Father had made a mistake in killing me because he’d made me stronger. But not strong enough by a long shot. Not when the demon who’d possessed him was one of the Rashirat.
My new skill was called [Demeot Eyes]. It must be the slayer skill Mother mentioned that’d allow me to tell who was possessed by a demon.
All Cored Beings, demons and dragons alike, could perceive the quality of a core or a soul as a color, unlike Souled Beings. I’d never heard of a skill that allowed a Souled Being to perceive that same thing.
Thankfully I’d gained a new skill slot, so I wouldn’t have to get rid of any of my current skills to accommodate my new one. I should evolve it to Uncommon as soon as possible—but that was a decision I could wait to make until after talking with Helas.
Opening my eyes again, I found my roommate crying above me. So that was who’d been calling my name. He was Helas’s other apprentice. He must’ve returned from helping her with a potion and found me dead in the middle of our dorm room.
Instead of calling for help, it seemed like he’d untied me and put my head in his lap. A warm tingle across my body that remained after activating [Cold-Blooded Nature] told me that he was probably maintaining a healing spell while he’d been crying.
“Ha—” I tried to say his name, but I didn’t have enough of a face to get more than a raspy breath out as the first syllable.
“Please don’t be dead,” he muttered between sobs.
【NOTICE】
For being killed by a demon a second time before qualifying, you have been awarded:
500,000 EXP ┃ 5,000 FP ┃ 2 EP
New Item: Daggers of Nowhere [Common]
This item weakens a demon’s tether to their core by up to 5%.
Due to the nature of A Mother’s Last Request [Rare], all experience points and free points earned after your class change to Slayer will be awarded after completion of this quest.
Do you accept this award?
Definitely yes.
The daggers materialized in front of me, both sheathed. No item would be more effective against a demon than this. Usually a Transcendental-level quest came with the potential for a Legendary or Transcendental item, but I’d take this gratefully.
I set them aside as soon as I grabbed them, and I reached up to pat Harorin’s knee with a hand. At least then he’d know I wasn’t dead, since that thought seemed to cause him distress. I’d never imagined anyone would cry over my death.
He startled, then held my hand in both of his.
“Oh, thank Hokra,” he gasped. It wasn’t as annoying when he invoked his patron god as when Father did. “You’re not dead. What happened? There’s blood—your head…” He started crying harder and rested his forehead against the back of my hand.
Harorin had fairer skin than me, though his was a bit ruddy. Crying like this, his eyes and nose were redder than normal. He also had blonder hair than me, shaggy and with a little wave to it. Now my blood was staining it in places.
I sighed and tried again. “Harorin.”
He gasped again. “Geram—oh, no.” He looked away and hovered his palm over my mouth. “That was gross. Don’t speak yet. Let your mouth heal a bit more. What happened though? Who drew this rune in the sand? Why were you tied up on a chair? We should get you to the infirmary…”
“No,” I said. If he was covering my mouth, then he shouldn’t be able to see anything gross. “I can’t go to the infirmary. You’re healing me anyway. Isn’t that what your B-Rank soul is for?”
His brown eyes softened as they watered again. “What happened?”
I didn’t know how to answer him because I still had so many questions myself. Father had killed me. Marched in here in the dead of night, accused me of knowing too much, revealed that he’d been possessed by a demon, and then murdered me.
What was it that I’d supposedly known? Had it been about Mother’s death, or had he feared that I’d remembered that he’d been possessed by a demon? That, even back then, Father hadn’t really been my father. Maybe, in all the time I’d known him, he’d never been.
From Khavura, the Shevira of might and strength and discipline, was born Ezrenad, the Rashira of severity and envy. The Rashirat were the demonic shadows of the ten Shevirat, making them the strongest of all the demons. Each commanded a sizable dominion guarded by their own demonic order. Making an enemy of one of the Rashirat meant making an enemy of their personal army.
Why had Ezrenad chosen to possess my father out of everyone else in the world? Why had Father summoned him in the first place?
Mother had mentioned the reason Slayers existed was because demons were crossing over into the Plane of Formation when they weren’t meant to. Didn’t that mean there were people other than my father possessed by demons? How many of them could there possibly be?
Feeling my face for anything still broken and judging all essentials intact, I tried to get up but dropped to my knees when a loud ringing took hold of all my senses even despite having [Cold-Blooded Nature] activated.
【NOTICE】
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Please wait while your Demon Core [1%] regenerates your Form…
Not entirely healed nor regenerated by my new demon core then.
Harorin snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Hey, focus on me.”
I avoided his gaze and surveyed the room. Messy bed from where Father had grabbed me while I slept. A pool of my blood in the middle of a ruined rune that Father had drawn with sand. He sure had left a lot of evidence of what he’d done here.
If I left the room this way, then my disappearance would likely be an assumed death with the amount of blood lost to the rug and wood floor. My roommate would corroborate the story, and that’d mean Father would continue thinking that he killed me.
“Geram,” Harorin tried again, tone firmer this time.
“It was my father,” I said, choosing my words carefully. Harorin was the only person I considered a friend, and I knew he’d do any favor I asked. “And he has to continue thinking that he killed me, or he’ll kill me again.”
That was, he wouldn’t simply beat my head in next time. He’d mutilate my body and then destroy the core Mother gave me, and I wouldn’t come back.
“What do you mean?” Harorin asked.
“We can’t clean the room. We have to leave it like this. The university has to think I’m dead so that Father thinks I’m dead.” I tried standing slowly by using the chair for balance, and this time I was successful. “I’ll need to borrow your clothes, too, and I need to find Helas. Then I need to disappear, go somewhere else.”
