Next time Nick woke up was not because of chanting sounds or pain – he was simply rested ... for the first time in a long time.

‘Now lets organize what I know.’ He was trying to imitate Olle’s way of thinking. ‘I am a fetus now. Did I die? Was that reincarnation? How did it happen? What did those monks do and who are these people I can hear?’

Nick felt he was starting to go off the rails as he spoke to himself, ‘Stop! Questions later, first I need to summarize what I know. First – I’m a fetus ... second – the whole situation is weird – I was at the temple at one moment and in the belly in the next ... third – someone is torturing me and my second mother. Do these people even know or care she is pregnant? ... fourth – torturers speak a foreign language I’ve never came in touch before ... fifth? I guess that is it for now. Wait! Fifth – I can move all my extremities – hands AND legs! Yes!’ Nick was overjoyed.

But joy did not last – the next session of pain came again. It was not that painful anymore, it just reminded that some sick freaks were torturing his second mother and him at the same time.

In the grand hall elders were gathered again around the body of the young woman lying on the altar. Her face had long lost all the rosiness, her skin was greenish-white and there were dark green, almost black, veins pulsing below her skin. The little bulging belly was a sure sign of a pregnancy, but if one did not carefully look and notice her breathing, one might think she was dead for a week or two already.

“Grand elder!” The only woman among elders turned towards the old man in the black robe. His face now was round and lively, he even seemed to have gained some weight, “The child has finally shown noticeable activity. Neither me nor elder Jan can explain the delay, but we will try to figure it out during the upcoming months. Other than that – the child is perfectly healthy and his physical development has exceeded our expectations. Oh, and as we predicted, the child is a male.”

Grand elder seemed to be lost in thoughts. He tilted his head a bit while looking at the young woman and stretched his hand towards the bulging belly. Strands of translucent mist formed around his palm and then slowly entered her body.

After few minutes grand elder retracted his hand and smiled, “Starting tomorrow, for the next month we will be clearing his Qi pathways. Elder Sonor, your Qi control is only second to mine and I will have to rely on you in the upcoming days. Each of us will have one six hour session every day with a six hour break in between. During the break elder Jan will organize baths for her, but from now on only nourishing ones. Otherwise, if we continue like this, the host will die too early. We can continue building up child’s resistances after the birth. Elder Agnes, you continue monitoring. If there are any deviations from the norm, positive or negative, I want to know immediately. Elder Ernest, prepare the necessary amount of the beast cores for me and elder Sonor to replenish our Qi. If there are no further questions – all dismissed!”

The upcoming days went as the grand elder planned. In the morning he was infusing Qi in the fetus’s pathways, trying to clear them. He guided his rich Qi in a strands thinner than a width of a hair through the fragile and barely formed meridians. It required incredible amount of concentration and finesse. Not only he had to lead the Qi strands through the brittle pathways, he also had to remove sludge and sediments using the same Qi strand. It was like picking grains of sand on the beach one by one with blacksmith’s tongs.

After the Qi session, disciples of elder Jan were bathing the lifeless young woman. Then the Qi procedures were continued by elder Sonor and six hours later woman was bathed again.

Nick obviously noticed the changes. First and foremost – the torturers seemed to be dismissed. Instead it looked like someone was trying out a new experiment or drugs on him. For long periods of time he felt like there were small worms crawling within his body – it was not painful nor itchy, just weird and unpleasant in an unexplainable way.

But after such sessions came compensation. Apparently these people were familiar with the drug dealing – organ steeling monks back at the small temple and were pumping Nick full with the same narcotics. Although he did not see stars or galaxies, he felt like he was floating in the seventh heaven. And usually during this phase he fell asleep, possibly, out of pleasure.

After multiple such sessions Nick noticed another pattern. While people outside were testing those ‘crawling worm drugs’, there was absolute silence around him. He could hear his own and his new mother’s heartbeats. But when the pleasant part came – there was some chatter around, it finally felt like his mother was sometimes moving. From that day on Nick tried his best to sleep during the unpleasant time and stay focused, listen and learn during the ‘narcotic infusion’.

