Getting Out of There (I)

It was only a few moments after I had decided I would sneak out, but I had a fair bit of trouble to deal with, mainly as these cultists. What I meant by that was, the leader of this group thought it was a good idea to secure me a new body, even though I wasn’t in a spirit form. What a right pain that would be.

Still, for whatever reason, I could not leave this stupid Magic Circle that they had me trapped in. I didn’t like the thought of that, but I had to bear with it for now. These cultists thought it would be good to keep me here for however long, did they? Well, they’ve got something else coming for them.

“My Demon King, Lord Abitor,” the lead cultist said, gesturing with his arms at me. “Please wait here for us to bring you a recreation of your body so that you can safely recover your missing power.”

Uh… what? What was this guy talking about?

Soon enough, the cultists left the room, leaving me alone to contemplate my next move. Could I not move under my power?

I lifted a leg into the air as if I were marching. Huh, what do you know? I can finally move.

After that, I twisted myself to face the door and walked that way. Fortunately, I got out of the room with no fusses, even as I bypassed the circle. How would it have worked for me to leave without waiting for the cultists to leave me be?

I looked around, mainly to see where I would go from there. To my right, there was a complete dead end, with no doors to suggest an alternative path. There was only one path to my left that branched to the right if I took it.

Well, that gave me only one option. I proceeded to my left.

I counted my steps to see how long it would take me to get from the ritual room to the next path. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, t—oh, wait. I needed eleven steps to get from the door to the turn in the hall. That was easy.

Next, I turned to my right to see what was there. There were doors on either side of the hallway, but someone spaced them in uneven increments. Was I going to investigate what was on the other side of each door?

I put an ear to each door, listening to see if there were others in the rooms. So far, there were people in each of the rooms I eavesdropped on. That limited me to keep going on down the hallway.

Now, in terms of what I needed to do, I had to find a stairwell, one that goes to the ground floor. I didn’t want to be stuck in the compound as their personal Demon King. That would be a massive problem for me to deal with.

Finally, I found my way to the nearest stairwell. To my immense pleasure, it only went up, so I could easily say I was in the basement… crud, I’m in the basement. How many floors does this base have, anyway?

#

Well, what do you know? They had a lot of basement floors. However, I didn’t know if this world worked like a video game because none of the basement layers had staircases going up multiple floors in one location. Still, I checked all the rooms that were empty, giving me some idea of what I was supposed to expect of these people.

It wasn’t a lot. I’ll be upfront about that now. However, I guess my expectations were to be ruined in other ways. For instance—oh, wait, that would be a spoiler. Still, I discovered some things that this cult was hoping to hide from me, which would be akin to treason if I were their Demon King.

Yeah, as if. Me, a Demon King? That only happens in bad anime and other media. A guy gets summoned to another world and becomes a Demon King for a dark cult, followed by a battle against what he’s told is a corrupt church. What are the odds of that happening? If I were a betting man, I’d say that the odds of that happening were closer to about 1,000,000:1 in favor of it not happening.

Then again, I’m not a betting man, nor am I that good with maths to know where the stats would come into play.

#

Soon enough, I got out of the basement where I entered this world, and the first sign that I was on the ground floor was the windows on the walls. That made things even more complicated. It wasn’t daylight out, but I couldn’t tell if the moon was out based on what I saw of the glass panes. I needed to find that out on my own.

With that said, I hid under the stairs that lead up to the upper floors of the base, proceeding to look around for some sign of anyone headed down. I needed to stay a step ahead of the cats in this game of cat and mouse, and I was the single mouse compared to everyone else. I didn’t want to be caught.

So, when I was safely certain they were having a bit of trouble with their task, I walked over to the front door. I had barely made it when —

“Oi! Who the hell are you?”

— crap. Someone saw me!

I spun around to see who caught me trying to get out. The man who saw me was a burly man who had to be armed to the teeth with daggers if I was seeing his weapon layout right. Just my bloody luck. A fantasy version of Uryū. How was I going to get out of this mess?

“Well?” Fantasy Uryū pulled out a dagger. “I’m waiting.”

I needed to be careful about this. How else was I supposed to stay alive? “Just a traveler who doesn’t know what this place is like,” I said. “I arrived when no one else was in the area, though I was pretty tired. I practically napped my whole time here away. May I leave?”

Fantasy Uryū put his free hand to his chin for a few seconds, before he nodded. “Very well. Take care of yourself out there.”

I nodded in thanks, then opened the door leading out to my freedom. I could safely get out now, so I did. There was nothing else to do about this.

Upon exiting the base, however, I noticed a few different issues that needed to be addressed. The path leading out of the compound was a straight shot, but I wasn’t about to trust the path to be untrapped. Then again, it had to have fewer traps than the woods around the path. Decisions, decisions.

Well, I had to go through the path, anyway. May as well make it official.

I walked on my way down the path, seeing that there weren’t any traps to worry about, though that would be hard to tell based on the lack of moonlight. What would it take for me to get some light around here? Wait, that would be a bad idea, come to think of it.

I turned around to see what I was leaving, mainly to memorize where I could go to wipe out these cultists later. I gaped when I saw it looked like a regular two-story cabin in the middle of the woods. That… was embarrassingly pathetic.

I took a few seconds to look the place over before I turned back to the exit path. However, on my way out, the moon came out from behind the clouds. Uh-oh!