Chapter 109 - Answers

Runa looked him in the eyes and held his hand gently, taking a deep breath and organizing her thoughts before putting them into words. "What we saw from the beginning was that you had successfully activated the summoning formation. From there things grew foggy as the incense expanded and the gateway was opened, letting the woman sitting there through. You were awake at this point, so you probably had a better viewpoint than us on what was actually happening." She paused for a few moments as if struggling slightly about what to say. Finally, she let out a long sigh and with a voice that held a tint of anger and vast ocean of sorrow and worry she continued with her explanation.She had stated that the woman had turned into some sort of colorful mist, invaded his body and at that point he had collapsed and was no longer breathing. It was only about a minute later that he seemed to take another breath and at the same time it appeared that the woman had been ejected with such force as to slam into the ceiling of the room. It had appeared that the woman was weakened within that time frame and so they captured her and tried what they could to check up on him. Continuing the story, she told him how he had been unconscious for two hours and had been seen by specialists who did not find anything wrong. She did make sure to mention that the summoning formation had faded, and the woman remained so though they were baffled they were fairly confident that the summoning had succeeded in full.By the end of the retelling there were tears in her eyes and the look of relief that he had actually woken up was evident. She was holding his hand firmly but gently, treating him like a vase that had been pieced back together but could collapse at any moment, ironically not too distant from the truth. The entire retelling hit Jien like punch to the gut, his eyes warily turning back to the woman seated at the end of his bed in chains. He only remembered seeing two eyes among the fog, a silhouette of a female figure and then nothing. It appeared that this woman had tried to kill him and nearly succeeded. What puzzled him and everyone else was how he had survived and how the contract had been completed without him even being conscious to do so. Perhaps on the crimson haired woman knew, and now that he knew the contract was complete, he could probably get an answer there as well.He refocused his attention on the grey skinned woman and looked at her with somber eyes before asking the question on everyone's mind. "What happened when you invaded my body? What were you trying to accomplish?" To this the woman looked at him again with quite a bit more fury. It appeared that she had gotten over her fear after hearing the tone that Jien had used and understanding words he spoke. The only thing was that she couldn't understand the words not spoken by Jien. She could sense the general emotions in Runa's words but she did not know the language and so it was all gibberish to her ears.Seeing the anger and defiance in the woman's eyes and the fact that she refused to answer him his mind spun with a variety of thoughts. If she could refuse to answer his questions, then there were a few possibilities that came to mind. The first was that the contract was never signed but they were still bound by something different meaning the rules were different than other summoners. The second was that a contract was indeed signed but the contract itself was loose and did not favor Jien in the least, a dangerous proposition that could lead to his death quickly. The last possibility that came to his mind at this stage was that the communication between the two of them was different than other demons, after all she was very humanoid compared to the others as described by the noble children.The way to get the answer to which of these three, if any, was the case was actually fairly simple and yet the actual act more complex. The answer was simply to make the contract visible to his eyes and read it. If he could do so that would mean that the contract did indeed exist and then allow him to know the varying clauses so as to navigate how to work with this demon. If no contract became visible with this action, then the answer would be more worrisome and would require a lot more research on his part in a field he knew hardly anything about. If it was just a matter of communication, then they would eventually break past that barrier with some time.The complicated part of the process if the contract existed was two-fold. First the contract was more or less imprinted on a demon's soul and would appear on their flesh. This wouldn't usually be a concern given that most summoned demons did not have humanoid forms but this woman before him did. He did not particularly want to start what would be a long-standing partnership by having her stripped naked so he could read the text that would appear on her body. The second issue was in terms of translating the text of the contract because it would not be written in any easy language, human or demon, instead being the equivalent of runes used in the creation of a formation.To try and avoid both causing a larger divide between the two of them and having to spend hours if not days or weeks to translate the equivalent of a multilayered complex formation he decided to attempt talking to the woman one last time. "I need to know what happened when you invaded my body. If you aren't willing to talk to me then I won't have a choice but to read our contract if we have one. If you can't understand me then I at least hope you try and communicate because I would prefer not to have to go that route."