Awakening to a parched throat is far from pleasant, more so when you weren't sure if there was water nearby. Crawling out of the alcove to see the sun rising over the forest, taking my time to properly look at the trees I see that instead of leaves they are covered in drooping needles which remind me of home.

  "Red did you know this forest would be a nostalgic sight?"

  "No, didn't look too much into your past." A smug voice responds

  Surprised my head darts around looking for my employer but to no avail, he doesn't seem to actually be here.

  "Calm down, I've just come to tell you to pick up the pace. It may come as a surprise to you but half of the top ten have been filled, I shouldn't remind you that you need to be among them." I can audibly hear his grin. "Oh, and another slot taken... Times ticking"

  I wait a few more minutes but the silence remains he must have departed. Getting up I start hiking up the mountain more to try and find some water.

  I stop about a quarter up the mountain where the steep slope starts becoming more of a wall and the looming mountain becomes ridden with shear cliffs, turning from the walls of stone I spy what seems to be a lake to the North of the mountain at least a few kilometers. Circling the mountain northwards in search of a river I manage to find a small stream after a couple hours, filing my parched gullet with huge gulps I find some comfort.

  I'd procured some food and found a water source that hopefully won't kill me along with a shelter I had a little time to work for Red, should I fail he said I'd gain more power. Giving me more doesn't sit right with me, in fact it makes my hunch about this contract even more solid.

  I wander back to my humble abode having missed it a couple times as I hadn't really set any proper landmarks to make it easier to find. The fire outside had long burnt out leaving me with naught but charcoal and ashes, an annoyance as I wasn't keen on having to start another fire but finding water was worth it. Being of a first world constitution the idea of eating spiders was unpalatable to say the least and I'd heard bugs go bad quickly after death making the corpses of these oversized spiders less appealing. Using a branch covered in the needles as a makeshift broom I sweep the spiders and dirt outside, unfortunately the branch shed some needles and wasn't the best at getting out dirt, but my little alcove was a little more homey.

  Near the back wall I start trying to copy the rune displayed in the book using some charcoal from my first fire. I had overestimated the challenge that drawing could be, my lines were messy and the small lettering merged together, not even mentioning how the swirling spirals looked like a bunch of tangled knots rather than some intricate spellwork. The book doesn't say the next step but I suspect that mana must have something to do with it so I try something. Pressing my hands against the rune I will the heat from my core through my arms and into the rune, at first nothing happens, then I think I feel the heat moving but nothing still happened. I change my image from heat spreading through my arms to picturing and inferno streaming through a tunnel and suddenly I feel a burning sensation in my core, the burning builds up till it feels like I'm on fire before suddenly rushing down my arms and out of my hands into the rune.

  The rune glows Red for a few seconds before fading back to black smudges, the charcoal drawing seemed nothing but a blur lacking any and all linework I'd actually managed to put in. My chest starts feeling empty and all my energy leaves me, I collapse onto the stone floor, lethargic and unable to lift even a finger.

  "I felt something there, you really are stupid. Can you even talk? Doesn't matter" The Smug bastard offers freely. "I commend you actually attempting your task even after turning down the offer of the system, you know some are already reaching level 15 whilst you are just still you."

  He crouches down in front of my head so I can see his smug grin plastered over his face. "You know the deal and unfortunately you failed to make the top ten in this first task, you'd actually activated this little circle in time but it failed and another took the last slot. I hope you know what that means..."

