"I noticed their summoning beast was trying to escape from their body and run away from their sight, not just because of my presence, but because of a presence that leaked out from the Astral Shadow Plain."
Ryder's words hung in the air briefly before he continued. The recording device still humming, and steadily radiating its blue light.
"Due to the level of fear their familiar was experiencing," he continued, his voice gaining confidence as Luxy whispered to him in his mind, "they abandoned the safety of their host and hurt them in an attempt to escape."
Elena's pen hovered motionless above her notepad. This was different— everything Ryder was saying was something she had never experienced, heard about, or read about in any history book.
Familiars are never intimidated by other familiars— even if they show fear upon recognizing a superior familiar, they still wouldn't act so... rapidly.
The lie detector remained silent, not even beeping once for detecting any lies, which was even more unsettling than if it had.
"I never directly caused any harm to Lucas or Kyle," Ryder concluded, turning his gaze toward the identical twins. "I believe they can testify to that."
The aura that had burned through the plain when Ryder emerged from the Astral Shadow realm had been terrifying indeed—even for Luxy, who was himself a devil beast.
It hadn't been just any random creature causing that disturbance; it had been demon monarchs fighting, distorting the balance in their own plane and slicing through the air— literally slicing the air.
'Tell them about the residual energy,' Luxy suggested, his mental voice carrying a casualness like Ryder's was. 'Make them understand that what they felt was just the leftover scraps of true power.'
'Show off.' Ryder scoffed mentally to Luxy. 'I will tell them anyway.'
"What you experienced," he added, watching Elena with a locked gaze, "was merely the residual energy from a battle between beings whose power transcends your own imagination.
My presence simply acted as a conduit for that energy to reach this realm."
Elena's composure cracked for just a moment—a small leak of her hidden expression of pure terror had flickered across her face before she regained control.
Turning toward the duo with deliberate slowness, Elena gestured for confirmation.
"Is this... accurate?" Elena's voice quivered, the kind she couldn't quite suppress.
Kyle was the first to respond. "We truly experienced... strange reactions from our familiars. They were trying to force themselves out of our souls, something that should be impossible.
The pain was..." He trailed off, his hand unconsciously moving to his chest as if he was recalling the experience internally.
"Excruciating," Lucas finished for his brother. "It felt like our souls were being torn apart from the inside. But Ryder never laid a hand on us."
Elena's pen trembled as she made notes, her neat handwriting becoming erratic.
Behind them, the FSG members stood in perfect formation, but their usual stoic demeanor was cracking. Whispers passed between them.
Commander Lucian, despite his years of experience and his prestigious three-star ranking on both shoulders, found himself unable to close his gaping mouth.
'This boy,' Lucian thought, watching Ryder's casual speaking with growing unease, 'he's not just powerful. He's something else entirely.'
"Now, turning toward you, Ryder," Elena said, her voice steadying with visible effort, "the entire interrogation is coming to an end, but I need to ask you a routine question as per the FSG code."
"Did you truly contract a beast from the demon plain?"
The room fell silent except for the gentle hum of the recording device. Even the air seemed to hold its breath.
"Yes," Ryder replied flatly, his tone carrying a hint of pride. "A devil beast, specifically."
Elena stared at the lie detector, waiting for its inevitable alarm. Seconds stretched into what felt like minutes. The device remained stubbornly silent, its blue light steady and unwavering. Truth. Undeniable truth.
Black mark summoners had become history several centuries ago. Ryder could have visited the plain, but to think that he is a compatible vessel...
The last thing Elena had to say wasn't a question, but a request.
"Can you show us proof? Can you... summon the creature?"
The request made all the FSG members standing in formation behind them tilt their heads forward in curiosity.
There wasn't a single person on the entire planet Terra who wouldn't be curious to have a glimpse of what a devil beast looked like, but there also wasn't a single person who had ever expected to encounter one in their lifetime.
If it wasn't true that Ryder contracted a black marked familiar, Ryder would be in the kind of trouble.
