Papers sprawled across the desk beside the journal, each one a different variation of the formation etched into the floor behind him. Theon's eyes skimmed over the diagrams, their complexity dizzying. Even if he spent days—no, weeks—studying them, his current self wouldn't be able to grasp their underlying principles. Not at a glance, and certainly not in the limited time he had.
Yet, scrawled in the margins were simpler instructions, notes left by the scientist for his less brilliant subordinates. Those, at least, Theon could follow.
With only a moment's hesitation, he set to work.
The southern quadrant of the formation had been obliterated, its runes eroded by time, but between the scientist's final blueprint and his personal annotations, reconstruction was possible. Plausible, even.
Though Theon's thought process wasn't nearly as one-dimensional as "doing it because he could".
Firstly, from his understanding, contracted demons could not harm their summoners, not directly at least. Though the demon summoned would be powerful enough to potentially topple the entire Sylvian Empire and undergo a revolution, there was a limit to its level of existence. A second planar world could barely sustain a third planar existence, not to mention anything above that, so it was impossible for Theon to summon a demon that could trample on the laws of the summoning contract and harm him, at least not directly.
Second—and far more pressing—Theon was lost. Truly, profoundly lost.
Surviving on this planet wasn't the issue; he had enough water from the natural springs, and at this point he could hunt the quadriceps he had seen earlier for feed. Moreover, he was confident in his ability to combine the contingency plans of the Sylvian Empire and their technological advancements with his growing mastery of Lu. He could live here, possibly even thrive, for an extended period.
But survival wasn't enough. He needed to return home.
And the only way for him to return home was a being of enough power.
A demon.
And he needed to do it now.
As much as Theon would have preferred to completely ransack every last secret hidden in the Empire's ruins, the death-Lu released by the abomination—the same energy now feeding the formation—was already dissipating. If he wanted a demon strong enough to send him back, he had to act now.
Before it was too late.
Theon completed the skeletal framework of the formation and turned to its beating heart—the runes.
This was no ordinary array. A compound formation, it wove multiple effects into a single design, each function governed by its own central rune, all bound together by a lattice of supplementary sigils. Their purpose? Harmony. Stability. A flawless convergence of power.
He started with the supplementary runes. Their failure would be less catastrophic than the central ones, and their reconstruction—though worn by centuries—wasn't particularly difficult with the scientist's blueprints in hand.
His hands moved with practiced precision, his mind slipping into a flow state. Clarity sharpened. His strokes became instinctive, guided by something beyond mere understanding. The runes unfolded before him, their logic unraveling in his mind like a scroll long kept sealed.
He had studied countless formations in the database—simple arrays for shielding, energy amplification, structural reinforcement. But this? This was different.
Its complexity lay not in sheer volume but in interconnection. Three, perhaps four sub-formations intertwined, each feeding into the next without waste, without the clumsy secondary arrays most grand designs required. Every line, every curve, was optimized—elegant in its efficiency.
The deeper he worked, the more the formation revealed itself. Lu flowed smoother under his touch, his motions growing fluid, almost predictive. He wasn't just replicating a dead man's work anymore.
He was learning.
Unnoticed by him, the runes began to glow, faint but undeniable. The air stirred, thickening with an unseen presence, as if the room itself had taken a breath—and held it.
The further he delved, the more he realized how much room there was for improvement. He could already see areas where the design could be pushed further. The interaction between the supplementary and central runes was good, but there were inefficiencies in the energy transfer. If he could adjust the angle of some lines, maybe widen a few circles, he could reduce the strain on the system, allowing even more energy to flow through.
"Compared to the formations I saw in the database…. This one is near limitless." he mused, his mind racing with possibilities as he felt himself on the cusp of a realization.
Yet as Theon's mind surged with excitement, a moment of clarity cut through the euphoria, sobering him.
There was no reason to risk his life for a moment of reckless bravado. Only a fool would do so.
No matter how intoxicating the insight, no matter how right the adjustments felt—this wasn't the time for ambition.
He steadied his breathing, refocusing. "I need to stick to the plan. The summoning is already volatile enough. Pushing this formation beyond its original limits is reckless."
Though it was the right choice, there was an undeniable weight to the decision. The profound energy that had seemed to radiate from him moments before dimmed, like a flame snuffed before it could blaze to its fullest. As soon as he made the decision to cut his excitement short, he felt his mind numb, his thoughts and ideas towards formation coming to a grinding halt. But his further comprehension didn't matter, he had understood what he needed to to finish the summoning formation.
Moving onto the central runes, Theon first began with the central rune based around drawing in energy from the atmosphere. It was a complex rune, resembling a vortex with additional lines creating a symmetrical shape. As soon as it was done, the supplementary runes relating to the rune gained a golden sheen as they began to glow.
Next, he turned to the second central rune, the one that would draw energy from the Sylvian Empire's [Project Ash] formation. This rune was similar to the first—a vortex—but with an additional point, a subtle marking designed to target Lu absorption. Theon's movements had become fluid, each flick of his wrist more graceful than the last. As the final line connected, the formation's hum deepened, thickening the air until it vibrated against his skin.
Then came the demon summoning rune.
Where others held elegant symmetry, this sprawled in deliberate chaos. Intersecting circles and jagged triangles formed a mad architect's blueprint. Four peripheral rings housed inverted triangles, their points jutting at impossible angles. Each stroke drained him further - where the first rune took minutes, this demanded thirty agonizing ones.
As he traced the lines, fatigue began to set in. His hands, which had been so sure and steady, now trembled slightly. The formation's resonance grew stronger, and with it, the strain on his body. Every stroke required focus, every line demanded precision.
As Theon finished up the central runes, he began to realize the power of the [Ouroboros Ring]. Not only did his Lu flow extremely precisely and exactly as he wished, it took away the main effort of him needing to control the volume as it carefully filtered the Lu to perfectly make the formation.
As the final rune fell into place, the entire formation began to resonate at a frequency that was almost deafening. The room shook violently, loose debris rattling as the glow from the runes intensified. What had started as a soft golden hue now twisted into a sickly black, spreading outward from the center like ink bleeding into water.
The formation was complete.