Time passed as Toji got used to his new power, initially, his spiritual energy was largely wasted when he used his mythical creature form, but he began to train partial transformations.
Each time the dense black mist emitted around him decreased slightly in intensity, the result was that not only did the power he could wield increase, but also the amount of spiritual energy expended decreased in slow but steady steps.
During this time, while on leave, Toji didn't remain idle, as Taizai no Machi thrived, Toji tried to understand the workings of its new sequence.
What was a Demon? It's difficult to distinguish between a Demon and a Devil in broad terms, but at least when it came to his potion, Toji began to get some ideas.
If his Devil sequence was about actions, the Demon sequence was about intention. It wasn't about going around massacring and bringing terror, it was subtle, it was about guiding souls to fall.
It was while conducting some tests around the city in recent days that he delved into the general meaning of what it meant to be a Demon, that is, he tested all kinds of people, influencing them to fall into depravity. In fact, it had an effect, perhaps that's why, even without doing anything, just by being the 'owner' of Taizai no Machi, he already felt his sequence progressing, even if at a snail's pace.
This also led Toji to research more deeply, and after some comparisons, he made a new discovery.
Pure souls were very different from 'black' souls in terms of their acting in this sequence, to make a simpler comparison, if he convinced a good person to 'fall', he would advance much further in his sequence than if he convinced a 'wicked' person to fall further.
One was the cake, the other was like the cherry on top, the value of both was easily visible, which frustrated Toji once again.
He had already set aside the ritual of advancement for the time being, he didn't have any good ideas at that point, he could only take it slowly and concentrate on the acting.
However, he preferred acting as the Devil, at least there was no difference between good and evil, he could cause suffering equally, and his actions would advance by leaps and bounds, but now, as Demon, he found himself tempted to act evilly again.
Influencing a criminal couldn't be considered a bad thing for Jugo, but influencing a good person had once again reached that bottom line he insisted on maintaining, so now his options were limited to crossing his bottom line or holding out long enough.
If Toji were a normal Demon, spending several years, even decades, slowly reaping the sins of this city would be irrelevant. The problem was that the great war was at most one or two years away, and he hoped to at least be an angel by then.
He didn't want to wait that long, besides, his acting itself might need his future knowledge to progress, and if he missed an opportunity, he would have to rely on luck to find a similar event in the future.
He hadn't seen Boruto, so he had no idea about the future of the ninja world, and what if some Otsutsuki more powerful than an angel appeared out of nowhere while he was sitting here? It wasn't worth it, so Toji wanted to find a way to cheat again.
To cheat in his previous sequences, he first needed to understand the core of sequence acting, just as he did when acting as an Unwinged Angel.
In recent days, Toji had come to understand more or less what Demon was all about, although there might be other ways he could operate that he didn't understand, for now, he could only work with what he knew.
To corrupt good into evil.
This is the basis of this sequence.
It wasn't a simple, momentary corruption like the previous sequence, Desire Apostle, which only needed to push emotions to the limit for a moment and cause a breakdown in the target's mindset.
He could act as a Desire Apostle, for example, letting a priest break his vows of celibacy, but after he left, that priest could deeply repent and act to redeem himself, that is, he didn't change the priest's mindset, although he did indeed 'fall,' it was momentary, something that could be redeemed.
That wasn't what Toji saw in the Demon's sequence.
What a Demon needed was to make the person fall completely, to totally change their perspective on life. Of course, people change and are influenced all the time by their surroundings and their own willpower, but as long as he could convert the person's mindset at that moment, to the point that without some kind of redemption event, the person would be completely corrupted.
The Demon needed to influence the target to the point of a mindset shift, that was the key to this sequence.
Toji's initial problem was that to reach that level of corruption, especially with significant advancement in the sequence, he would need to act against genuinely good, pure people, changing their minds to become evil.
Initially, Toji couldn't find an entry point, but after a few days of thinking, one of the clones he sent out to lure more civilians to the city had an idea.
In fact, it was chance, a situation that led Toji to reflect on the very nature of this world.
What Toji's clone saw was a boy protecting his younger sister from a rapist. In Toji's clone's view, the boy was completely pure, he couldn't find the slightest sin in him, but when the boy saw his sister about to be harassed, something seemed to click within him.
The boy took out a small fruit knife he was carrying and stabbed the man, again, and again, and again.
The man screamed in pain, begged for mercy, but the boy didn't stop, screaming with all his might as he killed that wretch.
When everything calmed down, the boy had hardly suffered any sin, because despite everything, he acted to save another person, although a little excessive, in Toji's view, his sin was not great.
The problem was the mental aspect, with the mind of the current Toji, that clone could quickly see the rupture. That boy had fallen, it was a milder kind of fall, but he had still fallen. His mentality had completely changed. If the same situation happened again, Toji had no doubt that the boy would make the same decision.
His hesitation had vanished, his bottom line had expanded, now his mindset was: killing to protect is right.