Kaizen walked toward the desk like a man walking to the gallows.
'It's fine. It's fine. Just act dumb. Be the most useless, uninteresting F-Ranker in history. Drool a little if you have to. If I'm boring enough, he'll get tired of me and go summon a succubus instead.'
He had to survive. That was the only quest that mattered.
Klaus stood up and pulled out a chair. It was a polite gesture, but coming from him, it felt like he was strapping Kaizen into an electric chair.
"Sit," Klaus commanded.
Kaizen sat. He slumped his shoulders. He tried to look like his brain was made of wet cardboard.
He looked down at the desk. It was a chaotic mess of leather-bound encyclopedias, star charts, and the parchment with the failed magic circle.
Klaus loomed over him. The Demon Prince raised a hand, his index finger glowing with a faint, violet light.
'I shall transfer the basic runic alphabet into his hippocampus,' Klaus plotted silently. 'I must be careful. His cranial capacity is likely limited. If I upload the data too fast, his head might explode like a ripe melon.'
Klaus moved his finger toward Kaizen's temple. 'Just a small packet of data. The vowels. Perhaps a few consonants...'
Kaizen didn't notice the finger of doom approaching his skull.
He was staring at the paper.
At first, it looked like gibberish. Scribbles. Angry geometry.
But then, his eyes itched.
Bzzzt.
A familiar static noise buzzed in the back of his brain.
The ink on the page shifted.
To Klaus, it was high-tier demonic geometry. To Kaizen... it looked like code.
[ Rendering Magic_Circle.exe... ]
The black ink began to glow.
A stream of blue light started flowing from the top of the circle, moving clockwise like water through a pipe. It was beautiful. Perfect logic. Smooth execution.
The blue light flowed through the first quadrant. It flowed through the second. It hit the bottom.
[ ERROR. ][ Line 404: Logic Break. ]
The bottom rune turned angry, flashing red. The blue light hit the red rune and scattered, fizzling out into nothingness.
It wasn't "mystical forces aligning." It was a typo. A syntax error. A missing semicolon in a line of code.
"That's the problem," Kaizen blurted out.
His hand moved on its own. He pointed a shaking finger at the red, flashing rune at the bottom of the circle.
Klaus froze.
His glowing violet finger was one inch away from Kaizen's temple. He hadn't touched him. He hadn't transferred a single byte of information.
Klaus looked at his finger. He looked at Kaizen. He looked at the parchment.
'I... I haven't done anything yet,' Klaus thought, his aristocratic composure cracking. 'How? How can a primitive F-Rank identify a flaw in Third Circle Geometry? He shouldn't even know which way is up!'
Klaus lowered his hand slowly.
"You..." Klaus narrowed his eyes. "You believe the error lies in the Southern Quadrant?"
"Huh?" Kaizen blinked. The blue and red lights were still dancing in his vision. "Uh... I don't know what a Quadrant is. But that squiggly bit right there? It's... it's blocking the flow."
"Blocking the flow?" Klaus repeated. "You can see the flow?"
"I mean... kinda?" Kaizen rubbed his eyes. "It just looks... stuck. Like a clogged drain."
Klaus stared at him.
'A clogged drain. He compares High Magic to plumbing.'
Klaus grabbed a quill. He looked at the rune Kaizen pointed at. It was the Glyph of Stabilization.
'It looks correct,' Klaus thought. 'But...'
He dipped the quill in ink. He tweaked the angle of the rune by two degrees. He added a small tail to the symbol.
Hummmmm.
The paper vibrated.
The black ink flashed purple. A low, harmonious hum filled the room. The circle wasn't just drawn anymore; it was alive. It was stable. It was perfect.
Klaus dropped the quill.
He stared at the circle in genuine shock. He had spent three hours on this. He had consulted memories of ancient warlords.
And a human boy, who looked like he was afraid of his own shadow, fixed it in five seconds.
"Astonishing," Klaus whispered.
"See?" Kaizen mumbled, half to himself. "It turned blue. Now it loops properly."
Kaizen was in a trance.
He looked up at the stack of books on the desk.
Bzzzt.
They all lit up.
He didn't need to read the titles. He could see the "code" of the books. One glowed with a warm orange light (Fire Magic Theory). Another pulsed with a jagged yellow light (Lightning Dynamics).
It was fascinating. It was like seeing the Matrix. He reached out, his fear momentarily forgotten, captivated by the beautiful, logical system of the world.
"It's just logic," Kaizen murmured. "Input. Process. Output. If the syntax is right, the reality compiles."
He was smiling. For the first time since waking up, he felt in control. He understood this.
Then, he felt a gaze burning into the side of his face.
Kaizen snapped out of his trance. The blue and red lights faded. The books became just books. The magic circle became just ink.
He turned his head.
Klaus was staring at him.
But it wasn't the look of a predator looking at prey anymore. It wasn't the look of an arrogant noble looking at a peasant.
It was the look of a Scientist looking at a new, undiscovered species of bacteria.
It was a look of obsession.
"You..." Klaus stepped closer, his red eyes wide with manic curiosity. "You say you do not know the logic... yet you see the 'code' of the universe?"
Kaizen's smile vanished. His blood ran cold.
'Wait.'
He replayed the last thirty seconds in his head.
'I pointed out the error. I fixed the spell. I muttered about 'syntax' and 'compiling.''
He looked at Klaus's face. The Demon King Candidate was grinning. He was pulling out a fresh notebook. He was uncapping a new pen.
"Fascinating," Klaus breathed. "Truly fascinating. I thought you were a simpleton. But you... you are an idiot savant. An anomaly."
Klaus grabbed Kaizen's shoulder.
"We have much work to do, Roommate."
Kaizen stared at the hand on his shoulder.
'I messed up.'
'I messed up so bad.'
He wanted to be useless. He wanted to be boring.
Instead, he had just become the Demon King's favorite science project.
"I..." Kaizen whimpered. "Can I go buy milk now?"