Vice Principal Valdred had expected the morning to remain quiet long enough for him to finish a single cup of tea, which by the standards of the Demon Academy was a modest expectation rather than an ambitious one. Several reports were spread across the table in his private room, most concerning troop movements around Academy-controlled territory and updated observations from regions bordering lands still held by the holy side. Much of the intelligence remained incomplete after the destruction surrounding the former 3-Star Fortress, but incomplete information was preferable to evidence of immediate retaliation, and nothing he had read so far suggested that the surviving Holy Gods had abandoned caution and begun moving openly. For the moment, the reports described the kind of problems Valdred understood well: uncertain patrol routes, changing garrisons, missing information, and commanders trying to infer intentions from movements that could easily mean several different things.
He worked through those reports at an unhurried pace, occasionally marking passages he wanted compared against older intelligence while taking drinks from the tea beside him. The quiet felt almost unfamiliar after the number of discussions that had followed Noctis's return to the Academy, especially when those discussions had involved dead divine avatars, outer sects, a destroyed fortress, and a student who had crossed into godhood before most of the people around him had properly adjusted to how powerful he had already been beforehand. Valdred had spent much of his life around talented demons and cultivators whose advancement could alter the fortunes of entire factions, yet Noctis had compressed enough change into a short period that even experienced people were being forced to reconsider what assumptions still applied to him. A morning filled with ordinary reports therefore felt almost restful.
That quiet ended while Valdred was taking another drink. Noctis's voice entered his mind without warning and asked, "Vice Principal Valdred, are you free?" at exactly the moment Valdred had begun swallowing. The tea left his mouth almost immediately, but enough had already gone down the wrong way that he bent forward over the table as a violent coughing fit seized him, one hand gripping the edge while the other covered his mouth. Every attempt to recover his breathing seemed to provoke another round until his eyes watered and the lower halves of two reports had absorbed enough tea for the ink to begin spreading.
The mental contact itself had not frightened him, because Vaelrath had spoken directly into his mind often enough that the sensation had become familiar over the years. Whenever the Demon God wanted information quickly or saw no reason to send a messenger through the Academy, Valdred simply heard his voice without preparation, and years of repetition had made that method of communication ordinary. That familiarity had contributed to the problem because the moment the connection formed, Valdred's mind had expected Vaelrath before he consciously registered who was speaking. Hearing Noctis instead broke the expectation at precisely the wrong moment, leaving him coughing over his reports while Noctis remained entirely unaware of what had happened.
Once Valdred could breathe properly again, he reached for a cloth and pressed it against the spreading tea while confirming through the connection that the voice did indeed belong to Noctis. Noctis answered calmly and explained that he wanted to speak with him, then asked whether he was occupied. Valdred looked at the cloth in his hand, the blurred ink beneath it, and the cup responsible for providing the ammunition before telling Noctis that he was not occupied anymore. Noctis replied that he would come over, and the connection ended before Valdred could decide whether there was any point in explaining what had just occurred.
He spent the next several minutes separating the damp reports so that the ink would not transfer between them and setting aside the one most badly damaged for someone to copy again later. The teacup was moved toward the far edge of the table, less because Valdred blamed the tea than because he no longer trusted the combination of drinking and unexpected divine communication. By the time someone knocked at the door, the coughing had stopped and only a slight irritation remained in his throat. Valdred allowed the visitor inside and watched Noctis enter alone.
Valdred had seen Noctis several times since his ascent, yet there remained a difference between knowing that he had become a god and casually experiencing what that meant in ordinary life. Noctis no longer needed messengers for a simple conversation and had apparently become comfortable enough with mental communication to use it as naturally as knocking on a door, which was a small change compared with everything else but still enough to remind Valdred how quickly the situation had shifted. More importantly, Noctis showed no sign of whatever internal problem had occupied him during the previous night. His breathing was steady, his movements carried no hesitation, and Valdred could detect no subtle instability suggesting that the damage to his core remained unresolved.
