"My apologies, Senator, but I do need to talk to you about some important things and I know that you can see the power of my soul. I have to admit that I did not think we'd be talking like this, but I need your help."

  Senator Celisar paused his drinking to blink several times.

  "If you want a favor, then you have to provide a favor. Power does not come freely."

  "I'm afraid that all I have is very important information to give you. It affects you greatly, and it is probably going to kill you if you don't deal with it."

  "Oh, is this a threat upon my person? My guards are right there."

  Ludere shook his head. "I meant, more like every single person in this arena is about to die because of a demonic invasion that will happen in roughly forty-five minutes. It's going to start with a gate coming up in the center of the arena, and two elites will come on either side, followed by a marching order of demons that just come in here and slaughter every single human they can. So I would like you to come to the negotiating table. Understanding that I'm here trying to save your life."

  As if on cue, the Senator floated a perfect sphere in between them. He could feel the amount of weight and mass it had. Whatever this thing was, it was heavy. And heavy in the sense that it had spiritual weight.

  It almost felt like the item itself had a soul of its own. It was only by looking at it with his Will Magic as well as his Soul Magic that he could kind of get a sense of what happened.

  "Let me guess, you're here to ask about advanced techniques for combat? You. Looking for some combat applications to take down a big old demon or something, right?"

  Ludere nodded. That was close to correct.

  He was surprised to see the Senator struggling to move the sphere down to the ground.

  "I must apologize, because it looks like we're going to be having a very weird time together. If what you're saying is true—I'm not saying it isn't, but as a Senator you must understand that I have a lot of wild claims, and you seem to have the ability to back this up as evidenced by the soul damage. That's inherent just from looking at you. No one comes up to me, but this is not soul damage without a story."

  For the first time, Ludere didn't feel the urge to tell his whole story of how he'd gotten this far. There was something about the way the Senator was not sneering, but not particularly looking happy anyway. He had a perfectly neutral expression on.

  The most likely thing that it could be, would be that the Senator wanted something out of him, and he was going to get some sort of concessions. Some sort of talent for his house. With what he learned so far, and how much he gained, that was going to be highly unlikely. He's been through so much, and the people at the top still wanted to test him before they even gave out a little bit of help. At that point, he could probably wield Will Magic better than the man himself. It's just that he had only been using it to brute force things. He clearly lacked finesse of whatever the man was doing.

  "This is a concentrated construct of Will. This took me months to figure out how to do. But once you do it, you can just send will straight towards your enemies. There's a lot of theoretical knowledge that underpins this, but just understand that I cannot give you the course that will teach you this in the time. And if what you're saying is true, we only have half an hour then we should be evacuating this Arena. I can give you some fundamentals."

  He left the stairway to hang there as the Senator scanned around the arena.

  "I can take some fundamentals from you. Please tell me something, because I've killed hundreds of demons by now. I've nearly cleared a dozen succubi out. Those were difficult to fight, but only because they have skills. Fighting an elite demon is like fighting against a stone wall."

  For the first time since this had all started, the Senator looked taken aback. Of course he hadn't misspoke, but the Senator wouldn't have known that. The average person doesn't kill dozens of demons. If the average person saw a demon during a lifetime, the world would be a terrible place. The Legion kept the city safe, for the most part.Senator Celisar's voice got quiet. "It was all a dream, wasn't it?"

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  "It started out as a nightmare."

  The Senator nodded. He gave a brief summary of what was going on. It didn't matter if the Senator didn't believe him. He could see his soul damage. Even if the soul damage was healing, there was going to be some sort of scar that other people would see. He would need to figure it out. All he saw of the man himself was struggling.

  "Purple flames, you say? Well, that's… That tracks. It's unfortunate that you had to experience that."

  The Senator's concentration looked fairly familiar. It reminded Ludere of when he was doing numbers. He honestly was probably going to be calculating the odds that he would get something out of this. If Ludere knew his Senators, at least.

