“So, before I potentially do something stupid again, is this safe to eat? I thought it was just some kind of fantasy deer, but the whole purple blood thing is kinda screaming poisonous.”

“Yes, it is quite safe to eat. And rather than deer I believe the locals call it a Violet Bladed. Named quite obviously after the color of its blood and the blade adorning its head. You should feel proud, there are many who perish in their scuffles with these beasts.”

I considered it for a moment. “Yeah, it was pretty fuckin quick there, and that blade is hopefully no joke. Plus, with how much damage it did to those plants on the way here, it’s probably hella strong. Which does beg the question though: How the hell did I basically one shot it? If it was so strong, shouldn’t it have had better defenses? I mean I basically just hit it with a pointy stick!”

Confusion marred Sophia’s voice as she replied, “The better question is what exactly did you expect after shooting an arrow at the throat of a beast with no visible armor? While there are rare intelligent beasts, this was not one of them. Meaning it had no way to manipulate mana to build up extra defenses. Shit, if you were to take one of your ‘pointy sticks’ and stab me through the throat with it I would die as well. The only difference is that I normally have several layers of defensive magic placed around me at all times, making it so that you would never be able to land your attack in the first place.”

I see. It seems that video games have indeed rotted my brain. The fantasy elements had me thinking for a second in terms of HP, where no matter what kind of attack you landed, it only did a set amount of damage to the monster. This isn’t a video game. This is reality, unreal as it may be. I chatted with Sophia for a while whilst waiting for the Violet Bladed to finish draining. She seemed very interested in the concept of video games, apparently never having heard of them before. I wasn’t really the right person to ask, as my experience with video games was pretty minimal, but I shared the plots and general gameplay of some of the more famous ones.

“I don’t know if you can travel back to my old Earth without getting summoned, but if you can, you should check them out sometime. A lot of people thought they were really fun, so you might enjoy them. Though granted, a lot of the appeal lies in being able to do things you can’t do in real life, so the venerated Desire’s Flame, Goddess of Wisdom may not be able to find one that can hold her interest.” I teased the demon.

I couldn’t actually see her face, but I swear that I could still picture her playfully scowling at me before she decided to play along. “Indeed, for the wildest dreams of you Children of Man are naught but an ordinary day in a life as esteemed as mine own. Thou knows thy place well Leo.”

“Yo, so that kinda brings up a question, the first sentence I ever heard you say was ‘For what reason hast thou summoned me Child of Man’, and then you kind of immediately dropped the old timey speech and started speaking normally. What’s up with that?”

Her voice rose in her response, with faint stuttering, hinting at a feeling of embarrassment. “I-i-it’s simply a way t-to establish a prop-oper working dynamic. It is in-integral to the nobility of de-emons to”

“So basically,” I interrupted, a grin spreading over my face, “You do it because you wanna feel like a big badass powerful demon lording over the pathetic humans right? Shit, was the pillar of fire even necessary? Or was that just a way for you to shroud yourself in even more intrigue?”

Silence fell inside my mind as I roared with laughter. This carried on for quite a while, as I found the ancient demon actually had a rather cute side to her.

Sophia’s POV

This insolent manling. I grant every desire of his heart and this is how he treats me. This is unacceptable, I cannot allow my dignity to continue to be sullied by his baseless accusations!!

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“The flame was very much necessary, as it demonstrates my dignity as Desire’s Flame. It was not at all a superfluous detail added for effect.”

“Not at all, clearly.” He agreed, though with a face as though he did not in fact agree and was still mocking me. “Though that does make me curious as to what you look like. Unless your real body is also constantly covered in flame.”

“In what way does my appearance matter? Would you have declined to make your wishes had I been ugly?”

He merely laughed at my provocation. “Not at all, it’s more so because our interaction didn’t simply end after the contract was established. We’re friends right? It’s a little weird that I straight up have no idea what you look like despite the fact that your voice kinda lives in my head. I don’t have anything to match it to y’know? I keep trying to picture your facial expressions when I hear your voice, but without a face to use, it’s mostly just vague outlines of a smile and a pair of eyes.”