Helas had an office and living quarters in the faculty residences, but she wouldn’t be there. Most professors were thankful they didn’t have to commute—or pay for living expenses. Not Helas. She hated how much space she had at the university and preferred a small, cramped house on the outskirts of the city—a twenty-minute walk. Which was also why that old woman hated coming to campus.
“Yeah, okay.” Harorin nodded as the warmth of his magic retreated from my skin. “Let’s get you to Professor Trazigar.”
I dressed as quickly as my regenerating body would allow and shrugged on one of his heavy fur jackets. By the time I finished changing into his pair of boots made with thicker leather and picking which of his belongings to borrow, I could feel the last of my injuries healing up.
【NOTICE】
Your Demon Core [1%] has completed regenerating your Form.
Perfect timing.
“You ready?” I asked Harorin.
He nodded, offering me a belt to hold my new daggers. Once I strapped it on, we headed out together. The hallway was empty, and so I didn’t need to activate [Forgotten Son] yet. I’d just need to push my perception as far ahead of me as possible so I could use the skill to hide before I ran into anyone.
I pressed forward quickly with Harorin tailing me. Décor was sparse in the castle except for large mural tapestries that depicted the history of the Kingdom of Sørgentsen, dusty and faded from age, lit only by periodic lanterns hanging from the ceilings. I’d relied on these shadows plenty of times to hide, and they served us well tonight.
At the bottom of the stairs, we neared a small group of students. Bolstaor University was a castle carved into a rocky cliffside, so while the tower residences had been built with wood floors and exposed wood beam ceilings, the first few floors were entirely stone. Sound tended to travel.
I took Harorin’s hand, pressed him against the stairwell wall, and activated [Forgotten Son] to hide us both. Moments later, the students passed us on their climb up.
“Did you hear?” one of them asked the other as we went unnoticed. “The king of Shazia finally crowned Princess Hyazira. I thought he’d give it to Princess Rozsula.”
“Of course, he gave it to his first daughter,” a second said, leaning closer to the other two in their group. “Even if she’s unimpressive.”
Ah, gossip.
Once they were far enough away, I deactivated the skill and we continued on our way.
“That was rude of them,” Harorin whispered. “What do they know? Have they met either of them? I bet not. They should just keep those thoughts to themselves. No one cares for their opinion if it’s going to be rude like that.”
“Comparisons are natural,” I said.
Mostly because my mind kept comparing between Father and me. I couldn’t stop from dwelling on the sheer scale of our difference in power. There was the gap between the quality of our souls, now compounded with the different quality of our demon cores. Father also couldn’t still be Level 92 when he was possessed by Ezrenad, a near demi-god.
Just how powerful were they with their abilities combined?
“Does that stop it from being rude?” Harorin asked, interrupting my spiraling thoughts. “Kissing is natural, but it’s rude to kiss someone who doesn’t want one from you.”
“That’s a consent issue.”
“Yeah? Well, neither of those princesses consented to constant comparison and critique. What if that harms their relationship as sisters? What if it drives them to compete when they could be supporting each other? Maybe it affects their confidence?”
“They’re not even going to hear it.”
“But we heard it,” Harorin said, his whispers getting more fervent. He clearly cared a lot about this, which made me reconsider. “Anyone could hear it, and you don’t know if they’re going to tell someone, who might tell someone else, who might tell this other person, and eventually it might get to them.”
It wasn’t as though he was wrong. I’d heard similar comparisons between my brothers and me, and I’d hated it. Still hated it even thinking about it. No one wanted to be compared to people they hated. At the same time, was there a way to prevent people from sharing their unnecessary opinions?
Violence, probably.
“Do you want to go back and tell them off?” I asked.
He blinked, then smiled. “No, but thanks for being willing to let me. Let’s hurry.”
After that, I navigated us through the university, using [Forgotten Son] as little as possible. When we stepped outside, it was still dark, but that didn’t tell us much about the time of day. In the north, the sun came out in the winter for only a handful of hours.
Thankfully, whatever storm had dumped all this snow was gone, so I pulled my fur robes closer, and we headed out into the early morning.
The cliffside had two castles—the university and the royal residence—both facing the Mirzalimat Ocean. Sprawling from the other side of the cliff, the city of Bolstaor was a maze of mis-matched homes, some built into the ground, either two or three stories tall, but all with very steep roofs covered in snow and dangling icicles.
So that I didn’t waste too much of [Forgotten Son], we ran through the brown slush and filthy sludge of the busiest streets, passing the market and the smithy, granaries and inns, taverns and a few temples, until the lampposts grew more distant and darkness made a home of the alleyways.
“Please—” Harorin wheezed by the time we reached the slums, lagging behind by a dozen or more steps. “Can we… walk now…?”
“Maybe you shouldn’t rely so much on the quality of your soul,” I said but slowed for him.
We walked the rest of the way down narrow roads and through deserted town squares. When we were nearly there, a bizarre presence tugged at my perception. Closer to Harorin than to me.
A drunken human stumbled out from the shadows of an alleyway, his gaze on the ground. He had too-pale skin and brown hair under his fur hat. He wasn’t standing straight but bowed forward, knees bent at an odd angle. His shoulder jerked unnaturally.
Instinctively, I reached for Harorin and activated [Forgotten Son], but he’d already taken several steps forward, concerned for the man.
“Can we help you…?” Harorin asked as he approached. “Are you unwell?”
The man groaned, and he stilled for a moment. The next second, his back arched with a loud snap, a shriek ripping from his throat.
His limbs stretched—his arms first, bulking with muscle and skin darkening to a crimson red. On his head, he grew blackened horns, and his nails sharpened into blackened claws.
In his middle, a dark yellow light pulsed like a heart.
Not a man.
A demon.