Starvation

We decided to evolve Justice first, reasoning that if we arrived at Nero and Alicia’s hometown, told them about all the trouble we’d had with dungeons, and then left, saying, “By the way, we’re off to another dungeon!” it would worry everyone unnecessarily.

(Or, potentially, necessarily, but that wouldn’t make things any better.)

The drops we needed for Justice’s evolution were Dragon scales and either a Soul of Fire or a Soul of Earth. We assumed this meant there was some choice for his evolution.

“Earth,” Justice said when asked which option he’d prefer to pursue. He looked at his hands. “I wish to… protect… everyone.”

Alicia immediately set to plotting out our next adventure. I joined her as Nero’s representative. He’d given in and was sitting outside the clinic for the day, reading with an intense scowl of concentration.

“Alright, there are two dungeons we can use,” Alicia told me. She dropped a thick book onto the table in front of me and opened it to one of two bookmarks. “The first one is located in… well… a cave.”

“Vetoed.”

She grimaced. “Well, I thought so, too, but… You see, the other one is…” She turned the page. “Also a cave. Even if we go outside of Astrea, there aren’t many options if we want a Soul of Earth. Those only drop from high-level Geo Elementals and… um… well, some problematic monsters that we aren’t ready to face. So! Geo Elementals it is! And those only turn up underground, you know?”

“That’s unfortunate,” I mumbled, taking her at her word that we weren’t up to facing the other monsters. I glared at the page. “So? What’re the differences between the two caves?”

Alicia turned back to the first cave’s page. “This one is much deeper. It has Earth Dragons and a Geo Elemental in it, though, so we’d only have to visit this specific dungeon. The monsters are really strong, with high defense and high attack power, but they’re also slow and don’t have any special skills.” She turned to the second cave. “This one, though, only has a Geo Elemental in it as the guardian. The dungeon is short, only ten floors, and about half the monsters are plant-type monsters. They aren’t strong, but some of them have some pretty nasty status effects they can inflict, so we’ll have to be careful. If we choose this one, we’ll have to find the Dragon scales elsewhere… and the closest place for those would probably be at these hot springs. They’re known to attract Fire Dragons. That’s fine. There are always high-level adventurers around there, so we’d have help if we got into trouble.”

She turned to me. “I’m not sure whether we should use the Earth or Fire Dragon scales. The drop is called the same thing either way, it seems, but do you think they might have different effects?”

My eyes widened. Specialization? This was what this world had been lacking! I clasped her hands between mine and bounced excitedly out of my seat. “Please! Can we try and see? Are there any Water Dragons near either cave? Justice doesn’t have any water-related skills, so that should make the effect obvious if there is one. And if it’s a hot springs, you’d think there would be some, right?”

Alicia laughed and shook her head. “Sorry, Luna, but there aren’t Water Dragons anywhere nearby. It sounds like you’d rather do the hot springs option, though, so let's do that.”

I deflated some, but I quickly perked up at the idea that the Fire Dragon’s scales might cause some difference in Justice. I remained behind to look through the records of past summons, trying to see if there were any clear differences.

Although people did record their summons’ evolutionary materials, so that later generations of adventurers could plan for things ahead of time, the information was spotty and incomplete. There was only the first evolution available for me, for instance, and although Heather’s evolutions were all recorded, none of them had any information on the materials. Luckily, Dragonnewts were common enough that I was able to find a trio of accounts. Two had been made with Earth Lizards as the starting summon, and one a Wind Lizard. Looking at the materials, it looked like the evolutionary materials were the same, and they all evolved into Dragonnnewts just the same.

It seemed that one of the Earth Lizards had gone on to evolve from Dragonnewt to Dragon of the Deep, while the other two Dragonnewts had become Dragon Kings. Unfortunately, none of them made any mention of what type of dragon they got their Dragon scales from. I closed the book with a huff.

“What’s the - oh, Luna!”

I started at the familiar voice. “Yuulen, what’re you doing here?”

The leader of Witches Five stood there with Cary, their water mage. Yuulen grinned and gave me a smug smile. “We were summoned by that deepest realm of darkness, the dredges of a past best left forgott-”

“Her mom wanted to see her kids,” Cary said flatly. “She lives in this city, so we’re here.”

Yuulen sighed, looked up pleadingly, and continued, “So what is it that has you frustrated?”

