While grand elder was talking, Nick already finished the bottle. Seeing that there was no more, he decided to buy himself some time, “Ten. Days. Eat. And. Sleep.”

Grand elder and elder Agnes looked at each other.

“Of course.” Grand elder said, “Lord Baal, please get stronger soon.”

Nick closed his eyes pretending to fall asleep, then suddenly remembered, ‘Mumbler!’

He opened eyes again, made a small fist and waved it at the grand elder, “Female! Seeevants!”

“Of course, Lord Baal, we did not forget!” His face twitching grand elder turned around and tried to calm down.

Elder Agnes put Nick down, covered with blanket and tried to smile gently, “Sleep well.”

Then grabbed grand elder’s shoulder and pulled him out of the room.

‘Not bad.’ Nick thought to himself, ‘At least they try to pretend like they believe I am a mega-demon and behave like that as well. Now I have few days to think of something.’

After entering the library grand elder kicked a chair into the wall and then stomped his foot, “Damned thing! Why didn’t we put a seal on him yesterday? I would have slapped him till he bleeds!”

“Calm down!” Elder Agnes laughed, “Don’t you think we got a lot of information from one interaction already?”

“Hm?” Grand elder was startled.

“The ego of grand elder interferes with your judgment. Think! What did he say when we just entered the room? We immediately learned that he is a pervert, or a lecher or has some special fetishes towards females. Since he did not care about looks or chastity, we might incline to think that it is the latter – any male would prefer a pretty virgin, don’t you think?” She continued to laugh, “And female company seemed to be really important to him; we can learn more details about that in the upcoming days.”

Then she turned more serious, “Next, we can be certain that he has come into contact with humans before. We know the human body can not survive the heat of hell, so he must have visited the surface. That also means he is definitely at least at the level of a demon lord. Demons have been rarely sighted in the past several hundred years and reports say that all of them have been powerful beings. If they were some weaklings, they would have been captured, dissected and studied, right? Since we could not capture any live demons but only summon few and seal their souls, we can conclude that the weak demons can not survive on surface. In fact, we had this suspicion before.” She sat down and became even more serious, “And the third thing we learned is the most important. Our Lord Baal is in hurry to grow in strength, even if it just the strength of a human body. He most definitely feels threatened, but not from us. Otherwise he wouldn’t have humiliated you. He is not afraid of us, he is afraid of something or someone else!”

Elder Agnes victoriously gazed at the grand elder who was deep in thought. They sat in silence for half an hour.

“I don’t think we can figure out much more at the moment. Let’s inform elder Silvio on the latest and proceed as planned. Except I will try to feed Lord Baal every time and gain more information material.” Elder Agnes stood up and turned to leave.

“Be careful. If he really is Primeval demon Baal, you might be in danger. We know very little about the three Primevals.” Grand elder raised his head and quietly said.

“Hahaha.” Elder Agnes laughed again, “Do you think I was born yesterday? Do you think I was infusing Qi in his body while he was eating only to help him digest the food and protect him from burns? If he tries something funny I’ll snap his neck and pull his little heart out instantly!”

Grand elder could still hear her laughter when she was already in the grand hall.

‘Crazy old witch.’ He cursed.

Luckily Nick had no idea what just transpired in grand elder’s library. If he had – he would have gotten cramps from laughter. But, even if he didn’t know, the next days he continued to provide elders with ‘valuable information’.

For example, when female apprentice guards were rotated in, Nick’s blurry gaze made out one particular woman that was way bigger than others, in honest words – she was really fat. The main criteria of these special guards was loyalty, not Qi or sword skills, therefore the most trusted apprentices of alchemy and rune forging were also requested. She was elder Jan’s rune forging apprentice who had followed her teacher for almost two decades. When Nick saw her large stature, she immediately became his main guard. She was happily blushing while bathing little Lord Baal or helping him to use the potty. Other girls were jealous, but Nick was confident that despite his blurry gaze, he had picked the strongest one to guard him.

Elder Agnes happily recorded these interactions and was confident she had cracked one of the demon’s secrets. There was a huge commotion when elder Silvio in an old book found a drawing of Primeval demon Baal. The three elders – grand, Agnes and Silvio were staring at this drawing in disbelief. It showed enormously fat Baal doing the nasty thing with three fat female demons. This immediately explained the huge amount of ‘food’ Nick consumed – he obviously wanted to become ‘handsome’ big fat demon and, of course, it explained Nick’s fetish. Everything fell in to their respective places!

If Nick knew of their ‘deductions’, he would think, ‘How f*cking stupid can you people be? It’s just a random comic or a concept art from few hundred years ago painted by a drunk artist! How can you even come to such conclusions?’

On the third day Nick ‘by accident’ called elder Agnes ‘a little girl’. She pretended to not notice, but later happily registered it as a fact of his seniority and previous longevity.

Another thing happened during one meal on the fifth day. Nick asked elder Agnes what kind of color his eyes were. When she told him they are dark blue, Nick looked really dejected. When she tried to clumsily comfort him, he just blurted out, “What do you know? Eyes are the gates to a person’s soul!” And then went to sleep.