He did not know how long were the sessions and how much time had passed. Nick was more or less used to the ‘worm treatment’ and was able to easily sleep through it. During the waking hours, besides attentively listening to the sounds outside, he started to do small physical practices, like moving fingers one after another and paddling with his extremities a bit. Usually this made him very tired and soon he fell asleep. Then he started to postpone his ‘physical exercises’ to the time he felt that the unpleasant session will start. He never suspected that his movement due to the ‘training’ created huge inconvenience and lot of inward cursing from his ‘torturers’.

Also there was a serious progress in understanding the new language. He was able to filter out and understand simple conversations about meals and weather. Nick learned that for some reason his mother was bathing most of the day, while people were calling her a ‘vessel’ and him – ‘lord’. Although regarding latter he was not certain, especially because it sounded very stupid.

At some point the unpleasant part of the treatment stopped and Nick was able to fully concentrate his attention on the language studies.

When the grand elder and elder Sonor finished the Qi procedures, elder Jan and his apprentices continued with their twice-a-day six hour shifts. And for the rest of the day elder Agnes started to watch over altar. While grand elder was still ‘replenishing’ in his bedroom, out of boredom elder Agnes went to his library, picked a random book and started to read aloud while sitting next to the altar. When she stopped, she noticed strong activity inside the ‘vessel’. She thought for a bit, then started reading lout out again. Activity stopped. She tried few more times and every time she stopped the reading, child seemed to start kicking around.

From that day on she was reading aloud every day during her shifts. In addition, from that day on Nick started to make real progress in understanding not only the language, but also the world he was in, and more importantly realizing the mess he had gotten himself into.

In few weeks time he understood that he came to this world because some religious freaks performed a summoning ritual with intention to summon a mighty demon lord’s soul into a body of a human child. The demon lord was supposed to fuse his demonic powers with the human abilities and conquer the world. In addition, to not loose control over the demon lord, these freaks were preparing to use some kind of seal to create a soul slave contract. Nick was not certain if the last part would work or not, but he really did not want to risk it.

This unpleasant, but useful, information mostly came from the gossips of apprentices who were bathing his new mother. From what Nick understood, the elder who was responsible of monitoring the process was exhausted in the course of these months of pregnancy and was mostly sleeping in the chair during his shifts.

Be as it may, the situation was more than critical. Nick understood that this should be the 8th month of pregnancy and it meant these freaks will try to enslave him in a few weeks. If this was on Earth, he would lough this situation off with condescending look on his face. But now, after witnessing how his consciousness or may be even ‘soul’ left his own body and settled in another, he was definitely unwilling to take any chances. Of course, he still gave a 70% probability that this all was a drug induced nightmare done by those organ stealing monks in Beijing.

Then there was another incident. It is possible that a new apprentice appeared or it was just another one that Nick previously did not notice.

Already some time ago, to make his life less boring, Nick started giving different nicknames to the people outside: there was ‘Granny’, who was reading the books; then there was ‘Fatty’, well – everyone called him that way, so Nick just joined the club; another one was ‘Casanova’ – a guy who claimed to have slept with almost every female apprentice; and, of course, there were others.

And then there was a ‘Mumbler’, obviously because of his habit of talking to himself. It was not easy to make sense of what Mumbler was saying, but most of it was about ‘not letting the demon lord destroy the world’. This apprentice was coming only occasionally, possibly as some kind of replacement. And, obviously, he was alone – Nick doubted Mumbler could voice such things otherwise.

It took some time for Nick to grasp full Mumbler’s plan, but it seemed he was going to kill demon lord as soon as he arrived in this world. Nick definitely would support such plan, except in everyone's eyes he was the demon lord. Also, he did not get why Mumbler did not use the opportunity and kill the helpless mother and the child right now … well, may be the guy was psychopath similar to the others and found it hard to raise hand against a sleeping woman. Anyway, no matter what Mumbler’s reasons were, Nick’s biggest problem was – he could not come out to not get killed or enslaved and could not stay forever inside. As sad as it was, he understood long ago that his second mother is a ‘vegetable’, but she would still burst open at some point if he continued to grow inside.