I explained the situation, and Cary groaned before leaving Yuulen with me. Yuulen beamed and tapped her chest importantly. “As it happens, I have studied this very subject! You have high luck indeed to have met me at this time. I will answer your question, and in return, you will supply me with information on your teams’ evolutions! Do we have an accord?”

I didn’t remember her being quite this over-the-top. It was kind of reassuring to know that she could tone it down for serious events. I’d feel bad for her party if she was always like this. “Sure. So? Does it matter?”

Yuulen immediately drooped, looking significantly less excited. “There is some effect in the types of skills a summon learns after the fact, but the determining factor in evolution seems to be a combination of the skills a summon possesses and the path their journey has taken. There are certain dungeons that researchers such as myself suspect cause summons to evolve into rarer forms. By that metric, the specific monsters killed for the evolutionary items are only indirectly related to the type of being a summon becomes.”

I also drooped, and we spent a moment looking similarly dispirited. Then Yuulen cheered back up and added, “However, that dungeon is one of the dungeons I was talking about, or rather, getting hit with some of the status effects in it are.” She pulled out a notebook and waited until I had paper and a pen out as well. “The effects you’ll come up against are Parasitic Infection, Confusion, Aphrodesiac, and Stun.” She waited until I’d written that down, then tapped the second one importantly. “Parasitic Infection is caused by a type of fungus called Cordyceps, and it kills the target, so you normally want to avoid it at all costs. However, there’s a story about a man whose Dragonnewt got infected. It’s in the Adventurer’s Guild’s handbook under the top ten ways no adventurer wants to die, because it’s supposed to be incredibly long and painful.

“Rather than watch his summon succumb to a death like that, the Dragonnewt’s Master fed him some Bloomshrooms. Remember them? Their death is disturbing from the outside, but it’s pretty quick, at least. To his surprise, his Dragonnewt didn’t die. Instead, he got the Symbiotic Infection status. It seems that Cordyceps and Bloomshrooms infections held each other in check. He lived for several more years, and when he evolved, he became a Dragonshroom.” Yuulen put her notebook away. “Now, I’m not suggesting you tell Justice to get intentionally infected. It’s said to have been incredibly unpleasant until that Dragonnewt evolved, and it wouldn’t be ethical in the least. However, if the worst happens, then definitely don’t hesitate to go for a mercy killing. It works for some other summons and humans, too, even if there’s no record of it affecting any other evolutions.”

“I don’t think he wants to be a Dragonshroom,” I admitted. It was useful information, but I couldn’t see Justice wanting to become anything with shroom in the name.

Yuulen shrugged. “Fair enough. It’s interesting, though, right? I’ll tell you about more incidents next time we meet. I should go find Cary now. We’re supposed to meet up with my twin pretty soon.”

I waved goodbye to her and returned upstairs to our inn room.

As expected, Nero’s reaction to learning we’d be heading to a cave dungeon again wasn’t ideal. Even so, he gamely accepted the decision. We decided that we’d spend a couple of days restocking before heading out.

I was, for some reason, dreaming about two men making out.

I watched, perturbed. They were both very attractive men, I supposed, by your average person’s metrics. That didn’t change the fact that I had no idea why I was dreaming about them at all, let alone dreaming about them kissing each other. Who even were they? One of them looked like some sort of prince. He had bright blue eyes and black hair tied back into a low ponytail with a golden ribbon. The other was his opposite, with silvery-white hair and dark brown eyes.

Their session got more heated, and I looked away, feeling uncomfortable. What the heck was my subconscious doing, showing me this? It felt like voyeurism.

“Sol… Do we have to keep this up?” one asked. I couldn’t help it. I peeked. To my relief, they’d stopped approaching R-rated territory and were now leaning against each other comfortably, watching the sunset. Which I hadn’t even realized was there until just then, but that was how dreams went sometimes.

The white-haired man sighed. “I’m sorry. Right now, anyone finding out would be…”

“I know.” The black-haired man shook his head. “You’ll tell me, right? The second it’s off for sure?”

“...yeah.”

Not only was I dreaming about someone else’s romance, but it was a doomed romance? What the hell was wrong with my brain?

Suddenly, the dark-haired man stiffened. His partner froze, like someone had pressed pause on him. The dark-haired man twisted to look past his partner and straight at me. His blue eyes narrowed, becoming red. “What are you doing here, servant?”

