In the end, we decided to camp in the middle of the meadow. We built a big fire, and I retrieved a couple of blankets and cutlery from my inventory. Initially, I thought about bringing out the table and chairs, but having only four chairs would have made things too cumbersome.
Lynx had returned with a full deer, and with the sow and piglet that Alice had shot, we had a lot of work to do—mostly Alice and me, as we were the only ones with some cooking skills. Food usually stayed well preserved in inventory items, especially if it was cooked. It also depended on the type and quality of the spatial tool, but most inventory items worked as if the item were in a vacuum.
I was afraid that dinner would be one-sided, consisting only of meat. However, Alice had thankfully bought significant quantities of rice, noodles, potatoes, and more on Earth, of which we were now boiling some rice in one of Tina's cauldrons. With the well-roasted meat—luckily, she had enough spices to do it properly—we had a marvelous dinner by the light of the campfire. Alice had always stocked up on food like a prepper, and it came in handy now.
By the time we sat down to eat, night had long fallen, but with Lynx and Alice nearby, we felt secure and chatted freely. All around us lay the dark forest, with only nearby bushes partially illuminated by the fire.
Above us stretched a strange sky adorned with stars and constellations we didn't recognize, along with two moons, both slightly smaller than Earth's moon. An owl chimed in with its lonely notes from time to time, and we could hear further distant rustlings and murmurs, but any potential tragedies remained hidden from our view, the low-level noises lending a sense of peace and tranquility.
"Two moons! And that's a damn blue moon!" Tom exclaimed, gazing up at the sky.
Tina chuckled.
"That's Frigg, the God of cold and ice, and his brother Demetros, the master of the underworld and King of the demons," she explained. "The brighter Frigg gets, the colder it will be."
"It's pretty bright now," Mike murmured.
"It'll be even brighter when the long winter comes," Alice assured him.
Tina turned to me. "Is Demetros your King? Is Hades up there?"
I sighed.
"Demetros is probably just a damn asteroid that got captured by this planet. That would explain its unusual orbit. And there must be some gases solidifying on Frigg as the temperature drops, which would explain its increasing luminosity."
The elf girl interrupted her chewing to address me, wearing a pensive expression.
"You truly are a strange demon," she declared.
She ate with careful, delicate bites, akin to an aristo-cat, while the boys devoured their food like a pack of hungry wolves. I found myself fitting into the latter category—the food was delicious, and I was famished.
I shrugged and raised an eyebrow, wanting to ask her what she meant, but before I could swallow, Hew spoke up.
"She's not really a demon!" he interjected, speaking with his mouth partially full. "She's been our friend for a while. She somehow messed up her character in this so-called game!"
Tina scolded him. "Hew, finish eating before you talk!"
Julietta shook her head stubbornly.
"While I appreciate her, she is still a demon, even if a very strange and peculiar one. Demons do not have friends. At least I have never encountered such before, and yet..."
"Did you encounter many other demons?" Michael inquired while serving himself another helping of rice and meat.
I couldn't help but notice how juicy and succulent the roasted piglet was.
How did Alice manage that? I wondered. I made a mental note to observe Alice more closely the next time she cooked. The piglet tasted as if having been done in an oven. If I would have done it, the result would have been more stringy and dry.
Mike raised a brow, asking for a more precise answer.
"How many did you encounter?" he pressed.
Julietta fell silent for a moment, seemingly lost in recollection.
A loud crunch interrupted the moment as Lynx gnawed on some bones from the sow. As all eyes turned towards him at the unexpected noise, prompting a grin from Lynx as he spoke with a half-chewed femur between his jaws.
"Compliments, Alice! ***Crunch, crunch***!"
"Well," Julietta began her explanation, "there was a time when I had a friend who was a warlock. I was in my youth, going through my rebellious decades, as any elf does during what you humans call puberty. He was an old, secluded warlock despised for his demon summoning, and I used to visit him in the dark woods. I think many of the summons he did out of sheer boredom; he would summon demons for menial tasks and ask them to tell him about life in hell. So, I met and conversed with dozens of demons during that time."
"And what did they tell?" Michael asked, his curiosity piqued.
All of us listened intently as Julietta continued her story.
"Well," she began, "their whole world is a very harsh environment, devoid of resources but rich in some kind of dark magic that flows through the land. Only demons live there; even the plants are some kind of demonic plants. Some of them harvest that dark magic and transform it into life energy. Maybe they are some kind of plants, I don't know. The energy is too diffuse, and the best places are highly contested. They need to feed energy to grow, and they feed on smaller and weaker demons. Even those kinds of plants do that. Once a demon is killed, it will respawn, thanks to that dark energy. Some are killed again and again in what seems to be an infinite loop.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
However, devouring the smaller ones is not that efficient in the long run. More efficient is to simply kind of milk them, draining their power. It is like a parasite society, each sucking up the marrow from the bones of others continuously. The stronger the demon is, the better fed it is. This is how demons grow and evolve by gaining more power. This is how their society is formed, with the bigger monsters monitoring and sucking the life out of their smaller counterparts, always trying to outdo each other, always trying to gain an edge and more power."
"Is this not how our world is, too? The stronger eating the weaker? Is this not the food chain that you describe?" Mike pondered aloud.
Julietta sighed heavily.
