Ryuunosuke Uryuu had a strange fascination with death.
Death was the one experience that no living person could truly know.
He also possessed an unusually sharp ability to tell the difference between authentic and fake portrayals of death.
To him, violent and bloody movies were simply laughable.
Both their storylines and visual effects seemed completely childish.
None of these depictions allowed anyone to grasp what he considered the "true nature of death."
While people often argued that fictional violence had negative effects on young people, he found such claims absolutely ridiculous.
If horror movies had shown blood and screams even slightly more realistically, perhaps he wouldn't have become the person he was today.
Nothing was real enough for him. Never real enough. Nothing even came close!
The bright color of fresh blood gushing from arteries, the warmth of internal organs when touched with bare hands, the sensation of pulling them out in one grab.
The victim's pain before death and those desperate final cries.
For him, being a serial killer was simply wonderful.
Nothing felt more authentic than personally taking someone's life.
Most people considered killing a crime, but Ryuunosuke's mind worked differently.
There were over six billion humans on Earth, he reasoned, with several million dying every day.
Compared to those numbers, the few people he killed hardly mattered.
He believed that when he murdered someone, he was helping them fully understand the complete experience of death.
He believed that giving someone a meaningful death was far better than letting them continue a pointless life. The knowledge, excitement, and experience gained from one person's death mattered more.
This wasn't destruction or murder in his eyes. It was creation. Renewal.
He saw himself as an artist.
With this mindset, Ryuunosuke kept killing as he moved from town to town.
The nighttime streets became his hunting grounds, where his victims never suspected any danger until it was too late.
He had killed more than forty people by now, subjecting them to various torture and execution methods from throughout human history.
But lately, even Ryuunosuke had started to get bored. The thrill was fading.
Killing no longer excited him the way it once had.
Hoping to recapture that initial feeling, he returned to his hometown after being away for five years.
While searching through a warehouse there, he discovered an old Western book filled with references to demons, satan, summoning, and so on.
The ritual ended in the quiet of night.
Ryuunosuke had successfully summoned a demon.
In the middle of the circle, which now glowed with bright white light, stood a figure with a strange presence. Even an amateur like him could feel it.
The figure radiated a deep, intense pressure from head to toe—
It was a woman dressed entirely in black, her body covered by a robe.
Though she appeared quite young, her face remained hidden as she kept her head down.
"I wonder what it's like to be killed by a demon," Ryuunosuke muttered happily to himself as he moved closer. "Will I be swallowed whole or torn into pieces? Either way, I think it would be an interesting experience. Definitely not a waste—"
The woman in black slowly lifted her head.
From beneath the hood emerged a rather beautiful face.
She had pale skin and youthful features—she could almost be called a girl.
Her black hair was divided into two braids that rested on her shoulders.
As soon as her amber eyes caught sight of the summoner's face, something changed.
"...Zabaniya..." she whispered.
In that moment, Ryuunosuke felt as if time had stopped.
Did she say something?
It seemed like she did, but he couldn't hear anything...
Suddenly, he collapsed to the floor, all strength leaving his body like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
"It hurts... wow... it's so hot..."
An intense heat spread from deep within his bones throughout his entire body, as though he was being burned alive.
The room around him began to spin violently.
His vision filled with color.
A bright, vivid red.
Everything seemed to transform into a massive river of blood, swirling wildly around him.
"It hurts... what is this? It hurts so much... it's burning—"
The black-robed girl looked down at her Master who lay sprawled on the floor like a puddle of mud, and spoke coldly.
"I won't kill you quickly. I need someone to provide me with magical energy. Try to survive a few more days in this condition."
Hearing these words, he realized she was executing him slowly.
"...Ha, haha."
Strangely, the murderer broke into a childish smile.
Ryuunosuke felt absolutely happy.
He had finally found what he'd been searching for all this time.
This woman he had summoned was clearly the ultimate artist who had mastered every killing technique in existence!
At last, he had rediscovered the pleasure in killing that he had gradually been losing.
If he could stay with this person, life would never be boring again!
"Oh... this is amazing... you must have been... sent from heaven to guide me..."
Overwhelmed with pleasure and satisfaction unlike anything he'd ever felt, Ryuunosuke painfully dragged himself toward the black-robed woman.
The woman simply glanced at him as if looking at a piece of trash, then turned and walked out of the warehouse.
"Wait, please wait... don't leave..." he begged.
Don't go... The purpose for living that I searched so hard to find...
The sound of the sliding door closing echoed through the room as Assassin departed, cruelly extinguishing Ryuunosuke's final hope.
After thirty years of a life filled with sin, just when he had finally discovered something worth living for, he tumbled from heaven straight into hell.
In the darkness, terrible pain ate away at his body while despair slowly consumed his soul.
What awaited him was a torturously long death that seemed as if it would never end.