In a pit in a hole in the ground, a demon rested. More an unusual occurrence than most would think. And this demon?

He had finally lost it.

“FUCK! FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!”

I, I, I, Fucking Happy! After everything, after all that, after fighting for our lives. After nearly dying, after feel the fucking Hell Gem wake up and carve itself out and across my body?! After all of that… we lose?! He just fucking steals the Gems at the very end?!

My fist hit rock, over and over and over again. The rock broke.

Fuck. Just. Fuck!

My mind was elsewhere but I could feel my fist and wrist start to snap and break. I finally came out of it, breathing heavily, a massive crater in front of me. I nearly sank to my knees.

I sighed heavily and turned back around to my party members. They all had extremely dark looks on their faces. Especially Tyler.

“Why… why?! Why did I put it down! I’m so fucking stupid!” He almost seemed to be in tears but I could only sigh again.

“It’s not your fault.”

“No! It is! I-”

“No, Tyler, listen. I mean, it is literally, not your fault. We just both happen to put the gems down, right next to each other, on that Altar? Without noticing the other person doing it? Happy’s luck aura messed with our perception. Maybe even our thoughts. That thing can be damn subtle when it wants to be.”

It wouldn’t have even taken much effort really. If you weren’t paying attention, if there was only a slight nudge of ‘I’ll put this down for a moment’ or your hand starts to cramp up for a second, or a feeling of safety or something, all of that combined and apart could lead to this. Hell, when I had been running to grab the damn thing, I’d confirmed my worst fears that it could at least partially affect the mind, as my thoughts seemed to slow to molasses all of a sudden. It was if I had become… distracted, for a moment.

Well, at least it wasn’t full mind control.

“Luck aura?”

“We have a lot to talk about. Let’s get out of here.”

I looked up at the hole we’d fallen from.

“Alright, how the fuck are we going to do that?”

*****

Four people sat around a small table.

It was me and the others. We took slow drinks from our mead and beer. It had been many, many hours. We seem to have come back sometime in the morning. After climbing out of a hole in the ground and the literal sewers, we’d made our way to a new tavern. I didn’t want to feel like we were really retracing our steps and more importantly, we needed a change of scenery. It was a decision made in a moment by me to just ‘go to the nearest tavern’ but honestly, our spirits and moral were low enough, no need to rub salt in the wound by insinuating we were back to square one.

Then had come the stories. I’d started off first, describing our journey and how everything had happened. Tyler and Riary hadn’t gotten to actually see the jungle, so they were amazed that everything was that massive. It really went to show just how down we are, as neither said anything to us being worn and treated like clothes. Though they definitely had odd looks on their faces.

I skipped over the sex. Merely said we had seen the farms. No need to make things more complicated or awkward. Pretty sure that was all a ‘in the moment of heat and passion’ type of thing. Well, the whole trip, that is.

It was a long story and the more I said, the more I realized utterly insane it had been. Tyler had straight up called bullshit when I had described the T-Rex but a few words from Konohora had him just gaping like a fish. It wasn’t that he really didn’t believe, the whole journey had just been that insane.

“Wait… has it really only been at most a few weeks for you two?” Riary asked, eyes set in a frown.

“Less. I would say the whole journey was less than two weeks.” Konohora replied.

Riary quickly asked one of the barmaids for the date and although it meant nothing to me, seeing as I had never known the date in the first place, Riary clearly did. As soon as she left, Riary snorted and her frown only got worse.

“Fucking Algethroic Principle…” She muttered.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Our journey was not so… short.” Tyler said, before launching into his own explanation.

And what an explanation it was. Now it was my turn to only nearly not call bullshit. Fucking Mama? That was real? A massive ice spire, that became an ice wall, that became a fucking mountain, before eventually reverting back. Tyler and Riary somehow killing half a dozen wolves within a day of landing. Yeti’s a lot of Yeti’s, and what sounded like Ice elementals or at the very least, some sort of living snow and ice storms.

And not a short journey, but one that took months. Riary suggested that it had been at least three for them. They even said that eventually, their worries had turned from our well being to how on earth they would even find us after getting back. Whether we started to think they were dead.

The most amazing parts of their story, however, were their very souls nearly freezing and Tyler somehow resisting it.

“You… blocked it? You just blocked the energies of the Gem?”

“Yeah. How did you deal with it? You never mentioned that.”

I grimaced.

“It… tore me apart. Literally. There… there was a moment when… when I was in a million pieces, just chunks. It was only because it was the Life Gem that I survived. I told you how it was trying to pump me so full of life to literally drown my soul in it but… I don’t want to talk about how I stopped it. It Hurt.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

And I shuddered. Because it had. It had hurt like nothing else I could ever remember. Just the a small, insignificant amount of Hell Energy not even trying to hurt me, had felt like all my skin had been ripped off. Like I had been skinned alive. That was Hell energy, at it’s most gentle.

The fact I wasn’t a sobbing mess on the ground at every hour of every day, was only because it didn’t last for long, before the pain just disappeared. But I still wasn’t okay. And my soul had literally been rebuilt from that realm and my form had followed. I didn’t even want to imagine what horror lay beyond the soul-mental barrier.

“I… didn’t think you could feel pain.” Tyler said.

“Well, it turns out there are exceptions.” I said, bluntly.

The mood dimmed as we continued to drown our sorrows. I was well and truly committed to getting black out drunk. I hadn’t done that since my college days but now was well and truly the time.

“We should discuss our plans going forward.”

I let out a loud grown, one that I was only mildly surprised to see replicated by Riary.

“Do we have to right now? I’d much prefer to get drunk as hell and then have that discussion in like… a week at least.”

