The scholar slept for a thousand years. He would sleep longer if not for the golden bird the size of an elephant that suddenly landed on the road made out of moonlight where he slept at that time.

The bird transformed into an adorable little girl with golden hair and golden eyes that was dressed in a cute golden dress with many drawings of flowers on it and ran up to the scholar with a pitter-patter.

She began pulling on the scholar’s ears, nose and hair, shaking his shoulder and yelling “Wake up!” on top of her lungs. Even though there was supposed to be no sound in space, her voice was transmitted clearly through the whole galaxy, with some planets being destroyed by the shockwave.

After a few minutes, the scholar lazily opened his eyes and waved his hand in annoyance.

“Hilda, what have you come for?”

Unlike the other time, he spoke with his voice instead of the mind. He sounded very tired.

“Oalur, I felt that a demon invaded this realm with a superior avatar around a thousand years ago, is that true?”

She spoke very excitedly and looked like she barely held herself from jumping up and down in excitement.

“Did you drive it away? Did you? I know you did, my Oalur is the best after all~”

And then she hugged his neck with enough strength to cause a nuclear explosion by compressing the atoms closely enough.

Oalus tried to get the little girl off of him but it was useless, so he spoke annoyed and with a sour expression

“Nothing happened, just an old annoying thing came to visit”, he put special emphasis on the word “annoying” and looked meaningfully at Hilda.

“You know a demon other than me?!”, she spoke ignoring the indirect message and opened her mouth and eyes wide in astonishment

“Yeah, yeah, now unhand me already”

“Never! Why did it come?”

“Past things”

“What past things?!”

“Nothing important. Leave me in peace”, Oualus waved his wrist in a shooing motion

“Don’t wanna! Now, tell me, tell me, why did it come?”

Understanding that Hilda won’t leave until he tells her the whole story, Oualus sighed heavily and spoke

“He destroyed the world where I lived before I became a wizard. Apparently he felt guilty about it and wanted to talk. Is it enough?”

Hearing the answer, Hilda froze for a moment, yet something dark and sinister began to boil up behind her eyelids. That something began to slowly heat up until it blew up

“…I’ll kill him! How dare that disgusting thing hurt my Oualus! I’ll murder him in the most painful, agonizing ways, he’ll experience so much suffering that even in his next life he’ll-”

Hilda’s eyes turned blood red and many jagged pointy fangs grew in her mouth. As she described the brutal ways that she would use to take her revenge for Oualus, her appearance became progressively more grotesque. Meanwhile, Oualus was listening to her and sometimes even showed interested expressions when he heard Hilda describe the various creative ways of torture.

“You demons sure know some creative things, don’t you”, he even said once

But he grew bored of her antics after a while, so he told Hilda to stop.

“Where is he?!”

Hilda has already reset her appearance, so when she asked Oualus with indignation, she looked quite adorable.

“It doesn’t matter. It was too long ago anyway. Now leave already”

“No, not in a million years. But do you truly don’t care?”, She looked him in the eyes meaningfully

“Sigh, no, I still do-”

“Then I’ll go and kill that bast-”

“But I don’t care enough to bother with him. The Caterpillar is protected by the Pontiff who, in turn is protected by three Demon Mangraves and a Demon Marquis. Killing that thing isn’t worth the trouble”

“Caterpillar? Pontiff? Are you talking about Lacrapell and Aralthen of the Kingdom of Despair? Don’t worry, I can extort that gross thing from a mere Baron. How about it?”

“Too bothersome” I don’t want to be in your debt

Seeing through Oualus’ thoughts, Hilda could only sigh.

“At the very least, you should still talk with him. You may think that it’s not a big deal, but regret will slowly gnaw at your heart until you are no more anyway”

Oualus stayed silent

“Come, let me go with you if you don’t want to do it alone”

Oualus shook his head with a wry smile and stood up. He looked at Hilda for several seconds and then said very quietly

“Thank you”

Hilda smiled as brightly as the Sun and hugged Oualus tight enough to turn a mountain into a black hole. Oualus shook his head helplessly and patted her back.

“Annoying”, he said, but it sounded kind somehow

“Men acting shy isn’t cute” Hilda answered and stuck out her tongue “Should we go straight to the demon realm?”

“No, there’s a realm where I sealed a portion of Aralthen’s soul back in the day. I’m sure he still has to keep countless avatars in that place”

“Lead the way then”

Oualus snapped his fingers and they disappeared.