In my sleep, I was overwhelmed once again. It had happened again and again over the past few days, never as bad as the day it started but... it just kept steadily eating away at me and my mental health in general. I would often ask myself whether or not the fact that I knew I was going cray was good or bad... maybe it was even a bit of both.

This time I saw faces, some scenes from my old life and some from this. I saw myself getting tortured, hit, I saw the flames, some from my old, some from my new life. I saw people around me die. And all that over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Each time it was longer, more vivid. It continued after I woke up.

My body was shaking slightly and I could feel my arms and my head twitch. Something was off. I was undressed and the smell of the carriage had changed. I also felt quite sick, feeling as if I had to throw up.

"You are awake, finally," someone said.

I jumped up, revealing my entire body. I was only dressed in underpants. My face was twitching and my eyes were wide as I stared at Rudolpho, now dressed in fine clothing. His armour had been put on the armour stand in the corner. He was a tall man, a little taller than I was, although my antler beams went out far enough to, technically, make me taller than him. Without his armour, he actually looked quite lanky and thin but still healthy.

"W-What?" I asked, still pretending.

"Oh, you can stop now. I saw what you did to the other members of that branch. You couldn't have called that deaths that happened due to self-defence. You slaughtered them," Rudolpho said with a smug grin on his face.

I chuckled. And that chuckle quickly turned into laughter. Rudolpho looked slightly disturbed.

"Alright, alright, I'll stop. Now to get to the important bits... why am I naked and where is my stuff?" I asked, my head tilted and a grin on my face.

Rudolpho revealed that my two daggers were on his lap.

"These are quite nice... where did you acquire such weapons?" he asked.

I thought for a few seconds. Revealing too much to him might tip him off to my origins in case it was even known. But since he worked together with the person that killed everyone I knew I assumed that he might at least be familiar with something about my old village.

"My father gave them to me," I responded.

"Your father? I see, so they must be quite important to you..." Rudolpho said.

His tone was a little suspicious.

"You wanna steal them?" I asked, raising one eyebrow, which must have been quite the sight combined with my grin and tilted head since Rudolpho burst out into laughter.

"Oh no, by the seven. I do not want to steal anything. I simply remembered some things about my father. Anyway, your other things are currently being washed. We also found a very large sum of money on you, mind explaining yourself?" Towards the end, he sounded very serious.

"I did a lot of jobs, investigation, rescue, assassination and stuff like that while I lived in that shit hole. "Most of that is from some noble whose daughter I found in the hideout of Pergament."

Rudolpho rubbed his goatee with two fingers as I grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around me.

What happened to M... I should have thought about that sooner, shit. I hope he's fine.

"So the Signia family was right... the demon lords were involved..." Rudolpho muttered to himself as he put down my daggers near me.

"What will happen to that woman, Ilaria?" I asked.

"Oh, well. To gain more information about her... superior, we will most likely need to torture her quite a lot," Rudolpho said.

"Her superior?" I asked, intrigued by getting to know more about whatever connection she and that organization had to the demon lords.

"Oh, I really am not supposed to talk about that but... you did play a big role in all this so I guess a little is fine. Her superior, her boss, so to say is the High Demon Lord Dion, also known as the blue flame. One of this world's many... very powerful beings. Even I might struggle when trying to defeat him one on one," Rudolpho explained.

"So you aren't the strongest?" I asked.

"Oh no, by the seven," he responded, sounding quite shocked, "Me? One of the strongest? Oh by far not. I am only a simple paladin, calling upon the power of an intermediate deity. If I had to name the strongest then I'd have to name: Golbrant, Adam, Ava, the Riftwalker, Cicil and that whole group often referred to as the unrecognized deities. Although to be quite honest, some of them might even be the same person. Then there are the high paladins and the saints, all above me. Oh, and of course the arch demon lords and some of the high demon lords as well. There are a lot of people more powerful than me out there. And I haven't even mentioned the deities or the... greater devils," Rudolpho said, with a lot of disdain in the last two words.

Golbrant huh? Now that is quite interesting.

"So, who would you say is the most powerful?" I asked.

"That is difficult to answer, probably one of the seven... or the... one of the... of the eight g-greater devils. But... if we are talking about beings that are not among the greaters my pick would regrettably have to be Grimlock, the dead sage..." Rudolpho said.

Regrettably?

"Who is this Grimlock?" I asked.

"Well, now that is information I truly cannot disclose," he said.

So that guy's a demon lord then? Or at least not on their side... good to know, good to know.

'Uncle Grim is an arch demon lord,' Ira said.

She caught me so off guard with the whole Uncle Grim thing that I nearly burst into laughter.

'You serious?' I asked.

'Yeah, he's one of the founding members of the council together with my father, mother and a few others,' Ira explained.

'... This shit keeps getting better and better,' I responded.

"Now that I have answered your questions, I would like you to answer some of mine," Rudolpho said.

"Go ahead," I responded, still not over the fact that Ira called the supposed strongest being Uncle Grim...

"What is your real name?" he asked.

"I told you, Altair. Well, my full name is Altair Oberon Lyrius," I said, not really thinking.

He looked surprised.

"A Lyrius, so there are still some surviving members of that family?" he asked.

"I dunno, as far as I know, I might be the last, might not be, who knows?" I responded, my head tilting to the left on its own for some reason.

"What about your parents?" Rudolpho asked.

"Died when I was young," I responded.

"Alright, I am not going to pry anymore. Onto the next question. When the maids washed you we found three separate magic marks, what types of magic do you possess?" he asked.

Getting a little personal huh? First my parents and now my magic?

"Wood elven magic, teleportation and thorn conjuration and manipulation," I responded.

"Hmm... judging by your mana and the fact that you seem to be easily capable of speaking the common tongue I would assume you are quite well educated. Am I correct with that assumption?" Rodolpho said.

"I dunno, I mean I do train my mana a lot but the whole language stuff? I dunno about that, doesn't everyone speak the common tongue? That's why it is the common tongue, right?" I responded, a little confused and finally having managed to get the occasional twitching under control.

"Well, normally I would agree but as far as I am aware most wood elves do not in fact speak the common tongue, and even if they do they usually have quite heavy accents unless they grew up only speaking the common tongue," Rudolpho said.

What? But like... everyone is just speaking English, right? Right? Did I miss something or...

'I mean everything sounds the same to me as well but I remember that a lot of the old council members had these weird necklaces that apparently translated language and stuff like that,' Ira explained.

'Strange... guess we'll deal with that later," I said.

"Well, if you don't know then you don't know. Now, for my most important question. Will you join us?"