I’ve tried to read this twice and got bored around the zombies being introduced both times.
This is a pretty generic, ‘gain power to get more power’, and ‘there is always a bigger fish’/‘villain of the week’ setup and it’s disappointing to see.
What this really needed was more restrictions and fewer bad guys.
The contract yourself thing is great. That should have let him get the netherborn thing. That’s all he needed. Netherborn is probably going to be so overpowered at higher levels it makes everything else useless. All the extra abilities water down what could have been a great fear based hero power set.
As for the villains, they are structured like long term, complicated, political ememies. They are treated like villains of the week.
Perfectly disguised demon foxes that have ruled the city for 200 years? Yeah they are being manipulated by a human clan and stop being a real threat at the end of arc one. The human clan? Being manipulated by a village outside city limits. I’m not sure they were ever really a threat. That village? No idea I lost interest I bet it’s dumb.
This needed a genre shift to really shine. This should have been horror/mystery. Or at least mystery/thriller. Tone down the power levels, make the monsters more threatening, start smaller. Only he can see them properly. Humans misunderstanding what he’s attacking should have been his greatest threat for the first arc. There are way too many foxes in that city for them all to be eating free range. There have to be farms. Massive industrial human farms. Where they eat the children, because humans take to long to grow. Pure practicality. Eating adults is something only the rich and influential foxes would get to do.
See how horrifying the foxes get when you add just a dash of practicallity to them? The first 10-20 chapters have so much potential to them.