He had been acting quite cocky toward very high-ranking summoner officers such as Lucian, after all. The kind of disrespect that could normally warrant imprisonment or worse.
But if it was true that Ryder contracted a black mark familiar...
"If you insist, then okay," Ryder replied, his casual tone remaining in opposition to the tension in the room.
"Yes, yes, come with me to the testing room," Elena hastily arranged the files on her desk, her movements sharp and urgent. The recording device was switched off with a click as well.
They all knew, with a certainty that chilled them to their bones, that Ryder had spoken nothing but the truth the entire time.
---
They all marched to the testing room hurriedly. Elena led the way, her heels clicking against the polished floor, the sound echoing across the hallway. The FSG members followed in their formation, still trailing behind Ryder like some loyal servants.
Upon reaching the room, Ryder couldn't help but stare around in amazement.
The room was vast, easily the size of his entire village's town square, with a domed ceiling that stretched up high. Banks of computers lined the walls, their screens flickering with a continuous stream of data and load outs.
But it was the machine in the center of the room that truly commanded attention.
The massive machine rose from the floor like a vault. It was an advanced summoning analyzer, designed to interpret and quantify the power level of a summoner's beast with accuracy and precision.
Elena approached a control panel that looked like it belonged on a spaceship, her fingers dancing across buttons and switches seamlessly activating it for warmup, clear evidence that she had used this machine way too many times.
"This machine," she explained, her voice taking on a tone that barely masked her nervousness, "is the most advanced power measuring machine we have developed since the age of summoning."
There were several different vaults in the center of the room, ranging from the smallest—designed for familiars no larger than a house cat—to the largest, which could accommodate creatures the size of small buildings. Each was calibrated for different power ranges and species classifications.
"The size of your familiar," Elena asked, her voice carefully neutral, "what would you estimate it to be?"
"Small," Ryder replied with a shrug. "About the size of a puppy."
The disappointment in the room was obvious. Several of the FSG members exchanged disappointed glances.
They had been expecting something magnificent—a colossal dragon perhaps. The idea that the most powerful familiar contracted in over a century was rabbit-sized felt almost comical.
But Elena, despite her disappointment, was not foolish. Size, she knew, was often inversely related to power when it came to beings from the higher realms.
The most dangerous creatures could sometimes be those that appeared harmless.
"For a demon plain creature," she decided aloud, "we'll use the highest measuring machine regardless of size."
The largest machine dominated the center of the room—a transparent cylinder vault that rose from floor to ceiling like a pillar.
Its base was inscribed with patterns that made Ryder recall a memory— it was identical to the pattern on the Rune of Shadows that had teleported his soul to the astral shadow plain.
The machine was referred to as the Advanced Summoner Analyzer because, unlike traditional summoning methods that required a familiar to manifest physically before measurement could take place, this device could make the measurements without the need of the familiar's materialization.
Walking toward the machine through the open section of the cylinder, Ryder didn't spare scanning everything up to the number of nuts on the machine. Unlike what he had expected, the inside was quite foreign to his experience.
Ryder, who had grown up in a village still struggling with basic infrastructure, was not at all familiar with technology this advanced. This, after all, is a machine many would never see till they die, except maybe on TV.
For a villager like him to see such, he found himself fighting to maintain his composure.
'Steady,' Luxy advised from Ryder's head, despite being amused as well. 'Try not to look too impressed. We have a reputation to maintain.'
Inside the machine, there was zero gravity. Ryder's body began to float the moment he stepped inside, the sensation quite thrilling. It was like being underwater without the water.
*Puff*
With a hiss that released pressurized gas, the machine door began to close slowly, sealing him inside the cylinder.
Elena signaled to one of the technicians to begin the testing process.
This machine, despite its advanced design and capabilities, had never been used to measure the power level of a black-marked beast.
Its creation belonged to the recent age of technological advancement, perhaps a couple of decades old at most. In all its years of operation, it had never encountered anything beyond red-mark classification.
It used the alphabet to represent power levels, ranging from F—representing creatures that were essentially harmless—to S—representing beings classified as catastrophically dangerous.
