The breakthrough

Their fight wasn’t something I could easily get close to.

The wraith’s human-like figure was shrouded in shadow, half of its left hand was missing and there was a long wooden stake pierced through its abdomen, yet it moved fast and effortlessly. The remaining claws on the right hand were partially melted, still, a big chunk of the cart was sent flying each time the wraith missed a hit directed at the young demon.

Xeli was nimbly dodging by using the red light underneath her feet as a momentary stepping platforms in mid-air. This allowed her to perform a wide variety of acrobatics by constantly changing her position both horizontally and vertically. Her tails were used to either parry or deflect an occasional shadow spike that shot out from the wraith's body without any forewarning.

She's strong; the cart was pulled all the way here!

But, she's still a girl, a lot smaller than the wraith…

She's a demon; there should be no problem with winning against an injured wraith!!

But why is she only defending?

She's Votr daughter; there's no way anything can happen to her!

But can he even directly interfere with my challenge?

Wait… is that why she’s not attacking? She can’t directly interfere?

Shit.

But… what can I do…

I’m fucking powerless!

Standing in place and watching Xeli's cape constant fluttering as she jumped around to avoid the wraith’s furry, I couldn’t decide on my next move.

A wave of frustration and irritation was flooding my mind.

Why it has to fail at the very end?! Why, for once, it couldn't go as planned?!

All the negative feelings that I had barely managed to calm down after the climbing hell, returned with doubled power.

I looked at the slimes, hoping they would return to finish their task properly, but the big battle between the two different shades of green slime tribes was producing too much squelching noises for them to pay any attention to a small skirmish happening near the cart. Unless the wraith was willing to wail like it used to, the slimes would remain a part of the background.

‘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?’

One step. One step was all I needed. One step, that I couldn’t force myself to make.

‘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?!’

I was being split in two.

There was a black hole of emptiness inside me, accompanied by an endless amount of pain and resignation constantly flowing inside it. There was no point in trying, I could as well just remain here in this godforsaken place and avoid further suffering. As long as I could obtain a painless sleep, being submerged in this muddy coffin for all eternity didn’t sound like a bad idea.

‘You don't want the first choice as you've already picked it once and now it would also be a waste to throw away such a good body.’

There was a burning star of anger inside me, accompanied by an endless desire for revenge. I should pass this suffering to everyone else around, so I could watch them wriggle in pain and laugh at their pathetic state. Before burning myself to death, I should at least rape Rora in front of Adam's eyes, doggy style, that would be a satisfying revenge scenario.

‘You don't want the second choice as you know that there's a piece of you that resists it with all its might.’

In between the two halves, a third one was born.

There was an endless space of possibilities inside of me, somewhere out there was a lush, green planet of life, waiting to be discovered. But I had to keep looking, otherwise, I would either get pulled into the black hole or burned by the supernova explosion. Or worse, I would be forever stuck in the vast lonely vacuum of space.

‘You don't want the third choice as you can't fully put your soul into it, which equals to nothing more than living a fake life.’

No, that’s wrong. I just need something to push me from behind.

‘... find an external factor. Something that will become a supporting pillar behind one of those three choices.’

“I promise to … I promise to...”

Come on, say it!

Are you George or are you Victor?

“I p-promise to k-kill…”

Why can’t I say it?!

I’m George...

“I p-p-prromiss t-too k-kill…”

COME ON! You fucking coward! Say it!

‘You would never agree to this! What’s worse you even accepted our defeat like a loser! You were a scum! A trash! An idiot! A miser! A worthless placeholder! But you never NEVER were a loser!’

I wanted to be a brother that she could be proud off, a person who could be proud of being himself.

This one drop tipped the scales towards the victory side.

No… I’m Victor!

“I’m victor! I promise to kill that fucking wraith or die trying!”

I made the first step towards Xeli. Following it was the second and the third and I started to run towards it. Like an idiot, with a battle cry coming from my mouth and an old rusty lantern acting as my sword. Yet, finally releasing my overloaded with pressure and stress mind felt incredibly good.

