Irthrothun noticed me almost immediately. “There you are!”

I took off at a run again toward Helas’s house through the slush and sludge of the streets in the slums. He rushed at me, faster than I’d anticipated. Had he been holding back his speed? Had he wanted to observe what I did before revealing his true abilities?

He trailed me too close for comfort. There was something about his anger that felt poles apart from before. No, his anger had been ramping up slowly all this time. He’d played at being mad in the beginning to make me underestimate him, but now he was enraged that he was the one who’d underestimated me.

“Why are you so fucking hard to catch?” he growled, more singularly driven than before and trailing me closely. His muscles twitched and veins bulged as his arms doubled in size.

Transformation magic.

He lunged, so close to me that I felt his breath tickle my ear.

I activated [Forgotten Son] and dodged out of his reach…or so I’d thought.

Thanks to Helas’s overwhelming training methods, muscle memory brought up my arms to block the demon’s enlarged arm, big enough now that all he had to do was swing. Forcing out the words for a shield, the hit landed far heavier than any of Helas’s punches and heavier than Father’s cane due to the sheer size. Like being hit by an old growth tree.

My shield shattered like the thinnest of glass.

I smashed into—and through—the wall of a house and into a dining set, skidded across a dirt floor into the kitchen, and banged into a cabinet with a loud groan. For a moment, every bone ached and every muscle screamed.

I’d played with fire…

Not good. Really not good.

I experimented with every limb as I scrambled to my feet with more effort than should’ve been necessary. The shudders that rolled through me told me I’d be in some pain if I didn’t have [Cold-Blooded Nature] activated.

【NOTICE】

Please wait while your Demon Core [2%] regenerates your Form…

This may take a while. You may consider further tethering your Demon Core.

Okay, so I’d probably be in a ton of pain without [Cold-Blooded Nature].

Upstairs, I could perceive someone, alone and afraid. Their partner and their kids could already be at work or on their way home. Or they had neither a partner nor a child, a widow maybe or their child had died before them.

All the same, no one deserved to die. I couldn’t bring a demon into this home or any other home.

I needed to end this demon, but how? I’d die trying at this rate, and probably take several innocent people along with me as I struggled to hold out.

My chest tightened. I took a few deep breaths and let time pass to gather myself as Irthrothun seemed content to wait. Once again, he’d underestimated me.

I needed Helas, and by now, she should know something had happened to Harorin. I’d thought it was just paranoia in her old age, but she always sent a raven after Harorin and me when we left her house to make the trek back to campus. Maybe she’d done it for this reason.

As I staggered on shaky legs toward the opening in the wall that my impact had made, I stretched my perception to the dark sky and almost wanted to thank my patron god. A foreign feeling since I’d stopped believing in divine intervention after Mother’s death. What had Ket’ha ever done for me except let me die—twice?

Callas, circled above Irthrothun and marked him as prey.

I was no longer fighting by myself.

“Come out,” Irthrothun almost sang. His skull face appeared on the other side of the hole I’d created coming in, his snout edging its way inside and breathing in warm air that reeked of rot. A pit dropped in my stomach. “Come out and play with me, Slayer.”

Neither of his eyes were still injured.

His torso still dripped with fresh, brackish blood. The shoulder he’d used to wreck half the first floor of a house was bloody as well. Being this close, I could see his core better than ever before. Or at least see the pulsing light radiating from him as that shock of dark yellow that told me he had an Epic core.

It was fainter now, but not faint enough. He’d still regenerate quicker than I would.

【NOTICE】

Forgotten Son [Uncommon] has been deactivated.

You have no remaining use of this Skill today.

Shit.

Irthrothun’s head snapped to attention, his stare piercing through me. Whatever intimidation tactic he was hoping would work against me turned into a hum in the back of my mind thanks to [Cold-Blooded Nature].

“Got you, Slayer.”

I hawked the only one of the [Daggers of Nowhere] I had handy into his right eye. He reeled back reflexively but reached a clawed hand through the hole instead. He couldn’t see me, but he had me in a small space and I had no room to dodge.

【NOTICE】

The Daggers of Nowhere [Uncommon] have weakened the tether to Irthrothun’s core by 15%.

So I didn’t dodge.

I took a gamble and dashed the length of his arm span while I mumbled the spell to summon the other dagger back. He must’ve pulled it out of his eye and dropped it somewhere, but it was mine, and so it materialized in my hand as I emerged from the house in front of his crouched form.

