The Seven Demon's Tamer

Up in the sky, suspended on his floating winged familiar, Master Yuki observed everything unfolding below.

Mia remained beside him, her nervousness evident in the way she kept fidgeting with her fingers despite their seemingly safe position above the battlefield.

"I should at least make the destruction of the Red Eastern Guild honorable and grand," Yuki murmured to himself.

Raising his hand upward toward the night sky, red mist began to flow from his fingertips, swirling and coalescing in the air above them.

It only took a little while for Mia to recognize what Yuki was creating. He was drawing out the logo of the Falcon Guild in the air, using some kind of advanced technique that allowed him to manifest foggy creations from his gamma energy.

The logo itself felt oddly disconnected from the name of the guild—instead of a falcon, the symbol was a dragon.

It was a logo of a humanoid dragon, complete with spread wings and a serpent-like body. Only the wings granted any similarity between the guild name and the guild symbol, given that falcons also possessed wings, though the comparison still seemed off.

It took almost a minute for the mist to materialize into a huge, thick manifestation of the Falcon Guild logo, extending over two hundred meters wide and positioned high enough in the sky for anyone within the Red Eastern Guild's perimeter to see clearly.

The sight was both a representation of pride for the falcons—a declaration of ultimate victory left by him, the orchestrator of this destruction.

Raising his head to observe the sky, Ryder noticed this dramatic display and felt a subtle change that should have been nearly undetectable to most observers by this time of the night. But the moment his eyes fell upon the logo, his pupils hardened with sudden intensity, and his entire body went stiff... with recognition.

He recognized this logo.

This was only the second time he had ever seen this logo, but it was a symbol permanently engraved into his memory. This is a logo he can never forget.

The last time he had seen this dragon-winged symbol was right after he had discovered his mother's body, cold and lifeless in their family home.

At this moment, the scene rushed back to him with absolute clarity—the pool of blood that had been beneath, the terrible silence that had filled their once-warm house, and lastly the envelope.

There was an envelope with this logo, this exact symbol. The envelope that definitely belonged to the assassins that murdered his parents.

The envelope had contained a single sheet of paper with words that he could never forget.

*"Do what must be done if you want to save your father."*

All of this came flooding back, bringing with it all the emotions he had restrained, unleashing them all in an instant.

That was the worst day of his life, a memory he could never let go of no matter what.

The rage and pain that filled him was so pure, so absolute, that it overwhelmed even his fear of the black-marked beasts before him.

His gamma energy began to fluctuate wildly around his body, crackling with an intensity he had never achieved before. The very air around him seemed to vibrate with his fury.

Ryder pointed up to the sky, and everyone's gaze turned toward it, noticing the symbol in the sky.

"Do you have some relation with that?" he asked, his voice deadly quiet, each word carefully uttered despite the rush of emotion raging within him.

"Oh yeah," Valachi responded casually. "That's the logo of the stupid guild that I was assigned to follow by the Dracogon."

The black-marked beast seemed completely oblivious to the change that had overtaken Ryder, continuing in the same dismissive tone.

"They are working for your actual familiar. The familiar you were destined to contract," Valachi spoke in a coded, low tone, as if sharing some great secret.

"They made a deal with the Dracogon," he continued. "The deal is for them to bring you back to the Astra Shadow Plain so the Dracogon can bind with you."

Ryder's fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles went white, small droplets of blood beginning to seep from where his nails dug into his palms.

"In exchange," Valachi continued, apparently still not reading the room, "the Dracogon will permanently subject some of his servants to carry out their will. Quite a trade, really."

"Now do you understand?" Valachi asked, tilting his head forward a bit with what might have been amusement.

"I honestly would have liked to take you to the Dracogon right now by myself, but that would be violating the Dracogon's orders," Valachi added dismissively.

"And unfortunately for me, the Dracogon isn't the type that can be convinced with compensation, no matter what it is. Stubborn as a mountain, that one."

"If I bring you to him unauthorized, he'll kill me, because it was never what I was tasked to do. The Dracogon values obedience above all else."

The black-marked beast's tone remained conversational, almost friendly, as he shared what he clearly thought was reasonable information.

"If he sends us, on the other hand," Valachi spoke, staring at the sky and definitely referring to Yuki Nakamura, "then that would be acceptable."

"Now, if you don't mind, I would like you to select your group. I do not wish to fight you, and I don't know about the others. I am in no place to hurt you, and fighting you seems so... unnecessary."

"I do not wish to fight him either," Draki's voice interjected from behind, the massive creature that towered even above Valachi with its ten feet of height. "I fear the dragon more than anything else. He is our leader and the strongest."

Turning into his two-headed dragon-like creature form, it growled in a low, meaningful manner, suggesting that just like the others, he as well wouldn't be fighting with Ryder. Both heads nodded in agreement, but with their different individual minds.

"Shut up!"

The words exploded from Ryder with such force that they carried a power burst of wind.

"All of you shut up!"

...

Ryder's death glare felt like it could kill. Something had snapped inside of him, something that had eradicated all his fear, and everyone had noticed at this point.

His gamma energy was no longer just fluctuating—it was building, growing stronger by the second, fed by suppressed rage and pain.

The temperature around him seemed to drop several degrees, and the very ground beneath his feet began to crack. His ordinary red eyes now seemed to glow as if lit by something ethereal.

"Don't tell me you are starting to feel cocky because we told you the Dracogon has chosen you," Valachi said, though his tone had lost much of its casual confidence.

"Screw you and screw the Dracogon!" Ryder barked, his voice carrying across the battlefield with such intensity that even the ongoing battles around them seemed to pause. "You all are responsible for my mother's death as far as I am concerned!"

"You all have my father held captive! You all are the reason why I am here, and I am glad I am on the right track!"

"I don't care whether you wish to fight me or not, but I assure you of this—" His voice dropped to a guttural growl that somehow carried more menace as he completed, "you will die by my fist."

"Luxy, I summon you."