Chapter 126: Welcome to Hell. Do You Want to Live?

Chapter 126: Welcome to Hell. Do You Want to Live?

A Devil sat on a stone in a cold, rocky wasteland.

It’d been around eight more days since he’d arrived here. In that time, he’d tried his hand at many more creations. Part of him was doing it out of genuine interest, the other part just trying to keep himself busy.

It was a strange feeling. On one hand, he knew he was going to die soon. The long, long life he’d lived, cut so unexpectedly short. How could that not be a distressing thought? Sure, he’d probably have a while until he actually died, but it was still way sooner than it’d have ever been otherwise. And besides, being up here was a death in and of itself. He couldn’t talk to anyone, affect anyone’s life, do anything of real meaning. He was faced, in short, with his own mortality.

On the other hand, he was also faced with the one and only time in his life when he actually felt relaxed. For the first time, he had nothing he actually had to do. No deadlines, superiors, or Humans. Just himself and his thoughts. Sure, he couldn’t really relax due to the previous thoughts about his own imminent demise, but, if he was being honest with himself, it was at least a more pleasant feeling than the extreme stress he was under when he was still managing that Arlan Nota case.

Though who knew how those feelings would change as the days continued to pass and he continued to get closer and closer to his death.

Right now, he was just passing the time, sitting on a rock and staring up at the blue-and-green sphere in the sky. He’d made a couple rock sculptures this “day,” though the days up here were more just him counting the time and approximating the twenty-four-hour segments, but he thought he’d take a break. He was running out of ideas on what to make.

He was also suffering from a bit of a lack of motivation. The sculptures had been interesting to make at first, just because of the novelty of the idea, but it was getting somewhat old now.

Or, no. It wasn’t that making them was getting old. It was more like something was missing. Something core to this whole “making art” thing. He couldn’t really express it, truthfully. He had no idea, no reference point. He’d observed the tendency in the Humans of the Overworld, but he didn’t really know why they did it, at their core. Most of them could keep going for months, years, even decades. Why was he getting so sick of it so soon?

He just had no drive to make another. He enjoyed making them, and enjoyed looking at the finished products even more, but there was just something not there that he felt would push him to keep going. Like some sort of reinforcement, validation. Something to let him know that what he was doing was worthwhile. But he had no idea how to get that. What was different between the Humans and him?

Before he could think on this problem for too long, he heard a sound. It was a strange sound. Really, any sound was a strange sound, out here. There was nothing alive, nothing that could move, other than him. And so there was nothing that could really make noises other than him. And it wasn’t just a normal sound, like a falling rock, it was more like...

“Xhag. Are you dead, or something?”

A voice.

He sat up from his previous position of lying on his back and turned around, finding himself facing a person. A Demon. His superior. She was standing right in front of him, with a portal behind her. A portal back to the Underworld.

It was shock alone that kept him from bolting for the portal back to the Underworld, in that moment. Instead, he just sat there, staring with wide eyes.

“...Are you there? Have you gone insane already?” His superior stared at him curiously, bending over and squinting as if to get a closer look at his shattered expression.

“N–no,” he eventually got out.

“Hm. Well at least you understand language.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I’ve come to talk to you.”

“Are, are you taking me back?” He asked, his mind only now beginning to catch up with what was going on.

“Depends on how useful you are.”

He just looked at her. Or, really, looked through her at the portal. He’d had enough time to overcome his shock to understand that the portal was the gateway through which his normal life lay, but he also had enough sense to understand that he couldn’t just walk through. His superior would stop him, not to mention the guards that would no doubt throw him back out here the moment he stepped through. No, the only way for him to make it back to his life was if his superior allowed him to.

She shook her head. “Have you been out here for longer than I thought? Did I miscount the days? Respond to me, underling.”

“I-I’m sorry,” the Devil said.

“Again with that ridiculous Overworld speak!” she growled. “Talk like a Demon, or I’m leaving you here to die.”

“R-right,” he shrunk back. “Expression of apology. F-formal expression of apology. What can I do to be useful?”

“Well, I’ll be honest, Xhag, I didn’t ever really intend to kill you.”

The Devil’s eyes lit up. “Really?! Then I’m coming back?”

