Chapter 45 - Joy

The true Lord of Gluttony's voice made the Imp immediately halt. He didn't know why, but this one was far, far more intimidating than the Lord of Wrath, even if what the Lord of Gluttony was saying himself was in a far calmer tone and demeanor.

Whenever the Lord of Wrath spoke, it didn't affect the Imp much, it simply sounded like mad rambling to him and he didn't pay much attention to what he was saying, but rather how to escape from that situation.

But right now, his need to escape was exactly part of the reason why the Lord of Gluttony was so intimidating. The pure, instinctive hunger that the Lord was feeling mixed into the aura that he was giving off to the outer world, and immediately gave the Imp a single mental image.

That of prey being hunted by a predator. And the Imp didn't like which position he took up in that situation at all.

He wanted to run away as quickly as he could, but just the sound of the Lord's slow footsteps as he was treading through the mixture of blood and stomach-acids was horrifying. The Imp just had to somehow take another step forward, just a single one, and he would be able to take it from there, he was sure of that.

And so, the Imp had to somehow divert his attention from what was going on behind him somehow, and there was one quick way that the Imp figured might work. Trying to slightly move his hand that was shaking from having its skin nearly completely burnt away by holy energy, the Imp tried to move the tip of his Dagger toward a place that he didn't really need at the moment, his stomach, and slowly ran across it with the edge.

[-112 Health]

Now, the Imp had two ways to distract himself. The pain on his stomach, and the notification floating in front of him. It somehow worked, but only barely. The Imp was just able to move forward a little bit toward the steps in front of him, and the Lord of Gluttony was already getting closer and closer toward him.

But the moment that the Imp placed his foot onto the first step of the enormously long set of stairs, his body started to push forward as if moving on its own, and the Imp started to practically sprint forward as fast as he could.

Just like that, the Imp managed to see the end of the stairs quite soon. The Guard that stopped him before was still standing there, looking at the backs of the Demons that ran away from this place, but the Imp just had no time to mind him and just ran past him immediately.

It seemed like the Lord of Gluttony was standing at the top of the stairs, just staring forward into the empty distance, but the Imp didn't want to wait until he got riled up and chose to follow him. He wasn't in the mood to die today, after all.

And so, the Imp just sprinted into the distance, direclty along the middle of the way between the Lord of Gluttony's castle and the next one's. From behind him, a loud crash sounded out, followed by more Demons trying to run away from that direction, so the Imp figured that it had something to do with the Lord, and he just sped up even more, until he was completely out of breath, trying to stop near one of the last buildings in front of the edge of the forest surrounding the Demonic Town.

In a slim alleyway where it seemed quite unlikely for anyone to be or come, the Imp set Clementine down and sat down next to her, trying to wait for the girl to wake up before continuing.

Taking that time, the Imp took a close look at his wounds. For some reason, his own wounds weren't healing as fast as those of the other Demons that he saw, but maybe that was just because he was technically weaker than them, or because he just reacted differently to Holy Energy than them in the first place. He didn't become unable to move when he was damaged through holy energy, after all.

But the Imp still had to try and somehow close the wound on his stomach up now. Losing too much blood didn't seem good either.

So for now, the Imp took off his cloak and properly got rid of his now ripped-up and bloodied shirt, by throwing it against the wall in front of him, and then looked down at his body, noticing something else.

The blue mark on the Imp's chest had spread out a little with thin blue lines. It wasn't by much, but he was sure that this definitely was a bit larger than the last time he looked at it.

The Imp didn't really understand what this meant, but he had no time to really think about that anyway. Instead, the Imp tried to think about what he should do to close this wound.

But before he could do anything, he felt a slight touch against his skin around that wound, and it started to slowly close up. Immediately, the Imp grabbed the hand and pushed it away, looking over at Clementine next to him who was now slowly getting drenched in blood.

"What are you doing?" The Imp asked her, and Clementine, with tears in her eyes, simply started to grasp her stomach and slightly looked at the young Demon in front of her.

"Th-thank you... for.. for... for saving me..." She said, quietly starting to sob. Even she understood the situation, knowing that she really shouldn't pull attention to them at the moment, but the Imp just stared at her, before grinding his teeth.

