Chapter 21 - Lonely Naiad

With a deep frown, the Imp just stared at the woman, unsure of what she meant with what she just said. "Diapers?" It asked, wondering if this person was making up words to confuse him, and she quickly nodded her head in response.

"Y-Yeah, wh-what it's wearing under the cloth-clothes..." The Woman stuttered fearfully, and the Imp continued to frown, "Diapers make it cry?" He asked, continuing to point the dagger at her.

After all, he paid as much attention to the child as he could, so nobody could have snuck something into it that he didn't know about. And he doubted that the people at the town he was at before wanted to make this child cry so horiffically and put something like that on it.

Nervously, the woman shook her head in response and slowly extended her hand toward the tiny child laying in the basket, "C-Can I show you..?" She asked, seemingly truly concerned for the child even if she never even saw it before now, and the Imp slowly nodded, holding the tip of the dagger now directly against the Woman's skin, so that if she made any wrong move, he would be able to fight her off immediately.

Carefully, the then slowly pulled the dress that this child for some reason was wearing up and opened the cloth diapers up, revealing the bad-smelling substance to the Imp.

"Th-This is it... I-It needs to be cleaned..." The Woman told the Imp, who slowly nodded at the woman, waving his hand at her to tell her to get to it already. Now that he at least somewhat understood what was going on, he was aware that it was a good idea to get rid of that dirt, even if the Imp didn't understand why people wore things like that anyway.

It had to get in the way when taking a shit, right? Well, obviously it did, as seen for this child. And before the Imp knew it, the woman tried to stand up, but he simply grasped her arm and tried to make her stay by pushing his claws into her arm, and even if they weren't as sharp as other Imps', they were still sharp enough to cause the woman to bleed a little bit.

"Not move." The Imp growled at her, but the woman looked at the Imp with a pained expression, quite literally caused by the pain she was feeling in her arm just about now, "B-But I need w-water for th-this... W-We have some in the ca-carriage..." She explained, and the Imp slowly looked at the wooden box, connecting it with that new word, before staring at one of the children standing next to it, the one that the Imp encountered first before.

"Get water." He told it with anger in his voice, which seemed to work pretty well before, and the child hurried into the carriage to get what the woman was talking about, a small bucket filled with water, and placed it down next to the woman.

Quickly, under the Imp's direct supervision, the woman began to clean the cloth-diapers with her hands, and then slowly tried to put it back onto the child, but the Imp stopped her immediately, slowly boring the tip of the dagger into her flesh.

"No. It wet. We dry it. You make fire." The Imp said in a commanding tone, and the woman twisted her face in horror, seemingly not able to cope with this situation anymore.

"J-Just make it yourself then!" She yelled out as she hurriedly turned toward the Imp to look straight at it, although she seemed to focus on something directly behind the Imp instead, and the Woman's face twisted into one of ecstatic pleasure at what she figured was about to happen.

"Gard! Hurry, kill-" She yelled out, but before she could finish, the Imp already pushed the dagger deeper into the woman's arm. He didn't want to kill her just yet, after all she might still be able to somehow tell the Imp more about how to care for this kind of tiny child, which he would need to know if he wanted to make it all the way back to the... to the... to whatever place he was supposed to go right now.

In reaction to the injury the Imp just gave her, the Woman began to scream, horrified and scared for her life, and simply tried to get away from the Imp. Knowing that the woman didn't seem to be that much of a threat anymore, the Imp turned around to take a look at who or what the woman was just talking to, and seemingly did so with just the right timing. Because just when the Imp turned around, he saw a bright ray of light bouncing off the weapon in front of his face, closing in on him at a high speed.

Immediately, the Imp tried to dodge, but in the end didn't manage to fully do so.

[-39 Health]

Confused, the Imp stared at the red notification, looking at the number created by this tiny scratch to his cheek. It was more than the damage that the Imp did when directly stabbing that man's leg before, so this was a clear sign to the Imp that something was off.

This person in front of him was far stronger than the Imp. That was as clear as day to him, and the Imp simply stared forward at that man, who now just stood there, trying to properly inspect his enemy.