Regarding growing, he could not measure his current size, but judging from what Granny said to others, he should be really big. And considering all the steroids these freaks were pumping into his body, he might become larger than Dwayne Johnson already before his birth.

He really had to think of something. As the days flew by, Nick got more restless, but he still could not come up with any solution.

The elders in their blood red hooded robes were once again gathered around the altar in the grand hall, each of them standing at their respective corners of the hexagon that was still there on the floor after all these months. Grand elder was standing near the altar holding a hand over the pregnant woman’s belly. During last two months he already learned from elder Agnes how to communicate with the ‘demon lord’. Today was finally the time to see results of their painstaking and costly efforts.

While the other elders were quietly chanting, elder Dinnar, one who has almost never been present during these months, opened a large scroll in front of him. The scroll was covered in strange runic markings that were glittering from time to time. Elder Dinnar looked at the scroll with fatherly love in his eyes. In fact – if he did not count the research, it did take nine months to create it. It was the pinnacle of rune master’s craft – a seal to enslave demon lord’s soul.

“Greetings, demon lord!” Grand elder placed his palm on bulging belly.

Nick, knowing the ‘protocol’, kicked once: ‘Hi’.

“Have you been well these days?” Grand elder asked again.

‘Go away!’ Nick screamed in his mind and kicked again.

Grand elder’s face turned into a wide grin. It was a unique opportunity to be able to talk to intelligent child who was not even born. Then he turned serious, “Are you ready to come to this world and rule over all living beings?”.

‘The pretentious old bastard! As if I don’t know what you are planning!’ Nick kicked twice.

The Grand elder got confused. He looked around, at the other elders with a questioning look.

Elder Agnes understood the meaning and asked “Do you need more time?”.

Nick suddenly saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

‘It might not be a solution, but at least I will have more time to find one.’ He thought.

‘Yes!’ He kicked once.

Grand elder heaved a sigh of relief. “How much time do you still need?”

‘A lot!’ Nick kicked few times, but he was already exhausted.

“Four? Four days?” Grand elder was surprised?

‘No way. How could four days make any difference.’ Grand elder felt two kicks with his palm.

“What? You mean – four months?” Now he was stupefied for real. One could prolong pregnancy for ten days or may be even a month, but four?

‘Yes!’ Nick vigorously kicked again. He felt like he was going to get a pardon when already standing right next to a guillotine.

Silence enveloped the grand hall. For a few minutes no one spoke.

“Grand elder, I think I understand!” Elder Silvio suddenly spoke, “It is thirteen! Thirteen months of pregnancy are needed for the demon lord!”

Eyes of other elders lit up and they nodded their heads in understanding, “Of course, we did not summon some random imp – we summoned the demon lord’s soul!”

Still, grand elder decided to verify, “Is that true that you, as a demon lord, need thirteen months of pregnancy?”

‘Yes!’ Grand elder got his ‘verifying kick’.

“In this case we will need to alter our plans. Demon lord, we will inform you as soon as we have finalized everything.”

Nick kicked one last time. He was totally worn out but happy at the same time.

‘It would have been nice to hear your plans, but at least I bought myself few more months!’ Was the last thought he had before falling into a deep sleep.

“Elder Silvio, please watch over our demon lord. The rest – follow me, we’ll have an emergency elder council. There is a lot to discuss.” Grand elder walked toward his quarters. The others followed him with mixed feelings.

In the far side of the hall there were six apprentices kneeling. They were positioned there by elder Jan in case some unexpected assistance was required. One of them sneakily watched as the birth ritual was abruptly ended and the elders one after another entered the small door at the very opposite side of the hall.

‘Is it good or is it bad?’ Mumbler thought to himself while letting go of the dagger under his robes. In front of these seven elders he was not confident in his plan at all. All of them were incredible Qi masters with one of them possibly being the strongest Qi sword master on the continent, ‘But I can not fail! I can not let them destroy the world!’