Meanwhile, Ixtra had immediately headed down to the 8th circle.
Merca was afraid his lack of following the demonic power system might cause misunderstandings and conflicts, so he hadn't gone down. Ixtra had none of these concerns.
Going down, the first thing he noticed was the architecture.
There were castles, large ones, surrounded by bustling cities.
These were larger than the human ones he'd seen with Merca, or even the demon ones he'd seen in higher circles. They were at least a kilometer tall, at the shortest. As for length across the ground and acreage, it needn't be mentioned.
They were huge, like cities unto themselves.
If the ceiling wasn't so high up, it might've been a problem.
The cities around these large castles were also huge, spanning over a dozen kilometers for the smallest ones.
Around these cities were large, mostly uninhabited territories, which ragtag groupings of villages and towns. Besides the size of the big central city, it didn't seem so different from a human kingdom.
However, there were no sub-territories in these regions. No noble territories or anything of the sort. Thus, the overall land around each castle was only so big, maybe less than 1000 kilometers across, before transitioning into another territory.
From how high up he was, Ixtra could see very far away. Alomg with his enhanced eyesight in his 2nd Release, he could make out a lot of details like these.
Hell wasn't like a planet. Each circle was flat, so being high up enough let you see the whoel area.
Ixtra couldn't see the whole 8th circle, since it was too huge for that, but he could see quite a lot.
He could also see over the edge and further down that the 9th circle was huge, and on it were some interesting things. However, that would have to wait for later.
Heading down, Ixtra visited a castle somewhere nearby. The archdemon who lived there flew up to him when he sensed him.
Squinting his eyes, the archdemon sized up Ixtra silently.
"Where are you from? I've never seen you before and pretty much all the archdemons at least know each other's face."
"I come from above. I became an archdemon on the 6th circle."
The archdemon had a look of amazement on his face.
"Wow. Been a while since that happened. Think the last time was 300 years ago or something. Well, come on in. I'll help you out."
He seemed oddly friendly for a demon, and Ixtra was especially vigilant because of this.
However, he also knew of the rumors of archdemon culture. He didn't completely dismiss the possibility that the archdemon was really helping him out.
In the giant castle, which was more like a megastructure that was a biome of its own than a building, he was lead to a large library.
This wasn't a room. It was a whole building. There was a building in the building. Yeah, this was no longer a mere castle. It needed a new word for the sheer scale, but Ixtra didn't know what to call it.
A megacastle maybe?
Let's go with that for now.
In the library, the archdemon used his demonic energy to gather a bunch of books all at once, and placed them on a table.
"Read all this first. If you have any questions, pour demonic energy into this."
He took out a palm sized rectangular jade brick from thin air. Ixtra was slightly startled, as it was very similar to how Merca took things out of the treasury, or the interspatial ring Sylvia had given Merca the one time.
He quickly calmed down, however.
Thanking the archdemon, who's name was Bel'sarath, Ixtra began reading.
He could read fairly quickly, but it would still take some time to finish everything that was piled up.
Meanwhile, Bel'sarath stretched outside before suddenly disappearing.
***
Ixtra learned a lot very quickly. It was too much to handle, really.
Weeks later, he had read everything Bel'sarath recommended, and thankfully there were not only clues to warp drives in that dense stack of books, but even multiple methods, fully outlined, as to how to traverse realms, including but not limited to just warpdrives.
However, most of these methods were unusable for him or Merca. Of those remaining, several of them preached the importance of a proper technique.
He also learned, finally, of many techniques and methods available to demons, from lesser demons up to archdemons.
With this, he would be far beyond Merca in strength now.
Most techniques required intensive practice, of course, so he spent a long time learning the few he liked the description of.
He had always been using demonic energy to cast spells, but he finally learned a technique to circulate red mana, or any mana for that matter, in his demonic body.
There wasn't much use to this outright, but it would help with void mana. He could use scarlet-crimson essence to cast spells above the 11th circle, he had realized, but he wasn't going to waste it like that.
Plus, it was always better to have an ace in the sleeve.
Besides this, he learned a full set of techniques for movement, attack, defense, recon, and so on. It used demonic energy to cast something similar to a spell but not one.
The books called these "circleless spells", or just techniques for convenience.
Because of the way they worked, he could use several peak level techniques at once, unlike a spell where you could only cast one peak spell for your level as a mage.
This was because these techniques were simpler to cast than spells that required magic circles.
Magic circles at this level were primarily for arrays, whereas circleless spell techniques were more often used by actual people.
Actually, at a certain level, spells and arrays became synonymous, since you could imbue your own body and even spirit and soul with arrays, allowing near infinite "casting" at all times just like a spell.
Of course, since arrays worked based off of spells, knowledge of spellcraft was a prerequisite to arraycraft. It was as if becoming an arraymaster was the natural progression of a mage.
In truth, once someone did this, they would no longer be a mere mage, nor a mere arraymaster, but something beyond both.
Once void mana arrays were carved into the blood, the blood would take the final step to unlocking the conditions to becoming the ancestral mage bloodline, and would trigger a Law that would transform the bloodline of the mage into that of the ancestral mage race.
Thereafter, all of one's direct descendants would not only be born with a variety of skills to naturally help them excel, but also with array imprints in their blood. The moment they first absorbed void mana, these imprints would activate and allow them to instinctively cast void magic.
This would allow them to quickly catch up to their parents, and surpass them, and with their children the cycle would continue. This was how the mage race of ancient times grew ever more powerful, until one day a great cataclysm wiped almost all of them out.
The details of that cataclysm weren't recorded in the books Ixtra read.
Void magic continuously went up in circle tier, 100th circle magic, 1000 circles, and so on ad infinitum, but after the 20th circle, it stopped becoming stronger, only becoming more and more complex.
This complexity came from the "magic encryption".
Mages of the mage race were so intune with mana, so gifted and well endowed in magic, that they soon became able to break each other's spells in the middle of casting in the split second it took to cast.
The well known spell [Counterspell], which broke an opponent's spell, did this automatically, but was limited in capability due to the automatic nature of it.
The ability to do this manually, called spellbreaking, became one of the staples of the mage race.
Due to this, some mages came up with a method to artificially increase the complexity of a spell in order to delay or otherwise prevent a timely spellbreak.
This method was to add magic circles that made up for the flaws of the underlying spell, allowing a more robust spell.
True 21st circle spells didn't exist. After that was a different progression system.
Thus, the 21st circle in a spell that used that many referred to an extra circle meant for making the spell harder to break. It hid away the flaws, "encrypting" them.
This was what was known as magic encryption.
One mage would break the spell, the other would encrypt it. Both the mage races spellbreaking capabilities and magical encryption capabilities grew to ridiculous levels.
Unfortunately, all encryption does is stop the spell from breaking. It doesn't make it any stronger. Forced to be unable to advance past the 20th circle in raw power, the mage race was unable to handle the calamity it encountered. Still, their technological feats were that of brilliance.
Indeed, not only was their spellbreaking and magical encryption astounding, but the technology they made using their afinity for magic was even more so.
Reading about them, Ixtra felt a desire to see for himself the relics of the mage rave's civilization, but unfortunately, there were none left.
At least, none publicly available.
The realm the mage civilization lived and thrived in was sealed off by a certain force.
The books said little about that force besides the fact that they were strong. Tremendously strong.
After learning all the techniques until he was satisfied, Ixtra traveled around the 8th circle.
He had already found a way to make a warp drive. He just spent the rest of his time seeing the sights.
It had to be said that in this particular operation, he was far more useful than Merca at the original objective.