“Halt!” orders one of the royal-guardsmen. The two of them, on the other side of the door, are crossing their pikes to block the hallway. “No unauthorized entry.”
Canta lifts his hands, waving him off. “It’s fine,” he says. “I’m the sin-eater. Besides, we’re doing a thing.” The two guards look at each other for a second before turning their heads back towards him.
“You’re going to have to leave, sin-eater,” replies the guardsman, not impressed.
Canta rolls his shoulders back around. “Hey, what level are you?”
“That’s not relevant. Please leave or we will be forced to -”
Canta places his hand on the shaft of the man’s pike and yanks it out of his grip, throwing it to the side with one hand while he grabs the collar of his breastplate, pulling him down towards himself. Canta presses his face to the metal slits of the helmet, staring with wide eyes through them at the increasingly nervous pupils on the other side. “I just wanted to know if demons get levels, is all,” he remarks. “I guess you don’t, though, right?”
“JOHAN! SOUND THE ALARM!” commands the guardsman, turning his head to look at the other one, who is suspended in the air, his legs kicking as Alleluia holds him aloft. The man turns his head back just in time to see Canta grabbing his helmet and ripping it off.
“I said -” says Canta, looking at the demon through wide eyes. “- we’re doing a thing.”
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{YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT}
[HEAVY ARMOR PROFICIENCY]{FIGHTER}(NORMAL)
{SUCCESS}
Allows normal maneuverability while wearing heavy armor
Reduces weight penalty of heavy armor by 33%
{YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT}
[POLEARM PROFICIENCY]{LANCER}(NORMAL)
{SUCCESS}
Allows normal proficiency of polearm weapons
Removes all untrained weapon-use penalties for all non-exotic [POLEARM]-type weapons
----------------------------------------
It’s five minutes later.
Canta presses down a burp, striking against his chest with his fist. He wouldn’t want to be uncivilized in front of Alleluia. Taking a moment, he winds her crank back up. She’s busy swarming about how cool he was and he can’t help but nod in fervent agreement.
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Finally, someone recognizes him for what he is.
“So we’re doing a thing?” she asks.
“We’re doing a thing,” he replies, adjusting the last of the looted armor he’s wearing. He’s not wearing the full set, as he prefers to be quicker on his feet, especially since he can regenerate anyway. But the chestplate looks cool, plus it has a cape. Brother would have wanted him to have a cape. It’s only the right thing to do. This is the big climax. He needs to look the part. Although, it is an odd combination with the priestess’ habit. But at least he’s been able to lower the hood. “And then we’re retiring.”
“Last time we retired, we had to run away from lizard-demons,” she says.
Canta gets up, grabbing one of the metal pikes and hoists it over his shoulder. It doesn’t feel heavy at all. He’s gotten a lot stronger. It looks like those push-ups have paid off. “Well this time, we’re doing it without the lizard-demons,” he explains.
“We can’t retire,” she says. “You still need to eat sins.”
He sighs, rolling his eyes. “Fine. So I’ll go to church once a week.”
“What a pious husband I have!” chimes Alleluia, clasping her hands together. “So gallant! So noble!”
He shakes his head. The two of them walk down the long hallway to the large intersection coming up ahead of them. “Are you trying to flatter me?”
“Yes,” she admits.
Canta nods. The two of them grope each other at the same time. “It’s working.”
“Good!” says Alleluia. “I’m still waiting on my ring.”
The two of them reach the end of the hallway. Three large, wooden double-doors are here. One to the left, one to the right, and one straight ahead. Canta and Alleluia look at each other, nodding at the same time as they push open the door leading straight ahead into the room.
“- That crazy fuck actually found the magical-staff!” says a man, slamming his fists against the table that he’s sitting at. “Like… how did he realize that he hid it inside of his daughter? Fucking wild shit, man! I almost died back there!” exclaims the guard. “It was lucky as fuck that he didn’t know how to use it!”
“Yeah, yeah,” sighs the other man sitting across from him at the table. “You tell that stupid story every other week.”
Canta looks around the room. It looks like some kind of mess-hall. There are about ten or eleven people here, all engrossed in their own little worlds.
All of them are demons.
“Remember that Georg has his birthday today,” says one of them.
Canta turns his head, looking at a group playing a game.
“Seventeen!” says a very excited guard, slapping down a handful of cards onto the table. The demon-possessed men sitting with him groan in exasperation.
“It was fucked up!” exclaims the 'man' on the left bench of the table, who was telling his story about a magical staff.
“Enchanted wizard-eyes?” guesses Canta, approaching the table. “They let him see demons?” he asks.
“– Yeah!” says the demon, disguised as a guard, looking up from the table.
His expression falls flat as his gaze meets Canta’s just in time, as Canta wrenches him up from the table.
“Where’s the staff?” asks Canta, calmly and collected.
“SIN-EATER!” yells the demon, terrified. Chairs and tables scoot away in an instant as everyone rises up to their feet, grabbing their weapons.
“WHERE’S THE STAFF?!” shouts Canta, slamming him against the table, frothy spit flying out of his mouth as he stares with wide, haunted eyes at the demon, who not only recognizes him but also the look on his face.
“HE HAS THE EYES!”
The other guard spirals across the room, crashing into a group of the others in the back as Alleluia flings him away. Grabbing the man’s pike, she slams it down past Canta, into the demon he had trapped, and pins him to the table.
The creature screams in pain, grasping at the pike and trying to remove it to no avail.
Canta grabs the other pike from next to the table, throwing it to Alleluia, just as a screaming man rushes towards him with his weapon in hand. Canta runs straight towards him.
The charging guard’s head snaps back and his body spins around in a sickening motion, a pike sticking in through his helmet which Alleluia had thrown. Canta’s boot presses itself off of the falling man’s breastplate as he pulls the pike back out, jumping and smashing it down onto the next man’s head.
It’s a good thing they spent so much time learning to fight together.
His cape billows behind him as he drops to the ground; the next man falls into a twitching mess as the blade of the pike cuts straight through the top of his head.
Canta drops to the ground just in time as an entire table flies over him, crushing the approaching next three against the wall. The stones crack, the wood splinters, and all three of the demons fall down to the ground.
Canta turns his head, looking at the few that remain on the right side of the room and who had gotten knocked down by Alleluia’s initial throw of the first man.
It only takes a minute, and they’re taken care of too.
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“Teamwork makes the dream work!” says Alleluia.
The demon, pinned to the table, screams in pain.
“It sure does,” says Canta, grabbing her hand as they walk back to the last demon alive. He grabs the shaft of the pike, which is still pinning the man there to the table. But he doesn’t pull it out. Instead, he just wiggles it a bit. “Where’s the staff?”
The demon screams.
“Where is it?!” yells Canta, grabbing the handle of the pike and leveraging it back down. The rounded blade of the axe-head turns inside of the man’s body.
“Destroyed! We destroyed it!” he yells, tears streaming down his face.
The door on the other side of the room opens and a man walks in, carrying a large paper box.
“Hey guys, I brought cake for my -” He looks around the room, staring up at Canta just as he wrenches the pike free from the flailing demon’s body.
“Happy birthday, Georg!” says Canta, handing Alleluia the pike to throw as he strangles the flailing demon with his other hand.