“Wake up, Mr Devil! Wake up!”

“Uhhh… huh?”

“It’s already past sunrise, get up lazybones!”

Before he could say anything more, a sharp elbow to his stomach jolted him up.

“I’m up! I’m up! Please don’t torture me anymore!”

The village children, who had all been surrounding his bed, laughed and scattered, and he sighed and rubbed his hair with a slight smile.

“Another day, huh?”

It had been a few days since he had been welcomed into the village with Anten, and he had found it surprisingly easy to fit in with the villagers.

The children were just as amazed at his appearance as they were horrified, the adults treated him as they would any other person, and the elders were interested to learn more about him.

There were a few troublemakers who were interested in chopping parts of his body off and seeing whether there were any supernatural properties about them, but thankfully none of them ever came around to do so, so he was safe on that front.

All in all, as Anten had promised, he had not regretted the past few days he had spent in that village. In fact, the longer he stayed in that village, the more he felt like he had found a home, one that he wouldn’t have minded staying in for the rest of his life.

“I see you’re finally awake, ‘Mr Devil’.”

Speaking of Anten, she was leaning against the doorway of the room, an amused expression on her face as she watched him sit up.

“Those kids are something else, aren’t they?”

“Kids will always be kids, no matter what.”

As he got out of bed and tidied up his appearance, she straightened up and took a step forward.

“The chief and his daughter want to see you… again.”

He sighed and smiled.

“Can’t be helped, huh?”

**********************

“Ah, hello devil! Have you come to take me away to the afterlife?”

When he entered the chief’s hut in the northern part of the city, the first thing he saw was the elderly and wrinkly chief shuffling up to him with an innocent grin and reaching his hand out, as though he was going to guide him.

He had already seen it the past few times he had visited, so he decided to humor him this time.

“Yes, it is I, the devil himself! You have done good deeds, so you will be sent to heaven, and I shall guide you there! Come with me!”

The old man laughed in response, shaking his head.

“No, that’s impossible. I can’t go to heaven, I’ve done too many bad things! And you’re a devil, so aren’t you supposed to only bring people to hell?”

“That’s where you’re wrong, gramps. You see—”

“Alright, that’s enough! Don’t encourage my old man over here, he’s still got a lot of time left, trust me!”

The daughter of the chief unfortunately interrupted their little fantasy as she walked in with a bundle of unsharpened miscellaneous weapons, consisting of swords, axes, and the like. She promptly dumped them on the floor and crossed her arms at the two men.

“My bad, Lady Jori,” he apologized, quickly putting on a theatrically formal air, “Lady Anten told me you needed some help, so I arrived as soon as I can.”

Jori, who was by all accounts a radiant, strong, and stubborn black-haired beauty, pointed at the pile of dropped weapons on the floor.

“The number of nightly beast raids have been increasing recently, and we need all the weapons we can get. The blacksmith has been very busy creating and sharpening other weapons, so we would like you to pitch in as well. After all, you know how to create and use fire, so maybe it’ll be easy for you.”

“I wouldn’t say I know how to, but… yes, sir, I mean, madam! I’ll get right on it!” he saluted jokingly, and her frown deepened.

“…and stop with this fake formalness. There’s a time and place for fun, and this isn’t it. Now, get a move on!”

**********************

“Man, the chief’s daughter is something else, isn’t she?”

At her request, he had moved the weapons to the blacksmith’s shop and had begun preparing to sharpen them using the spare tools lying around.

“It can’t be helped, devil,” Liroi, the blacksmith at the shop who was in the process of hammering a sword, replied while still focusing on his current task, “as the chief’s daughter, she has a lot of things to manage on her own, especially since her father is… not exactly very capable of doing things anymore.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” he remarked as he placed a sword on the blacksmith table and began to sharpen it.

“It’s been rough for the village these past few weeks,” Liroi continued, “the beasts of the wasteland are getting smarter, and our hunts are becoming less successful with each trip. At this rate, we’ll be lucky if we can even come back at all.”

“That definitely is a problem.”

“And to top it all off, they have been promising us a solution that could fix everything.”

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Fix everything?

He abruptly stopped his sharpening and turned to face Liroi.

“They? Who’s they?”

“I don’t know the exact name for certain,” Liroi clarified, “but I have heard them being called by a certain name. The Overseer.”

“The Overseer?”

“The first time I saw them, I could tell something was off, from their appearance to their tone, there was definitely something wrong, I could feel it.”

“…and what did they offer exactly?”

“I couldn’t make sense of it when they visited Miss Jori, but essentially, I heard something like Paradise.”

“Paradise?”

In normal terms, such a word would normally describe a place that touted itself as being something akin to heaven, where all of one’s dreams could come true.

Considering that as far as he knew, the world was currently hell, it was strange that such a place could even exist, let alone be casually suggested as a solution.

“They got rejected though. Miss Jori said that she didn’t need any easy way out for this village and that we could survive by ourselves.”

With his confusion temporarily sated, he turned back and continued sharpening, but he continued to press the blacksmith.

“What do you think though? About this supposed Paradise?”

Liroi briefly stopped hammering as he pondered the question. A few seconds later, he promptly resumed his work and replied.

“Don’t make me think about things like this. My opinions shouldn’t matter, I’m just a simple blacksmith.”

“Oh, sorry about that.”

“If you ask me though, anything that sounds too good to be true, and offered by someone with such a strange title as ‘The Overseer’, is honestly very strange. So, speaking as a person with experience, it feels like a trap.”

