Chapter 1 A Beginning

The long night was not yet over, but the ancient castle had finally welcomed a moment of peace—or at least it sounded peaceful.

However, if anyone saw the scene in the castle's central courtyard, they probably wouldn't be so calm.

The great demon, over five meters tall, was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the courtyard. Even sitting down, Hao Ren felt like he was looking up at a giant. The flames and lava constantly bursting from the demon's body turned the surrounding area within a radius of dozens of meters red. The pile of stones beneath him had partially turned into magma, as if the demon were sitting on a lake of lava. Hao Ren and the demon had already confirmed each other's identities, and the former had even double-checked with his data terminal. The heart-stopping task was now successfully completed.

The result filled Hao Ren with a sense of unreality.

"My name is Izaaks," the demon said, subconsciously leaning his upper body forward when speaking to Hao Ren. This was a sign of politeness, but it forced Hao Ren to jump around to avoid the splashing flames and slag. The demon's voice sounded like thunder, mixed with crackling sounds, and the demonic language was difficult and complex. Without the data terminal's powerful translation function, Hao Ren would have been completely unable to communicate with this giant. Izaaks's Chinese was like Japanese-accented English. "Nice to meet you, sorry for the disturbance—I heard this is how you greet people here."

A bead of sweat trickled down Hao Ren's forehead (actually, he was constantly sweating; it was too damn hot near the demon). He thought to himself that this intimidating giant was actually quite easy to talk to. He really didn't know how that magical raven had found such an oddball. Then he nodded to the demon who called himself Izaaks: "No problem, no problem, just call me Hao Ren. Uh, did Raven 12345 tell you about the other stuff?"

The demon seemed to give a wry smile. "She did, she told me everything. I know the situation here. Don't stand so far away, I don't eat people… I know demons aren't exactly welcome in most worlds, but you don't have to be like that, do you? You're an inspector."

"Why do you seem more familiar with the word 'inspector' than I am? I only just took office," Hao Ren said, looking at the demon strangely. "It's not that I'm afraid you'll eat me, it's just that the temperature around you is too high…"

The demon chuckled thunderously. "Haha, interesting. I had some dealings with the Xi Ling God System and received some help from them before coming here, so I know a little bit. Let those two little girls over there come here. Don't look so wary. I'm not dangerous. I just want to find a place to live quietly. Just give me a place to stay."

Hao Ren looked at the great demon's face in surprise. From that obsidian-like, rugged face, he really couldn't see much ferocity (he had been startled when they first met and subconsciously felt intimidated), and the demon's voice sounded somewhat melancholic. Based on what he said about "receiving some help from the Xi Ling God System," it seemed like something had happened to this guy before he came here? But this wasn't something Hao Ren should be concerned about now. He turned to Vivian and Lily and waved. "Alright, you two come over here. Vivian, put away your bats. Lily, put down your brick—that thing is called a city wall brick, not a board, okay? It's over a meter long!"

Lily casually tossed the multi-ton boulder aside with a loud crash, then carefully approached with Vivian. Neither of the two supergirls could understand the demon's words, but they had roughly guessed what was going on from Hao Ren's conversation with him. Vivian looked at the burning giant with surprise. "This isn't our new neighbor, is it?"

"That's him. His name is Izaaks. Looks like he doesn't speak human languages. I'll ask Raven 12345 when I get back if she can install the translation program for all of you, then you can communicate smoothly."

The demon noticed Hao Ren pointing at him while introducing him and immediately grinned at Lily and Vivian, revealing a smile of over a thousand degrees Celsius, which made Lily's tail hair stand on end.

"...Is he speaking Demonic?" Vivian looked at Izaaks with a strange expression. "I've dealt with demons before, and I can speak their language. It's not like this. This sounds… like a tape being played backwards, I can't understand it at all."

When Hao Ren heard this, he also felt a little strange, and coupled with the accident that happened when Vivian tried to seal the demon stone before, he suddenly became curious about this Izaaks.