  "I understand that you're trying to figure out if you should help me or not. Let me just say that I'm here for my friends and other people. I don't want to die at all. I really want to not have to go through this loop again. It looks like there was a mountain of demon flesh between me and there.""A mountain of demon flesh. Truly so eloquent. Would that all heroes of the empire had the command of words that you do."

  "Alas, I am a product of my times. Would that I could even consider speaking to the Emperor's finest."

  "Indeed. So, I am a part of these visions. You've been throwing yourself up against these demons over and over again. I have to admit, I've always wanted to match strength against one of the demonic elites. I never had the chance. All of my time in service was off the front lines."

  Ludere wanted to say something but he wouldn't stop the Senator from talking while he was actually giving information.

  "If you ever get out of this loop please come to a house Esprit. We need men like you."

  Ludere packed that fact away for later consumption. If he ever got out of the loop, he would be doing a lot of talking to some parties. There were a lot of people that would be very interested in skills and he now knew how much they would pay. In fact, he could start interviewing with them on the sly to see who would give the best offer. If and when he actually finished this loop. There was always another loop, and so far, he did as much as he could.

  There was only so much that stubbornness could give him. He needed to outsmart these demons… And getting the Senator to admit that he had a special technique to take him down? That was all part of the game.

  "You need to think about your intent. Think about using your Willpower. It's a dialogue between you and nature. Are you going to just stand there and let nature dictate what you can and cannot do?"

  He nodded. So much of what the Senator was saying did not make an ounce of sense. But he was determined to listen. After about five minutes, he was entirely convinced that he had to speak to a grammarian who had the skill that he had, in order to learn from that person, if he was ever going to catch up. It was either that or brute force the whole thing up, or whatever he could get of it. Getting it to level thirty meant that he had good control, and his fundamentals were strong. That did not mean that he knew how to apply them. It just meant that he had put the reps in.

  He was hoping that the Senator would push him in the direction that would give him what he needed. He wasn't sure if using Willpower in combat made it advance faster, or if just having it around made things easier, but so far it had been both. It was just using it as much as possible in combat felt like he was missing out on something.

  So, too, with Soul Magic, he felt like he understood the fundamentals very well, but he just didn't have a place to point the advanced stuff. He could place his hand on somebody and have them move. This worked exceedingly well against the subject with low willpower or somebody without their own skills that related to it. This meant that both demons could be seized. The effects that he felt after similarly being attacked by it he imagined were felt by others. He wouldn't know about their hangovers, because he couldn't last that long and he definitely did not want to ask Gia about such things.

  Senator Celisar stood. "Ah. It looks like we're going to have to take them out together after all. I'll try to focus on the elites."

  "Allow me to bring everything I've worked for against demons. You just show me how to do this so that I can replicate it later."

  It took almost a minute for him to weave together the concentrated construct of will that he then passed to Ludere. Holding another man's will construct in his hands, Ludere ran like a madman over the walls, jumping clear across to the center of the arena using his own willpower.

  The pure construct held aloft, he landed on the elite's head before pushing the construct into it. The elite tried to pull him off but he was gone before the Will construct detonated.

  A shockwave of Will knocked up dust all around the arena.

  The entire place was dusty, like a sandstorm had kicked up out of nowhere. Which, for all purposes, it had. He couldn't make it settle fast enough. He pushed a cone of dust away, and tried to see where the foot soldiers were coming through, and before he knew it, he found an area where there was no sand and he went in that direction. He praised himself, placing them over his eyes and then looked up, and the world was red.

  Several elites stood there just minding their business as a line of demons that had to be thousands long queued up to enter the gate.

  He had walked through the gate to the demon side.

  Ludere gasped. He had thought that there would be a difference, but here it almost felt better than home. He didn't have enough time to do anything about it as the line of demons in front of him began to break off and attack him.

  "Thank Fiddle for well-maintained spears."