POV: Phobius Barnes

After that insane amount of pain my body was actually feeling a lot lighter and I was feeling way more refreshed as well. The way of this world was starting to click in my head, as I realized that this lightness of my body is due to my skill points. It was at this point I was wondering how it would feel to be at an insanely high level and have insane stats.

“Well, no time better than the present.” I pulled the plate out and was about to tap it but stopped for a second.

Wait, how is this plate even around my neck? When I put it back it feels like it disappears. There is a good chance it's a sort of magic.

It was this point in time when I learned to stop questioning every single little thing in this world. The answer is almost always magic, or just because. Getting used to it is going to take a long time though. I went ahead and double tapped the small plate that still looked like a dog tag and pulled up my stats and skills.

Name: Phobius Barnes Race: Human Age: 17

Level: 7 Class: Detective Skill Points Available: 0

Strength: 70 Agility: 85

Defense: 70 Stamina: 75

Magic: 67 #$*(&^@: 31

Skills: Language Barrier (Lvl.Max), Analytics (Lvl.Max) Dash (Lvl.2), Hindsight (Lvl.2), Foresight (Lvl.5), Machiavellianism (Lvl.2) Empathic Accuracy (Lvl.2), Hellflare (Lvl.1)

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Danny suddenly bolted over to me, basically shoving me to put her face right up to a certain skill, Hellflare. “Am I reading that right?” She rubbed her eyes as if that would change anything.

“Hey isn’t Hellflare the skill you basically spammed all of yesterday?” I looked down at her and she was still just staring at the one word, I’m not even sure if she was blinking. “Um. Danny?”

“Uh..Yeah, it is.”

“Alright what the hell is wrong? It’s getting a little annoying.” Even though I was treating her nicer than before, it didn't mean she still couldn’t get on my nerves.

“Well.” Danny started finally looking away from the skill and back to me. “Hellflare. Is…”

“Just say it!” All of this back and forth was seriously about to push me over the edge.

“Sorry! It’s just this shouldn’t be possible. Hellflare is a demon exclusive skill.” For a moment I just stood there and stared back at her.

“Demon exclusive? You mean only demons can acquire this skill?” Not having knowledge of this world was really going to keep hurting me if I didn’t start learning more about it and soon. The fastest way for that is to have Danny tell me everything about herself, but I feel it’s going to take at least a few days for that. I’m just gonna have to be patient.

“From what I know, there has never been a single being other than a demon who has acquired this skill. Hellflare is a basic combat skill for demons, but can be extremely powerful eh higher the level it goes.”

“Hm. Guess I’m an anomaly then.” I chuckled, rubbing the back of my neck, hoping she would calm down a bit. My ploy obviously didn’t work as she was just staring at me wide-eyed.

“Ha.Ha.” I chuckled slowly. This awkwardness is killing me. “Sooooo. I’ma test it out then.”

“I wouldn’t suggest it.” Danny stared at me as if she was looking into my soul. “It could be quite dangerous for a human, especially since this has never happened before.”

I pondered for a moment, thinking back on her words. “That is true.”

“So then you won’t?”

“Hmmm.” I looked at her for a moment before a wide grin appeared on my face. “Hellflare!” Holding out my hand, I imagined exactly how Danny used it the first time and aimed at the cave wall.

In my head I was expecting something as cool as what she did but my geeky side got too ahead of me as the spell just spurt out a little flame that didn’t even go 10 yards. I clicked my tongue in annoyance, staring at the cave wall that didn’t even get hit in the slightest. Not even a scratch.

“Why would you do that?!” Danny suddenly yelled. “That was so dangerous!”

“It was needed for my own goal.” I casually responded while staring at my palm not even glancing at her direction.

“You’re pretty unbearable yourself you know.”

“I’m glad you dropped the overly happy front. That was unbearable.” Just thinking back to how she was so happy to go along with a random stranger gave me shivers.