"Oh, I'm from another world," Izaaks answered rather straightforwardly. "Not another planet, but another universe, with a considerable 'distance' from your universe, but the physical constants are highly consistent. It's just that the planet I lived on was a little bigger than your planet, and the gravity was also stronger, but it doesn't matter, it doesn't affect me much."

Then the demon saw that Hao Ren didn't speak for a while, and added a few sentences: "Actually, I was initially arranged to another shelter in your universe, about twenty billion light-years away from Earth, but I didn't like the high oxygen content there, so I was sent to your place."

Hao Ren's mouth was open for ten seconds before he finally couldn't stand the overwhelming sense of incongruity and said with a strange expression: "What… I understand what you mean, but why are you talking like this? You should say you're from another plane or another dimension, summoned to this world by Raven with some kind of magic, the elemental power in the two places is similar… I think that's how a demon like you should talk. You're a demon, a legendary race, okay…"

Izaaks scratched his head in confusion, scratching off a large patch of sparks. "Why would I talk like that? It sounds pretty stupid, and it's not very rigorous. It's a bit like the way people in my world spoke in hero novels a thousand years ago."

Hao Ren: "...I just feel it's really incongruous to hear a magical creature say words like planets and light-years."

Izaaks shrugged. "But we discovered that our planet was a sphere a thousand years ago."

Hao Ren: "..."

Alright, it seemed that this issue wasn't suitable for further investigation. Hao Ren felt that he should remember and adapt to one point: anything related to the Xi Ling God System wasn't based on normal settings!

Hao Ren turned his head and explained Izaaks's origins to Vivian. The vampire girl was immediately surprised. She had previously felt that even the concept of aliens was very novel. Now she was actually seeing a creature from another universe, and she immediately felt that the world was unprecedentedly broad. Lily next to her was more calm: she didn't understand.

In fact, Hao Ren's surprise at this time was no less than Vivian's. After all, even with the badge of "Space-Time Administration Employee" hanging on him, he hadn't even come into contact with real time-traveling. It would be a lie to say that he wasn't surprised when he heard Izaaks was from another universe. It's just that he had to work hard to maintain his image as an expert in front of the two inhuman beauties, at least maintain a calm image—they were both employees of the Space-Time Administration, and he couldn't be like a bumpkin who had never seen the world when he saw a foreigner.

"I don't think this is the place to continue talking." Hao Ren still wanted to chat with the demon for a few more words to learn more about this guy's situation, but he finally noticed the faint white appearing on the horizon and immediately realized that he had been delayed in this ancient castle for an entire night, and that sooner or later some random people would notice the anomaly here, so he quickly stood up and said.

In fact, he was very worried that someone would notice it now. After all, the phenomena of Izaaks's arrival and Vivian's tossing around had been quite loud, but now he had no time to think about these trivial troubles—he had to find a way to transport this Izaaks back!

Hao Ren looked up at Izaaks, who was taller than the house even when sitting down, and then looked at the two inhuman beauties in the form of beautiful girls next to him, and immediately felt sorrow from his heart: "How am I going to transport you back!"

That Raven 12345 hadn't told him that his new tenant was a humanoid volcano five meters tall! He didn't know if it was still possible to temporarily grease some palms, contact an international smuggler, and charter a giant container, but even if it was possible, it would be useless. Look at the fact that the ground under Izaaks's butt was almost becoming a magma pool. What level of container could withstand this guy?

As a result, Izaaks just smiled calmly: "Oh, that's simple."

As he spoke, the great demon's body quickly shrank, and the flames and magma surrounding him slowly converged and deformed, until he transformed into a burly giant nearly two meters tall.

"See, isn't that done?"

Hao Ren: "...Why didn't you say you could transform earlier!"

"Well, you didn't ask."

Hao Ren: "..."

(Been out all day...completely unable to write, can only use the saved drafts to hold on, don't know how long I can hold on for. Will be updating once a day recently, mainly to save up drafts for when it goes on sale, I don't want the tragedy of running out of content as soon as it goes on sale to happen=.= Please understand, maintaining the double update for a month while taking driving lessons is completely burning out my energy.)