I didn’t think about dying. On the contrary, I was sure that if I could pull off this act, I would change for the better!

Halfway through I was noticed. The wraith that kept vainly attacking Xeli shifted its attention to me. The young demon used this chance to pull away the biggest piece of the cart that still held together.

And then the remains of the haunted house disappeared, following right after it was the wraith. It wailed one, last time and burst into a cloud of black smoke. My next step failed to find the expected hardness of a paved path and instead sank deep into the mud. I lost my balance and fell face first into the stinky swamp. Not understanding what just happened I quickly emerged from it and looked around.

Votr was standing close by, in the exact same place I had seen him before. Next to him was Xeli - breathing heavily while lying on the rescued piece of the cart. Barely audible in the distance were the squelching sounds of an ongoing slime war.

“For once, I actually feel bad… sorry Victor, but the last remaining skeleton was dissolved by the slimes when you were about to start berserking. In other words, the haunted house was cleansed and the challenge completed. You were transported back to me and, like I’ve said before, that wraith was just a bonus objective so-”

“I promised to fucking kill it! You can’t do that to me now!”

“Don’t worry, it’s not gone, it should attach itself to some other mana spot in the area.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?!”

Together with those words, I punched the surrounding mud, splashing it all around. Votr made a quick step back to avoid getting hit.

“Papa, are all humans that loud?”

“Not now Xelioatre, we’re busy.”

“Roger.”

“Answer me you fucktard! How am I supposed to keep that promise now?!”

Votr stomped lightly in my direction and a wave of heat hit my whole body, instantly drying the wet layer of mud.

“Mind your language when my daughter is present.”

Inside me, a boiling rage was looking for a way to escape. I stood up, picked the lantern that got transported together with me and, using every last ounce of strength that I could produce, threw it at Votr. The moment before it hit, there was a bright red pulse of light originating from his veins and the lantern disappeared. One blink of an eye later, something heavily hit the back of my head and I fell unconscious into the mud.

“Remember Xelioatre, if you want to become a personal demon, then don’t worry about such things.”

“But papa, he’s so weak. Are all humans like that? We really can’t help even a bit?”

My head hurts like hell...

“Only when no one is looking, but you must be sure that there’s enough profit in it for you, to make it worth undertaking the risk. Oh, Victor woke up, keep in mind my words and watch me in action.”

“Roger!”

I tried to touch the place on my head that hurt the most and found something that felt like a bandage wrapped around it. Not only that, but the hands which skin had been torn off while banging on the hatch were also dressed up with a white piece of cloth. The uncomfortable feeling of having mud all over my body was gone and I was lying on something soft.

“You should thank Xelioatre for that, she kept pestering me to show her how a clean human looks like.”

“He’s better looking than I thought!”

After shifting to a sitting position I realized that instead of swimming in swamp’s mud, I was on the wooden cart. The previous soft feeling came from the Xeli’s folded cape which had been placed under my head.

When I recalled everything that had happened before losing consciousness, I simply laid down my head on the cape and closed eyes.

Just finish me already.

“You failed the bonus objective, but completed the challenge. It’s the fun ‘where’s my reward?’ part.”

“...”

“Alright, as for the wraith I will do something about it on my end. I will make sure that no one will destroy it before you find it, so you will be able to keep your promise and fight with it to the death like a man.”

“...”

“No matter how long you wait, I won’t throw a naked loli demon at you again, you know?”

“I hope so!”

"..."

"You're wearing clothes that can barely cover anything, so I don't know why do you even care."

"Papa! That's different, you know that I overheat easily!"

“...”

Just leave me alone.

"I get it! Papa, is that the thing you told me about? Give them rewards, make some promises and mix a joke or t-"

“Xelioatre... your sharpness is good for hammering nails. Anyway, it doesn't look like we can get anywhere with him in this shape. Victor, I will be back later, rest for now.”

Said Votr in a neutral tone, resting seemed like a perfect plan.

A worried Votr, yeah right… credibility zero percent.

