What if Buer never asked about the church?

“Your body should be weak enough to take for myself. Yes, I'll take this body and leave these ruins. Based on your lack of mana, I should have no problems.”

She brought her face closer to his.

“Huh? What are you- humfph?” He struggled as she put her lips on his.

(“Why is this happening? Didn't she want to kill me!?”) He thought as he struggled in her grasp.

(“I can't exactly call this a good thing. How much time would have passed that the church would allow its believers to come here without basic knowledge of demons? Based on his current appearance, I'd say they're currently using this place for training regiments. He must be quite poor in skills to be this injured, yet I took so long to catch him… What does that say about my current state?”)

Kevin wondered about this kiss, but he quickly realised it wasn't a kiss(at least not a traditional kind). She was depositing her own spit in his mouth.

He tried to stop her by grabbing her horns but the attempt was so pathetic, she didn't even pay it any attention.

She even grabbed his throat and started choking him. She didn't let go until she felt him swallow her mouth fluids.

After doing so she stopped the mouth-to-mouth connection and placed her finger into the wound on his shoulder.

“Ah!” He weakly exclaimed. “What the hell did you do that for!?”

“You didn't expect me to spill my blood for a human did you?”

“I meant the spitting in my mouth!” He shouted.

“Oh, that. Same answer. (It is quite a shame I had to place my lips on such a weak human but I do require him to ingest my own fluids. And I'm certainly not going to bleed for this man, no matter how minor. Though now that I think about it there was another option. But that's far too much time.)”

She began marking his chest with several foreign characters, using his own blood.

(“Ah-”) Kevin thought. His surroundings had once again turned red. (“I'm going to die…”)

He stopped struggling and she continued writing in peace.

“It seems you finally know your place, human.”

He had tears in his eyes and began crying when he realised it was over. It soon turned to full unashamed bawling moments later.

“It's not fair!” He shouted as the tears ran down his face.

“Crying? After just this? How pathetic.”

This woman didn't know what he had been through to even reach this point but it stung even more because he felt she was right. Why did he come down here? To play hero and trust his magical eyes that conflicted with the norms of magic? To pretend he could help avenge someone who saw so much in him even as he put the minimal effort required of him? He was pathetic. It didn't matter what he thought, this woman above him was right.

She stopped writing on his body and pressed both her hands against his chest.

“I can't believe I'll have to be the one who provides the mana.”

He felt something rush through his chest.

(“Thankfully I've already consumed his blood so the preparation should be finished.”)

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

What she had done was use his body as the parchment for the pact. And the conditions she had written skewed quite heavily in her favour.

He could feel something hot flooding not just in his chest but throughout his entire body. His mind flooded with knowledge and characters he had no prior knowledge of. Various herbal recipes and even the knowledge of a healing potion that could heal broken bones became information as basic as washing his hands.

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He wasn't sure how much time had passed. He wasn't even sure if he was alive. His body burned. His mind burned. Everything inside him was burning.

He was covered in a thick and almost oily layer of sweat. He moved his hand to wipe the sweat off his head.

Did his eyes deceive him? No that wasn't possible, maybe it was the lighting messing with his sense of colour.

He brought it back before his face and no it wasn't a deception. His hand was red. It wasn't his eyes showing him this, it was physically red.

Was it a dream? The pain resided enough that he could stand on his feet.

He noticed his other hand retained its regular skin which confused him more than it should have.

“What- What happened to me?” He silently mouthed to himself.

He noticed a vine grow by his feet. He bent down and gave it his attention.

“Wow, I didn't know this place could support a wisteria, I wonder where the main plant is, I can't how would look with a vine of that si-”

Why did he know it came from a wisteria, despite only looking at the vine? He had no knowledge of what the vine looked like, he had only heard Elizabeth named her guild after them, though hers was a different kind.

More vines took over the surroundings and the walls of the dungeon began breaking down and faded away, as if they were made of sand all along.

Soon the stone roof disappeared and a blue sky, with a bright but gentle sun, took over the above.

“If there is one good thing I must say about this realm, it is the fact it can support far more flora than hell could ever hope to imagine. Ideally, if humanity were removed, I'd have no problem staying here. No, even considering humanity, I'd stay here in a heartbeat if all those God-fearing fools disappeared from this world.”

The vines under his feet quickly rotted and turned to dirt. It expanded for miles for as far as the eye could see. Soon green burst through the surface of the dark dirt, forming a sea of green. Various flowers and trees soon decorated the scenery. The sea of green soon became a sea of rainbows, not a single colour missing out and not one tree having the same shade of brown.

And the thing that frightened Kevin the most, was the fact he recognised all of them.

Sitting behind him, with a cup of tea in her hand, in a chair and table formed from branches, was the demon Buer.

“You no longer have to work as a human, you no longer have to suffer, you no longer have to worry about rejection, and you no longer have to worry about death.”

Various trees formed around him and those then took on the shapes of women. Their bark quickly turned to green flesh. They all took on the appearance of the demon Buer, with the only changes being horns made of bark and their skins being green.

They all smiled and jumped into Kevin, bringing him onto the grassy and flowery floor.

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She stretched her new body for several moments.

“I can't believe it was that easy. Was an encounter with me all it took to break his will? The church-”

She blankly stared into space as his memories flooded his mind.

“500 years? They forgot about this place for five hundred years!? Are you telling me I took this body for myself for nothing? And why has humanity forgotten how to use the natural mana around them?”

As Kevin's memories and experiences flooded her head, she calmed herself down.

“I suppose having a human body is advantageous enough. After all.”

She looked at her new body. It was Kevin's. She had done the favour of healing his wounds but it seemed she might have accidentally overdone it.

“It seems some of my power has manifested in his body.”

Parts of his body had turned red and he grew a single horn. And the biggest annoyance was the fact it was the body of a man.

“Well, it shouldn't be too difficult to convert it to that of a woman's. Ugh, now that I remember, human women go through some pain due to their reproductive organs every month, don't they? I'll have to remove the ovaries when I convert this body.”

But with the boy trapped within their mind that was an easy task.

She turned around and began walking. She recognised the reason the boy came here.

“Humans fighting against other humans. It seems no matter the period, things never change.”

For demons, their greatest enemy was humankind. And for humankind, the answer was the same, with demonkind being a close second.

She made her way through the dungeon, ready to see how the world had changed in the time that had passed.