"Don't." He told her, slowly moving the white cloak that he wrapped her in to the side to take a look at her stomach, which was now completely covered in numerous wounds from different sources. For one, there was of course the fresh wound that she just took from the Imp, but there were also different cracks all around it, similar to the ones that formed on the Lord of Gluttony's fake body before.

The Imp wasn't entirely sure what he was supposed to be doing against this, but he was still panicking at seeing so many deep wounds on such a small body. "You aren't losing Health?" The Imp asked her, just to once more confirm that she couldn't actually die from this but just felt all of the pain, like it was explained to him before, and Clemenetine slowly nodded her head, although shakily, trying to somehow bear with the pain without screaming out loud.

And then, the Imp got an idea. There was a line in the book about the Lords, speaking about how Holy Energy was the 'savior of the people, but the demise of the Demons'. The Imp wasn't entirely sure, but at the very least he was hoping that this would really work out.

If Holy Energy hurt Demons, being their demise, then it being the 'Savior' of people meant that he somehow should be able to help Clementine using it, right?

Slowly, the Imp placed his Dagger down next to him and pushed the Three of Swords back into his bag, while pushing his hand against Clementine's stomach, directly onto her wound.

Immediately when the Imp did so, Clementine couldn't hold it in anymore, starting to scream as loudly as she could, but the Imp quickly pressed his other hand against her mouth to stop her from doing so.

"Quiet." He told the young girl, before starting to push his mana out of his palm and into the Magic Stones, causing a relatively high amount of holy energy to pour out from them.

Before, the amount was practically explosive, but right now the Imp was trying to let it out slow so that he wouldn't hurt his hand any more, and so that he could make sure he wasn't really injuring Clementine in any way.

And soon enough, the young girl seemed to calm down, the blood stopping to flow from her body. Apparently it wouldn't kill her anyway, but she was still in pain as long as this wound wasn't somehow gotten rid of, and if she was in pain she wouldn't be able to walk around on her own.

Carefully, the Imp pulled back his left hand from Clementine's mouth and his right hand from her stomach, taking a proper look at whether or not she really was fine.

"Does it still hurt?" He asked her, trying to rub away some of the blood from her stomach with part of his cloak to get a proper look at the wounds, while Clementine slowly nodded her head. "Mhm... But... but no as much..." She replied, so the Imp looked at her with a satisfied expression.

"Can you walk?" The Imp asked her, but Clementine just looked back at him and pulled her legs toward her body. "Can... can we stay here for another few minutes..? Just a little while, please..?"

Trying to hide her face, Clementine pushed her forehead against her knees, and the Imp slowly nodded. "A few minutes." He replied, just trying to make sure that he as well would be able to get rid of a little bit of his exhaustion.

There were a question that the Imp wanted to ask her, but in the end, he just stayed quiet about it, because he figured he knew the answer already. He wanted to know why Clementine had to 'Heal' the body of the Lord of Gluttony. It was probably to let him eat as much as he could without breaking like he ended up doing.

And so, the Imp and the young girl just sat next to each other, the monster trying to prepare as much as he could for the next Lord, while the girl was trying to stop her crying caused by fear as well as physical and mental pain.

While the Imp was preparing, he also took a look at the book once more, and then noticed a page right at the very back of the book, mapping out the seven different 'areas' of the town, mostly describing which castle and area belonged to which Lord.

Right now they came from the Lord of Gluttony, and when seen from the town they went left, so it would be the Lord of Pride, and then the Lord of Sloth, so where Sammy and Leon were. Behind that was the Lord of Wrath, so they would have to try and stay as far away from there as possible and maybe pass through town again, to get the Rudy from the Lord of Envy, and then the Priestess from the Lord of Greed, before moving onto the castle of the Lord of L.u.s.t to get Arc.

Slowly, the young monster continued to read about the different Lords that would be coming next, first the Lord of Pride. According to the book, as long as you complimented them as much as possible and stayed humble, you might be lucky enough to get away from him alive. Sounds easy enough... Or it would, if the Imp had any idea what either 'Compliments' or 'Humbleness' were.

He didn't read about it before, so maybe he just had to improvise or ask Clementine about it on their way to the next castle.

Either way, for now, the Imp luckily got the first of the children back and knew where he could get the others. And that made him feel a joy that he couldn't even express if he wanted to.