Chapter 4: Black Arts

Annie was happy to see another person join them, since after her sudden heat attack, it was kind of hard to look at Aleg directly. She was supposedly thinking:" I might have forced him onto me with my charm. Some men are disgusted, if the girl they want to fuck is a prostitute and refrain from any further contact. Most likely Aleg is not that type. However he wasnt as experienced as I expected him to be. It felt like having sex with a virgin. Although if he is not disgusted by prostitutes, this means he has had them before. This does not particularly explain why he fucks like it was his first time. Aaarrrghhh thinking soooo much makes my head hurt! Whatever it felt like a good time, that is all that matters."

While the group was walking towards a restaurant to still their hunger, they noticed how Annie suddenly screamed "arrrgghhhh" and shaked her head. Aleg asked her:" Are you alright, Annie?"

Annie's cheeks slightly turned red and she responded with a quiet "yes" averting her eyes from Aleg's gaze.

Gavro let out a laugh:"Hoohhohohoo, It is nice being young!", and mentioned " Oh, here is an Inn, let's just eat here instead of a restaurant, plus it is less expensive."

They agreed with Gavro's proposal since both of them had no blagos, the currency used in the Hell realm.

They entered the Inn and it looked like any other. Some goblins in bronze chainmails were completely wasted and talked about their glorious days, when they were hunting hundreds of bats. Aleg thought:" They must have been drinking since the early morning or they never stopped since the last night."

In another corner were 3 souls seated, that looked like war veterans. No matter how tough they looked, as a human soul you had no potential of becoming strong. Most likely they have been doing lots of errands to afford to stay in an Inn.

Small implings were playing on the floor while the implings' parents furiously discussed about the best method of mixing a flight potion that lasts for a longer period of time.

They seated themselves and Gavro ordered rat meat on sticks.

Gavro started talking:" Only the lower demons eat meat of the lower creatures like rats and bats. The high ranking ones usually feast upon the lower demons walking around. Long story short eat before the rat meat gets cold."

Aleg chewed on the rat meat like no other. The use of his ability has left him starving and any source of energy was appreciated. Unlike Aleg Annie had trouble eating something mouse-like. She was chewing on the rat meat with a distorted face, trying to imagine a medium grilled steak. The thought of that beefy medium distracted her from the nonexisting fondness for rat meat.

Aleg and Gavro finished eating roughly at the same time and while Annie still fought with that stick of hers, Aleg posed the one million dollar question:" Why do you know so much about this Realm, Gavro?"

" Hohohohoho, it will take a while to explain, do you mind listening?"

-" We have enough time on our hands, it's not like we can die from old age."

" Hohohoho, what a splendid joke, you deserve applause master!" Gavro started clapping his hands and continued:

" It all started when I was seven years old. My parents were Librarians and had that strange hobby to collect any book they came across. It didnt matter if it was a book about cooking stones or the drawings of some 70 year old grannies. During my usual procedures of looking for strangely looking books to read in the library. I came across a thick book covered in dust. My interest was peaked, because of the ominous feeling I got from that book. Because of my young age i couldnt detain my excitement to read the book. I basically dropped all other strangely looking books i was holding and approached that particular book. The title was " The Forbidden Black Arts""

-" And what was written in that book exactly", Aleg impatiently asked.

" The book was about summoning Demons from a realm, from this realm to be exact. Various sacrifices had to be met to summon a demon and as I got older, I got sick of summoning some lowly creatures like a demon rat or a demon bat, I wanted to summon a being with greater intelligence. The sacrifices were usually souls. The greater the power of the demon summoned, the more souls you would need. Before you ask me how I could obtain souls in our mortal realm, I will answer it for you. A soul leaves the body and stays near it only for the first five seconds after death. You basically have 5 seconds to kill all the animals needed for the sacrifice and chant the specific summoning spell.

That is where it got tricky, how am I supposed to kill one hundred animals bigger than a cat within five seconds. Unfortunately I came up with the answer when I turned twenty. I caught 100 deer and let them starve for 7 days. I prepared a special mixture of grass containing moonflower powder for the deer. I fed it to them simultanously and ten minutes later, they all died. I chanted the spell as fast as possible and the summoning was complete. I summoned a demon from the city of Makolar. The demon's name was Heviel.

" Wait, wait, where is that Makolar city you were speaking of?", Aleg asked.

" It is a city for middle class demons, a two week march away from here. Anyway, continuing with the story. He asked me what I desired and the price for it would be a soul. However I wasnt as stupid to demand anything from Heviel just to let my soul get stolen, another factor was the desire I developed during a young age to keep wanting to know more. I started with small talk and lead the conversation from one part to another until I extracted enough information from the Realm of Hell. In my opinion it was the smartest choice, since I would have landed there anyways. Better to know more about a place you will be visiting. I got to know you had to pay up the gate guardian, a good way for making blagos was to collect dead tree branches, which were unusually hard to cut. However with the right trick it was like picking up leaves. The city everyone arrived first was called Petoskrim and here comes the most important part! How demons actually get stronger.

There is two ways for demons getting stronger. One way is to eat a soul core, which is equal or stronger than the soul core you possess. The other is contracts with other beings to trick them into giving their soul core to you as a price.

Unfortunately the first method is only reserved for high ranking demons with special abilities knowing how to devour a soul core. The mid and lower class demons, have to rely on the contracts to get stronger. Thus the hierarchy is quite harsh. Nobody wants to do contracts with lower class demons, because their strength is very limited. If any mid class demon reaches the high class, his very soul gets devoured by some high class demons who waits for the new and younger prey out of pure fun. It is not like the stalking high class demons get any stronger from devouring them, but the sheer thought of imaging a low class demon working his way up through incountable contracts just to get devoured by them, amuses them. Thus my long lecture ended."

-" I have seen that soul core, it looked like black fog. How are you supposed to absorb that anyway... It is kind of uncatchable like fairy dust.", said Aleg.

Annie had finished her grilled rat meat and all that talk about books souls, bla bla bla got her kind of sleepy, so before she completely fell asleep she stated:"Im going for little girls."

Gavro and Aleg were both immersed in the conversation, so they didnt even notice her leave.

"Hohohoho, so many questions youngster, I was soon caught after the deer massacre and put in jail, but I made sure to not let any of that information go to waste that Hieviel gave me. Thus during my time in prison I developed a special technique on how to absorb the soul core hoping it would help me in Hell's realm. I must admit, it worked with a rat I killed, while waiting for you to show up. However the pain I experienced was unimaginable. The fusing of human soul cores and demon ones is not a

Process I intend on doing."

-" Wait whaaaaaat? You developed a technique for absorbing soul cores??? Does that mean every freaking demon would be able to use it, if you teach them???"

"It is a special technique that I can teach only once. By the way I finished the technique, when you went past me towards your execution. Anyway, point being I can only teach it once, because the knowledge of it disappears and gets transfered to my student."

"Woaaaah, I guess every technique has its pros and cons.", said Aleg astonished.

In the very same moment Aleg let out that big woaaah returned Annie from the toilet.

"Did I miss somethung?", she asked.

"Not really.", answered both Gavro and Aleg in unison.