“Not exactly,” she began. “This life-draining link is pure pain; it's like having a rod in your flesh, having a parasite continuously sucking life out of you. Continuous pain.
They grow until they reach a limit where they can no longer grow without taking in more demons under exploitation. They also gain insights from others as they devour them, and in this way, they learn to take better and more consistent forms. They cannot change their forms as they please, with the exception of some specialized changelings, but they can evolve as they grow.
The world itself is layered like a cake; the deeper you go, the more probable it is for new demons to spawn and survive, as the conditions there are not as harsh. That's where the bigger demons go to feed on them. The greater the farm, the stronger the demon, but they are limited to the area of their demon larvae farm, for if they want to wander, they lose some of the power that comes from it. It's an eternal fight between feuds, and many times, a third or fourth party wins when two fight.
Deep down, there are old monsters who rule and control the area in some kind of truce. It's always a win for such a monster to get new spawns to terrorize and exploit.”
“Why don't the weak unite and help each other?” Michael asked.
“Two weaker demons cannot win against a stronger one. Not even ten weaker demons, because of the power-draining ability; the stronger always wins in this direct contest. He is more resistant to draining and can absorb more power than they can absorb from him. If you help someone, you lose an opportunity to grow and remain weaker.”
"But there must be some family bonds, aren't there any?" Tina inquired.
The elf-girl shook her head.
"No demon said anything about having children. I understand that they cannot have children; they only spawn and respawn like this."
"But what are these spawns?" Tina pondered.
"I guess just some soulless magic creations," the elf-girl presumed.
"Yeah, but that does not apply to our Lores here, isn't it?" Hew countered.
"But she is a demon; she does identify as a demon!” the elf-girl replied flatly to Hew.
Mike raised a brow. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.
I chuckled. “It's not what you think it means, Mike!”
Julietta turned towards me with an inquisitive look.
“Were you not born in Hades?” she asked, then added before I could answer, “You want to tell me that demons are not spawns from Hades?"
I sighed. That topic again! But I had encouraged her to speak her mind freely! I sighed again, trying to rein myself in and think of an answer. However, before I could respond, Alice shook her head and spoke softly.
"These spawns are not just simple magic creations; they are lost souls that went to Hades. Their form is what they remember from their previous life. That's why demons want to gather new souls that go to Hades, to have new spawns in their larvae farm."
The elf-girl raised her brows in surprise and turned towards Alice. "How would you know that?"
"My grandfather had a passion for studying demons. He did much of what your warlock did but in a more systematic way. He came to the conclusion that all demons originated from some kind of discarded souls or souls that cannot forget, and Hades is the only place where these souls can respawn," she explained.
Julietta was taken aback. "That's an interesting theory you have there!"
She turned towards me with an inquisitive look. “Were you born in Hades?” she asked.
"She is our friend born on Earth!" Tom countered, "Stop persecuting her!"
“She was not born in Hades!” Hew also protested. “She was born on Earth, like us; tell her, Lores!”
“Why don't you let her answer?” the elf-girl interjected, turning towards them.
I sighed, feeling tired of the conversation. I knew where her problems with demons came from, but what did I have to do with that archdemon that had tortured her? On the other hand, I did tell the boys about the explosion on Ha'des and the problems I had.
“Well, me identifying as a demon does have a connection to Hades,” I said slowly. “So you could say that I was born in Hades, as I've told you..."
I wanted to explain everything to them, to tell them about the surface of Hades, the dark magic that permeated it, the black magic explosions I had generated to 'clean' myself and improve my magical capabilities.
I wanted to tell them about that third mega explosion and the strange reaction I had seen in the stratosphere, where even Deimos seemed to take notice of my struggle.
But as I prepared to speak, my eyes froze, my mind froze, and a message resonated within me.
“Lores Deimosdottir, some things may be better left unspoken.”
It wasn't a command spoken in my mind; it was like a spark of lightning that shook me to the core. It was an intent and a warning. Perhaps the intention was to warn me. There were no spoken words, just that spark of lightning with meaning, and that was the best my mind could make out of it.
"Huhu? Lores? Blue screen of death?"
Hew's voice broke through my thoughts, and I realized they had moved without me noticing, or perhaps I had been standing there, lost in my thoughts, for half a minute.
“Did something happen?” Alice's voice sounded worried as she approached me.
I looked around, taking deep breaths to calm my racing heart. It felt like my heartbeats were competing with the wing beats of a hummingbird.
As I tried to compose myself, I met their curious gazes. Did I just receive a warning? And from whom? Why? It wasn't that I was afraid, as the intent didn't seem harmful, but it was overwhelming. It was like an elephant speaking to a mouse.
Placing my hand over my still wildly beating heart, I inhaled deeply while they waited for an explanation.
"I... I don't like talking about this. Maybe some other time. I'm too tired now, and we haven't decided what we'll do tomorrow," I muttered, turning towards Julietta. "Do you have any other portals, or any other way to get back to Earth?"
She shook her head, clearly surprised by the sudden change in conversation.
"No, as I've already said, unfortunately, we're stuck here until we find a portal. Trying to sneak through the existing portal would be nigh impossible, as the area is controlled by Mephisto."
"So what do we do? How do we survive? Especially with our four level zero boys..."