“It wasn’t all a front.” She started to pout at my comment. “I just thought I needed to be over the top, so humans weren’t afraid of me. I was actually happy to come along.”

I looked over at Danny, she was dropping her head and I swear I saw a pouty lip there as well. Letting out a deep sigh I took a step towards her.

“Sorry for assuming.” I put a hand on the top of her head, hoping to console her once again. “But seriously, you pout a lot.” Ruffling her hair I went back to looking at my stat screen. Danny put her own hand where mine was a moment before, the tips of her ears slightly red.

“Back to this skill.” I resumed what I really needed to figure out. “Is it supposed to be that weak at level 1, because even for a beginner combat skill that really sucked.” Danny shook her head, presumably to recompose herself and chimed in my self conversation.

“That was actually a lot weaker than what it is supposed to be, but I have no idea why. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I smiled at her, deciding I just needed to use it more to hopefully level it up.

It is due to the fact that you are not yet a demon.

IT? Why do you keep randomly chiming in. That would make sense if it’s true however. But what the hell do you mean by yet?”

I waited a moment, but with so many of my other question’s IT went silent. I couldn’t just ignore this one though, that word yet had a lot of implications that I didn’t really like.

Of course you disappear again, you bastard!

I never disappear Phobius.

There you are, you little shit! I don’t care what you are, you seriously get on my nerves!

You want answers right?

Oh wow! What gave you that idea, Sherlock? Yes, I want answers!

All your questions will get answered if you get stronger.

All of them? And why can’t you just tell me.

Since you’re so adamant and I need this to work between us, I will help you out with your memories just this once.

Finally man, thank you!

You have yet to actually try to remember anything, just hoping that it will come to you by itself. Even banking on the fact that I will tell you, but if I told you anything it would risk everything. So you must try to remember yourself. If you want to get stronger, if you want to get revenge just follow out the path I will set out for you.

I would like to revoke my thank you, the only thing you gave me was advice!

Sighing internally I knew that IT was right.

As much as I hate to admit it, you’re right. I will not be thankful to you but I will admit you are right. I apologize. I guess I’m going to have to put my trust in you.

Good choice.

Only. If you put your trust in me as well. This has to be a two way thing, if I don’t like what you're doing you have to take into account my side. This will not be the you show, I will be a part of this movie as well.

While I do not get the references, I get your point. I will take what you say into account as well.

Thank you. So the first thing I gotta do is just try to remember these memories that I somehow don’t remember?

Correct. Remember your past, what happened to you. Don’t push it away anymore. Accept it. Think about it. Use it. BECOME IT.

Become. My. Past.

In that moment I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and remembered my journey up to here. It may have not been a long time, but it felt like an eternity. Getting summoned here, some of my happiest moments in my life with Phillip, Kathy, and Vanellope. Sweet little V. Remembering what happened to them was making my blood boil inside of me. The anger, the rage, was all rushing back and when it did I started to see other things. Guards cowering in front of me begging for their lives, they looked like the ones who killed my family. I could feel the sweet feeling of killing them as I watched it back. Then I remembered getting caught, getting tortured. Escaping, running, my time alone with IT, and finally this time alone with Danny. As all the emotions I have felt so far rushed through me, happiness, relaxation, but also anger, rage, grief, a vision appeared before me.

Suddenly I remembered what I was seeing. It was what I was seeing when I passed out from the pain of leveling up that weird skill. I was remembering all of it however, just pieces here and there. The main things I remembered were those four weapons, the knife, the sword, the crystal, and the gun. Seeing some vision of me on a chair with people surrounding me, the two people behind me were fuzzy and I couldn’t make them out but the other two were very clear. Danny was sitting on my lap, and a girl with cat ears and a tail who looked super similar to Vanellope was sitting on the air chair and I had a hand on the top of her head. The last thing I remembered was me passed out with my head on Danny’s lap. She leaned over to me and kissed me on my forehead.