The scale had been established based on historical data and theoretical observation.
Brown-marked summoners consistently read rank F. Orange-marked summoners typically registered rank E, occasionally reaching D if their familiar possessed unusual abilities. Red-marked summoners, the elite of their society, usually achieved rank C, with the most exceptional reaching rank B.
But a black mark... theoretically, a black mark should read nothing but rank A or S, representing the peak capabilities the machine was designed to measure.
Whether it registered A or S, the result would be absolutely record-breaking. Since the machine's creation, this would be the first time anyone had pushed its readings above rank B.
The technician's finger hovered over the control panel, sinking in the discussion he had overheard about Ryder being a black mark summoner.
He deactivated the previous warm up activation Elena had done earlier then moved to a different section for proper activation.
One by one, the technician flipped switches.
The first switch powered up the machine, causing a low harmonic hum to fill the chamber.
The second switch synchronized the presence of gamma energy in Ryder, causing gamma energy to constantly crackle in the vault he was in.
The third switch established a direct link with the familiar's energy signature, creating a bridge between Ryder's soul and it that allowed the machine to peer into Luxy's nature.
The fourth switch—the one that would measure actual power levels—remained unactivated.
The technician hesitated, his finger trembling above the final control. The air in the room had grown thick with anticipation, every person present leaning forward, not planning to miss the slightest detail.
Hearts raced, breath held in collective suspension, all eyes remained unblinkingly stiff.
The machine's reading limit is rank S.
Click.
The fourth switch engaged with a sharp click.
For a moment, nothing happened. The machine's displays remained steady, its readings climbing slowly through the familiar ranges: F... E... D... C...
Then the numbers began to accelerate.
B... A...
The displays flickered, struggled, then blazed with blood-red light that should not have been possible.
Warning alarms that had never sounded before began to wail throughout the facility. Emergency protocols that existed only in theory activated automatically.
BOOM!!!
---
Multiple firefighter teams were rushing toward the back section of the FSG base shortly after the explosion. The once-peaceful headquarters, a symbol of order and governmental superiority, no longer resembled anything peaceful.
Half of the entire complex had been vanquished beyond recognition—not just destroyed, but broken down to dust and debris.
The scene looked like the aftermath of some extraordinary catastrophe rather than any explosion. There were no scorch marks, no evidence of fire or heat damage even though it was assumed as a fire disaster.
Instead, everything within the blast radius had simply... stopped existing.
Fire trucks equipped with summoning-enhanced equipment rushed to the area, their crews moving with efficiency. Emergency medical teams followed close behind.
All of them came so fast within a minute, they were already at the entrance of the FSG base as if they had been anticipating this right from the start, but however, it wasn't the case. They were summoners after all, so it was a normal occurrence to see them being so fast in responding to disasters.
Best-case scenario: no one had died. The explosion should not have been lethal enough to annihilate red mark summoners around, after all, the energy burst is something they also possess— it was gamma energy.
At the point of origin of the destruction, in what had once been the testing chamber, Ryder stood exactly where he had been when it all happened, frozen. His clothes were unmarked, his hair remained as if it had always been, his expression one of wide-eyed puzzlement rather than hurt.
He was completely unharmed.
"Luxy," Ryder communicated inwardly, his internal voice carrying confusion, "please tell me I'm having a false assumption about what just happened."
"I am sorry, Ryder," Luxy responded internally to Ryder, his tone carrying a hint of something that might have been guilt. "It is exactly what you think it is."
The weight of the situation settled on Ryder, slowly. All of this destruction, all of these people who might be hurt or dead, all of this chaos—it had happened because he had allowed them to measure his power.
"Don't blame yourself," Luxy continued, listening to his thoughts. "It was not your fault. They were aware that I represent an anomaly compared to the beasts they have been dealing with.
"They should have prepared beforehand with equipment of the highest quality available on the entire planet if they wished to test my power level."
'This is why monarchs rarely manifest their power or overuse it even in the astral shadow plain,' Luxy realized in his mind, something that never came to him until it was already too late.