Konohora shook her head.

“I feel it’s important to do it now.”

“We have to go after Happy.” Tyler said with earnesty. Earnesty I immediately popped like a balloon.

“Alright, how? Where? We don’t have an information network, and even if we somehow did, he has the ability to teleport vast distances at a moment's notice. But let’s say we solve both of those problems, figure out a way to lock his teleportation down and find him. We circle back to where but at a different angle. We weren’t anywhere even close to each other, let alone the known territories as far as we could tell. This world is massive. He could literally be a million miles away. And then we have the most damning issue of them all, above even that.”

“He has… four gems.”

Riary, Tyler, and even Konohora startled at that.

“Four?” Konohora said.

“Yes. Ice, Life, Space and… when we were teleporting, I felt a fourth on him. I’m not sure which one it could be.”

Partial lie, but not enough to trip Konohora. True, I didn’t know for sure but I’d damn well bet it was Nothing, with a capital N. I really considered the value of telling them there were four more, higher level Gems but… Konohora couldn’t be trusted not to tell anyone who asked and out of those four, I knew where two of them were.

Tyler seemed undeterred though.

“Then we have to tell someone! We can’t just… do nothing!”

“Tyler, that won’t work.” Riary replied.

“Why not?!”

“Because…” I picked up the conversation. “What are you going to say? That there’s a dangerous man with four incredibly powerful items? We might as well be saying there’s a dangerous S-rank person that exists out there, somewhere. Someone merely being powerful and evil isn’t exactly going to cause the world to move. Worse, if you say why he’s dangerous, everyone will try to find him… and take the Gems for themselves.”

Tyler gaped and then frowned and looked down in thought.

I didn’t say anything more, just gave him space and time. We all did. Hell, it’s not like I wanted to just let this go either. I wanted to kill Happy. The most annoying part of that, was that he let me want to kill him. I’m sure now. My ability had quite a while to Analyze him. It’s not so much an ability or anything like that, so much as just really good raw Charisma. If he wanted to… I was positive it would be impossible for me to hate that man. It would be impossible for any of us or anyone to really hate the man.

He just liked the authenticity. The bastard.

“We should still prepare.” Tyler said. “There’s got to be some way we can get to him!”

“You are not wrong.” Konohora said. “We should prepare.”

Ah, the crux of the issue, I see it now.

“I get you.” I said. “We’re too weak.”

Riary huffed out a breath as Tyler blinked.

“Weak?” He said.

“Even if Happy appeared right in front of us, right now, unarmed… I have absolutely no confidence we could kill him, harm him, or slow him down. I told you my ‘Power Gauge’ or ‘Analyze’ is an actual Ability. I’ve seen him. Even without the Gems… he’s beyond us. Unfathomable. We don’t stand a chance.”

Happy, had never once, attacked. And god help us for that. He might ‘read’ as C-rank… but that was only because I didn’t understand him. Sure, maybe he can’t punch a crater into the moon, but he could definitely sing a few songs, give a few winks, sleep with a few people, and have the entire world out to kill us. Hell, he could probably turn Riary on me and make Tyler Konohora hesitate. And Luck and Charisma are only two cards of a deck I can’t see.

“And hell, even without Happy… we nearly died. I don’t know about you three… but I’ve been ‘weak’ since I’ve gotten here. Back and forth. A dozen men dead, then I nearly get roasted.” Riary had the grace to wince a little. “Easily murder a horde of goblins, nearly died multiple times due to a vampire. Relax for a week or so, murder a bunch of cultists, get teleported by a bard to a land of Titans and soulless abominations that could crush me like a bug. We’re all stronger now than when we went in… but it’s not enough. Regardless of any future plans, we need to all get stronger, or we’re gonna wind up dead eventually instead of having stories to tell.”

That had been my main take away. I was strong… within a certain context. I could probably murder most low level superhumans right now. Not a single person on earth could probably kill me without a gun or a weapon of some kind and what a fucking trip that was to think about.

And yet I kept nearly dying! I would have never gotten through that panther without help. And it wouldn’t have just been me that died. Even bringing Konohora away might not have stopped the Gem’s effect. If I was being honest with myself… Konohora came this close, to being dead. Unacceptable. I wasn’t much of a protector or guardian but… I wasn’t a selfish evil asshole either. I just didn’t want my friends to fucking die.

“Alright.” Tyler said. “So we get stronger and then go after-”

“No.” I said, putting my foot down. “We are not, in anyway, going after Happy.”

Tyler nearly looked enraged.

“Why not?!”

“Because… he’ll come to us, sooner or later, if we all stick together.”

Riary and Tyler looked confused, with frowns on their faces, while Konohora sighed.

“He’s taken a… personal interest in me. Thank god it’s not like that vampire before with Riary or I’d be… well... But the point is he finds me ‘interesting’ and he called me his ‘muse’. Bleh. He’ll turn back up and bother me again, sooner or later. All we have to do is get strong enough to kill him at that time.”

Tyler almost looked happy at that, nodding. Riary did look happy, eyes burning with a strange blue glow oddly.

“I’ll burn him to ash for sending me to that frozen wasteland.”

“Now, we should talk about our plans going forward… tomorrow.” Konohora said.

“Agreed.” Three voices rang out, even Tyler’s. Plans needed to be made because honestly… I didn’t want to make fucking Happy my whole god damn life. Fuck that! I’ll kill when I see him and get stronger for everything else that was going to come my way.

But that was discussion for tomorrow. For now? Alcohol! Then sleep.

I may have accidentally became a demon… but I’d show this world what that word meant. I’m tired of being on the losing end of things.

Just you wait Ero, I’ll rip apart the next thing you throw at me!