“Phobius? Phobius?!” I opened my eyes feeling super groggy and saw Danny was shaking me, her face and her emotions showing the same thing, concern.

I smiled looking at her, “I guess you really do care, Danny.” With that my brain overloaded and I wasn’t able to stay conscious. I opened my eyes and saw Danny learning over me, staring at me.

“Ugh.” I held my head sitting back up. “Passing out two times in less than an hour huh. How long was I out?”

Danny had tears forming in the corners of her eyes, but quickly rubbed them away. “Not long, only a couple seconds.”

I started over at her, barely able to keep her emotions in check. Man, being able to feel what others do is pretty handy.

“You gotta stop doing that!” Danny punched me in my arm, hurting a bit more than I thought it was going to.

“Ow. Doing what?” Rubbing my arm, I couldn’t really figure out what she was talking about.

“Worrying me.” She kept rubbing her eyes, obviously trying to hold tears back.

“I can’t remember doing anything besides passing out twice that would make you worry about me.” I pondered trying to think but it had only been a day, there was really nothing else.

“Isn’t that more than enough though?”

I looked back over and stared at her, my brain still not being able to fully accept what was happening before my eyes.

“You really care about me don’t you?” I had never really had anyone care about me so much before meeting Phillip, Kathy, and Vanellope, even my own mom and dad didn’t take care of me much. I knew they loved me but it was a distant kind of love. With me suddenly disappearing on them, I knew that they were worried about me. There was no way they weren’t, but it wasn’t so bad that they would give up on life over it. They loved me, even if they didn’t show it.

This was definitely the first time as well, a girl had shown any affection for me. Now whether this was platonic or romantic, I wasn’t going to get my hopes up. However I would accept Danny for who she is, especially if no other human would.

Danny stared at me for a moment, before blushing more than I had seen before. She suddenly stared down at the ground and responded to me, “Of course I do, you doofus.”

“Sorry, it’s just hard to believe.”

“Why?” She kept her head down but peeked up at me, making my heart twinge from the cuteness of it all.

“Well to be honest.” I hesitated for a moment, but I knew I was going to talk about it all someday so why not say a little now. “I have something inside of me. Something that I don’t know. And to be honest, I thought you may have been drawn towards that thing instead of me. I can feel it’s emotions, and that’s why I knew what you were feeling. It wasn’t my emotion.”

Danny picked up her head and stared at me the whole time I talked. Not making a sound until I completely finished.

“I know.”

“What?” I was so confused, how could she have known?

“There was this hidden part about you, it was like half of you was locked behind something. While it may be true that I was drawn to you originally because of whatever that thing is, I started to care about you because of you. The you that accepted the fact that I was a demon despite everyone else I tried to talk to running away before I could even say a single word. The you who consoled me when I was sad, the you who keeps putting up with me despite my shortcomings. That’s the you I care about, while I may be curious about this other being in you. I honestly don’t care about it. What I care about is you.”

For a while we just stared at each other, our eyes never leaving each other's line of sight. After a little while the embarrassment was settling in for both of us and we quickly looked away from each other. She peaked over at me with anticipation in her eyes, clearly looking for some form of response. I had never been good at this sort of thing before so I quickly turned around and started to stand up. Her disappointment must have been extreme cause without even trying I could feel it on the back of my neck. I knew it wasn’t fair to her after everything she said to me but all I could manage to get out was.

“Me too.” She seemed to get the message though as that level of disappointment was doubled but in the form of pure happiness. I started to walk so we could get started on our day but I suddenly got light headed.

“What's wrong?” Danny quickly got up and ran over to me.

“I’m…not sure.” My head was feeling really fuzzy and in that moment I remembered all the visions I saw when IT talked to me.

Oh yeah, so much has been happening it’s hard to keep up with. What happened at the kingdom, whatever IT is, meeting Danny, this weird stat, those visions that I can remember, those visions I can’t remember. My brain was starting to overload.