The nature of our gamma energy is all different... That of a beast from the black mark plain... Is... Extremely negative.
Cough cough cough
A massive piece of rubble shifted near Ryder's feet. The chunk of debris—which had once been part of a wall—was pushed aside with tremendous effort, revealing a bloodied but alive figure underneath.
Commander Lucian emerged from the wreckage, blood streaked his face and arms, his uniform was shredded in multiple places, and his usually perfect military composure was half gone, filled with malicious anger visible in his eyes.
He was alive, and more importantly, he was conscious and mobile.
Looking at Ryder with eyes that already burned with anger, fueled his fury to the extent that his body quivered with barely contained rage.
"Are you alright?" Ryder asked, the question filled with concern as he closed the distance to the commander despite the hostility radiating from him.
"Stay back, you monster!" Lucian screamed, his voice cracking with emotion. "Look what you've done!"
"Hey, I didn't mean to—it wasn't under my control; it was my summoned beast..." Ryder began, but his explanation sounded weak even to his own ears.
"I don't want to hear any of it!" Lucian screamed, by now, his composure completely shattered.
Emerging from his shoulder where his markings were embedded was a thick red smoke moving a bit too rapidly despite the fact that the wind was gentle.
Ryder recognized this instantly. It was serpentine in nature but clearly not ordinary—as thick as a bridge pillar and so long that parts of it remained coiled within Lucian's body.
The familiar was carrying an air of dangerous aura, a terrible thing to behold.
Its scales were so solid, almost too solid which defied the way it moved freely. Curved horns crowned its massive head, each one sharp enough to pierce steel. And lastly, its eyes— crimson orbs glimmering with predatory intensity.
The serpentine launched itself straight at Ryder with the speed of a striking viper without even needing Lucian to command it.
Its movement was fluid power, as it covered the distance between them in a heartbeat.
The attack should have been devastating. The serpentine's fangs were capable of piercing metal like butter from the look alone, and the muscle around its jaw suggested its bite force was not short of terrifying as well.
By all rights, Ryder should have been torn apart, especially since he stood there still bearing his shocked expression and watching everything unfold without reacting.
But Luxy had given him a very specific instruction: do not move.
Just as the massive serpent was about to make contact—close enough that Ryder could see his reflection in its eyes— something happened.
The serpentine halted its attack.
Not slowed, not redirected, but completely faltered by some invisible force. The creature's forward momentum simply... stopped. Its massive form hung suspended in the air for a moment.
Ryder, who had remained perfectly still on Luxy's orders, noticed the exact moment when everything changed. The rage and bloodlust that had filled the creature's crimson eyes was suddenly, completely replaced by something else that resembled...
Terror.
Just as quickly as it had emerged, the familiar began to retract. Its withdrawal was not the traditional elegant withdrawal—it was the panicked flight of a retreat.
Its form retracted and burst into a red mist and returned to Lucian's shoulder the same way it came.
"What the hell!" Lucian stared at his own shoulder, his anger temporarily replaced by confusion.
At that moment, the rescue teams who were on their way finally arrived. The firefighters were staring around, lost as they observed.
Firefighters stared around in bewilderment, their equipment detecting no residual heat, no active flames that would indicate the explosion that had occurred here. The destruction was total but cold, complete but confusing.
"Where's the fire?" one of them muttered, voicing the confusion they all felt.
Rescue teams arrived shortly afterward— some flying in the air with the aid of their familiars, while others were on the ground, walking side by side with their summoned familiars.
Bending his knees into a jumping stance, Ryder was visibly pissed, but felt guilty at the same time no matter how much he didn't want to.
It wasn't his fault; they insisted on testing his power level, after all—he wasn't the one who came up with the idea.
*Swoosh*
His body rocketed into the sky in a single leap that would have been impossible for any human, enhanced or ordinary. The force of his departure cracked the ground beneath his feet, sending fractures radiating outward.
"He's traveling kilometers with just a single jump!" Lucian's eyes widened as he clenched his fist.
"He is definitely a threat to humanity; he must be eliminated!"