I blinked. Squinted. Only one person called me that. “Fyth?”

His form shifted, becoming the appearance I knew, and the other man disappeared. “Who else?”

“You can’t expect me to see some random guy and assume it’s you,” I complained. I wasn’t about to start assuming every unknown man with black hair was secretly Fyth. “Anyway, isn’t that my line? What were you and… whoever that was doing in my dream?”

Fyth studied me, evaluating my words, then sighed and held out his hand expectantly. I stared at it, then at him. He shook his hand slightly, and when I still didn’t move, he reached out and grabbed my hand and pulled it up to examine. “This will hurt,” he said curtly.

He immediately drove a nail into my wrist, between the bones, ignoring my scream. He pulled his nail back out and released me. I healed myself while he licked his finger thoughtfully. “I see. I suppose I bear part of the blame for this invasion of privacy.”

“And you gathered that from stabbing me?” I asked irritably.

He looked at me and frowned. “Did I say you could heal yourself?”

“What? No, but -”

Naturally, he was the kind of asshole who stabbed me again. I gritted my teeth through it. “What was the point of that?”

“Look,” Fyth said.

I did, ready to yell at him, but then I stopped. My blood was darker than it should have been, and it wasn’t flowing properly. I brought my wrist closer, trying to figure out what about it, exactly, bothered me so much.

“It’s my ichor.”

“Ichor?” I blinked. I’d heard the word before in stories, usually edgy ones where some godlike being granted some lesser being their blood as a power-up. Was that the actual meaning, though, or was it just a cool-sounding word?

Fyth pressed his fingers together, and a familiar black substance flowed out from the resulting circle. He caught some in his other palm, released the circle, and held out the palmful of liquid. “My body is largely made up of this. Regardless, it should not have remained in your blood for so long. Have you been starving yourself?”

“Starving myself?” I asked, baffled. “Of course not!”

Fyth studied me carefully. He abruptly picked me up, ignoring my shouts and kicking, and pressed his face against my neck, breathing in deeply. He repeated it, taking noisy breaths that were frankly humiliating, before he set me down. “When was the last time you had blood?”

“Um… on the way back to Etrea?” I guessed. “I caught a rabbit.”

“...a rabbit. What was the last time you had human blood?”

I blinked. Although I hadn’t purposely done anything wrong, I was immediately certain he was going to be furious with my answer. “Never?” I could have asked Nero. I was sure he’d have agreed. It just had never occurred to me. I had the rat the first time, and then I never looked back.

The dream abruptly ended. I opened my eyes and sat up, but it wasn’t me. My body hurt. It felt like I was burning up and too full and freezing from the inside out all at once. I tried to cry out, but my body didn’t react. It left the room, descended toward the first floor, and looked around. It sniffed and headed out the door, sniffing regularly as it did. Slowly, I realized it was following a scent. Even more slowly, I realized that I knew who it was tracking. Mathew.

My body knocked on the door to an apartment that smelled heavily of Mathew, and after several minutes, he finally opened it, looking half asleep. The moment he saw my body, though, he woke up. He let me in and got his glasses.

“How can I help you, Luna?” he asked.

“My servant requires blood.”

I wasn’t honestly sure whether it was to Mathew’s credit or not that he understood what was going on faster than I had. That uncertainty was probably tied to the way he leaned forward excitedly. “Would I be correct in assuming I’m speaking to Lord Fyth?”

Lord? I repeated incredulously. I struggled against Fyth’s control. If this continued any longer, my body would start to break down.

My body gave him a look that was far too imperious for such a tiny frame. “You will speak of this to no one.” Fyth wasn’t even kind enough to ask permission. I suppose he thought that announcing his intentions was good enough. He grabbed Mathew’s arm and bit down into it without any care.

All fight went out of me. I understood immediately why Nero couldn’t bring himself to live off animals the way I did. The world swam with the heady pleasure of the most delicious ambrosia to have ever existed. If I had experienced this taste first, I wasn’t sure that I’d have been able to stomach anything less either.

I just about passed out.

Fyth caught me. He didn’t smile. He didn’t smirk. He didn’t even frown. He just gave me a painfully neutral look. “Servant. Do not make me do that again.”

I nodded dumbly. An absurd urge to cry welled up in me. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t respond. He just disappeared.