“Yes!” he roared. “Run right into my arms!”

His chest—where his core rested in a tangle of flesh and muscle and organs in the cavity of his ribs—couldn’t have been an easier target.

Big and broad right in front of me.

Arms open almost as if welcoming the slash of my dagger that I drove from his throat to his midsection.

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He let out a raw animal noise.

【NOTICE】

The Daggers of Nowhere [Uncommon] have weakened the tether to Irthrothun’s core by 15%.

I hopped onto the awning of the house opposite him, leapt onto the roof to pass him, and then took off at a run once my feet hit the ground again behind him.

Helas’s house was so close. I could make it.

Two years training with Helas had taught me a lot about her. For example, she habitually used a raven she called Callas as her eyes in a fight. According to some of her stories, Callas was either incredibly ancient or she was just the name Helas used for whatever raven she chose to transfer her consciousness into using magic.

Over my shoulder, I threw one of my [Daggers of Nowhere] into his exposed core, and a crack splintered the silence that surrounded us. At the same time, I signaled to Callas.

A sweet sound to my ears.

【NOTICE】

The Daggers of Nowhere [Uncommon] have weakened the tether to Irthrothun’s core by 15%.

He overshot my position and tried to adjust by swinging his arm across the length of the street, but his timing was too slow.

Callas dived low at him, digging her talons into the demon’s uninjured eye. Irthrothun hissed and swatted at her, but the raven avoided his claws with ease. She was a seasoned fighter. Or at least she was when Helas was controlling her.

“Manio incix,” I said, skidding to a stop while summoning one and then the other of the [Daggers of Nowhere]. I relished in the solid feeling of them in my hands, cold hilts radiating an intoxicating power through me.

He watched me stalk toward him, gaze steady and burning with hatred and bloodlust. Compared to Father and Ezrenad, he seemed like a petulant child. I’d never fought against a demon before, and I hadn’t gone up against a monster as strong as him before, either, but his defeat thrummed in my veins.

It was a feeling as cold as death.

Helas dropped behind him unnoticed—not because she had a skill for it but because she was that fast—and grabbed him from under the shoulders. Her brown skin and shock of white hair was unmistakable. She barely moved her lips when she whispered the spell to nullify his magic.

I almost felt sorry for him as he struggled in her grasp, too weak to free himself from her even though she was shorter by half a head.

A demon like Irthrothun couldn’t beat her strength.

Because that was the thing with Helas. She looked middle-aged with only a few eye wrinkles, hedging on grandma because of her white hair. Except I’d traced her scholarship across five hundred years of history, so she could be my grandmother four times over.

The only people who could use magic and lived that long were dragons and dragonkin, and dragons were too proud to use transformation magic to hide their appearance to blend in.

I’d chosen Helas for this reason.

I believed that she was one of the oldest and strongest people in the world. That she’d trained Mother as well? Meant that there wasn’t anyone who could train me to defeat Ezrenad better than her.

Although I could’ve sent the [Daggers of Nowhere] into his core with two flicks of the wrist, I walked up to him.

Standing in front of him now, he didn’t seem so threatening. Even though he still fought against Helas’s hold, every jerk and twist was a half-movement burdened by defeat. He looked like he’d already accepted death, and for some reason, that bothered me.

“What about a deal?” I asked.

Helas gave me a look, her mouth and eyebrows twisting together. “What the fuck are you talking about, kid?”

Irthrothun grinned. “Yes, it’s not surprising that you’d seek more power after having fought against me, Slayer. You know you’re weak and that we are many while you are few.”

I raised a hand to stop him, and he did. I’d just wanted to know what he’d say, but now I was curious what other information he might tell us. “How many of you have crossed over already?”

“Many, many, many.” He cackled, and his tongue danced in his mouth. “We are everywhere, and you are nowhere.”

“Just kill him,” Helas said, kicking out his feet so he kneeled in front of me.

“Why are there so many of you?” I asked him instead.

He tilted his skull head to the side. “Because we want more, of course. What a stupid question.” He licked his sharp teeth, smacked his lips. “We want more power. We want more to devour. We want everything to be ours and nothing to be yours. And we’ll have it all very soon. All the dungeons. All the kingdoms. All the portals. All the souls. All of you. Then we can get stronger and become more powerful than the gods.”

“Well,” I said with a sigh, “not you. You won’t get any of that.”

