, and the screen the she was watching disappeared as another one took its place.
But this screen contained nothing within it. Unlike the first one that was playing a small tidbit of Dignitas' past life, this one merely played silence, a black screen.
"There's… nothing?"
Malphasia bit her nails in fear. Her first method of Enthralling, corruption via Devil Ashra, didn't work. She watched as Dignitas' body seemed to expel the foreign energy at a rate that even Divinity-bound followers couldn't achieve. It was like it rejected anything that it deemed harmful to Dignitas.
The real kicker was the current situation. Malphasia's second, and perhaps least used method of Enthralling, "Past Influence." It involved the use of the Past Door, a special room in the castle that would lead victims to fragments of their past played live for them to experience.
These fragments were often in the form of hardships that they failed to overcome, traumatic incidents that had a negative effect on their health, or the most exciting memory of theirs.
The main goal of this was to weaken the would-be Thrall's mental state by forcing them to exhibit extremely high or low moods. When their brain lost its guard, that was when Malphasia would start bending them to her will.
But Dignitas was a unique subject, the first of his kind. Malphasia had never once come across someone who's life was so bland that they didn't even have anything for her to take advantage of.
"Past Influence uses… the Soul, not the Mind, because that is where the innermost memories are stored. I didn't want… to use this, because it isn't in my area of expertise."
The second method was often bad for Malphasia's Thralls. They would, most of the time, be left as worthless husks that couldn't even think for themselves. Being corrupted by Devil Ashra would do the same, but it wouldn't happen immediately, as the potency of the energy could be controlled. This meant they could still be used.
"His Highness will surely… reward me if I bring that human to him."
Malphasia wasn't sure as to why the Demon King wanted Dignitas in the first place, but she didn't care whatever the reason was. What mattered was proving her loyalty, and that could be achieved once the human was under her control.
And so, with a burning desire to Enthrall Dignitas, Malphasia continued frivolously typing at the air. She wanted to believe that he had something in his life that would cause him to feel extreme emotion.
***
"Mmh…!"
Dignitas stretched his arms out in pride. He had just spent half an hour filling out the rest of the chapter he wasn't able to finish.
It was merely a celebration chapter that followed after John destroyed the Beast Core, but it was still important to the plot.
"I wonder… will this new bit of lore that I've added be included in the Log? Oh wait…"
Dignitas realized. He had spent way too much time in one room. What if something had happened to Bigsby or Curie, and he wasn't there to help?
"Fuck, I got carried away with typing. I need to find a way to get out of here. Did I really miss writing that much?"
Getting up from the chair, Dignitas began. looking for a way to escape. He surmised that, based off how closely it replicated his workshop, meant that this was an illusion. But as if that wasn't enough of an indication, being transported here was.
"I haven't been attacked yet, so they must be keeping me like this for a reason. Bleh, this sucks. Not being the one in control, but the one controlled."
He looked around for any distortions in the room. If this was created from his memory, then it meant the demon who took residence in Makarov's Lockheart was especially skilled with Mental magic.
"Not here, no. Nope, not here either. Hot damn, she's good."
Crack! Out of nowhere, a small crack in space appeared in front of him, catching the author off guard. The next second, the crack further expanded, almost as if the world was a glass bottle about to be shattered.
And shattered it did. Without warning, the crack burst open, and a monstrously large hand showed itself. Just the hand itself was as thick was Dignitas' head, making him feel as if something powerful had come.
Shing! Death's Vision instantly showed him a mirage of the hand's future action. The next second, it would crush his head like it was nothing. Acting quickly, he somersaulted backwards onto his chair.
His room was tiny as is, but added with the comical amounts of paper stacked high everywhere, it made the already small chamber somehow even smaller.
The crack in space further widened as the hand did its best to pull itself out. From a crack that was merely the size of a lightbulb, it grew exponentially, dwarfing Dignitas within the next few seconds. Like a mirror being shattered, the crack split into millions of pieces, spilling all kinds of fragments into the room.
The once tiny crack had now manifested in the form of an all-consuming portal. And it was through that same portal did an absolute behemoth of a monster appear.
"An ogre… fuck."
With blood red skin and a physique that threatened to swallow Dignitas whole, a brutish ogre forced its way through the portal, grunting deafening grunts.
Its face was hideous– eyes the same color as its skin, but brighter, locked gazes with the author, officially recognizing him as its prey.
"GRRUWAHH!!!"
Shouting up a battle cry, the ogre charged at Dignitas with the intention to kill. Each step it took caused the floor beneath them to vibrate, making it difficult to move.
Ogres were known to be ferocious in terms of physical strength. Few races could match their tenacity and brute force. Only the most gifted of species could hope to match their raw power, those races being werewolves or dragons, who were just naturally broken.
"Ngh!"
The sudden increase in the ogre's speed caught Dignitas off guard. He didn't think that such a heavy combatant could even reach those speeds with how much weight it was lugging around.
Blood instantly shot out of his mouth as the ogre rammed him against the wall. The sheer force at which he was hit caused his spine to shatter, rendering any sort of lower body movement impossible.
Unsheathing Dainsleif, he stabbed its crimson blade into the ogre's head repeatedly. Luckily for him, Dainsleif managed to pierce the ogre's tough skin and damage its skull.
The ogre yelled in pain, retreating as it clutched its head. There was nothing else keeping Dignitas pinned, so his body helplessly fell to the floor.
He stabbed his sword into the cold bloody carpet, using it as a crutch to keep himself upright.
"You mother–fuck! I can't stand."
Even as it kept it hurled backwards, the ogre never once lost its smile. It stared down at the paralyzed prey, uttering something incomprehensible in its language.