Chapter 132: The Conversation

Chapter 132: The Conversation

“I’ve got more resets,” I said to Xhag’duul, trying my best to buy time as Erani and Ainash went to get help from the guard post in the distance behind me.

“Oh?” the Demon said. “How many?”

I straightened my back, trying to show as much false confidence as I could. “One hundred.”

He blinked, and for the first time, I saw this unbeatable being actually show a bit of fear. “One... hundred?”

I nodded, getting a bit more confident. “Yeah, a hundred. How else do you think I got past your forces every time? They were competently set up, you know. Killed me a few dozen times each. But it isn’t really fair when your opponent gets that many tries. Wasn’t your fault, really.”

Hands shaking, he snarled at me. “You’re lying. That’s absolute fucking bullshit. No fucking way it’s that powerful. I’m aware of your Classes, you know. They don’t give you so much power right away.”

“Mm,” I nodded. “Sure, you know about the common Classes, but you don’t know about the rare ones. My Class comes from killing a one-of-a-kind monster. It obviously rewards you for that.”

“No, no!” He shook his head. “No fucking way!”

I nodded. It was working even better than I’d expected. I knew from the previous timeline, he seemed to feel like it wasn’t his fault that he’d failed to kill me for so long. At least, his whole rant about wanting to see me feel the same way he’d felt seemed like it portrayed that. So I was basically just validating all of his fears and frustrations. His whole operation was doomed from the start, I was telling him. He’d never had any chance of beating me. And maybe, if I pull this next part off, I could convince him that he didn’t need to fight me at all.

“I get it,” I said. “You probably had nothing to do with this in the first place. It sucks that you got pitted up against me. I’m sorry for anything the people who forced you into this did to you for failing. But, I mean, I’m actually a bit surprised they expected you to win in the first place.”

He shook his head. “How the fuck were any of us supposed to know you could just get out of any fucking situation we put you in?! We all got unlucky, nobody could have known!”

“No, I mean, Demons have a longer lifespan than Humans, right?” I said. “Plenty of people have gotten this Class in the past. We’ve got it in some of our history books. I looked into them and found some basic info. So wouldn’t most Demons already know about the things the Class got?”The inaugural upload of this chapter took place via N0v3l-B1n.

He looked into my eyes. “...What?”

“I mean, I get that most of you guys wouldn’t know. It was a long time back, after all, and it isn’t all that well-documented on our side, either. But I’d be willing to bet that some of the Demons would’ve lived long enough to have encountered the people who stole this Class from the Underworld, too. They’d definitely know it’s basically impossible to beat the Class.”

“...No,” he said. “That’s ridiculous. I haven’t heard of anything like this. Not from my superiors, not from any of the Diviners, not from the underlings who worked closely with the Overworld...”

“Weird,” I shrugged, trying to find the perfect time to hit him with the biggest part of all this. Putting all the pieces together, I understood a basic idea of what had happened with this Demon. When Ripley had warned us about all of this, she said that she used to be given orders by one Demon, whose name was something along the lines of ‘Xhag’duul.’ And then, he was replaced with another Demon whose name started with ‘Quinmorada.’ And she was the one who both said she was ‘dealing with’ the first Demon, and the one who announced the fact that they were sending in ‘special forces’ to kill me now.

Obviously, that first Xhag’duul Demon was this one, who was standing right in front of me. The second one, though, must have been someone who was in charge of him. If she got to make the decisions over what he did, she must have been. And considering the number of times he’d derided the people above him, he probably held some resentment toward her. In fact, it seemed like he felt like she was just lording her power over him and forcing him into unwinnable situations. That’d been what he’d said in the previous timeline. So, if that was the case...

“In the books, they actually said the Demon who the most recent user of this Class fought against,” I said. “Maybe she’s already dead, though. Could’ve been too long ago.”

He looked at me. “What was her name?”

“Oh, I don’t remember that,” I shrugged, trying to keep myself from shaking. “You know how Demon names are, I’m sure. Us Humans just don’t get them.”

“Just...” he closed his eyes and shook his head again. “Do you remember something, anything, about it? Tell me the name.”

I put a hand to my chin. “I think it started with a... K? Something like Kwit... or, no. Was it a Q? Right, right, it was something like Quitnorda, or, or was it something like... Quinmorada?”

His eyes lit up with rage the moment I said the name. “That name. Wh—where did you hear it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I think it was Quinmorada,” I said, nodding. “Why? Do you recognize it?”

He shook his head, laughing in frustration. “I fucking knew it! I knew she was pulling some shit! That fucking bitch. She just set me up for fucking failure. She hasn’t even beaten these bullshit fucking powers, either! She lost, and she knew it was impossible to beat. She knew it wasn’t my fault, any of the fucking times you got away. She just wanted to get rid of me. Just wanted to berate me, demote me, try to fucking kill me.”

I did my best not to sigh in relief. He’d bought it. It was a gamble, that was for sure, but he’d actually bought it. People believed what they wanted to believe, and it seemed like, whatever was going on with this guy, he desperately wanted to believe that none of this was his fault. He wanted a scapegoat. And I’d given him one.

He continued rambling about how he’d been set up, and I fought my urge to look back at Erani and Ainash, still on their way to the outpost. It’d been a while. Had they gotten there? Were they on their way back yet?

“Were there any other names?” Xhag’duul’s voice snapped me back to our conversation.

“What?”

“Did those history books mention anyone else who knew?”

Heat Resistance has triggered. Damage has been reduced to 13.

Your Health is 243.

I dropped to the ground, trying to ignore the agony of the fire and roll around in my clunky armor to extinguish it. It didn’t work, though. I knew it wouldn’t—you couldn’t end magical fire through mundane means. But my mind wasn’t thinking rationally as I attempted to stop my skin from melting.

“There’s something you don’t seem to get here,” Xhag’duul said, continuing to calmly approach.

You have been burned. 18 damage.

Heat Resistance has triggered. Damage has been reduced to 13.

Your Health is 230.

“No matter how many tries you get, no matter how many attempts you make,” he said.

You have been burned. 18 damage.

Heat Resistance has triggered. Damage has been reduced to 13.

Your Health is 217.

“No matter how clever you are, or what ideas you come up with.”

You have been burned. 18 damage.

Heat Resistance has triggered. Damage has been reduced to 13.

Your Health is 204.

“If someone is stronger than you, and they’re faster than you, and they’ve got big enough numbers.”

You have been burned. 18 damage.

Heat Resistance has triggered. Damage has been reduced to 13.

Your Health is 191.

“Then you simply can’t beat them. No matter what. You need to learn what I did long ago, Human. Sometimes, it’s just hopeless.”

“Talking with guards now!” I got a message from Ainash. The signal was faint, probably because she was so far away, but I could still barely pick up what she was saying. “Hold on little longer, and will come with help!”

But it was too late.

Xhag’duul stepped over my body as the flames began to die out. He lifted his foot above my face and sighed. “You just gotta learn when to quit.”

You have died.

And then I was back, five hours before. No more uses of Time Loop left. This was my last shot.

We were all moving down the road, currently. We’d probably only recently left after I woke everyone up last time.

Erani turned to me, seeing that my expression had changed. “What’s wrong?”

But before I could respond, I saw Ainash. She was wide-eyed, staring off into the sky with a shocked expression on her face. She’d stopped in her tracks the moment I arrived in this timeline. This didn’t happen before; what had changed?

“...You okay?” I asked.

She frantically turned to me. “Memories! Have memories, from future! Know what will happen! Need to get to the outpost, with Humans, they will help!”