Rick stood there in a daze, looking on as words continued to appear one after another.

To the Owner

Please standby...

Alternate system detected

Name- Lesser God's System

Do you wish to sync?

His eyes moved about reading the lines once. And then once more.

"Lesser God's System?" he wondered aloud.

Ding

A notification rang, prompting Rick to immediately check it.

[Condition: Name Change]

The Lemegeton is trying to change the name from Evolution System to Lesser God's System.

"Wow," He exclaimed, flashing a sardonic smile. The Lemegeton was renaming the boastful "Evolution" System to be called the "Lesser God's" System!

He accepted the name change and right after a new line of text appeared on the Lemegeton,

Incorporating the Lesser God's System into the Lemegeton…

Please wait…

Simultaneously he received another notification from the Lesser God's System confirming that it was syncing with the Lemegeton.

"It looks like its centuries old, So why does it function as a modern computer," he marvelled, as he ran his fingers across the edges of the grimoire. He glanced at the lines of text on the page, reminiscent of a computer program installation.

"Let’s move on," clearing his heads of those thoughts, he moved his hand to the edge of the page to flip it onto the next.

"What's wrong with this," he burst out. No matter how much he tried, he could not move to the next page, nor the one after. It was as if the pages were glued together.

Shaking his head in frustration, he decided to wait out the syncing before trying again.

"Let's check you out in the meantime," he placed his right hand over the Lemegeton as he inspected the ring on his third finger.

The Signet did not seem to be extraordinary in any sense. At least at first glance, it looked like one that you would find a streetside peddler selling near a beach. Even though he did not see anything outstanding from its looks, Rick was not willing to leave it uninspected, after all it was a Paragon artifact just like the Lemegeton.

"What's the ranking for these artifacts anyway," he shrugged. He had two Paragon ranked artifacts on him, but there was no way to determine how good they were, without anyone there to appraise them.

He ran his other hand across the ring, feeling its surface. The broad ring was cool to the touch, with the dull grey texture of a common rock. At the top, facing out was a tapered crown, and on it the etching of a hexagram star and a dot-shaped mark at its centre.

But contrary to what he had come to expect from the day, nothing happened in spite of touching it, the ring lay on his finger an ordinary ring. He scratched, prodded and rubbed it, but with no results to show.

With the Signet showing no response, he stopped fiddling with, shifting his glance back at the Lemegeton. But there was no change there as well, the last line of the grimoire still read "Please wait…"

"Let me freshen up then," he pushed back the chair and stretched his arms got up from the table for and decided to freshen up. He walked across the room to find a new set of clothes before heading into the bathroom.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Minutes later, Rick walked back into the room,( hair glossy) and a change of clothes.

With a slight sigh, he sat back down on the chair, arms folded, ready to play the waiting game with the Lemegeton again.

More than half an hour passed, with Rick anxiously tapping his foot and fiddling his thumb, when he finally received a new notification he was waiting for. Just as he was checking the single line of notification, he realised the same line appear on the Lemegeton as well, reading,

Synchronization Completed.

Rick's face immediately lit up a wide smile tugging the ends of his lips. The wait was finally over.

"Please be a heaven-defying, amazing treasure that can remove this one-year summoning curse!" Rick prayed. He could not get Sol's warning, gnawing at the back of his head at every walking moment.

His shoulders taut with nervous energy, he quickly turned the grimoire to the next page. To Rick's relief, the next page already had text in it.

This grimoire, Lemegeton belongs to the Owner, Rick Hanique.

The Lemegeton has assimilated the inferior Lesser God's System, with its own system.

Just the first two line at the start of the page was enough to take his breath away. He peered back down again, to read the rest.

The words were in the middle of the page, written in masterful calligraphy.

It read,

The Owner of the Lemegeton is destined for greatness and has the obligation to lead humanity into greatness.

"No thanks. I don't want to be a hero. Let me just have a happy life," Rick mumbled, shaking his head no.

He quickly read through the rest of the lines of text which appeared. He then flipped the grimoire to the next, and the page after. In a short time of a minute, he read the following six pages, before leaning back into his chair, recalling all the information he could glean through the book.

'This must be one of the Lemegeton's powers! If I only had this before the world went to doom, I would ace every exam', Rick smiled as he recalled every word of the pages he had read of the Lemegeton without any deviation.

After reading the next few pages, Rick finally had a cursory understanding about the grimoire. As per his understanding, the Lemegeton had three Parts, Each covering the Lemegeton’s different abilities, summoning, a repository of information and a spell book.

The first part of it was a summoning grimoire. The Lemegeton along with the Signet allowed the Owner to command over the demons of Hell. With the grimoire, he could summon the demons, while the Signet would give him the power to command over them.

Not only that, the Lemegeton could summon almost anything. But Rick had to also be able to control the summoned creature.

The second use of the grimoire was that the Lemegeton was a complete repository of information. It could catalogue anything the Owner wanted information about. And not just any sort of cataloguing, it could analyse and provide information to the Owner in real time. All the owner had to do was point out mentally what information the Owner wanted and provided the owner could comprehend it the information would be displayed.

The only trouble was that, with the change in the environment of the Earth, a lot of information was just not available.

And the third and most obvious use of the Lemegeton was that it was a spell book. It had a record of spells and information on how to create spells and other magical objects.)

“This can be a game changer, if I can uncover its full potential,” he thought aloud.

On his hands was a treasure that more than a few people would probably kill him for.

