Grand elder was first to break the silence, “Lord Baal, your request to elder Sonor was unusual. You see, in Mainland it is strictly forbidden to ask others to teach their skills against their will. Usually they are taught only to family members or to apprentices while only the cheap and simple skills are taught widely, like in the army, for example.”

Grand elder smiled. The main tactics they have agreed upon was to keep discussion as friendly as possible, to gain more in the inevitable bartering that will follow later. Also a stress-free environment would help them to control the flow of conversation more and to avoid making mistakes.

“The Qi techniques you have requested are very special to elder Sonor, but the meditation technique is extremely unique. Only two people in the world know it – that would be elder Sonor and I. Because of this technique, we are, possibly, the most accomplished Qi masters on the continent! Especially elder Sonor – he is one of the three strongest Qi sword masters in the whole world!”

‘Old fox, trying to jack up the price. Do you take me for a newborn? In that case …’ Nick smiled back at grand elder.

“Then let’s just drop the whole thing. It’s no big deal – was a whim of mine anyway.”

Of course, grand elder was already prepared for this, “We are aware that you only wanted to experience these techniques out of curiosity and could grab any other to fool around. But same as with tasting food in a fancy tavern, even if you are not hungry, you have to pay appropriate price for a delicious dessert. And that dessert might be worth tasting even if you are not hungry.”

The whole library looked absolutely surreal with seven elders smiling at the child and him smiling back at them like he was looking at seven Santas.

“What do you propose?” They all knew this would be the start of the real conversation, thus Nick just kept smiling and squinted his eyes a little bit to look more like an experienced shopkeeper. Of course, all it did was made him look more adorable.

“Lord Baal, since you love to make deals, we would like to offer you one.” Grand elder was confident Belial knew he was going to say this so he just continued, “For the three incredible Qi techniques we would like you to answer ten questions with the same rule-set as in the book-reading contract. Regarding the meditation technique – it took almost thirty years for me and elder Sonor to personally perfect it, therefore we would like you to answer three personal questions to trade for that.”

Grand elder tried to smile like a caring grandfather, but the smile on Nick’s face slowly vanished. Earlier he planned to get serious or angry to get a lower price, but now it happened naturally.

‘Why don’t they strip me naked and just throw out to feed the dogs? This is daylight robbery! It is obvious all those questions will be incredibly tricky and hard to answer. All of them are old foxes and spend two days of thinking to properly formulate those. And the three personal questions! I could be really killed in few minutes here if I make a wrong step. I still have a ton of books to read – how will I answer those questions if they are created in such lineup? But if I pull back from the book deal, I am most likely dead as well! All of these freaks are mass murderers, especially that sword guy – he is just waiting for opportunity to kill me! I have to think of something fast!’

‘Bam’ Nick slapped his small palm on the table, it hurt, but he didn’t care.

“F*ck you!” He said with furious face.

The smiles were gone. Stupefied, angry, shocked – suddenly elders had all kinds of facial expressions.

“What!” Grand elder had his bottom line. He was playing nice for weeks, but it was instinctively impossible for him to swallow an insult from a newborn.

“You heard me! F*ck you!” The gears in Nicks head were turning in the speed of light, “Who do you kids think you are? Do you think just because you know my love for making deals you can spout out any nonsense that comes to your mind? I was making deals before you were born! I was concluding contracts before fathers of your fathers were born! The Hell, I was concluding contracts when the current kingdoms were not even founded! And you, stupid girl!” Nick looked angrily at elder Agnes who was holding him, “Stop infusing Qi in my body to check my heart rate! You can tell by the look on my face that I am furious!”

He slammed his second palm on the table a continued to yell. “We were playing a nice game, but you morons want to insult my intelligence? F*ck you! Let me explain it so you children understand. You can ask for a very expensive price for a fancy dessert, but you can’t ask to buy a restaurant! F*ck you, f*ck you, f*ck you! If you think you can take advantage of me with your numbers – f*ck you! If you think you can take advantage of me because of this weak mortal body – f*ck you! I can tolerate anything, but I can not tolerate insults to my intelligence! Because of your greed you decided to throw out everything you have built during the last month? F*ck you, go ahead and do it, I don’t care. Like it would have anything to do with me. Greedy little children!”

Nick leaned back into elder’s Agnes bosom. “Bring me away, I am too tired and don’t want to see anyone here!” Then he closed his eyes and proceeded to ignore everyone. Although his heart was beating like that of a scared rabbit, he hoped elder Agnes would think it was because of anger.

Grand elder did his best to keep himself together and signaled elder Agnes to bring the demon to his room. When she came back everyone looked extremely gloomy. Only elder Agnes was smiling like fifteen minutes earlier when this meeting was just starting.

