Swampy journey

"At this point, I'm really not sure which one of you two has disappointed me more. You Xelioatre, for messing around and changing the entire mana spot settings into some crazy furniture warehouse with spirals made out of fridges. Or you Victor, for running away like a headless chicken right after I told you not to do that."

I turned on my back, spit the content of my mouth, relaxed and enjoyed the cold sensation of stinky swamp mud all around me. Completely unrelated, an almost forgotten memory from many years ago, reappeared in my mind together with the lyrics of one of the most basic and well-known lullabies ever created. It was the memory of my mother singing it to me.

‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.’

"But papa! You told me 'go back', didn't you mean 'go back and prepare everything for me'?"

"If I meant it, I would have said it that way. I've decided, you will be punished for breaking Victor. Come here, no excuses."

"R-roger."

'Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.’

Through a tiny opening in the entangled branches of twisted black trees, I watched as countless stars were shining mysteriously in the sky, at least that was how I imagined it because it was too dark to actually see anything up there.

‘When this blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,’

My head hurt and so did both of my hands.

"Now undress."

"EHHH?! Papa!"

‘Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, through the night.’

I don’t remember the rest...

"Undress or I will help you with it."

"R-r-roger."

The air of this place was stagnant and smelly; the only source of light was provided by a few rusty lanterns hanging sporadically on the leafless branches.

That’s the only thing she had ever sung for me, I miss her.

"Remove everything."

"Everything?!"

"Yes."

"What about keeping at least my panties and bra…"

"Everything."

"R-roger."

The noises in the background grew too ridiculous for me to ignore anymore.

The fuck is going on there?!

"Victor, it was her mistake that made you misunderstood the situation, forcing you to use both your power and the slime stones. So here, catch, a naked loli demon to make you feel better."

I was about to shift my position to get a better view but decided against it. For all I knew it was probably just another trap, misunderstanding or whatever...

A second later something heavy landed right on top of me.

"Ugh!"

"Told you to catch her."

When I was shocked and in pain from the impact, the girl on my chest rolled to the side. I only managed to see two long rat-like tails and a little of her reddish skin before she covered every inch of her body with mud.

"Such a perfect chance to catch a glimpse and you've magnificently wasted it by not looking. Xelioatre you may go now, clean yourself and stand by somewhere close."

"Uuuu… r-r-roger."

She crawled away, half-submerged into the mud, behind the layer of trees. It was too dark to notice any details other than 'something is moving over there'.

Due to this shock treatment, I was unable to go back to the illusory safety of memories. The refreshing coldness of the mud turned into an uncomfortable disgust.

"I will try to keep it short. When we were alone in the prelude stage, Xelioatre went one step too far and prepared the mana spot by herself, which resulted in the furniture chaos you were in. It took me some time to change it to how it was supposed to look like. If you didn't try to run away from the fog but decided to investigate it first, you would be transported here without going through all the pain. I actually almost had you for a moment, but you jumped back on the sofa. Well, it also ended as a good lesson, so it's not all that bad."

Couldn't you just tell me not to move back then…

"I could."

Knowing this wasn’t helping in ignoring the pain of my head, fists and recently joined chest area.

"Victor, if you move your ass out of the mud I may be willing to help you a bit in the incoming challenge. You missed one good chance to stand up, don't miss the other."

Heavens, I want to take a shower… and give Vio a long warm hug.

“Hey Votr, any normal person in my place would run away from that dark fog… do I really have to suffer for making that decision?”

His scary demonic image in my mind wavered and I slowly prepared to raise the amount of anger inside my voice.

“Hey Victor, do you really want to be a normal person? Didn’t you decide that such life is too boring and too common for you?”

“Ha… haha, yeah…”

Just like that, with one retort, he made the gathering storm of my rage dissipate before it could cause any damage.

I don’t want to live a normal cheap life...

“You were just running away from your own fear, hurt yourself a bit and ate some mud. Nothing big, so collect yourself already.”

He rolled a twenty and scored another critical hit. When put like that, I really caused the most harm to myself on my own. Still, I didn’t want to let my anger escape without even a tiny bit of resistance.

“Yeah, you’re right. Nothing big happened!”

“Yes, yes, for you it was a pretty important event, but you’ve survived, right? Do you want to live in fear for the rest of your life?! Or will you finally accept some risk and raise your pride from beneath the mud?!”

He… maybe he… maybe he is right.

“Good.”

I did as he earlier told me to and among many squelching sounds of a swamp, released myself from its grasp. I wanted to slap my cheeks like I always did to focus, but gave it a rest. I was already covered head to toes in a layer of mud, it didn’t need to be additional slapped into my face.

Among the dirty water and mud dripping from me were droplets of blood from the injured hands.

