Episode 12: Great Forest of the Demon World (1)

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Caim and the others turned to leave, continuing their journey. They didn't have the Life Essence with which to buy anything (not that they needed more supplies than what they had brought), and there was nothing more to discuss.

Or so he had thought, but it seemed Virgil wasn't satisfied with the conversation ending there.

He waited not only for Caim to turn around but also for him to take a few steps before calling him back.

"There's one thing that does seem to be true about your people."

There was no doubt, he was trying to provoke him. But Caim was no child. He turned his head, looking at him silently. He didn't respond in any other way. He didn't reveal his feelings, carving out an empty expression.

"Your face is beautiful like that of a woman," Caim accepted it without further ado. He was used to being told such things while at the same time being called a pig, repulsive, seed of evil, but "your body is as tough as that of a man."

Virgil suddenly burst into laughter.

It was an unpleasant laugh, like that of a lecherous old man, and probably drunk on top of it, which he surely was. The latter right now not, of course.

"Although the same goes for that one there, so it's not something so special after all."

"Are you hitting on me, old man? Or provoking me? Are you so eager for us to attack you, were you getting bored?"

That son of a bitch raised his hands above his head in what was supposed to be a sign of surrender. Caim didn't believe he was as confident as he wanted to appear, but if he wanted to provoke him to attack, the reason was quite obvious. While on the one hand people called him the devil's seed, they seemed to delight in pushing him to commit bad deeds, as if to prove themselves right after all.

The only thing he would achieve by drawing his sword and slashing him from chin to groin would be that: telling him he had been right about him all along. It wouldn't be true, but he would believe it, and that was more than enough.

"I was just wondering if you led those two women to ruin with that pretty face of yours. In that case, I guess even your face is that of a devil."

Caim frowned. He would control himself to a certain extent not to agree with his twisted perspective of things (or, in any case, not to let him win, no matter what he wanted to achieve with provoking him), but he would only tolerate it to a certain extent.

"You better learn to shut the hell up. Understand? This is your second warning. There won't be a third."

He made things clear.

He didn't want to do this, but it wouldn't be his fault if he forced him to. He couldn't let everything pass, first of all, the crap he was spewing out of his mouth not only had to do with him, so it didn't matter what his violent reaction might decide or not about him.

He would do anything to defend his very few loved ones. They were all he had in the world, after all.

They left, and Virgil proved to have learned to shut the hell up, indeed. At least for now.

However, it didn't matter. His words kept swirling in his head. The more you tried not to think about something, the more it consumed your thoughts. It meant that the only people who had seen beyond his horns, who had been kind to him unselfishly, had only reached his "angelic" face. Was it true? He almost wanted to ask, but not only would it be an unimaginable betrayal, distrusting the people he should never distrust, but what did he hope to achieve with that exactly? If it wasn't true, they would be angry. If it was true, they would lie.

What nonsense.

Especially since obviously it wasn't true. Why was he letting himself be manipulated by that old man? Who would accompany him on this crazy journey just because of his face?

Such nonsense, such vain insecurities. Since when had he harbored such senseless doubts?

In any case, he had to bury them forever.

They were here for the same reason he would do anything for them: love. They were like a family.

More to distract himself than anything else, Caim opened the stats page. He should have done it already, in fact, last night before going to bed, but he had been very tired, he hadn't felt like thinking about anything. Since he hadn't paid for that mistake (for example, with a terrible ambush in the middle of the night, so quick that it wouldn't have left him time to distribute the points), he swore he wouldn't make it again, that he wouldn't leave fate and damn luck a window open to screw him over.

He had five experience points.

Five, no more, no less. Two points had made a considerable difference, although not huge, the important thing was that it had been noticed.

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It didn't seem to him that he had defeated so many enemies directly to deserve five experience points at once, but Caim wasn't going to argue with his mysterious power (or the Tower's, truth be told, he didn't care about the difference, if there was any) arguing that it should make things harder for him. His life had been hard enough.

As for how to spend those points, it was very easy to say that the best defense is a good offense.

That no matter how much damage he could withstand or how long he could hold out in a fight as long as he had the strength to finish everything that stood in his way quickly.

It sounded reasonable, but he knew that betting everything on one thing was always a mistake, he should distribute the points evenly and sensibly. So, this is what he did in the end.

Strength: 4

Constitution: 2

Endurance: 4

He didn't know if he had made the best possible decisions, but he had limited himself to the names whose meaning he understood more or less well and those that should be more useful in a direct fight. He didn't think the Tower held challenges where it would be good for him to be more Charismatic. In any case, not enough to justify spending points on that statistic instead of others more important always.

Moreover, it didn't matter if he had decided well or not, the fact was that he had.