Pressing the tip of both [Daggers of Nowhere] into his chest, I dug out his core while he wailed and screeched like the dying thing hoping to be rescued. The sound flinched through me in a way that I always hated.

【NOTICE】

The Daggers of Nowhere [Uncommon] have weakened the tether to Irthrothun’s core by 15%.

【NOTICE】

The Daggers of Nowhere [Uncommon] have weakened the tether to Irthrothun’s core by 10%. Irthrothun’s core is no longer tethered to his Form, and his tether can be weakened no further.

The core wedged out of him and dropped to the ground between us. He slouched in Helas’s arms until she tossed him aside like he weighed nothing. He didn’t look alive—

【NOTICE】

You have defeated Irthrothun, a demon [Legendary].

You have been awarded:

100,000 EXP ┃ 1,000 FP

Do you accept this reward?

—because he wasn’t alive anymore, it seemed.

Yes.

“Good riddance,” Helas said. “Manio isati.”

Helas’s spell produced a roaring inferno of white flames, magnitudes more powerful than the fire Harorin had been able to create. I shielded my eyes against its brightness.

“Dio isati,” she finished, and the fire disappeared. A destruction spell for fire. All that was left was the dry stone beneath the snow and the demon’s core, a deep red energy swirling in a condensed form that looked like a glass bead that fit in my hand.

It was warm against my palm when I picked it up.

I said his name before I’d even formed the question I wanted to ask. “Harorin—”

“—It’s too late for that,” Helas said. She closed her eyes, signaling that she’d dropped her connection to Callas.

I wanted to ask how she knew what I was asking. Was she really answering my question or a different question she imagined me asking?

I wanted to ask if she was sure. How could she be? Had she already seen his body?

But the motivation to ask disappeared into my core along with everything else I’d used to tether my core. What remained in me said that Helas wouldn’t give me any answer if she hadn’t known what I was asking and she wouldn’t have given me such a disappointing one if it wasn’t true. So I didn’t know what to say.

She put her hands on my shoulders. “Since when the hell have you been a slayer?”

I blinked, then remembered that she could probably see the demon core Mother had given me just like the demon. “Since less than an hour ago?”

【NOTICE】

You have deactivated Cold-Blooded Nature [Uncommon].

You have 31 minutes and 17 seconds of use remaining today.

“Twenty-nine minutes ago,” I corrected myself.

“Your mother?” She removed her hands and wiped my face with the sleeve of her fur coat, staining it with the red of my own blood and the black of the demon’s.

I nodded, opened my mouth to say more but found I didn’t have the words to explain it all right now, either. Something in me stilled—I’d been shaking, and for some reason, I couldn’t look her in the face. It wasn’t even that I wanted to avoid her gaze; she was blind when she wasn’t seeing through Callas.

“I’m glad you’re not hurt,” she said. She stepped closer to me, hooking her arm with mine and guiding me in the opposite direction of her home. “You did a good job here. You survived. You have no reason to apologize.”

“But still…” I didn’t know how to finish, and my dropped sentence introduced a long stretch of silence between us.

“Demon cores do not raise us from the dead so easily,” Helas said after a while. A sardonic smile lifted her lips. “And demons know this better than other Cored Beings. What was done to Harorin was on purpose, and had you known, you would’ve acted differently. Am I wrong?”

“No, you’re not,” I said. I let her warmth and her words lift some of the sour taste off my tongue. “I don’t want anyone else to die like that though. I need to be stronger. A lot stronger. Mother said you trained her. Will you train me as a slayer, too?”

“I’ll teach you everything I know. But first…”

I heard nothing else she said.

〖QUEST NOTICE〗

You have successfully completed A Mother’s Last Request [Rare]. All the experience points and free points earned since your class change to Slayer will now be rewarded.

For seeking the Slayer called Helas Trazigar and convincing her to train you as a slayer, you have been awarded:

10,000 EXP ┃ 100 FP ┃ 2 EP

In addition, for completing this quest within the hour, you have been awarded:

New Item: Infinite Chain of the Endless Slayer [Rare]

Passed onto the Hidden Slayer by a mother’s dying wish…

This item originally owned by the Endless Slayer disrupts the tether between a demon and their core, immobilizing them and making it impossible for them to break free for up to an hour in one day depending on the strength of tether to your <#ERROR!> Demon Core [2%].

Do you accept this award?

Yes.