As soon as I tried to look at Votr, behind him, I saw something that made my head go blank. Inside a big transparent aquarium, placed on an old cart with a lantern, were the two slimes I had summoned earlier and they were busily dissolving girly clothes. On one of them a pair of panties was slapped centrally in the middle, giving a perfect view on something that once might have been striking red and quite risky, but now was quickly turning into a mass of green goo.

“See? I’m already helping you by taking good care of your pets.”

Votr went closer to them and tapped the glass lightly.

“This Xelioatre… is that your daughter?”

“More or less, but I don’t feel like explaining the whole family system of demons.”

Votr was standing on the only mud free area, a narrow paved path leading somewhere into the darkness. Not much changed in the way he looked. He still had spiky bleached hair and denim jacket, but the red pulse veins partially returned.

Somehow, seeing my face in his mirror eyes didn’t make me half as uncomfortable as before.

“Yeah, you’re right. Let me do the challenge and leave this place, I’m eating mud, I’m smelling mud, I’m hearing mud and even seeing mud, it’s everywhere. I want to get this quickly over with.”

“Look over there.”

In the direction he pointed - many lanterns lit on simultaneously along the path. Thanks to them a ruined mansion could be seen in the distance. Most of its details were hard to perceive from the place we were standing, but I already knew that this was a flag bearing example of the definition ‘haunted house’.

“Votr… this mana spot, where it places on your scale?”

I might have-

“No, you didn’t overestimate your possibilities. There’s simply a lot of mana here, but it’s not a high-quality one, so overall I give it seven. But, in your place, I wouldn’t allow Violet to use that pine tree. Mana that gathers around living things tends to be incredibly pure and rarely scores less than five on my scale. I don’t want you to become completely useless due to experiencing how her slowly turning cold corpse looks like. The road sign or the slide should be good enough for her. Forget about the trash can, it’s a waste of a ticket.”

That’s good to know.

“Before you relax too much. There’s a different kind of a problem here. Someone had tried to conquer this spot once and failed, this means that there will be a wraith during your challenge.”

I looked at Votr hoping that he was just pulling my leg or this wraith thing would be actually a positive-

“Nope, it’s an additional hurdle for you to conquer, it will try to get in your way, probably kill you. The usual. Think of it like a side objective, you may ignore it, but if you destroy the wraith a part of the mana it had collected will be turned into your reward, the rest is a bonus for me.”

He happily rubbed his hands together and again tapped the glass of the slime aquarium.

“Is it just me or are you looking forward to it?”

“Victor, I’ve already told you that I’m going to give you a little help to compensate for Xelioatre accident. Guess what, you’ve brought two perfect examples of a swamp slime and they really like to go wild in their natural habitat. As long as you can bear the penalty for using an unconventional method there’s nothing to worry.”

“Helpful Votr, that’s a new one.”

A new type of smile emerged on his face, a slightly worried one.

“Something has popped out and a lot of my colleague's attention is gathered on it, wasting such a precious chance to improve? This is a win-win situation for us both.”

Something?

“Xelioatre come!”

“Roger!”

Her voice came from the darkness behind the wicked trees. A few seconds later she walked over to us. She didn’t sink into the mud, each time she moved her bare foot a new thin layer of red light appeared to separate it from the mud’s surface.

She was a slim girl a bit taller than Vio or Aura.

On her slightly pointed face was a wide grin as natural as if it was her default expression, which together with the curious gaze of her orange eyes gave her a playful and energetic aura.

“Xelioatre, do you remember what’s the today’s meeting about?”

“Yes papa! Everyone’s busy with discussing changing the rules of duels between espers as the old ones are hard to put into a good use and-”

“Stop. You shouldn’t be revealing such information when a human is present.”

Wrapped around each of her legs was a thin rat-like tail sprouting from under her short red and black checkered skirt. Above it she wore a simple brown cami top revealing a lot of her reddish skin and navel. Her bust size was about three Violet’s worth, still not much.

A long maroon cape with a clasp at the neck was fluttering on her back. On each of her hands was a big iron bracelet with an embedded sapphire.

“Eh? But papa, you’ve asked yourself…”

“And you did a good job, thank you. Don’t worry, you’re still young and making a mistake or two is nothing big.”

“I don’t get it.”

But the thing that was the most unique about this girl was her fiery hair. It should be about shoulder length. However, that was hard to ascertain as it never stopped moving. It constantly shifted and repositioned, making it look like a fire in slow motion.

She kept her curious stare locked on my mud-covered self.

The three of us were standing in a triangle formation, there was about five meters distance between each of the formation corners.

“So now you know Victor. Let’s not lose more time and start your Three Choices. Remember to make a good use of the slimes. Xelioatre, pull the cart for him and listen to his orders as long as they’re concerning it.”

“Roger!”

She went two steps closer to me, but no more. Put one hand on her chest in a grand pose and said:

“Let me introduce myself. I’m the unranked demon of… hmm... temporary cart pulling, Xelioatre, you may call me Xeli. I will be your cart’s guide in this place and its engine. Please forget about the previous accident.”