After Noctis sat across from him, Valdred moved the damp reports farther away and told him that if he intended to contact him mentally again, he should try not to do it while Valdred was drinking. Noctis looked toward the stained papers, understood what had happened, and replied that he had asked whether Valdred was free. Valdred stared at him long enough to determine that Noctis appeared genuinely satisfied with that reasoning, then decided that explaining the difference between asking before and after someone nearly choked would accomplish very little. He abandoned the subject and instead asked what Noctis had come to discuss.
When Noctis answered that he wanted to know about the Demon Crucible, Valdred's attention moved away from the ruined reports immediately. Noctis had already entered the Demon Crucible once, so there was no reason to explain it as though he were preparing for his first expedition. He already knew that the portal did not open into a fixed training ground beneath the Demon Academy or lead into a conventional dungeon whose inhabitants and resources simply returned after each group left. Those who passed through could be transported to entirely different worlds, each with its own environments, dangers, inhabitants, resources, cultures, and methods of developing power.
The Demon Academy valued that unpredictability precisely because nothing within familiar territory could reproduce it perfectly. Students sometimes returned with materials no one at the Academy had encountered before, while others brought techniques from societies whose cultivation traditions had developed under completely different circumstances. Some expeditions reached worlds dominated by monsters or hostile beasts, while others placed students near civilizations with their own languages, religions, political structures, and assumptions about strength. Even expeditions that produced few tangible gains could teach students how badly familiar habits failed when the surrounding world no longer behaved the way they expected.
That unpredictability also explained why the Academy treated every expedition seriously. Students sometimes returned injured, and some did not return at all, while others came back carrying resources they barely understood or cultivation gains they were not experienced enough to integrate safely. The Academy therefore required time between entries, not because it wanted to deny opportunities but because sending someone repeatedly into unknown worlds encouraged exactly the kind of impatience that destroyed otherwise talented cultivators. Valdred had seen enough examples of that problem to regard the restriction as necessary rather than conservative.
Noctis asked when he could enter again, and Valdred realized from the wording that Noctis had assumed the waiting period belonged to the Demon Crucible itself. He corrected that immediately by explaining that the portal did not require months to recover or reset after someone used it. The waiting period belonged to the Demon Academy and was imposed on its students because most of them needed time after returning. Noctis remained quiet while Valdred elaborated, giving him room to explain the reasoning instead of reducing the answer to a simple yes or no.
Valdred told him that some students returned with injuries that took weeks to heal, while others acquired cultivation gains that needed to settle before they could safely push farther. Someone who returned with a new technique could easily waste it by chasing another expedition before learning how to use what had already been obtained, and rare resources often required specialists to identify them before anyone knew whether they were valuable, unstable, poisonous, or completely useless. The problem became worse when an expedition went especially well, because success had a way of convincing young cultivators that the safest response to one opportunity was to search immediately for another. Several had nearly damaged their own foundations by stacking new gains on top of cultivation they had not finished consolidating, and others had misunderstood techniques badly enough that instructors had to intervene before poor practice became permanent.
Noctis understood the distinction without needing further explanation. The restriction had never really been about the Demon Crucible, because the portal itself remained available; the Academy was controlling the pace at which students exposed themselves to opportunities they were not always mature enough to manage. That kind of restriction made sense for ordinary students and even for talented ones whose cultivation could still be damaged by impatience. It made much less sense when applied automatically to someone who had already reached godhood.
Once that was clear, Noctis asked whether Valdred could open the portal if he wanted to enter that same day. Valdred answered that he could and pointed out that Noctis was no longer someone the Academy needed to protect with a general rule designed around ordinary students. If Noctis returned from the Demon Crucible injured, unstable, or obviously unprepared for another expedition, Valdred could still advise him to wait, but there was no reason to enforce a fixed schedule simply because everyone else followed one. Noctis's current condition provided no such concern, especially when whatever damage he had suffered the previous night had already recovered completely.
The answer changed Noctis's understanding of the Crucible more than Valdred had expected. Until that moment, Noctis had treated another expedition as something that would happen when the Demon Academy's next entry period arrived, which placed it somewhere in the future regardless of how useful another world might become to his current goals. Knowing that Valdred could open the portal whenever necessary removed that distance and made the Demon Crucible something he could incorporate into his immediate plans rather than merely remember for later. He could enter that day, the next day, or after whatever preparations he considered worthwhile, and none of those decisions depended upon an institutional calendar.
