The group of three arrived in the demon town just after midnight. At first glance, this tent village looked like something Night had seen in the movies about nomadic desert people.

To the guards on duty at the camp, the startling sight of the two men walking up to the camp with someone strange was quickly mitigated by the sight of the beast carcasses being carried on the scorpion's backs.....especially the sand snake.

In the quiet camp, most of the people were already sleeping. However, the few camp guards had sounded an alert that managed to notify just about everyone in the camp. Most of the people in the village camp had already come out of their tents to welcome the two hunters back when the three men entered the camp perimeter.

Night had reached out with his perception some distance before the arrival to check the situation in the camp. The camp consisted of about two dozen tents. The tents looked big enough to house small families easily. There was a large pen set up that held around thirty scorpions too. The tents were centered around a small shallow oasis pond that was maybe three tents wide and full of muddy water.

In his counting, Night figured that there were 67 demons total in the Ammon Clan. From what Night could tell...around 30 of these demons didn't seem to be doing that well....they must be the poisoned ones.

"Quickly, I need to bring the body of the snake to the healing tent to get the antidote to cure everyone that is poisoned," Garik said as they approached the camp, "You two can share the lizard with the families for food. Everyone can have a great feast tomorrow. Talik, make sure to introduce Night to everyone and introduce him to the clan leader. The antidote should be ready pretty soon...no more than two hours."

After giving his instructions, Garik sped forward towards the medicine woman's healing tent. Talik and Night were left standing alone as the guards and clan members swarmed around them.

Talik was a very talkative guy once he got around his family and friends and quickly disseminated all of the information Night had told the two men about himself. Tarik's tale of his daring escape from slavery and the destruction of a human oasis...had some demons looked at him with a little awe and trepidation. Some others of the demon clan just seemed to go about their normal business without any concern over Night....mostly the older crowd. In both cases, none of the clan members showed any hostility toward Night. He greatly appreciated their general friendliness.

Although the story got a bit exaggerated, Talik saved Night a great deal of time by explaining his background to everyone that had shown up at the camp entrance. Besides listening to the demon introduce him, Night had been greeted with a series of self introductions from some of the clan members..... especially a group of about 8 kids that were running around. The three horned demon children were quite adorable although Night had to keep watch that they didn't run off with his possessions.

"So where do we need to bring the lizard to process it?," Night asked Talik once he started to get tired of the commotion.

Of course, Night knew what would happen after Talik explained that the lizard was very good food for the clan. He had lived out in the woods his entire childhood. Of course, he new the basics of hunting and processing game animals for eating. The thought of hunting game brought back memories of his father....which in turn made Night's mood slightly sour.

Hoping to pull himself out of the emotional slump, Night looked at Talik waiting for a response.

"Oh....ya.....let's get to work," Talik said as he lead his scorpion with the lizard pieces on it's back to a tent off to the side. He had been enjoying the attention of the clan members a bit too much.

Hearing the call to work, the crowd started to disperse except for a few stragglers looking to sight see.

Talik lead Night over to the largest nearby tent. After coming up to the tent, he yelled, "Chief Bravik, you doing okay in there? We got a sand snake and a sand lizard. Everyone should be doing great by tomorrow morning."

In response to the shout, a pale faced older burly man slowly walked out of the tent with a large butcher knife in his hand.

"Great, Talik. I assume that Garik already brought the snake to my wife," Chief Bravik said before turning his gaze to Night.

"Yes, Garik is over there now. We also got twelve snake eggs too, so we should be able to profit off this trip too," Talik responded excitedly. It seemed like he was bragging.

"Good, Good," Chief Bravik said while pointing his knife at Night, "Who is this guy?"

Although the gesture may have seemed threatening, Night didn't take the knife pointing seriously as a threat. The man was actually using his other hand to support himself with a crutch. The clan chief also seemed to have some bandages wrapped around his waist because of an injury. His pale complexion also made it seem like he had been one of the clansmen affected by the poison from the bandits.

Talik proceeded with his introductions of the two men. After a few minutes of chatting, the introductions were over and it was time for the three men to get to work.

After stretching out the lizard's corpse on a newly unfolded tarp, the two demons decided to work together to carve up the sand lizard into portions for distribution. They even called a few bystanders over to help carry off the pieces that were going to be cut off. Judging from documentaries Night had seen back on Earth, tribal groups would chop up game animals and distribute the meat out to everyone in the clan. He assumed something similar was going to happen here.

After spreading things out, the Chief and Talik immediately started separating the lizard meat from the skeleton. Night was not the kind of person to sit around while other people work. So, he pulled out one of his knives from his waistband and started deboning one of the lizard's hindquarters.

The two demons seemed to be quite surprised when Night pulled out such a fancy knife and got to work. However, the Chief looked at Night with a bit of hesitation in his eyes after a while.

"So you actually caused the destruction of a human oasis town? You don't look that strong," Chief Bravik questioned as he narrowed his eyes on Night.

The bedraggled looking man was probably the strongest demon in the village....he was at least a Level 1 Demigod.....so his status as Clan Chief seemed to make sense. However, Night didn't know what caused the shift in attitude.

