Chapter 66 - The Demon

Hideki, currently has his back arched, his head thrown back, his face parallel to the sky, as black smoke suddenly rush out of his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

Kotone covers her mouth.

Fumio almost drops the camera.

Takeo's eyes go wide as saucers.

And Red's brows jump in surprise and his gaze sharpens in interest.

Not only them, but the other spectating members of the Kumagai are shocked at the sight at the center of the village.

Red, looking at the black smoke start to convene in the sky, quickly thinks of his feet and has come up with a few theories and courses of action to take. He takes one of them, and acts on it.

Red, balloons a condensed sphere of spiritual energy with him at the center while also doing the same with his spirit sense, and expands it enough to cover 50 meters radius in all direction, covering a quarter of Kumagai Compound. This means that the black smoke is also inside Red's spiritual energy / spiritual sense sphere.

Red then flares his eons old killing aura, "WHERE ARE YOU GOING, SQUIDDY~?", and addresses the black smoke, while maintaining his Mr. Fool character.

The black smoke freezes in the air, looking afraid.

Takeo, Kotone, Fumio, and other people within Red's 50-meter radius sphere, unanimously fall to their knees.

They all suddenly feel a choking feeling, and a sense of their own bloody imminent death coming from the man in red.

Red, seeing the collateral effect, curses his thick killing aura.

He can only focus and concentrate it to the black smoke.

That worked in alleviating the effect of his death aura to the bystanders and they now feel fine and relieved.

The black smoke meanwhile, originally felt confident that it can flee. Now, it no longer feels so. He feels that if he continues his efforts to flee, his death will be delivered.

Soon however, he feels his confidence grow back.

'This is not how to kill me.'

It pumps itself up and continues to remove the rest of itself from Hideki's body.

"YOU WILL STAY, SQUIDDY~" It then hears the clown say, and the dreadful feeling that made him freeze, is now not only palpable, but is actually trying to pull it back to Hideki's body.

It tries to fight back, even cut the rest of itself off, but not only does it feel it can resist, the force pulling it back even increases.

Soon, its entire self is back inside its host, Hideki.

Unlike its dashing and confident look before in its host's body, it now looks haggard, with blood leaking out of the orifices of its head. It looks even more pitiful as it is forced to its knees by the feeling of death that that is being squeezed down on it.

"YOU'RE INTERESTING… WHAT ARE YOU? SQUIDDY?" Red asks.

"W-what are you? How are you doing this?" The black smoke, now being able to speak again through Hideki's body, instead of answering, asks instead.

This is its first time meeting or even being in a vicinity with a human like Red. It has to know what it can of him so it can share the information to its kind.

"I'M HUMAN! STOP ASKING. SMELLY SHOULD NOT ASK QUESTIONS!" Red, initially simply wanted to kill Hideki, but the strange situation with the black smoke and bleeding orifices piqued his curiosity.

"I-" The possessed Hideki is about to speak, when Takeo interrupts again.

"Mr. Fool! That young man is possibly possessed by a demon! The black smoke is the proof!" Takeo claims.

Everyone who heard him widen their eyes either in shock, or in disbelief.

It has been almost 150 years since the great war ended, and a century after the last demon in the world was killed. While they have heard many stories about demonic possessions in the modern world, half the population simply think of those stories as some superiori going crazy, or scams of the once powerful ascetic forces who spearheaded the fight against the demons.

These ascetic forces include the Knights of the Church, the Shinto priests and maidens, or other shamanic orders throughout the world.

Takeo himself, even though he has lived for almost seven decades, has never seen witnessed a demonic possession and had doubted the stories and the claims of those ascetic groups.

After all, even the videos released by the modern Knights of Orders or other organizations like it, do not match with what is written on his great grandfather's journal.

One more important evidence missing from those claims, is something, an object that can be harvested from a demon after killing one. He has never heard of anyone possessing it, much more sell it.

"DEMON?" Red gets even more interested.

He then brushes his spirit sense on the possessed Hideki's being. A second later, he retrieves his spirit sense.

'How foul' he shakes his head.

'And crazy', he ponders.

Just like the superiori he scanned before, the demon too, has a mutated spirit root. And the demon's mutated spirit root has eaten up Hideki's original spirit roots.

As to how the demon is able to do it, he can only suspect that the demon has similar abilities to a race of parasitic demons in the infinite realms.

Red knows however that unlike the demons in the infinite realms that were born out of the evil side of the void, this demon in front of him is simply some sort of an abomination that he suspects is a product of someone or something's doing. And that someone or something is powerful enough to screw around with the biology of the creatures of this realm.

Unlike the mutated spirit roots of superiori that Red believes to have more likely resulted from exposure to something, the mutated spirit roots and the biology of the demon looks to be deliberately designed.

