In just ten minutes, he arrived at the fitness center, situated in the heart of a thriving commercial area in Midtown. The building was wide, only two-stories high, and covered in glossy blues and greens. Its front was made entirely of glass walls, providing a clear view of the amenities inside.

He landed near the entrance, shrunk into his human form, and whipped his phone up to confirm the location.

“Take me in with you,” Prillon said, offering himself.

With the location verified, he put his phone away. “Huh? You have two legs and wings. You can move yourself.”

“No. I’d rather not reveal my demonic goodness, for obvious reasons. I’ll turn into a coin. Then you could stuff me in your pocket.”

“Nope. If I transform, then you’d be teleported away to my domain along with my clothes. I’m not sure you’d want that. Why not become a fly like you did before?”

Prillon kissed his teeth in frustration. “That was against mortals. I’d rather not try that stunt against spawn, even if they are morons. Oh, wait, I got it.”

The demon compressed and stretched, then morphed into an arctic wolf with a dense, creamy white coat and robust muscles.

With Prillon, now a wolf, in tow, he walked up to the entrance and pushed the glass door open. A well-lit lobby with comfortable seating, bright walls, and a desk in the middle welcomed him in. This was not what he expected when Ratum gave him this address, stating that demonic spawn were here. However, he knew all too well that looks could be deceiving. After all, a demon walked by his side now in a disguise he couldn’t see through.

A woman stood by the desk, clearly agitated, conversing with the receptionist, who wore the widest smile he had seen in ages.

“I just don’t understand what is going on,” the woman said. “Do you employ cleaners anymore? The place is filthy.”

“I understand, ma’am,” the receptionist said in an upbeat tone. “We are trying our best to rectify the situation.”

The woman slammed her hand on the desk. “You said that already! I mean… am I going insane?”

“I understand ma’am. We are trying our best to rectify the situation. Please exercise patience.”

Baffled, the woman glared at the receptionist, then hissed before walking briskly past the desk into the hallway leading to the facilities.

As Jalen approached the receptionist, he felt a nudge from Prillon. However, he already knew what was happening without that warning. On their way over, he had asked Prillon about everything there was to know about spawn. It wouldn’t do him any good to come unprepared and, worst, uninformed.

“Hello,” he said, offering a bright smile. “I would like to sign up for a membership.”

“Thank you for choosing us.” The receptionist beamed in her cheerful tone. “What membership would you like? We offer several plans to suit different needs.”

“Tell me the options available.”

“Of course! Are you looking for a short-term membership or something more long-term?”

“I’m thinking short-term.” Then he backed off to give her a full view of his entire body. It was time to put her to the test. “I’m also thinking of taking on a specialty class. Something along the lines of Aqua Aerobics or Zumba. Like my mum used to do. What do you think?”

With her trademark smile, the receptionist said. “Of course! We offer a variety of specialty classes. Which one are you interested in?”

“It’s been a long time since I used a gym. So tell me, what exactly does Zumba entail? I may have forgotten.”

“We offer a variety of specialty classes. Which one are you interested in?”

He slowly nodded in disbelief. It seemed everything Prillon stated was true. A spawn was essentially a corpse animated by infernal energies. They lacked the intelligence they possessed when they were alive, becoming mindless husks that followed set instructions. The only way to get one to speak was to program the words and assign the appropriate phrases to be called upon when the spawn felt certain stimuli, like the questions he had been asking. Prillon had expressed in colorful terms that the entire spawn-making process was a tedious, ineffective mess and a waste of time and resources. And he was inclined to agree with everything the demon said, save for the latter statement. The spawn couldn’t be a waste of time, considering the issues they caused for Belial’s demons in Hermosville, according to Ratum. As for the waste of resources, if the demon cared not about human lives, then stressing over that point was pointless. That brought another issue to the forefront—he loathed the mess the demons were making of his city.

He tried one last tact for the receptionist to redeem herself. “Show me your boobs.”

With a bright smile, she replied. “Good morning! Welcome to FitLife Fitness Center. How can I assist you today?”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Of course, she couldn’t respond to his disrespectful request. The receptionist didn’t even understand the words she was speaking.

“What demon turned you?” he asked.

That finally flipped a switch, it seemed because her smile evaporated into a scowl. With a swift act of viciousness defeating her cordial facade, the receptionist lunged at him with outstretched hands tipped with long claws, while baring her mouth lined with jagged teeth. Since he had been expecting something along these lines to happen, his feet were light, allowing him to sidestep the attack.

The spawn flew by, then landed on all fours, turning to bare her teeth at him. Prillon seized the opportunity with her back facing him and darted forward, snatching her head between his jaws and crushing it. The spawn twitched for a second, then lay still.

“I didn’t need your help,” he said. “I had it under control.”

Prillon released the crushed head. “And I don’t need telling, new god. I simply detest the use of spawn. To debase yourself by relying on the pathetic mortals? It’s disgusting.”