"Yes, I helped destroy an human oasis town. The humans have one main flaw. They are lazy and keep a ton of slaves to do their work. They rely on heavenly stone collars to control those slaves but somehow mine ended up defective....and I could break free. After that.....with my strength.....it wasn't that difficult to free the rest of the slaves and cause a full revolt. I didn't destroy the oasis on my own," Night said to fill him in....without giving too many details.

"So you worked with the human slaves to destroy the town?," Clan Chief Bravik asked with an odd tone.

"Yes, they were no different than me in that situation," Night said to clarify his stance concerning the human slaves. Although the didn't want to cause a conflict, he was trying to keep the story as close as possible and didn't want to lie too much.

During the questioning session, the trio were steadily working to harvest the lizard's meat.

Despite the cordial interaction, the Clan Chief kept looking at Night in an awkward fashion....which gave Night a bad feeling. He wasn't sure if this demon had bad intentions or if he figured out that Night was a human. The glares his way made Night feel real uneasy.

However, the three men continued to work and eventually had most of the lizard carved up and headed out for distribution to the clan.

After they were finished with the lizard, the Clan Chief began handing out the meat out to the clan families that had started to flock around the area. Each group got an amount proportionate to the size of their family. It took a good while to get everything handed out but it was completed pretty quickly..

Right after everyone got their food, the medicine woman showed up to distribute the poison's antidote. Clan Chief Bravik introduced the woman as his wife, Branim. Unlike Night expected from a medicine woman, the Clan Chief's wife was absolutely gorgeous and seemed like a complete normal woman. Night had imagined the medicine woman being a dried up old hag that talked in all sorts of riddles....like in the movies.

The antidote was quickly distributed to the clan members and Night soon heard a few moans of pain and some sounds of relaxation throughout the camp area. It seemed like the antidote was a success.

After all the formalities were done, the Clan Chief had a few men setup a small tent for Night to sleep in. They had decided that it was okay for Night to stay with the clan until the antidotes had completely healed everyone. Night had been a bit uncertain, but what other choice did he have?

When he was finally alone in the tent, Night started to rummage though his pack. He pulled out a green orb.....the same orb that Mr. Harver would put on his desk for privacy in Manco Oasis. Tapping the orb, Night injected some of his heavenly energy. The energy caused the orb to glow and Night could tell that it would be difficult to observe his actions in the tent. Night had put the handy item into use because.....although he was friendly with these demons....he wasn't a hundred percent sure about them...something seemed off with the chief.

Now that he had his privacy, Night spread the contents of his bag out on the rug floor of the tent. He wanted to review his inventory. He had some food and water and some miscellaneous goods like bandages. a few handfuls of blood stones, assorted heavenly stones and some soul stones. Nothing too big, but it should be enough for him to get a foothold somewhere. He had left all the bigger supplies, like bed sheets and armor on the dead alloc. He could only bring so much on the trip since he was now on foot.

While he had messed with a few of his supplies while traveling, he hadn't spent a considerable amount of time checking through his supplies. Some of the heavenly stones were very nice quality under further review.

Night also had an odd looking black gem that he had taken from Mr. Harver's private collection of treasures. During one of his lonely nights in the desert, Night had figured out what the gem was and he had not been so excited in quite a while. The black stone was an darkness elemental gem.

From what Night knew, darkness and light elemental gems were extremely rare. He had used the gem that night and his power over his concepts had more than doubled. His shadow concept blanketed about a quarter mile of desert and the death concept..... well.....there was nothing living around Night at the time, so he couldn't really tell the effects of the elemental gem on the death concept. Regardless, the boost in power was very exciting and Night planned to find someone to fashion the gem into part of a weapon for him eventually.

After admiring the elemental gem for a few minutes, Night decided that he was finally settled enough to begin something that he needed to do for a while. Complete the ceremony of turning Grief into a Ker. For the last week, she had only been a floating soul orb in Night's soul space.

Night went into his soul space and began the Way of the Ker process of inscribing Grief's soul. Grief was very patient with Night and seemed to be appreciative when she realized the pain the procedure had caused him.

Night was so exhausted when he was done. He had to use two soul stones to recover some of his soul energy. In an hour, he was almost back to normal.

After recovering, Night sat on the carpet looking over his stuff. He caught sight of the small pile of soul stones sitting on the floor. Inspiration struck him and Night had an idea.

Since the soul energy in the soul space seemed to benefit Misery Before, Night guessed that if he absorbed some extra power from the soul stones then he may be able to give Misery a boost to wake up. He was worried for the woman and missed her company. Consider the situation, Night didn't see how absorbing a few extra soul stones could hurt anything. So, he picked up a few of the soul stones and absorbed the full amount of soul energy from the stones. Looking into his soul space, Night noticed that Misery was starting to stir. His idea had worked.

"Hey, Night," Misery said looking over at the man in the soul space. Then she caught sight of the woman next to him.

"Who's this?," Misery said with a loud questioning look on her face.

'Shit,' Night thought as he saw the angry look on the woman's face.