“Hm. It’s more that I just wanted to show you that I could. Or, it’s that I wanted to show you what our methods were. What you’d go through. Sitting out here, totally useless. In the Underworld, you were a drain on society, out here, you’re a drain on yourself. It’s poetic, isn’t it? Your body needs heat, it needs air to keep itself alive. It doesn’t get that out here. Now, you’re a powerful Demon, so you’ll be able to survive for a while, but you’ll eventually succumb to the cold. And the reason you will is that your body just refuses to stop consuming the resources it doesn’t have access to anymore. It’s a perfect portrayal of what a useless Demon does to the Seventh Circle. It drains, and drains, and drains, and keeps taking our resources, until it kills us. That’s why I’m hard on you, Xhag.”

The Devil nodded.

“Do you understand that?”

The Devil’s eyes widened. He lost control of his breathing. That was the Overworld?! How could it have been? Why was it so... Why did it look so...

But his superior continued on, apparently unconcerned with this world-shaking revelation. “Where we are—the surface of the Underworld—is where the First Circle used to reside. As you can see now, they’ve been all but wiped out. Forced to migrate underneath the surface. Or, at least, what was left of them.”

“W-why?” The Devil still shook, trying to distract himself from his previous thoughts.

“Well, they did just fine up here for some time. But then, the Overworld—the Humans—figured something out. They figured out that they could summon Demons. Something to do with their Classes. I don’t remember what they called it, but one of those Classes, if they picked their choices correctly or whatever, they got a Spell that could steal us away from our homes. Teleport us straight to the Overworld under control of the caster.”

The Devil had heard of as much. At least, he’d heard that, at some point in time, the Humans had been able to summon Demons. But then the Demons had developed countermeasures against that. That was the extent of most of the talking done about the Overworld, for the vast majority of the Devil’s life.

“That was what forced the First Circle underground, with the rest of us. The Spell the Humans have, it only works if they have direct line of sight, see? So as long as we’re all underneath the surface—or if the Underworld has turned around, so we’re on the other side, away from the Overworlders—they can’t get to us. And then, once we protected ourselves for long enough, the Humans just stopped trying. They couldn’t take our people anymore, so they didn’t choose the Spell anymore. Now it’s more or less safe for us to be up here.”

The Devil frowned. There was just so much, all at once. “How is this possible?”

“What?”

“Any of it. H-how is time different for us when we’re in the Underworld? If I can see the Overworld with my own two eyes—”

“Oh, that was another countermeasure made against the Humans. We needed more time, our people were getting taken so quickly to be the slaves of the Humans.” She shook her head. “Disgusting. Anyway, the Demons pleaded for the God Lunae to save us, and it did that.”

The Devil reeled back at the mention of the dead God. “Lunae? How did—”

“I’ll tell you everything, Xhag. All I need is for you to do me a favor.”

“W-why?! Why are you telling me all of this? And how do you know? Doesn’t this break protocol?”

“No, it goes exactly according to protocol. After all, I’m just onboarding a newly-promoted Demon.”

The Devil’s voice caught in his throat. “D-does this mean—”

“You’re not promoted yet. But I’ll restore your ranks and give you even more if you just do us a favor.”

“What? What’s the favor? What do you need?”

The Devil’s superior crouched down, lowering her eyes to be parallel with the Devil’s. She got close, and spoke with a low, sinister voice. “I want you to kill Arlan Nota.”

His enthusiasm instantly deflated.

He couldn’t. Not with the resources he’d been provided. Not with the time ticking away. It was just impossible. Going back to that old life? Stress, worry, overwork? He couldn’t go back.

His superior seemed to sense his mood. “Don’t worry. He’s not in that empire yet. He isn’t safe. It may have been over a week for us, but for them, they’re still in that mountain range. You have one more chance at this. If you don’t succeed, you’re worthless. But if you do, you’ll have everything. Don’t you want everything?”

“I...” the Devil couldn’t get it out. “I want to, but...with what I have, with my resources...”

“I haven’t finished,” she said. “I don’t want to give you an army. I don’t want to give you soldiers. I want to give you one single person.”

He frowned. “W-what? Who?”

“A Projector Demon.”

“But who’s the fighter it will be projecting? Who will actually slay him?!”

“Xhag. Listen to me.” She reached out a hand, cupping her clawed fingers around the Devil’s chin. “I want you to kill Arlan Nota.”

He fell silent, realizing now what she was asking him to do. Fall as low as a common footsoldier. But, how could he get even lower than he’d been? And if that was what he had to do to get his old life back...

“Do you accept my offer, Xhag?”