Honestly, even I am getting kind of excited for this. Forty years is a long time for a demon, long enough for her to think deeply about many matters. And she was a very special case. Deciding to live after such… evil, she must’ve had some kind of reason for this.

But…

I can’t help but think I am putting too much hope in her.

This isn’t my first time doing something like this, and none of them resulted into anything useful so far.

But, she is an exceptional case. And I never shared my power with someone before, not even my wife, so that should count for something.

Someone with my power probably thinks differently than those with something like standard Magic or nothing at all.

At least, I hope so.

Or else saving her would’ve been a waste.

No, she deserved a second chance. But still, I probably can’t help but feel disappointed if this doesn’t yield results.

I’ll give her five more years, then…

I might pay her a visit.

…………..

Or, at least, that how it should have gone, but unfortunately – or perhaps, fortunately – , two years later, I was woken up by someone just like with her.

No, it wasn’t just like then. This was much more…. Rude, to say the least.

I was sleeping (as per usual) when suddenly, a very familiar voice – though I hadn’t heard her voice a lot, I could somehow hear a similarity – of a women nearing maturity sounded over this vast wasteland.

Thinking it was her, I was rather pleased that she spared me a bothersome trip, but then I noticed she hadn’t left her city through the Soulthread I linked us both with, and, when hearing what she said, I knew why.

“Hey, you. Are you the ‘Lord’ Mother send me to find?”

Still lying on my back in the sand, soaking in the delightfully hot desert sun, I slightly tilted my head sideways to look at the new arrival.

Indeed, she looks like her mother, except for two things.

Instead of the hill-shaped horns arching over a black-haired head, like her mother, she had long brown hair, though she had the exact same hill-like horns of her mother.

The other thing different was her tail. Instead of the mother’s leaf-like end to the leathery thing, hers had a line perpendicular to the end of her tail, forming a cross-shaped tip.

Everything else – overall shape, height, eyes (brown), nose, voice – was inherited from her mother.

She was probably around nineteen years old, just like her mother probably was back then, and stood fully covered in leather armour, holding a spear in her right hand and aiming its tip towards me, waiting for me to respond.

I stared silently at her, hoping she would explain further details of why she was ordered to fetch me.

Instead, I was surprised.

Rushing forward towards me at high-speed, she kicked the still-lying me into the air, sending me soaring through the clouds until finally landing about twenty kilometres further.

But that wasn’t what I was surprised about. Well, perhaps a little.

No, it was what she used to kick me. And I don’t mean her foot.

It wasn’t the Magic that so thoroughly permeated the world after me gifting it to the People of Sloth. It was what my wife used to call the ‘Origin’, as in ‘the Origin of Magic’, and what I simply call ‘Energy’.

It’s the power only I, and a couple of people who have ‘seen the Truth behind Magic’ can use. Though theirs is but a degrading form of mine, theirs being reached through Magic research and mine being ‘natural’ and allowing for ‘true’ immortality. Not just anti-aging or anti-disease, but rather a pure indestructibility of the soul and its power, Energy.

And she used it to kick me.

And it wasn’t the derogatory form of Energy either, but rather the exact same as mine, albeit used incredibly unskillfully and crudely.

A true Immortal, just like me.

I can now safely say that saving her mother was the perhaps the best decision I’ve made to date.

Even if she won’t supply me with the answers I search for, her daughter could be used instead. And even if that doesn’t prove successful, at least I have someone to share this burden with. That, on its own, is much more than I could ask for after this long time.

Perhaps my wife was right, ‘kindness begets kindness, and good comes to those who do good’.

Unfortunately, as of now, she’s still useless. She hasn’t lived for a long time, making her closer to a mortal than a long lived Immortal like I am and I’ll need to wait a long time before she becomes like me, but ‘luckily’ I have all the time in the world.

Too bad she’s also an annoying brat.

After my landing, she ran towards me with frenzy in her eyes and started stabbing me all over my body.

There was no reasoning behind her aim, no technique behind her Energy and not a single thought given to her enemy. She was merely a berserker, frantically punching a bloodbag that just so happened to be me, whilst grinning madly with every drop of blood leaving my body.

I simply stood there, taking her attacks as I looked in distaste.

She is the type I hate the most.

Someone who had everything since birth. Power, love, wealth and overall happiness, yet she viewed it as her right to have these things. Having a power stronger than everything – Energy – she takes what she wants, extorts her own family and merely uses raw force to overwhelm whoever she dislikes.