I could remember that vision of Danny kissing me on the forehead, but I don’t know for sure if that was a dream or somehow I was seeing what happened to me. Before I realized what I was doing, I touched the part on my forehead.

In the corner of my eyes I could see Danny’s cheeks get flushed and she quickly looked away from me.

So that did really happen? Coming from her reaction it would be safe to assume so.

“Uh.” I started to try and ask her if that really happened, but she quickly cut me off.

“Let’s uhh…get going. Shall we?” She phrased it as a question but she started walking deeper into the cave anyway.

“Wait up.” I jogged to catch up and when I went to walk next to her she scooted away from me once again.

POV: Danny

Was he awake? Did he realize I did that? No that’s not possible, I was certain he was still unconscious. But he touched exactly where I kissed him!

I looked over to Phobius as he walked by me. He was next to me a minute ago but I couldn’t hide my embarrassment as quickly scooted away from him.

He doesn’t think I’m weird cause of everything I told him, does he? But he responded with ‘Me too.’.

A smile came over my face as I remembered him saying that. I couldn’t believe what was happening, was I actually falling for a human? If my father saw me at that moment he would’ve been furious to the point of no return, but I already decided to leave and find my own place in this world. To find someone who could potentially help me with my goal, even if I was a demon.

I thought that was impossible and I got sadder by the day whenever someone saw me and immediately ran away screaming. Humans treated me normally until they got a glimpse of my horns, then they left me in terror like all the other races. Phobius was so different though, that was why I was so attracted to him. Back home plenty of guys tried to get my attention but they all felt so fake. He was different, he felt like home.

The best case scenario was that I could stay with him and he would help me with my mission, but if that doesn’t happen.

I’m going to have to choose one or the other.

POV: Phobius Barnes

Like the previous day monsters were coming at us at pretty good rates, the majority of them being in groups. The most common type of monsters so far had to be those wolf type ones. Each of their packs were different though, some were radiating a weird color, some had spikes, some had monstrously large teeth.

The cave felt never ending, but the weirdest part of it was that it wasn’t getting any hotter or colder. It was a normal temperature, in fact it was coldest in the entrance but past that it felt like a nice spring day. The light was also getting stronger the farther we went down due to those stones. It seemed that those stones were capable of absorbing mana just like the monsters were. That made me think was the very bottom of the cave going to be so bright I couldn’t see or would there be an eventual cap to how bright the stones could get. I was hoping the latter was the truth.

An hour passed by and I wasn’t feeling nearly as tired as I was the previous day. Was that also due to the boost in my stats? The way this world worked still confused the hell out of me. There was no telling if I leveled up at all without pulling up my stat plate, but I decided that I was going to pull it up at the end of each day.

Danny was helping me out with the packs of monsters, making sure that I was able to get some kills as well though so that I could level up as well. She left the singular ones to me though and so far I hadn’t fought one that had given me much trouble. The stat boost was doing wonders for me.

For lunch we had the exact same thing as always, bread with water but I wasn’t complaining. As long as I was getting something into my stomach it was good enough for me.

In between the fights with the monsters which wasn’t very long at all, the maximum amount of time we went with no monster attack was about 20 minutes, Danny and I talked about the tiny things in life. What kind of things we liked, foods, what we did in our free time. I made sure not to say anything that would give away I came from another world because I had a feeling she already had her suspicions. At the same time Danny was being careful not to say anything to me that would give away anything about her past. It was a strange little unspoken game that we were both participating in.

Someday I’ll tell her, but not today.

Towards the end of the day right when we were about to set up camp, we ran into what I would like to call our first mini boss. If monsters got stronger the farther down we went into the cave then, there must be levels where a singular monster was able to control its domain. This was that first one, he was massive and looked like an ogre carrying a massive club. It was easily over 10 feet tall, with a singular eye and small horns coming out the top of its head. The ogres horns looked different from Danny’s though, almost looking like something you would find in the woods. It was quite dirty and had scratches all over it, it was even a bark color. While Danny’s horns were very stylish and red. Personally I preferred Danny’s horns over the ogres.