I heard a set of heavy steps growing distant.

A few minutes of lying later, someone couldn't stay silent any longer and said:

“Hey, are you sad?”

Asked me a girly voice.

“Just tired.”

“Hey… you’re sad, right? You’re crying.”

I felt something smooth and long wiping out the tears that weren’t there.

“...”

“Earlier, you said that you want to talk, right? Let’s talk.”

“Leave me alone girl.”

“I will start, let me tell you about myself first. Hmm… what about the story of how I grew up? It’s a bit shameful, but it took me a lot of time to grow as a proper demon. Counting from the moment I hatched, I needed over thirty years to go past through the larval stage, but it was easy, someone was always keeping an eye on us and made sure we were kept safe and well fed, but two other generations passed me by and the caretakers made fun of me by saying that I must be really special to take so much time to grow. There was even a rumor that I may be the queen type! ‘Oh, how wonderful it would be if that was true’ that was my greatest wish back then, but I guess it wasn’t too original, nearly every larva had dreamt of it once. Still, how long can you just keep crawling around in a small room? Fortunately, from time to time someone came and gave us a lecture or two about demon laws, stages of evolutions, mana and other basic things like that. Even though I listened to everything over three times, that was the most fun I had at that time. Then I finally managed to evolve and another twenty years were spent as a chrysalis, but this stage wasn’t as boring as the first one, it went fast as I just slept a lot and dream-weaved the kind of a demon I wanted to become. There were so many details to choose from, it took me a year just to look through them all! Of course, you could always pick one of the pre-made models, but where’s the fun in it? I scraped over ten thousand custom models before deciding on one… that I didn’t even like, but my caretaker had convinced me that it was the right thing to do..."

Before I noticed, I started listening to her story.

... but the lesser demon days, those were horrible. They just threw me out on the street and said ‘from now on you’re on your own’. You’ve got like zero demon rights at this stage, which sucks. Everyone can do whatever they want to you. Luckily, I looked a lot different than I do now and, as long as I kept a low profile, everyone ignored me. It is a common strategy, you know? My caretaker used to say it a lot ‘don’t make your lesser demon stage cute and pretty or they will rape you all the time with dicks half your size!’. I’m so glad I listened to her seriously, I saw a few lesser demons proudly showing off their beautiful forms right after leaving the hatching center… only to find them broken or dead a few days later. For the next few years I was just fishing for leftovers in the dark corner of a river, desperately trying to survive, that’s where Papa found me..."

Those demons go through some really harsh stuff while growing up. I wonder how did she manage to stay so cheerful despite that.

"... Back then, I was so scared when he stepped on one of my tails, yet it turned out to be the luckiest day of my life! I still remember it clearly, It was three years ago, just when he became a personal demon. He wanted someone to take care of his house when he was working on this side and decided that long and careful looking for an adequate candidate was bothersome, so he just captured a random one from the street. When he gave me some of his blood to drink, I could feel his mana mixing together with mine and finally became a true demon. This great form I have now is like a dream come true! Maybe one day I will reach the next stage, but wouldn’t mind staying in this one forever.”

“Do you want to become a personal demon to follow in Votr footsteps?”

“Yes! You know how hard it was to convince papa to let me try? But I’m lucky! Papa finally gave up, his exact words were ‘You want to become a personal demon?! Fine! A daughter that can’t cook a decent meal, burns half of the house by wanting to pet a slime and all the damn time keeps her tails in the air, flashing her panties for everyone to admire, is worthless anyway! Find me someone who can take care of your house chores and you can come with me to see how the personal demon work looks like'.”

“Heh, you sound like a troublemaker.”

“Nah~, papa’s just shy and capturing someone better suited to work in our house was surprisingly easy. Now, your turn, give me my profit and tell me all about the human world! How do you humans deal with all those erupting volcanoes? How many stages did you go through since you were born? Were they hard? Are you still in a lesser human stage, is that why you're so weak? Don't worry I won't hurt you! Come on, tell me everything!”

“You may be a bit disappointed, but alright. Listen well…”