It didn’t actually take very long for Zoe to formulate a response to the girl’s question, because both her knowledge and opinion on infernal cultists were pretty simple. “I can’t say I’m a fan of them.”

“Wait, does that mean you’ve encountered them before?” The girl seemed pretty surprised at that. In any case, she almost sounded hopeful—or perhaps Zoe was reading too deep into it.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Zoe admitted. For a few seconds, the girl waited for her to continue. When it finally became clear that Zoe had no intention of doing so, she sighed and swung her legs back down under the tree branch.

“I think the guys you killed were working for a group of them.” Pausing for a moment, she shrugged. “I mean, it’s not like I could appraise them, so I don’t actually know they weren’t cultists themselves. But I don’t think they were.” She frowned. “Anyway, they’ve been following me for the past few days, and then they wanted to know where the others who had escaped were, but I didn’t even know that anyone else had escaped, so—”

“Hang on hang on.” Holding all four arms up, Zoe shut her eyes for a moment while trying to make sense of what the kid was saying. There were a lot of implications, but there was also a lot that was just left completely unsaid. She definitely needed the girl to back up and explain more clearly from the beginning.

“Do you think you can explain this more clearly from the beginning?”

The kid remained frozen for a moment, seemingly not comprehending what Zoe was asking and why it was necessary. But then she snapped out of it and launched back into her explanation.

“Okay, so there is this group of infernal cultists—apparently its actually big for a cult—and they’ve taken over a larger village that way—” twisting around, she pointed in the direction that Zoe was pretty sure was upstream of the river, “—and then they started grabbing people from places around the village as well, including me, and then they started taking us all somewhere else, but I was able to slip away because someone forgot to put out our group’s campfire.”

Blinking, Zoe tried to take it all in. The girl spoke really quickly, without many breaks—in fact, she was pretty sure the entire thing had been one giant sentence. Also, it sounded like there was more to the last part. What did a campfire have to do with escaping? What were these ‘groups?’ But for now, Zoe was content to move on.

After all, she now had enough to understand the basic nature of the situation. Probably.

“I see.”

“Anyway,” the girl continued, “I decided to go downstream to see if I could find people to get help, but then a few days ago I realized those guys were tracking me. But I didn’t actually think they would catch me until they found a small boat…”

“Right.” Sighing, Zoe shook her head slightly. “So I assume you know how to survive on your own out here?”

The girl sniffed. “Obviously.”

“Well, that’s good. Do you have a specific destination or are you just following the river until you find something?”

“Uh, sort of?” She paused. “There’s a small temple of Lux close to the river where it flows into the scorched wastes. Everyone says it’s abandoned, but I’ve been there a lot and I think it’s actually being maintained. So I was going to first go there and see if I could find anything useful or a way to contact the Order.”

Wait, a temple of Lux? Looking back downstream, Zoe squinted. Obviously, all she could see were the trees and their mana, but she looked back anyway. After a moment, she returned her attention to the child. “Lux—so like, get the attention of a paladin or something like that?”

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The girl laughed. “Oh that would be awesome. I mean I didn’t expect that anyone would send an actual paladin, but that would be so cool.” Chewing her lip, she paused. “But it is a big infernal cult, so maybe…” Her eyes widening, she leaned forward over the branch. “Can you imagine? Imagine meeting an actual paladin.”

After a moment, Zoe scoffed. “Eh, I can’t really say I’d like to repeat the experience.”

At that, the girl’s mouth hung open. For several seconds she just stared. “You’ve met an actual paladin of Lux? What was it like?”

Suddenly uncomfortable, Zoe grasped for something to say. Given that this kid seemed to have some sort of fascination or admiration for them, she was pretty hesitant to admit that she had killed one on the very first day she had arrived.

“Well, our interaction was fairly brief,” she hedged. “I don’t actually know much about them, honestly. He was pretty strong though.” Annoyingly so. Zoe didn’t want to run into any more of them anytime soon, even with her own subsequent growth in power.

“Wow.” The girl just sat there for a moment, and so the two of them remained in silence. Finally, Zoe decided to break it.

“Thanks for the information. You can go now, if you want. Good luck getting to the temple.” With that, she stepped under the branch—ducking as she did so—and climbing all the way up to the tip of the rock. “Actually, how far upstream is the village?”

“Uh, it took me a couple weeks I think?” Shifting around to face Zoe’s new position, the kid frowned. “Why? Where are you going?”

Zoe tilted her head. “To your village. I’ve been looking for them and I was already heading that direction anyway.” That wasn’t entirely true—Zoe hadn’t been looking for more cultists, she had been looking for the people who had tried to capture her and who presumably were responsible for the corruption in the river.

However, she strongly suspected there was a connection here. After all, she already had corruption in her mana channels before the pirate’s initiation fight in the sandpit. It had obviously been a result of the demonic ritual the cultist chieftain had used.

The girl, of course, immediately perked up—much to Zoe’s dread. “Then I’ll come with you!” Leaping down from the tree, she hurried up to join Zoe’s side, looking up at her once more in fascination. Please don’t get all feely and try to touch me, Zoe thought.

Fortunately, the kid didn’t seem inclined to do that—yet. “Wait, why are you after the cultists?”

It didn’t take any thought for Zoe to decide on her response. “It’s personal.” When the girl looked like she was about to probe deeper, Zoe glared down at her. Sighing, she returned her attention to the direction of the river. “Honestly, I get the feeling that you’re going to be absolutely determined to follow me no matter what. So let’s just go ahead and get on with it.”

Leaping down to the ground, Zoe didn’t wait for the girl to climb down and join her. If she wants to follow, then she has to keep up. Of course, that didn’t seem like it was going to be a problem, as she was back at Zoe’s sight just a couple seconds later.

“So what’s you name, little human?” As soon as she said it, Zoe tried not to laugh. She didn’t know where that phrasing had come from, but if she was going to be a totally inhuman monster, she might as well get the stupid bits of enjoyment she could. Like indulging this kid’s obvious monster-enthusiasm.

“Millie.” At first, Zoe thought she wasn’t going to ask back—but then she realized that Millie was working up herself to ask the question.

“What’s yours? Do you have one? Can I pronounce it? Or wait, is it even a word or is it a scent or something?”

Wow. Zoe didn’t even know what to think. Hmm, what should I tell her…

“Yes, but I’m not going to tell you. You can call me Zoe though.”

It was the best thing Zoe could think of to mess with her. She suspected that not knowing would frustrate Millie more than anything else. Then, if she ever decided to admit that it really was just Zoe, it would be super lame and disappointing. How evil!

While the girl didn’t immediately try to question her more, Zoe could tell she already had her wheels spinning. After about a minute, she spoke again.

“Zoa-IE.”

Confused, Zoe looked down. Millie continued to repeat the name, feeling it out with her tongue. But she was saying it really strangely—trying and failing to pitch down her voice while imitating a chronic smoker. It also sounded like she was trying and failing to roll her ‘R’. Never mind the fact that there was no R, of course.

After a few more repetitions, Zoe realized she was trying to imitate the exact way Zoe herself said it. But of course, Zoe just sounded like that because of her transformation. Ha!

Flicking Millie on the back of the head with a single claw—perhaps a bit too hard—Zoe shook her head. “Stop doing that, you sound like an idiot. You’re a human, just use your normal voice.”

The girl instantly turned bright red. Zoe rolled her eyes. What have I gotten myself into THIS time?