6. Two Demons Conversing
At the top of the stairs, just below the pulsing ceiling, Isaac could make out the figures of two demons conversing. Bits and pieces of their words drifted by, growing louder the closer he got.
“—and I wanted to rip his insolent, pathetic throat out—“
“You must have felt quite frustrated.”
“—but then I remembered I’m not allowed to, so I just described what I would do instead!“
“Excellent impulse control, I’m very proud of you.”
“Thanks, I think I did a good job with the description. But, it’s just not the same, you know?”
The other demon gave a sympathetic hum.
“—so I was like, what’s a good way to vent stress if I’m not allowed to kill people? So I talked to Sharil and she told me about these things they have in the Upper World called gyms!”
“Very interesting.”
“She said Fable was telling people about them, and they just opened one in Solonell City! So I decided I’d better take a few days off and try it out—oh and thank you so very much for letting me take time off, I can’t express how grateful I—“
“I assure you, it was no problem at all.”
“—bless and praise you you’re such a gracious—“
“Olzu.”
“Oh, yes, forgive me! Uhh…”
“I believe you were talking about the gym.”
“Oh yes of course! So I went to this ‘gym,’ and it really was satisfying, incredible venting, I really recommend it sir, oh but someone of your caliber wouldn’t need to vent like a pathetic weakling like me, I never should’ve implied, I’m so terribly sorry, I—“
“I’m not offended. Please, continue.”
“Right right right, where was I…?”
Isaac cleared his throat, interrupting the demon. He stared between the two of them. The one he’d interrupted was quite small, only going up to around Isaac’s waist, with tiny wings that looked almost comical on the creature’s significantly more muscular body. The small demon’s face was decidedly inhuman, resembling a gargoyle, and he had a tendency to gesture aggressively from where he stood at the top of the stairs. A plain black string hung around his neck, and some sort of stone formed the pendant. This, he assumed, was Olzu.
The other demon was easily recognizable to Isaac. He looked much more like a human, being the right general size and shape, though even then the differences were obvious. The dark red skin, horns, black sclera, and wings clearly separated him from the humans of Chrowall and even the “humans'' of Solonell City. He was hovering near the ceiling, a bit higher than the smaller demon, wings moving so little that it looked like he was casually sitting on air.
Isaac raised an eyebrow as his eyes fell on the smaller demon again. “Should I come back later?” he asked, bemused.
The taller demon turned to face him and smiled warmly. “It’s wonderful to see you, Isaac,” he said.
The demon’s name was Lucius, and he held the distinction of being one of only two level 91 people in the Underside. As the most powerful person in the Inferno, he acted as a pseudo ruler, from what Isaac understood, and he often ran into the demon when he was on jobs there. His stat sheet automatically pulled up on his tablet, not that he needed it. When he’d just started out, Isaac had made it a point to memorize the stat sheets of every being over level 80.
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NAME: LUCIUS
SPECIES: DEMON
LOCATION: THE INFERNO, RED LINE
[CLICK TO EXPAND DETAILS]
ATTACK: 33
SPEED: 47
SKILL: 42
DEFENSE: 29
INSTINCT: 33
INTELLIGENCE: 45
STAMINA: 33
CALCULATED LEVEL: 91
It occurred to Isaac, as he faced the man, that he was effectively talking to a final boss and that he should probably be much more terrified considering how absurdly powerful Lucius was. He wasn’t, however, for 2 primary reasons.
The first was that Isaac had never actually seen Lucius fight. The system had already been in place when he’d first met him, and hearing about someone’s strength was very different from witnessing it. Besides, the man was so frustratingly patient that it was difficult to imagine him ever fighting anyone.
The second reason was that, ever since witnessing the other level 91 of the Underside (who incidentally was an angel, go figure) hang off the edge of a moving red line train and yell, “I’M FAAAALLING,” nothing was sacred anymore.
“Good to see you too, Lucius,” Isaac replied. He heard Olzu release a scandalized gasp and could feel an oncoming headache coming. Sharil’s words floated back to the surface of his mind. “Hands full” indeed.
“Olzu was just telling me about the training he was doing,” Lucius said. “He’s been going to the gym that opened in Solonell City and believes his stats are in need of updating as a result.”
Isaac admired Lucius’s ability to calmly translate and rephrase the amount of bullshit he probably had to listen to daily. He turned to Olzu, pulling up his stat sheet. “Well? What stat are you updating?”
“Attack!” the demon proclaimed, flapping his tiny wings proudly. Did demons flex? He looked like he should be flexing.
“Uh huh.” Isaac held the tablet up. It glowed gold, and a beam of golden light shot out and scanned the wall of the cavern. He pointed to it once this process was completed. “Just hit this.”
Olzu looked all too eager to follow his instructions. The demon moved closer, practically skipping down the stairs, and Isaac wondered if he could actually fly or not. The disproportionately small size of his wings said that he shouldn’t be able to, and he hadn’t flown yet from what Isaac had seen, but bees existed. That, and physics weren’t really a thing in the Underside.
Puffing up his chest, Olzu reeled his arm back, then lunged forward and punched straight at the wall. A blast of wind from the ensuing impact nearly knocked Isaac off the stairs; a nearby Lucius casually pushed him back to standing. He blinked, seeing that the wall had turned soft, much like the pulsing ceiling, perhaps in an automatic response to the amount of force.
“That was really satisfying,” Olzu said once he’d taken a step back. He turned to Isaac, practically vibrating with excitement. “Well?”
The tablet screen glowed as numbers flashed across it too quickly for Isaac to see or make sense of. After about a minute, it made a soft ringing noise and the results flashed across the screen.
NAME: OLZU
SPECIES: DEMON
LOCATION: THE INFERNO, RED LINE
[CLICK TO EXPAND DETAILS]
ATTACK: 15↑ [UP FROM 13]
SPEED: 7
SKILL: 10
DEFENSE: 9
INSTINCT: 3
INTELLIGENCE: 10
STAMINA: 10
CALCULATED LEVEL: 11↑ [UP FROM 10]
A strand of golden magic emanated from the tablet and wove itself around Olzu’s hand, where the plain infinity sign tattooed to the back flashed with the updated information before fading to its usual matte state. Olzu was grinning so hard his face was nearly split in half.
“Ha! Just wait until I tell that stinking, no good, son of a glacier—“
“Congratulations, I’m proud of you,” Lucius’s voice interrupted. Olzu beamed so hard that Isaac wouldn’t be surprised if he actually started emitting light. He himself was scrolling through the new stats, a bit impressed. It had been a month since one of these requests had actually yielded changed results.
Isaac closed out of Olzu’s stat sheet, about to pull up his list again, when a flashing dot in the corner of his eye caught his attention. The live map of the Inferno was still pulled up, and a dot was approaching them at breakneck speed. He squinted at it, and his eyes shifted over to the tiny name hovering next to the dot. His brows rose in recognition.
“Ah shit.”