Obviously Agnes recorded it as a problem of the soul of this little demon. The question remained whether the soul was incomplete or damaged, but further research would definitely show it.

Nick, on the other hand felt a bit sad, because in previous body he had his father’s turquoise blue eyes. But then he remembered that baby’s eye color will change within the first year and decided to not worry too much about it.

‘Evidence’ like that slowly piled up in the grand elder’s library and was accompanied by heated discussions.

On the eight and nine days Nick noticed how his vision was significantly improving. More surprisingly he could already roll his body over. Despite him being in the size of a two year old, he still was born few days ago therefore that was quite a feat!

‘It is either the mammals in this world develop more quickly, or the steroids they are giving me are priceless.’ He thought.

Previously raised by his health nut mother, Nick would have loved to grow naturally and slowly, sucking on a tit and bathing in the sunlight, but he did not have any freedom of choice, at least for now.

With his sight improving he finally got a clear view on the faces – to his pleasant surprise, they looked exactly the same as the ones on Earth, except, of course, for the grand elder who looked more like a walking skeleton.

And lastly he could ‘finally’ pronounce ‘r’. Of course, no other person would ever describe such ability of a less than ten days old newborn with a word ‘finally’, but Nick could not care less.

On the tenth day he asked elder Agnes to show him around. Luckily it coincided with elder’s wishes to change the pace of their research and testing.

She carried him out in the grand hall. Nick saw the place where he had spent his first months in this world. The hall was huge and seemed to be carved within mountain – there were no columns to support the high ceiling and the walls looked to be from monolith stone. On the walls there were weird small flecks of light that dimly lit up the hall as there were no windows or other sources of light.

Looking at the empty altar in the middle of grand hall surrounded by the hexagon of runes, Nick understood that this was the spot where his second mother suffered injustice.

‘Don’t worry, mom number two! One day I will burn this place down for you.’ Nick said to himself.

Then he was brought to the library that was right next door to his own ‘bedroom’. It was very spacious and Nick’s eyes lit up when he saw the amount of books on the bookshelves.

‘As soon as my eyesight allows, I’ll have to start reading all of these!’

He noticed strange wide workshop table in the one corner, packed with small bottles, flowers and grasses. Nearby were piled up boxes and sacks, probably containing similar ingredients.

“That is grand elder’s alchemy table.” Elder Agnes saw Nick’s gaze and explained, “Over there is his private room and in under no circumstances anyone is allowed in. That big window door leads to the balcony.” She brought Nick little closer so he could see through the window.

“Let’s go out.” Nick waved his little hand towards the window. He was trapped and tortured in a womb for months and was dying to get a breath of fresh air and see a direct sunlight for the first time in a long time.

“Lord Baal, are you sure?” Elder Agnes was worried, “Your body is still very weak.”

“Stupid little girl! How do you think the sunlight will harm this human body? If anything – it will strengthen it!” Nick pretended to be furious, “It’s not like I can demonize in a body of an infant.”

Elder Agnes did not even notice the insult. Her hands trembled for a second when she heard another ‘vital’ bit of information that this complacent demon let slip out.

Soon she got another ‘important clue’. As they stepped out on the balcony, Nick closed his eyes, turned his small face toward to the sun and raised his hands, “Sigh, human body can sometimes be really convenient.”

He stayed like that for a while, then lowered hands and started to look around.

The previous theatrics he did, of course, because he planned them a while ago and were meant to shock the old freak again. But now it was his turn to be shocked. A sight like that of a fairy tale greeted him.

Beautiful mountains with snowy peaks stretched across the horizon. At the feet of these mountains lie beautiful valleys covered in dark green forests stretching up the mountain slopes.

Nick squinted his eyes trying to look in the distance. It seemed like he saw outlines of even bigger mountain behind those mountain ranges.

Elder Agnes noticed him exerting his weak eyes, “That’s the mount Corbus. The grand elder constructed this balcony because of the beautiful scenery.”

Nick nodded and quickly calculated, ‘This is still late morning and the sun is on the right of the big mountain. So we are in the south-west direction from it. With such an enormous landmark it might be possible to find directions anywhere around here.’

Then he started to look around at his immediate surroundings. The balcony was in a size basketball field. Actually it was not a balcony – it was just a flat surface carved on a small cliff.

‘It turns out I have been living in a mountain.’ Nick pondered, ‘I wonder what technology did they use to carve out the grand hall’.

“Bring me closer to the edge.” He poked elder Agnes.

She finally started fulfilling her duties as a guide, “As I have told you before, Lord Baal, here lie the headquarters of the Holy Order. These walls were carved by our ancestors many years, probably centuries ago.”

“So you mean grand elder himself carved all of this?” Nick teased her.

“Hahaha!” Her loud laugh resounded in the valley below them, “Down there you can see how our sect has developed. Here we have few hundred apprentices. Well, the most of them may be counted as initiates or outer apprentices. Also dozens of deputy elders who finish their apprenticeship are completing different tasks outside the sect across the continents.”

Although Nick really wanted to watch some more and even have a sunbath, he knew there will be other opportunities and he needed to look indifferent, “Not interested, let’s go back. This fragile body is tired again. I should eat, sleep and after few hours you will show me more interesting stuff.”