'Need more data, but it's probably a race made by a natural born Demigod or a True God…' As for why he thinks it is a natural born Demigod or a True God, only these beings that were born alone, and had no one to teach them their powers, are the curious and odd kind. They will experiment with their powers to explore them, and that includes changing or even giving birth to mortal creatures that the void compels them to.

Whoever that being is, Red wants to meet them and give them a nice talking to.

He then spreads his spiritual sense again to the demon, and reaches for its sea of consciousness.

After a year of relaxed training, Red's body can now handle more abilities of his spirit sense, and that includes being able to take a peek at someone's sea of consciousness which contains that someone's memories and thoughts.

<><><><><>

"Hm?"

I seem to have been unconscious for a while.

Where am I?

Ah. The mortal world.

I remember now.

Zograthan, that traitor.

Why would he betray Hell?

After he closed the gates of Hell, me and other demons' abilities to recuperate have disappeared. We can only rely on swallowing the life essences from humans. And with our numbers that quickly  dwindled, we can only hide from humans that are hungrily hunting us for our cores.

Thankfully, the humans themselves started fighting against each other. That allowed me to live amongst them for a few years.

Unluckily, I was found out.

The last thing I remember, I was hunted by a human.

Thankfully, she wasn't able to land a killing blow. However, I have lost a lot of my essence and I managed to find some cave under the sea before I ran out of it and went to sleep. And that is where I am.

What do the humans called it? 'Devil's luck'.

Heh. I seem to have it.

Now, let's see how long it has passed.

<><>

My Hells… It has only been 120 human years since I went to sleep, and this is the human world now?

And their weaponry.

How majestic.

Their guns have become even more dangerous. 

And the horrifying new weapons.

Bombs.

Missiles.

Atomic and nuclear weapons.

These could have wiped us out had these humans had them during the war.

Well. They couldn't have.

Maybe they can put us to sleep, but they cannot kill us without their weapons that has anti-demon runes in them.

The only problem with these is that they are most effective against humans themselves.

We can just steal it from them.

HAhahaha.

Wait a minute.

No. If they are smart enough to come up with these, then they can simply carve their runes and talismans in their guns just like how they carved runes in their arrowheads.

Does not that mean that they can only carve runes in their bullets and… I do not even want to think about it. How horrifying.

<><>

So that's how it is.

Now I know why I woke up.

I feel it…

Home. Hell. It's far and unreachable, but it has a bit of connection to this real once again.

It means that whatever that traitor Zograthan and his angel friend did to the gates of heaven and hell, it is not permanent. Or maybe the princes and the king managed to work some magic out?

HAHAHA… If that's the case, then we can finally harvest again.

But I have to find a way home first. I have to inform them of the improvements in the human civilization. If the gates of hell open once again, maybe this time, the lords, princes, and even the king might finally ascend to this realm.

For now. I have to regain my strength. I can barely absorb souls in my prime, much less now with my weak form.

I have to absorb life essences from souls for now. Where should I start.

<><>

Who is this… man? How can he.

This is not good. Not even my lord has this amount of bloodlust.

Is he really a human? He's definitely no angel.

How did I offend this being? Why of all times, now?!

Is this it?

Maybe I can ask to be spared.

I feel it, hell, it's presence has become a bit stronger. I need to survive a century more. No, maybe even decades. No, maybe years if the king figures something out. I have to see hell once again!

<><><><><>

"Mr. FOOL!" Red is interrupted by Takeo calling out.

"He's a demon! We have to kill him now!"

Red raises his brows, seeing the greed in Takeo's eyes.

"BE QUIET." Red sends a sliver of his killing aura to Takeo, making the man shut up.

Red wants to try something.

[Demon. Hope that what I'm about to try will not work, or else it's your last day.]

Red sends a mental message to the demon with his spirit sense. The demon's eyes widen for a moment, before swallowing in acceptance of his fate.

Red then puts his spirit sense in overdrive to take a peek at the demon's soul, and soon he finds it.

Just like he suspected, there is something anchoring the demon's soul. He figures that without it, a demon will die as easy as a human would and its soul will dissipate back into the void.

The object, is something he compares to a cultivator's method of preserving their soul essence if their body gets destroyed during a battle.

Unfortunately, for Red, this is all he can figure for now as his body is not strong enough to use more powerful abilities of his spirit sense.

While he can sever the anchor between the demon's soul and the object, and then kill the demon, he wants to see what the object can do.

"YOU." He then turns his attention back to Takeo.

"BRING ME A RUNE WEAPON." He orders.

"Y-Yes…" Takeo can only comply after Red released the killing aura on him.