But when the Imp was looking at the man, he started feeling something weird, as if there was something that the Imp wanted, no, needed inside of his pocket, before the man raised his eyebrows with an excited grin.

"You... You're a Card owner!" The man exclaimed with an ecstatic grin on his face, "An Imp with a f.u.c.k.i.n.g card, this has got to be my lucky day!"

Immediately after the man said this, he took a few more steps forward to get closer to the Imp and raised his arm up high, before slashing down onto the Imp immediately, although he took another step backward and as such managed to once more evade a direct hit from the blade, even if that really didn't make that much of a difference, apparently.

[-367 Health]

[Warning! You have been affected by 'Bleeding'. If the wound is not treated, you will die in 19 Minutes, 46 Seconds]

Immediately, the Imp opened his eyes wide at seeing that notification. But most importantly, his eyes stuck to the word 'Die'. The Imp didn't want to die, he really, really didn't want to. If he didn't want to die, he had to leave, he had to leave as quickly as he possibly could.

The Imp just needed to turn around and run as fast as his legs could take him. He left behind his bag because the strap was cut, together his book, the shiny things and the meat inside it, now he only had his dagger and a cut-up, blood-drenched cloak. And most importantly, he ran away from that small creature inside of the basket. Just the fact that he was running away terrified the living hell out of the Imp, he didn't know why, but it did.

He knew he was supposed to bring that child somewhere, but he couldn't. He couldn't anymore, not now, not ever, not if it meant dying.

The Imp really, really didn't want to die, dying was scary, so scary. But what was even scarier was the darkness that followed when the Imp dropped into a river exhaustedly, his blood simply pouring out of him and mixing with the water of the river.

And then, everything around the Imp went black.

Without even knowing what was going on now, the Imp could only notice the weight of the water on top of him, combined with the seemignly infinite darkness that accompanied it.

It was so cold around the Imp, so, so, incredibly cold.

It seemed like everything was about to end, but the world seemed to have another idea. A bright, shining light appeared in front of the Imp, in the form of a small, scaled woman. The Imp knew it wasn't a monster, because he knew whenever he saw another monster, but this didn't seem like a person either. Proportionally, she may have been similar to a regular, grown and slim woman, but just from her height, she didn't seem to be any taller than the Imp.

Without knowing why, and without the ability to fight it off, the woman slowly ran her hand over the Imp's upper body, directly across the wound that was now on his chest. The sheer pain that the Imp felt from that simple, slight touch was incomparable to the pain that he felt when actually getting the wound.

The little bit of air that he still had in his body was immediately pushed out through his mouth as the Imp began to wrythe in pain, and once more passed out.

But instead of dying, like the Imp thought he would in the first place, he woke up soon after, in the place where he seemed to have ran into the water before. At the very least, there was a lot of blood where he was laying right now, leading in a straight line through the dense forest in the direction where he encountered all of those people before.

Slowly, trying to immediately return to where he was at before, and most importantly to the child that he left behind, the Imp rushed back through the forest, ignoring the notifications that were still floating around behind him.

[Due to your affinity with water, a lonely Naiad took a liking to you and healed your wounds]

[You have gained the ]

[Affinity with the Water Element Increased]

And as the Imp rushed through the forest, his already ripped-up cloak, weighed down due to being soaked with blood and water, got stuck in numerous branches and became even more destroyed than it was before.

But the Imp didn't pay attention to all of that, instead, he just approached the area where he seemed to have been nearly killed before, while the sun went down behind him. The Imp continued further forward as quickly as he could, before he saw a small, kindling light in the distance, hearing some voices from the same direction.

"...Jackpot! Do you understand what this means?! I'm a double Card Wielder now! And this is the Ace of Cups as well, I can't believe how lucky I am!" The same man that spoke before exclaimed happily, while the Imp just slowly approached, trying to be as quiet as he possibly could ever be, both out of fear of that man, and simply because it was something that his body naturally did as if it was the most logical thing in the world.