Stats distributed, death for the moment forestalled, Cass settled a little more comfortably in her cave. She placed her last vineroot potato in the bed of coals in her fire pit, unrolled her mat--which had somehow survived intact, despite the chaos of the centipedes--and rolled onto it. She was mentally exhausted and she just wanted to sleep.

Her body was uninterested in the concept though. Turned out that almost getting possessed by a demon just didn’t tire your body out that much. It was probably the least physically exhausting near-death experience thus far.

She laid there with her arm over her face, hoping she’d fall asleep anyway. She needed to recover her Focus and Stamina before she risked moving on. Any amount of Health recovered would be welcome too. Sleep would be good for that.

Stamina: 43/45

Focus: 125/207

Health: 12/32

But it wasn’t coming. And how could she sleep when she had no idea if or when the demon might attack her again? The system called him her servant, but what did that really mean?

All she really knew was she would need to sleep eventually. If he could possess her while she slept, with Soul Guard running, what could she do? She couldn’t just not sleep forever.

She was going to need to test how safe it was to sleep eventually. It might as well be now.

She sighed loudly.

How long had she been here now? It had been about a week in the forest? And how long in these caves? A day? Two? It depended on how long she’d been passed out after the Centipede. Call it 9 days then, just round up. Why not? It made her lonely melancholy more reasonable.

And she was lonely.

What were Kaye and Robin doing now? Were they still looking for her? What could they even do?

Her hand clenched into a fist over her chest. How was she ever going to get back to them?

She shook her head. She couldn’t be thinking about this either. She’d collapse if she did. And, she didn’t know how she’d put herself back together if she fell apart now.

But what else was there to think about? She was stuck here, twiddling her thumbs, waiting. She usually practiced Elemental Manipulation while sitting around camp, but she didn’t want to spend the Focus right now, she wanted that full and for it to stay that way.

There wasn’t even anything to watch. She was underground with nothing but stone around her for as far as she could see. She had never thought she’d find herself bored while trying to survive in a world trying to kill her. But here she was, watching moss grow on the bare wall of a cave.

She was going mad. Mad enough to consider insanity.

She opened her mouth, almost voicing the madness, but stopped. She didn’t want to talk to him. He’d tried to kill her. She wasn’t that desperate yet.

Was she?

No. Definitely not. No.

She’d just lie here. She would sleep. She would wake up a couple hours from now with lots of Focus and Stamina and find her way out of these awful caves. She didn’t need to talk to him.

She wouldn’t give him another chance to hurt her.

She rolled onto her side.

He was just another monster. Vicious and cruel and… Could he really hurt her just by talking?

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She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything about him or demons.

But really, did it matter if talking could or couldn’t hurt her? She still didn’t want to talk to him. It was a matter of principle.

She rolled back onto her back.

Tomorrow, she would find a way out of the caves. She had a promising lead. Atmospheric Sense had said there was a slight airflow back at the crossroad earlier. She just had to keep following that. Eventually, she would find her way out again.

And then what? the pessimism preparing her for the world to kick her down again asked. What happened once she was out? Wander the forest again? Hope to run into people? She’d been here nine days and hadn’t seen a single person.

The closest she’d gotten to civilization was an ancient ruin guarded by monsters and a mad demon trying to possess her.

She should sleep. This wasn’t helpful.

Against her better judgment, the words slipped out, “Hey, can you hear me?”

She didn’t know how much the demon could hear of the outside world. Or how much Soul Guard blocked. Or if she really wanted him to respond.

He didn’t, which she decided suited her just fine.

“I don’t know what we’d talk about if you could hear me. You’re probably still trying to kill me.” She paused. She didn’t know if she was waiting for him to interrupt her or if she was just talking to herself.

“I’m really tired of this place, you know?” She didn’t know if he would know. But she imagined Hell was something like this place, full of monsters trying to kill each other.

“I was tired of my life on Earth, I guess. Nothing glamorous about the office job. No near future where I was going to save enough money to buy a house. No romantic interest in anybody in my life and no drive to try the dating app games.” She doubted a demon had any opinions about Earth dating apps, but she stopped in case he wanted to interject.

“But at least nothing was trying to kill me. I hadn’t nearly died once in all the time I lived on Earth. You know how many times I’ve almost died in the week and change I’ve been here?” She stopped, counting her encounters on her fingers. The hound. The terrorcat. The plague from the plague crows. The cockroaches. The centipedes. The demon. That was six times. And those were just the ones where death got close. How many other fights had she been in? How many of those could have gone significantly worse?

She should stop these thoughts. This wasn’t helpful. This wasn’t filling the ever-growing void in her heart.

“I’m alone,” she whispered. “I’m so alone that I’m all but begging the last thing that tried to kill me to give me the time of day.” She almost laughed. But it hurt.

I do not know the time either. The voice echoed around inside her, discordant and raking.

She winced. But it was better than the silence. “You can hear me.”

He didn’t answer.

“Come on, you know I’m begging for company. I’ll even settle for you.”

This is uncomfortable for both of us.

She winced as his voice ripped up her insides. “Oh, so this hurts you too then? Good. If I have to suffer for your company you should too.”

It's the resonance from my thoughts bumping off your guard.

“Agh,” Cass curled up, gritting her teeth. “So you’re saying I just need to let you out and this’ll stop hurting?”

Or start absorbing my soul. The root cause is the rejection of outside influence.

Cass had never known a voice could hurt so much. She almost asked him to stop. But pain was becoming uncomfortably familiar these days. Solitude was too, but she was done with that.

“Don’t know how to absorb a soul. I think that’s out of the cards.”

Shame.

“What happens if I let you out?” Cass asked.

Pendant. No resonance. He spoke slowly, a deliberate attempt to minimize the pain. An obvious manipulation technique.

“And you try to eat my soul again later while I sleep?”

Cannot. Level 4.

“And what about later? How long will you be level 4?”

He didn’t answer. Either he was in too much pain to answer or he had no answer that would convince her to let him out. Maybe both.

Cass didn’t know what she’d expected. She didn’t know what answer he could have given that would have made her trust him. She didn’t think it existed.

But that meant she was stuck on her own.

She checked her stats, hoping they were full enough that she could leave this god-forsaken hole.

Stamina: 45/45

Focus: 187/207

Health: 13/32

Definitely not full. But it was close, if one ignored Health, which she was. More to the point, Focus was almost full. Assuming she was still losing one Focus every minute from Soul Guard, that would give her a little over 3 hours to find another campsite. She could risk that.

If it meant she wasn’t driving herself insane trying to talk to the demon, she could risk that.