Before he began considering what another expedition might provide, however, the Demon Crucible reminded him of someone else who had disappeared through it. Noctis asked whether there had been any news about Kaeltharion, and Valdred answered without consulting a report because the situation had not changed. Kaeltharion had not returned, no message had reached the Academy, and no reliable information had identified where the portal had sent him. Valdred added that if Kaeltharion had been transported somewhere accessible through ordinary communication methods, the Academy probably would have heard something by now, but that still did not tell them whether he had survived.
The Demon Crucible made absence difficult to interpret because there was no single region where missing students could be searched for after they disappeared. Kaeltharion could have died shortly after arriving wherever the portal sent him, leaving nothing behind that could ever reach the Academy, but he could just as easily remain alive on another world with no method of contacting anyone here. The Academy therefore had no basis for declaring him dead, but neither did it possess information useful enough to organize a meaningful search. For the moment, the matter remained unresolved because the world itself had placed Kaeltharion outside their reach.
Noctis accepted that without trying to force certainty from it. The mansion he currently occupied had once belonged to Kaeltharion, and the unfinished matters inherited from the original Noctis had not disappeared merely because their target vanished, but unresolved business did not automatically become urgent simply because answers were unavailable. If Kaeltharion had died somewhere beyond the Demon Crucible, the matter would eventually prove irrelevant. If he remained alive, circumstances could bring him back into reach later, at which point Noctis could deal with whatever still remained between them.
The question reinforced what another Demon Crucible expedition actually represented. Noctis would not be entering a predictable dungeon where the enemy types, terrain, and rewards were already catalogued, but a world that might be completely disconnected from everything he currently knew. The portal could place him within a civilization whose political structure and cultivation methods were unfamiliar, a wilderness dominated by hostile monsters, or an environment where the most valuable resources were things he had never encountered before. Kaeltharion's continued disappearance demonstrated the uncertainty involved, but Noctis had never regarded uncertainty by itself as a reason to avoid exploration.
If anything, that uncertainty made the Crucible more attractive. A familiar world could be studied until its important factions, routes, resources, and dangers became predictable, whereas another world created possibilities that could not be reproduced by remaining within territory he already understood. Noctis had adapted to unfamiliar bodies, systems, and environments often enough that the prospect of entering somewhere unknown interested him more than it intimidated him. He did not need to know exactly what waited beyond the portal before deciding that the opportunity itself had value.
The Bloodgrave Ascension Scripture gave that opportunity a second purpose. Its requirement of one million distinct living sources was too large to approach efficiently through scattered hunting, and a world dominated by hostile monsters or beasts could offer numbers far beyond anything convenient to collect locally. Even if the Demon Crucible sent him somewhere unsuitable for large-scale blood-essence collection, the expedition could still yield ores, herbs, artifacts, ruins, bloodlines, cultivation knowledge, or creatures worth studying. There were too many possible gains for the trip to become useless merely because one specific objective could not be satisfied.
Valdred eventually asked whether Noctis intended to enter that day, and Noctis answered that it had been the plan. Valdred told him to return whenever he was ready, because the portal could be opened without waiting for the next Academy entry period. Noctis thanked him and rose, satisfied that there was nothing else he needed from the meeting. When Genesis Steps began altering the space around him, Valdred noticed quickly enough that his hand moved away from the teacup before Noctis disappeared from the room.
Valdred remained looking at the empty chair for several moments after Noctis left. He eventually glanced toward the tea, considered finishing it, and decided that the morning had already produced enough interaction between drinking and gods. The remaining reports could be handled without testing whether another unexpected voice might arrive while he swallowed. With that decision made, he returned to the documents and left the cup where it was.
Noctis returned to the mansion grounds expecting to handle only a few matters before going back to Valdred. He had not yet told Nocthyrael or the others that he intended to enter the Demon Crucible again, and simply disappearing into another world without informing anyone would create unnecessary problems. The portal offered no guarantee that an expedition would be brief, and even if Noctis expected to return without difficulty, the people remaining behind still needed to know that he might be absent for an uncertain period. He initially thought that conversation would be the main thing separating him from another expedition.