A person talented since birth and then spoiled rotten. Having everything, but giving nothing.

But even then, I normally wouldn’t bother even sparing a single thought to it, thinking it’s just a pain to deal with.

But, to top it off, she is an Immortal, like me, yet she has everything I want, without suffering through what I had to.

She was never despised whilst trying to fit in a society that doesn’t want you, never hated for the power she wielded, nor ever worshipped out of an excessive feeling of fear, nor revered as a being higher than one’s own, to never offend or even be spoken to.

She was someone like I, but was raised with love and by people who respect her and treated her as an equal, but she twisted this happiness and ruined it by forever wanting more.

Even I can’t help but feel both hatred and envy towards her.

Luckily, time will correct her, or rather, erode her. After a million or so years, she’ll be just like me, longing either for death out of hope a better afterlife, or searching for a meaning behind a meaningless existence.

That doesn’t mean an early lesson would do any harm.

Whilst still stabbing away at my body, perhaps wondering why I hadn’t been pulverized yet by the sheer pressure of her Energy, I decided to shake her up a little.

Seeing her pulling her spear backwards and preparing strike once more, I slightly moved my body to the right, dodging her strike as it slipped past me. I moved closer faster than she could notice and, with my right palm, struck her squarely across her left cheek. Feeling that her Energy had instinctively formed a barrier around her, I put in enough of my own Energy to cancel the barrier out, making the strike about as powerful as a regular slap.

But the effect was of anything but a regular slap.

In all her life, she had never been hurt once. She could leap from the highest mountain into the deepest canyon and still be without a scratch. Any mortal’s weapon would simply deflect off of her instinctively placed Energy barrier. She could never have had any diseases, not even growth-pains during puberty, since her body would automatically heal her. Although I don’t know about menstruation cramps or any other gender-related pains, I can take a safe guess she probably never had any problems with it.

Having lived without pain throughout her entire life, even the slightest harm, much like a slap only leaving behind a faint hand-print, would be received as if she was mortally wounded.

And now, she felt.

Watching her expression turn into shock, as she dropped her spear and brought her left hand to her red-tinged cheek, I couldn’t help but grin ever so slightly.

But this wasn’t over.

Though I could not know for certain, having seen her frantically stabbing me like that, I made a well-educated guess she had harmed and almost definitely killed before, and probably not just one. So, I decided to make her feel something more… horrifying.

As she stood there, staring into my eyes with such a shocked expression as if she couldn’t believe this was real, I formed my right hand into a fist and thrust my fist harshly into her abdomen. But instead of cancelling out the barrier and hitting her with pure muscle strength, I decided to add more.

Much more.

I forced my Energy through my fist in three highly-condensed waves, the first shaking and shattering every bone from her skull to her toes, the second rupturing every organ from windpipe to stomach and the third tearing every single thing, be it flesh or muscle or vein, apart.

Only the outside and the brain were unharmed. The first to hold everything together and stop blood from spilling out, except through her orifices. The second in case she had somehow not linked her soul and her memory like I had.

It was the single most cruel death available without a prolonged torture. In comparison, she suffered much less compared to her mother, but that was only because of the difference in the amount of time one had suffered. Aside from that, the suffering was comparable.

But naturally, she would survive.

As blood leaked out of her eyes, ear and nose, I saw her falling to her knees, throwing up a bloody mess of flesh, blood and bones and then falling face-first on the ground as she went in a state of shock, stopping after a few minutes as her body already automatically began to repair itself.

Was it cruel? Yes. Perhaps even too much, but if I was right, she has already killed many, so this, though mixed with personal hatred, was merely a situation of crime and punishment.

And, even though saving her mother was more of a whimsical kindness and half-assed experiment, I still think her mother deserves happiness, and can’t help but conclude that such a rotten daughter didn’t particularly help in that aspect.

So yeah, I don’t feel bad about it.

While her body was busy fixing herself, I used my power to clean her of the bloody mess she was covered in and also clean and fix her armour of the blood and the hole left behind by my fist.

After waiting until her body had fixed itself, I grabbed her by the tail and decided to pay her mother a visit, deliberately not teleporting out of personal pettiness so I could drag her across the desert sands.

She’s unconscious so she won’t feel a thing anyway.