“With experience? Does that mean you’ve experienced this type of thing before?”

“…no comment.”

With that, the discussion was over.

**********************

“Emergency! Emergency! We need healers and medicine at the south side quickly!”

“Ugh, huh?”

A loud shout from outside his hut had suddenly awoken him in the middle of the cold night, and once he had fully awoken, he could hear panicked shouting and crying from the villagers, especially the babies who had also been woken up by the loud noises.

“What’s… happening?”

As if on cue, Anten burst in soon after with a panicked expression on her face.

“You need to come, now.”

“What’s wrong?”

As the two of them ran to the south end of the village, he could see the scene more clearly, and with one look, he understood the situation.

It was gruesome, not too different from the sight of littered bodies the wolf-beast had left behind on the day he had woken up.

Three villagers had been severely injured. All of them were carrying weapons and packs, so he automatically knew they were hunters.

One was missing an eye and a leg, the other was missing several fingers and a ear, and another had their left side completely torn up. They were yelling and screaming in pain, adding to the cacophony of the cries and shouts of panic from the other villagers.

No, not again, not like this.

“Come on, come on! Damn it!”

Anten had quickly rushed over to the wounded hunters to heal them, but as minutes ticked by, the healing process was going agonizingly slowly, and the wounds were still bleeding heavily.

“What’s happening, Anten? Aren’t you a healer?” one of the healers who was bandaging up the wounds yelled.

“I don’t know!” she yelled back as she got increasingly flustered, “I’ve only healed minor injuries before, I don’t think I can replace missing body parts!”

“…”

The whole situation was overwhelming him, and much like the last time he had witnessed such a disturbing scene, he stood still, unsure of what he was supposed to do.

“Oi, devil! Help me seal the wounds with your fire powers!”

Finally, a shout from another healer jolted him back into action, and grabbing a metal plate from a nearby hut, he rushed over to the hunter that was missing a leg.

“Alright, hold on!”

Imagine fire in your hands. Not a sword, but just fire!

The metal plate promptly burst into flames as soon as he had willed it to happen. Blowing on it to get rid of the fire, he slowly and carefully pressed the hot plate against the bloody stump.

“Aghhhhh!”

The hunter screamed, and he winced at the painful cry, but he persisted until the flowing blood stopped.

“Bandage up the wound, quickly!”

“On it!”

“Please, stay awake! Don’t die on us!”

The screams and shouts continued, without fail, until sunrise.

**********************

“Huff…huff…”

Eventually, the worst was over. The hunters were lying on beds, sleeping and safe for the time being. The healers who had spent hours tending to their wounds were exhausted, with some of them having passed out next to the beds.

And above all else, the angel and the devil who had done a lot of the work were tired too.

“That’s… strange… I thought we had… a lot of stamina,” he mumbled.

“I think,” Anten replied as she tried to catch her breath, “either we were… too caught up in the panic, or… we could have used up a lot of our power to fix this. Just because… we have a lot of physical stamina… does not necessarily mean that we have a lot of overall power to spend…”

“You mean… we have to watch how many times we use our powers… as well?”

“…seems like it.”

Jori, who had been one of the first responders to the scene and was currently reassuring some of the hunters’ loved ones, walked up to them. They could see bags under her eyes, and her hair was all messed up, most likely caused by the stress of the situation.

“I can’t begin to express my thanks to you two. If not for your help, I think our hunters might have been worse off than they are now. On behalf of the village, I thank you.”

Anten smiled and raised her hand tiredly.

“It’s… ok… this is what we’re supposed to do… anyway…”

“Nevertheless, we appreciate the assistance. If it’s no trouble, it would be nice if you two could stay in the village for longer, help us with a few other things. With some of our hunters out of commission, we could certainly use the help.”

“I’m sorry, but we… have to respectfully decline, we do have other things we need to do, so we cannot stay in the village for very long. I hope that’s ok with you, Miss Jori.”

“Ah, is that so? That’s a shame then, we could have—”

“Clang!”

Just then, a loud sound startled them.

One of the hunters close to them had woken up and was struggling to get up from his bed, knocking down a jug of water placed beside his bed in the process. The healers who were still awake were struggling to get him down with significant difficulty given their exhausted states.

“Please, you have to calm down! You’re not fit to walk around!”

“Let… go!” the hunter replied, his words slightly incoherent and slurred out of pain from his injuries, “I need to… save him!”

In a flash, Anten was kneeling beside his bed, asking him questions.

“Him? Who’s him?”

“Gh! C… Charlie…”

“Charlie? Is that your friend? Did he… not return with you?”

The hunter nodded.

“Do you remember where?”

“A… about five miles south of the village past the cliff… near the Great Lake… the beast might be done though…”

“Thank you. Come on, devil.”

She stood up, beckoned for her companion to follow, and began briskly walking towards the entrance of the medical hut.

“Uhh… ok?”

After hesitating for a bit, he quickly joined up with her.

“Miss Anten? Where are you going?” Jori ran and called out after them.

“We need to get him back. Even if it’s too late, we can still bring the body back so that his loved ones can mourn,” she answered without looking back.

“Don’t you need… supplies? Assistance?”

“No need for them. We can’t waste any time, Miss Jori. We have to go now, or else the possibility of us saving him becomes zero. And don’t worry about us, we’ll never die!”

“Uhhh… good luck then!”

Slightly stunned by the last comment, Jori was left standing right outside the hut, hesitantly waving with slight confusion and fear.

“…I hope they make it back alright,” she said to herself as she went back inside to tend to the hunters again.