A scream that pierced the air, originating from somewhere deeper in the building, stifled any comments he wanted to make about Prillon’s philosophy. The woman. Caught in his ploy of attempting to expose the receptionist as a spawn, he had completely forgotten that the woman had ventured into a den infested with demonic spawn. In a flash, he grew and his skin turned to the roughness of stone, his eyes burning with a golden cosmic energy.

Back at the cemetery when Prillon made known to him that the demons and Jigoku Kumo’s spawn were locked in a territorial war, he deduced that HAVEN and the government had gone to strenuous lengths to hide that fact from the general populace. He also knew that they couldn’t hide the spawn’s existence forever, considering the amount of people potentially affected. He smiled. HAVEN’s greatest mistake would serve as the catalyst for his ascension. And he would seize that opportunity by first saving the woman.

Jalen zoomed down the hallway, listening to any sounds his superhuman hearing could gather. It became evident that the woman was upstairs, struggling for her life from her rash breathing and pained grunts. There were also other sounds—hisses and growls from many sources, a telltale sign of the abundance of spawn in the building.

He banked left into a hallway with the men’s and women’s locker rooms on either side, then turned left, ascending the stairs. Into another hallway he appeared, accelerating as he punched through a concrete wall, the spray of debris left in his wake. The wide space he found himself in was the gym floor, lined with rows of workout equipment. To the left, a contingent of spawn, dressed in dirty, blood-soaked clothes, were dragging the woman into an adjacent room.

Most of them had turned to discern the cause of the noise. They roared at him like wild animals. It was a little disheartening to see humans reduced to such filth and devoid of any autonomy.

The spawn charged and his eyes lit up in response, only to dim when he realized that many humans were imprisoned in the room ahead, and they were at risk of becoming collateral if he used his beams. So he resorted to using his fists to quell the infestation. They came in waves and vaporized just as fast as he swung his arms. Any spawn he connected with exploded into a bloody mist, yet they continued to dive headfirst into certain elimination. They swarmed him like a colony of ants that found valuable loot. Claws slashed at his skin. Jaws attempted to gain purchase. Yet the spawn failed miserably at even drawing a morsel of blood from him. A cacophony of animalistic grunts reined as he tore them apart. Limb after limb. Heads from shoulders. Soon, only the wet squelches of blood and guts remained.

He grabbed the last straggler on his back, who was once a child barely over ten, and crushed its head. For the second time today, he stood amongst a messy pile of body parts, viscera, and blood.

As he floated into the room, he pieced together the puzzle. About thirty-odd humans were bound with ropes and dumped in the corner of the room, that was laid with rows of yoga mats, all spotting blood stains. The spawn restrained any humans who came into the fitness center until the demon came around to turn them into spawn to increase her ever-growing army. Obviously, this tactic was bound to fail, as law enforcement would catch wind of people disappearing and investigate the cause. But by that time Jigoku Kumo would’ve amassed enough spawn from this location. The spawn would then kill the officers and rendezvous at another place to begin the process again. That begged the question—could he wait here for the demon? No. Given her elusiveness, there were bound to be fail-safes put in place to discern if a location and her spawn had been compromised.

He peered at the woman, the latest addition to the spawn’s collection, who lay on one such yoga mat, clearly exhausted, with her hands bound. Many bruises lined her arms as her chest rose and fell, sucking in as much air as possible. She stared at him out of the corner of one eye that was laced with dread. He floated over to her.

She flopped like a fish away from him. “Leave me alone! Please don’t hurt me.”

The other humans also flinched and trembled as he drew near.

“I won’t,” he said, transforming and raising his hands, his blood-drenched god form replaced with a more palatable face. “See? I came to free you all.”

His human vessel visibly calmed the rising tides of fear in the room.

While examining the tightly bound duct tape on the woman’s wrist, he glanced across the room for the right tool to free her. Naturally, he refrained from using his god form to avoid frightening them again, as it would only make her more resistant and make his job more difficult. Then one wayward movement with his superhuman strength and he could break the woman. His sweeping gaze across the room stopped at the doorway where an arctic wolf stood.

He reached his hand out. “Great timing, Prillon. Quick, change into a knife. I’m trying to free these people here.”

The demon gasped in disgust. “And why the fuck would I do that? To become a tool used at the expense of filthy humans? ‘Ave you lost your bloody mind?”

He sighed. “We made a deal.”

“Yeah. To find the bitch, not play nursemaid! What does that ‘ave to do with this?”

“Everything. You offered your help in exchange for me to honor your master’s request. This is the way we force the tsuchigumo out. By limiting the pool of humans she can use to amass her army.”

Prillon remained silent, contemplating Jalen’s words with a scowl on his long-furred face and a sinister glint in his eyes. Regardless, the demon shook his head regrettably and paced forward, then transformed into an ornate dagger adorned with rubies.

As he picked the dagger up, a mouth appeared on the blade, muttering. “The things I do for my goddamn master. You shall never speak of this new god. Fucking bullocks!”

After a brief, amused scoff, he used Prillon to split the thick layer of binding duct tape, freeing the woman.