  He explodes into a puff of embers and like that he's gone as if he was never here, but I'm not given time for much more thought. My right hand starts throbbing painfully and I can see massive bulging veins spreading from the scars left from his handshake, the veins spreading like vines up my arm to the shoulder felt like someone was pouring lava through my veins. After settling into place the throbbing stops and the burning begins, it feels as though my arm is melting and I watch in horror as the skin turns crimson and cracks becoming and a thick leather. After what felt like an eternity of agony I get up and look at my new arm, it's not much bigger nut I can feel power coursing through it, even feeling as though I could crush diamonds within my clawed fist. Clawed? I've got claws instead of fingertips now, the black curved claws look sharp to the touch testing them gently on my other normal arm they prick the skin quite easily. I can even feel energy flowing from the arm back into my core, filling it back up beyond my previous capacity.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  A cold seeping feeling grabs a hold of my chest from my core, it feels as though my chest is starting to freeze and go numb, it even feels as though my heart has stopped. After a long minute of cold and numbness warmth returns and everything restarts, my core now feels as if it has much more energy churning within then before. I get up groggily and have some more of the wolf meat, as I chew at the overly cooked hunk of meat I watch the corvids eating at the spider pile. The black birds see me but don't really react too much must be used to humans?

  Having finished my meal I go back to the rune and reattempt to draw it, this time going twice as slow and thrice as focused on making sure everything was right. I had to erase and redraw it 5 times before it seemed good enough, I then tried pouring energy into it the same as before and the energy burst forth through my transformed arm far easier than before. The rune begins to glow a bright red before settling down to a slight dim glow, after watching it for a while and seeing no change I try pouring even more into it and the rune hungrily drinks it down till I'm almost dry and then it plateaus. A rift of swirling red opens above the rune, the rift itself is only about a meter in circumference which spits out a small red humanoid possessing rough red skin, long black horns and claws. Shortly after depositing the red critter the rift vanishes along with the glow from the rune.

  "I'll deem thee imp" I state to the small red thing.

  Hearing my voice it stares at me with it's pitch black eyes and bares it's crooked fangs shortly before lunging at me, instinctively responding I punch it with my dominant hand which happened to be my changed right arm. As the fist makes contact with it's bulbous skull, it just gives way and crumples into a mess of broken bones and flesh. The body of imp smudges the charcoal that was used to bring it here.

  "Disappointing" An angry voice booms in my head, making it feel as though it was trying to split me apart. "You summoned one of mine only to kill it, you've brought great waste upon you for you see the next step you are to undertake was to build a horde threescore and a dozen strong."

  I am still clutching my head in pain as he continues his tangent "The first summon is typically the most important as you can dedicate the most time to developing them into a second in command that alleviates responsibilities and eases the toll on controlling the others as the hierarchy forms. Knowing this in my generosity I tend to lend my contractees with greater quality summons as the first, that one you killed was a one in a hundred specimen with a higher growth potential then standard. Now you are only going to get the runts till you prove trustworthy, you're days behind your competition and that charcoal circle is terribly inefficient, the next deadline will be missed and the deal is still in effect."

  After depositing that information the voice goes silent and the headache recedes I am left alone with the corpse of what was to be my first minion and a ruined summoning rune. "The charcoal smeared so I'll need something that won't, but my drawing materials are very limited." my focus returns to the corpse slowly leaking blood, "The book!"

  I prop the book under the corpse and it hungrily drinks the imps blood, turning to the new information after thee book had finished it's glutenous feast I see that it mainly covers how the first summon typically goes. The lesser demons aren't very intelligent and value strength so where the hierarchy is unclear they challenge in order to find their place, system worlds with levels typically remove the need for fighting when the level disparity is high enough "I'm not a part of a system, does that mean I seem weak?"

  Continuing through the page on summoning I see a line that seems incredibly useful but vague "The summoning rune must be applied to a surface in order to perform the summoning" applied, it doesn't specify drawn, maybe carving into the alcove floor might work?

  After resting for the night I reattempt creating the rune this time using a claw of mine, I've never carved stone before and it took a lot of practice but after an entire day I seem to have made a rune on par with the first successful one. I pour mana in and it drinks it in, consuming twice as much as the last summon and the imp that comes through is scrawny compared to the last, it seems as though Red was telling the truth about runts.

  "Hello imp" Same as the last imp this one immediately lunges at me, this time expecting such an action I catch it by the throat and throw it against the stone wall. Shortly after bouncing off the wall the imp gets up and kneels to me "Do you understand me?" It just tilts its head to the side responding to the sound but giving no further sign of understanding.

  "This'll be a pain"