“Want me to help?” Danny asked. I was doing most of the work throughout the day so I could get used to Hellflare and my new stats but now I felt warmed up.

“I got this.” Cracking my knuckles I started to walk over to the ogre, activating my mana armor. I skipped a few times to get ready and bolted towards the ogre, clearing the 30 or so yards between us in 2 seconds.

The ogre’s eye went wide in surprise, obviously not expecting me to be that fast, but for its size the ogre was surprisingly fast. I leaped as high as I could but I would only be able to hit it in the chest. Just as I was about to connect the club moved in front blocking my attack. Even with my mana infused punch, it barely left a scratch on that club.

“What the hell is that thing made of?” I quickly retreated before it could counterattack. That's when I noticed that the ogre was staring at me, seemingly analyzing me.

So it has some level of intelligence. Unfortunately even if it does, there is no way it's getting spared.

“Too bad for you, I have an even better form of analysis. Foresight.” As usual a secondary ogre appeared showing me what it was about to do.

I can’t keep this up for long, but with my improved stats it should be longer than before. It’s coming.

The future ogre started to run at me, so I set up a defensive stance. A little bit longer than a second later the real ogre moved. He was going to rush me then just swing his club downward. Even if this thing has intelligence it is a very small amount, because his moves are very one dimensional.

I easily avoided his club leaping back just a small amount to barely avoid it, but I wasn’t just going to dodge. As soon as his club landed I jumped on top of it, and when he pulled it back up, I lunged straight towards him.

I won’t let this opportunity pass.

“DIEEEE!” I yelled putting everything I could into this punch, and sure enough it landed. I heard a crunch as my fist connected into its nose. He got sent flying back but as he did his club connected with the back of my head, sending me with him towards the cave wall.

“Shit.” I grumbled, slow to get up. The hit made me lose focus and in that moment of confusion the ogre took advantage. As soon as I looked up his club was right above me.

I lost focus! It’s a gamble but-

“Hellflare!” I knew that it’s level was far too low to do any damage, in the whole day spent training I only got it up to level 2. However, that didn’t mean it had no uses.

It may not hurt you, but it can blind you.

Aiming right for the eyes the ball of fire hit it’s target. Sure enough it barely scorched him, but he slowed down for a short moment of time and that gave me the opportunity to dodge. Instead of running, I advanced. Using my full strength in the right arm, I swept his feet, ending with the ogre landing on his back. Increasing my mana strength as far as I could I leapt up landing on his chest.

“Nothing personal kid.” Winding up my arm I kept my focus on my target.

Right between the eyes!

At that moment my adrenaline was so high that I surpassed my prior limit. Taking the mana surrounding my whole body and focusing it on a single part of my body. Strengthening it to a limit that was stronger than ever before. Easily having twice the strength in my right arm then before I slammed it down as hard as I could.

It was no exaggeration to say that his head legitimately exploded. My fist went straight through his head, making a small crater where his head used to be and because my mana was only in my arm the gore that followed covered me.

In that moment, what happened to Phillip, Kathy, and Vanellope ran through my head.

I can do this. I can avenge them.

“AHHHHHHH!” Letting my emotions go wild, I screamed at the top of my lungs. The whole time Danny was just watching me from behind but it never crossed my mind that she was. I was elated that I was making so much progress in so little time. The fight against the ogre lasted no more than 30 seconds, but those 30 seconds were a huge stepping point for me.

After I ran out of breath my screaming stopped. I activated a thin layer of mana around me, just willing it to get the blood off of me. Slowly the blood disappeared and as it did I stared at the cave wall, bloodlust in my eyes. Panting I muttered four simple words that were my driving force.

“I’m coming for you.”