And he couldn't take it back, for better or for worse.

At least as far as he knew.

Well, if such a thing existed, he couldn't see it and it was practically the same.

They crossed several rooms and went up a staircase (considerably shorter than the previous one, although few were not) without encountering any problems. Not even a skeleton soldier or some lesser monster that would have at least slowed them down a bit, served as an obstacle.

Thanks to that, Caim, naturally paranoid, once again had the feeling that something was waiting for them around the corner. Before he had been wrong, or at least it had been a more positive than negative surprise, but he doubted that would happen again. He doubted he would be so lucky, when he had never been.

Sometimes he wondered if it was really worth it to keep going, to try. Sometimes, well. Actually very often.

What awaited them around the corner turned out to be a huge forest. At the very least, it was much more impressive than that old man and his small shop, and only the gods knew what could crawl through the darkness, among the dense vegetation.

"I don't like the look of it, but I don't see another path."

Of all that Virgil had said, the only thing he knew for sure was true was that there was no other way forward. Even if the entrance door hadn't vanished with the morning mist, for them turning back was not an option. They had lost the right to look back since they embarked on this journey. No, rather they wouldn't have gotten this far if they had looked back even once.

"Be very careful," he continued. "Who knows what kind of animals live here. Damn it, I don't even want to think about it."

"Just as we entered we saw a giant spider. That was our welcome. Now that we've made progress, we'll find it could be... Yes, don't make me think about it."

They ventured into the forest.

It didn't take long to hear Victoria emit a gasp of surprise, danger. Caim exploded like lightning.

Nothing less would have been enough. He wouldn't have reacted in time if he had hesitated, even for a millisecond.

Victoria was a mage, and although that meant she could do great things, it also meant she had obvious limitations, like her reaction ability. Spells, spoken aloud or in the mind, took time. Too much time to react to that fearsome surprise attack in any case.

The attacker was fast in general, not just fast compared to Victoria. And that attacker, who fell dead with a bullet between his eyes, was...

"But what the hell?" exclaimed Yonah.

No wonder.

It was a naked man, wild, his expression still that of an animal about to catch its prey, he had died before realizing what was happening. When he said naked he meant completely naked, he didn't even wear the most essential. Yes, it wasn't very impressive, but his penis was hanging out for everyone to see.

It was the first time he had used the gun in the Tower, the first bullet he had spent.

Naturally, it had been worth it. If he had been stupid and tried to intercept this enemy using the sword, that wild man would have slit Victoria's throat with his nails, blackened and long as blades, or with his teeth which were more or less the same, but surely they could tear flesh easily.

Monster flesh.

Human flesh.

For someone desperate, he supposed there would be little difference.

Apart from his lack of clothing, the only thing that stood out was that he was bathed in blood and entrails, like a newborn baby. For some reason, that was the first comparison that came to his mind. He would stick with the first one, he didn't need more.

"He wasn't a human being. Too fast, and the disposition of his bones, if you look closely... Something has mutated him."

For the reasons that Victoria had just stated and others, he really didn't want to think about it too much.

Yonah shook his head. As if to say: damn, what things you have to see.

"We won't suffer the same fate, whatever it may be."

Caim nodded, not taking his eyes off the dead man (or whatever it was) on the ground with that expression of extreme pleasure frozen on his face. Caim had killed many people, more than he could count, if only because he had stopped counting them a long time ago. But he had never done it for pleasure. Even to those he deeply hated. And he had plenty of reasons to hate many people from the bottom of his soul.

(if I have one)

"We haven't come this far to die now. Or something worse."

"That poor devil must have thought the same, but for us it's true. We have something that no one else has."

"True."

Even if he thought otherwise, he would never say it out loud, of course, but he was telling the truth. Caim believed they were special. That he was destined to conquer this Tower.

Of course, if he didn't believe that, he wouldn't have been able to get this far, he couldn't take another step. But he sincerely believed it, not just because he needed to believe it. It was an important distinction. It was what would make the difference.

They moved forward even more cautiously (if possible), the last thing he wanted was for one of those naked bastards to jump on him. He heard something among the bushes and drew his gun. However, when he saw it wasn't what he had expected, he didn't pull the trigger. Not yet.

They weren't naked savages, but half a dozen men in knight armor, armed with swords, spears, and axes. They could be real knights or merely opportunistic bandits who had massacred a group of knights at some point and now wandered around with those armors as if they deserved them. In any case, Caim opted for a civilized approach.

"Greetings, me and my..."

"A devil's spawn!"

They didn't even give him a chance to negotiate. He hadn't expected anything else, but how quickly it ended, the knights or whatever they were reached for their weapons.

"I suspected as much," Victoria said dryly.

Great Forest of the Demon World (1): END