I froze when he uttered that word. Friends. Friends? Me? Friends with a human? When the hell had that happened? I think back to the past few days, the semi-constant conversation we had shared. And I thought of when he was asleep, and something seemed to be missing. Friends, huh? Actually thinking about it, I don’t even think I could name a demon who was my friend. They were more like neighbors you had lived next to for so long that eventually you knew them all intimately, but it’s not like they had ever really come around simply for conversation. That’s not really something immortals do. Wait, was this human my only friend? Fuck. I can never let him find out. He will never stop teasing me about it.

“Hmm? Your silence is rather telling. Don’t tell me, are you embarrassed?”

I panicked, and rushed to respond, “U-Utter lunacy, for w-what reason have I to f-feel embarrassed?!?”

“I’m not really sure, since I couldn’t see exactly when you blushed during this conversation, assuming demons do in fact blush. Though I do have enough of a handle on your normal speech patterns to mostly tell how you’re feeling.”

This is dangerous, I cannot allow him any more insight into the pitiable state of my social life. I need a distraction. “Hey, looks like the Violet Bladed is finally drained of blood, you should dismantle it and move before the scent draws in a predator.”

I watched as he jumped up and started working on skinning and separating his quarry. Perfect, I managed to successfully- “Oh, and by the way, nice try at distracting me. Though since you really seem to want to let the topic go, I’ll be nice and let you have your way for now.”. Despair filled me. Mixed with another odd emotion that took me a while to place. Contentment. I may only have one human for a friend, but it could definitely be worse.

I observed as he butchered his hunt, separating it into pelt, meat, bones, organs, and cartilage. He then cooked the meat and organs over the fire, in order to prolong the edibility of the Violet Bladed, and used the blade, bones, and cartilage to finish his spear, attach several arrowheads to his arrows, and even fashion a few makeshift knives and daggers.

After taking another night to sleep, Leo spent the next couple of weeks continuing downstream of the river he used to guide his path. He had reasoned that it would most likely feed into another larger water source eventually, and given the necessity of water amongst all life, he would possibly even come across a town soon enough. During this time we spoke almost constantly, he told me about living in a world without magic, and the various scientific advancements that he knew about. He claimed not to be an expert, but had spent many sleepless nights gathering information about so many different fields, that even topics he didn’t fully understand, he had enough background information to make educated guesses. He also asked me several questions about Hell and living in a world where magic exists. Common sense things he should know in order to not stand out as much whenever he finally does encounter other humans.

I lacked the heart to inform him that humans almost never went off on their own. He would be seen as a complete anomaly simply by virtue that he braved the wilderness and monsters by his lonesome, rather than with a large and capable party. Not only that, but as the weeks passed he continued with his magic practice. Every day he was becoming more efficient when it comes to mana manipulation, and every day his maximum mana pool was growing even larger. He was now able to keep a spell going for five minutes straight, an improvement speed which was practically unheard of for mortals. His spells themselves were also all fascinating to witness.

I watched Leo use the concept of light to render himself invisible, the concept of poison to cure himself of disease, and even the concept of gravity to lift himself up a short way. When I asked him about his odd spells he told me of the field known as Optics in physics, of medicine, and of the theory of relativity. He seemed to take an odd approach to magic where instead of familiarizing himself with one or two concepts to a masterful degree, and finding ways to use those to solve various problems, he preferred to take each individual situation on its own and figure out the simplest solution to each. I chose not to inform him that this was by no means conventional, simply because this style seemed to suit him best. Besides, it’s not as though using multiple concepts was completely unheard of, more so that it was only commonly seen amongst the higher ranks of mages.

After around two months of travel, conversation, and sporadic hunting, Leo finally proved himself correct. Off in the distance, a town was visible.