Slowly, reality faded back in, and I saw Mathew pressing a towel against his arm. I took a breath, smelled the scent of his blood filling the room, and sighed. “Blessing.”

“Oh, you’re back. Thank you, Luna.” Mathew smiled dreamily. “I can’t believe you were able to contain a Demon Lord, even for a little while. I can’t believe a Demon Lord drank my blood. I may never wash this towel again.”

“Uh, no, please do,” I said automatically.

Mathew laughed giddily. Maybe I should give him a break. He was doubtlessly suffering from blood loss. “So, Luna, how does it feel? Is the taste different? What prompted this? Has Fyth ever possessed you before? What did that feel like?”

I immediately felt stupid for having given him the benefit of the doubt. “What do you know about ichor?” I asked, since I may as well get some use out of his obsession.

Mathew hummed. “It’s not something I’ve heard of, I’m afraid.”

Oh. That was surprising. “I see. Well, thank you for your assistance. I’m going to head back.”

“You should really stay here,” Mathew said. He gestured toward my body. When I looked down, I winced. I was covered in blood. He smiled his ‘normal’ smile. “I’ll have Matt call Nero over.” To my surprise, the sparrow I’d seen disappear into Nero’s shadow popped out of Mathew’s, accepted a note from him, and dove back into the shadows. I needed to learn to do that. I browsed the Skills Store for it.

“Luna!”

The door slammed open. Nero stood there, panting. When he spotted me, he charged over. “Are you okay? What’d he do to you? What…” His words slowed and lost steam. Then, to my shock, he lunged toward Mathew. I grabbed Nero’s shoulders and shoved one bloody finger into his mouth, ignoring the way his sharp canines bit into my finger. It wouldn’t satisfy him, but I hoped that he would come to his senses.

There is something wrong with you. Fyth commented suddenly.

With me? What about Nero? He just went crazy!

Fyth’s voice was dry. That is the normal reaction for a starved Demon presented with fresh human blood. The fact that you are sitting there, absolutely fine, is abnormal.

I didn’t understand at all. Yes, it smelled good, and yes, it tasted amazing, but I didn’t feel any kind of urge to go obtain more.

There was a knock at the door. Mathew went to answer it, and Nero relaxed. Reason returned, and he released my finger and took a shuddering gasp. “Oh god, I’m sorry. I didn’t… Thanks, Luna, for stopping me.”

“Mm.” I wasn’t sure how to respond.

Mathew returned, holding a sealed container. “I sent Matt to ask Straits to get me some blood for you,” he said as though it was a perfectly reasonable thing to be able to ask for and immediately obtain. Maybe my incredulity reached him, because he gave me that smile and explained (as Nero desperately gulped down the blood without any hesitation), “You aren’t the only Demons in the Guild, though no, I won’t be telling you who they are. We expected this to happen sooner or later.”

That was what led to the first time I actively went looking for Fyth. Which, honestly, mostly involved me shouting his name in my mind repeatedly the next night until he finally got irritated enough to drag me into the void he called home. “What?” he snarled. “Do you have any idea how annoying that is?”

Yes, I did. My daughter used to do it to me all the time. That’s why I knew it would work. “Why didn’t you tell me that it needed to be human blood?” I demanded.

I couldn’t see his eyes, but I was nonetheless positive that he rolled them. “I have done this more times than I can count, and you are the first to ever need that explained to them. It’s an instinct. A basic need. Does a human need to be told to eat? To sleep? To reproduce? No. Because they are basic needs, instincts all humans possess.”

I stopped, all my indignation at his omission draining from me. “Oh.”

“Oh,” he said, mockingly.

I understood now, I thought. I sighed. “Thank you for the explanation.” I felt deflated and, for the first time in a long time, defective.

Fyth stalked closer and bent low to study me. “You gave up rather quickly, servant.”

“It just makes sense now. Can I go?”

He cocked his head curiously. “I expected you would have questions about what you saw the other night,” he said abruptly.

I shrugged. I didn’t feel up to more conversation. “I figured it related to the 'not bringing up stuff about your identity' thing.”

He hummed, sounding displeased. “Fine.” He waved a hand and sent me away.

And yet the next night, I was back. “A servant should take an interest in her owner,” he announced.

I stared at him. Sighed. “Alright, then, who was that?”

“It is none of your business, servant,” Fyth said.

I was seriously going to murder him.