“What now?” Grand elder gloomily asked. Then he saw the one expression that didn’t fit there at all, “And what are you laughing at, old witch?”

“Hahaha!” She really started to laugh hysterically and then abruptly stopped, “Look at you all, how can I not laugh!”

Elder Sonor slowly stood up and pulled out his sword, “You are threading on a thin ice, old bitch!”

“Oh, then I won’t tell you.” Elder Agnes pouted like a young girl.

Elder Jan put his hand on elder Sonor’s shoulder and said, “Elder, dear brother, calm down. I dislike her more than you do, but it is obvious she knows something important. She always behaves like that when she has something the rest of us don’t. And there is no need to draw your sword, we all know very well that there is only one person in this room whom you can’t kill instantly. No one wants to escalate this any further.”

“Damn you, elder Jan!” Agnes turned little more serious again, “I don’t like you either, but you are right, this is a bit too tense.”

She turned towards the grand elder, “I was circulating Qi in his body as usual since the moment we entered library. Already a month ago we agreed that I will use this method to collect data and I have been doing this every day, every time I touch him. You all know what research I have been doing for over sixty years and you also know my specialty, and therefore should trust my expertise and judgment when I say that …” She gazed around the gloomy faces of elders, “You all have been played! Hahaha!” She started laughing again.

“Stop that!” Grand elder was getting more and more annoyed, “Explain normally!”

Elder Agnes winked at the grand elder, “All right. I am telling you that you have been all played because Belial was not angry and not even furious. He was excited! From the moment we came in, he grew more and more excited. First, he did not expect so many ‘preys’ to be here. Second, as the meeting went on we just played into his hands and let him get a kick out of all this! Look at your faces – who made you look like that? This all was more like an art! Unfortunately I could not interrupt the performance because we need as much information on that thing as possible and, to be honest, I didn’t really want to. It was beautiful! Now I am even more convinced that the Primeval demon Belial is a terrifying existence.”

“Think retrospectively about what transpired.” She continued, “If we look at this from another perspective – absolutely nothing happened. But at this very moment he is bathing there in ecstasy both figuratively and literally. It is you, old bastards, who are feeling insulted. If I was not paying attention to his main organs, I would have also been fooled. His mistake was thinking I only was checking his heart! He is not used to this small body and has no idea how the Qi works. Therefore I came to conclusion – this all started really because of his whim. He does not have any interest in Qi at all because he does not want or even does not need to use it! Have you seen those weird exercises he has been doing? Do you know any normal human who does anything like that? It is obvious he is preparing to awaken his demonic powers! And he has a plan ‘b’! Who of you old bastards did not loose his sanity and was listening to what he said? Who can filter out the key words from all that nonsense?”

Silence enveloped the library. All the present have been around for a long time, they have experienced many ups and downs, all the possible emotional states. They had to agree with elder Agnes they lost their composure just because no one could even think to, less even dare to say ‘f*ck you’ to their faces, repeatedly at that. They all gathered together to keep their calm, but they lost it exactly because they could not bare such insult with the others present! Primeval demon Belial! What a mastery, what a subtlety! What a fine actor! He was right, they all were just a children in front of him.

“It’s ‘mortal body’, the key is ‘mortal body’!” Elder Silvio jumped on his feet and shouted in delight.

“Hahaha! You won! Do you want a kiss?” elder Agnes was in a really good mood today as she laughed and clapped her hands.

Elder Silvio ignored her, “This is just a game for him! He does not even care for this mortal body, because if it dies, only mortal body will die – he himself won’t. And the taunts! He knew we have our pride and couldn’t let it go. Especially elder Sonor, he was targeting him while downplaying the worth of the techniques. And he already knew elder Sonor wanted to kill him! … Wait! … We almost missed the most important thing. He targeted elder Sonor from the very start when he asked for the techniques. For some reason he is poking the hornets nest, in fact not only poking, he is beating it with a stick!”

“May be he wants his human body to die?” Elder Ernest interjected.

“I think there are various probabilities, but I think there might be possible when all your guesses are correct. A thousands of years old Primeval demon is experimenting with humans, by playing with their emotions, researching habits and having fun at the same time.” Elder Jan gave his thoughts, “And more importantly – he does not even risk anything. He can loose his human vessel which we fools provided, but that might just give him more research material. By the way, we don’t even know the effects of breaking contracts that were sealed by the handshaking ritual. Not that I want anyone to test it out ...”

“But … but … what if …” Elder Ernest started to stutter, then abruptly stood up, looking around in panic, “I know I’m just a treasurer and don’t have your accomplishments. But … what if he wanted us to summon him? What if he came here on his own initiative?”

Even elder Agnes lost smile on her face thinking about this prospect. A Primeval demon who came into this world on his own accord is much more scarier that anything they could imagine!