Activity across the nearby training grounds changed his attention before he entered the mansion. Several fallen angels were sparring in pairs within one of the open areas, while a larger gathering of Demon Academy students watched from around the perimeter. The fallen angels had restrained their raw power enough that the grounds remained intact, but restraint did little to hide the experience behind their movements. Their spacing remained precise, their reactions came without hesitation, and transitions between attack and defense happened smoothly enough that the exchanges still resembled genuine combat rather than demonstrations arranged for spectators.
The Academy students were not gathered there merely because the fallen angels looked impressive. Some followed entire exchanges in silence, while others concentrated on individual details and discussed them quietly among themselves. Several watched footwork more closely than weapons, paying attention to the small positional changes that allowed a fighter to avoid pressure without surrendering unnecessary ground. Others were more interested in timing, particularly the moments when a defensive action became an attack without an obvious pause between the two.
A few younger students had moved farther from the main gathering and begun reproducing movements they had observed. One repeatedly shifted his weight through the same step, stopped whenever his balance moved too far forward, and tried again until the motion became less awkward. Another worked on a defensive turn that had appeared effortless when performed by a fallen angel but became much more difficult once he tried to coordinate his shoulders, hips, and rear foot at the same time. Their attempts were imperfect, but they were not treating what they saw as a performance; they were trying to understand enough of it to improve their own movement.
The fallen angels had clearly noticed the audience and showed no sign of objecting. They continued training without simplifying their exchanges or deliberately slowing down for the students, which gave the observers a chance to study movements that developed naturally rather than techniques arranged for instruction. One exchange drew particular attention when a fallen angel yielded a small amount of ground beneath an incoming strike, redirected the weapon past his body, and moved forward into the opening created by the attacker's commitment. His counter stopped before impact, and both fighters reset without breaking the rhythm of the session.
Several students immediately began debating what had created the opening. One believed the redirection itself had been decisive, while another argued that the attacker had already compromised his position by following too aggressively after the first retreating step. A third listened to both before pointing out that neither explanation would help if they could not reproduce the balance required to make the movement work under pressure. Noctis did not intervene because the students were already doing something more useful than waiting for someone to hand them a simplified answer.
There was some irony in the situation. Noctis had entered the Demon Academy as a student, yet students from the same institution were now voluntarily gathering to study the people serving beneath him. The reversal amused him, but it was not the part he considered most important. What mattered was that the fallen angels were using their time productively without needing Noctis to supervise them.
They trained without him, adjusted to one another, and continued improving without waiting for instructions. Their experience was developed enough that other people could learn simply by observing them, even though none of the fallen angels had deliberately taken the role of instructor. More importantly, they were capable of functioning as an organized force whether Noctis stood beside them or not. That mattered much more now that the Demon Crucible could remove him from the planet whenever he chose to enter.
His followers would remain here while he explored another world, but their responsibilities would not stop because Noctis was absent. They could continue training, defending his holdings, securing territory, and fighting enemies. They would make decisions, encounter opportunities, and deal with problems during whatever period Noctis spent beyond the portal. Watching them operate independently made that reality easier to consider in practical terms rather than as an abstract possibility.
That thought led him back to the Bloodgrave Ascension Scripture. If his forces continued fighting while he was somewhere beyond the Demon Crucible, then the battles occurring on this planet could still produce the kind of blood essences required by the scripture. The current conflict with the holy side would not pause because Noctis entered another world, and enemies killed during his absence would represent potential sources that could otherwise be wasted. The limitation was not the lack of battles but the fact that the Blood Crystal would be wherever Noctis carried it.
If he took the only Blood Crystal into the Demon Crucible, then enemies killed on this planet could not contribute to the scripture while he was absent. Leaving the Blood Crystal behind created the opposite problem because whatever Noctis killed beyond the portal would then be lost for cultivation purposes. He had been treating that limitation as inevitable only because he had assumed the vessel already in Blood Space would remain the sole Blood Crystal. Once he questioned that assumption, the problem changed immediately.