“I can’t let anyone know about it,” he decided. . He chuckled, “In a lawless world, even possessing treasures beyond one’s ability will be punishable by death.”

“Okay tell me everything you know,”Rick flipped to the next page. but realized the next page was empty.

“What!” he exclaimed.

He quickly flipped through to the next page and then the one after. But to his dismay all the pages after were completely empty without a word written on it. He suddenly panicked. 'What the hell! Is someone trolling me?'

He slumped back on his chair dejected. The grimoire left open on a random empty page.

“Shit,” he cursed.

He was excited thinking he would now be able to find information on summoning and on the Four Kings. But seeing the empty pages, his face turned white with fear.

“I only have a year’s time, I need to know about those damned Kings” he lamented recalling the one year time he had.

Suddenly the pages of the grimoire flipped on its own as if under a gust of wind. Finally it stopped on a random page with text on it.

“There was nothing there before,” Rick was sure of it. But he read it,

The Four Demon Kings of Hell

Aaymon, the King in the East;

Corson, the King in the South;

Zinmar the King in the North; and

Gaap the King in the West.

The Four Kings together command the demon kingdom and its numerous nobility…

Wide eyed he stared at the page.

'You answer when I ask,' he felt enlightened.

Rick flipped to the next page.

There was much more than just that one page. The Lemegeton had provided him with detailed information about the four Kings. “Yup that’s him, Corson,” Rick said as he looked at the vivid sketches of the four Kings. The detail on the picture was to the extent that Rick could immediately address each of them by name now.

“Why are these pages empty,” Rick wondered. There were many parts of the pages empty in between as well.

A single line appeared as he thought this,

The information cannot be accessed.

As page after page of information entered Rick's brain, it immediately imprinted itself into his mind. He could recall any details about the Kings at moment.

But the information was only stored in his memory as if he had rote learned it. He still had to go over it carefully to fully comprehend it

"How do I summon a Demon King?" Rick spoke to the grimoire, hoping his conjecture was right.

The pages again flipped on its own accord to another random page.

"Yes!" Rick voiced, his conjecture was right.

But his happiness was short-lived.

The entire page had only two sentences on its top end,

The first step to summoning is that of inanimate objects.

The information cannot be accessed.

Reading this, Rick felt like grabbing a fist full of hair and ripping it off his head with frustration.

'Fine, fine!' Rick consoled his bruised ego.

"How do I summon an inanimate object?" Rick hissed through his clenched teeth.

A second line appeared on the same page,

The Owner needs to increase his overall Stats.

"And how do I increase my overall stats?" Rick was starting to feel annoyed at the vague answers.

The grimoire again flipped to another page. There too was a single line written.

Fortunately this time he received some useful information.

The optimal training method is to clear Dungeons.

He immediately rejected it.

"Let's keep that as a backup plan for now. What are the other options?" Rick was in no hurry to get into another dungeon. His experience in the library earlier in the day was enough to last him a lifetime.

The second most optimal method by consuming Pills. But overuse of pills have drawbacks.

"Great, that sounds doable", Rick replied, "What the name of the pills? And where do I get them?"

A new line of text appeared,

The information cannot be accessed.

"What the…!" Rick was pissed now. If looks could kill and books could die, the grimoire would have been dead."If I can't use it, why are you even suggesting it?"

It was as if the grimoire was only giving it hopes to crush it later.

Another line of text appeared in response to Rick's curses,

The information is provided to give the Owner the optimal training method.

Rick took a moment to compose himself.

"Please tell me the easiest, safest and simplest way I can increase my stats," Rick reframed his question.

The easiest and safest way to increase stats is through physical training practice.

'Now, at last, I get something useful.' Rick heaved a sigh of relief.

He immediately formed a plan based on the information he received. Rick closed the Lemegeton and tucked it in his jeans pocket. Rick quickly felt his room to look for his sister.

"Hey Sis, you know what I was thinking. Since all this doomsday stuff is going down, I should practice self-defense a little, what do you say?" he asked Samira

Samira raised her chin up from the kitchen counter.

"Are you sure?" Samira questioned back.

"And don't hold yourself back." Rick nodded back a yes.

"Sure, I would love to kick your ass," she smiled back.

Rick was very pleased with his plan. Samira was a black-belt expert and a former junior martial-arts champion. As such Samira was quite an expert in both hand to hand combat and sword fights.

And just like that Rick had a perfect partner to get "combat practice" from.

"Let's start right away," Rick said and rushed to the backyard.

“What’s gotten into you,” Samira was amazed. For as far as she could recall, Rick had always been disinclined towards sport and always stayed cooped indoors.

Samira smiled, removing the apron. She took off her apron and followed Rick to the backyard for a quick spar.

------------------------------------------------------------

An hour later Rick was lying on the living room sofa, groaning in pain.

"You did not have to go so hard on me!" Rick complained.

His back had several bruises on it.

"This was fun! We should do this more often." Samira replied back from the kitchen.

Rick stared back, but kept silent. He knew he probably had to agree to be beaten death by his sister. After all the Lemegeton listed to be the easiest way to increase his stats.

Rick quickly called up his Status Screen.

[RICK HANIQUE]

Strength: 12

Stamina: 9.1

Perception: 2

The increase in his stats made Rick shake his head in anger.

"Easiest method my foot. This way I will get killed before I increase my stats even by a single point this way," he cursed.

The only improvement after the one-sided thrashing session was a 0.1 increase in his [Stamina] stat.

Rick felt tears well up in his eyes as he realised, 'I have to go to a dungeon again!'