Chapter 12: The Oni Village

"Wow, this city looks ravaged!", exclaimed Annie, as soon as she and Mila had reached the location of the blue Oni tribe village.

Black wooden tree parts were all across the ground. Most of those broken wood pieces were once planks belonging to the shattered wood houses. Some small fires were still burning, indicating, that the village has been recently raided. Annie couldnt see any corpses, which either meant they were not strong enough to leave a spiritual body or all of them were caught and enslaved.

Mila:" The red oni tribe village is like ten kilometers away from us. It lies in the direction of the Deep Forest. Oh yeah, in the Deep Forest are mostly secluded ancient demon tribes, who avoid the contact with the civilsed cities. The reason for not going into the bigger cities is most likely due to the secretive ways in their hidden abilities. I heard from my grandpa, that there are vicious serpent heads, who may hypnotize any target, they come across."

"Does that mean your tribe and the red one have special avilities, too?", asked Annie.

"The blue and red oni are only known for their strength, we dont have any particular special abilities.", she replied.

"*sniffff snifff* I can sniff them, they are close to us maybe 200 more meters.", announced Gavro to Aleg.

"Good, good, good. Once I find Annie again, I will make her sign a pact, if she disobeys then I am done with her.", said Aleg smirking.

"Pacts are truly astonishing things. Somehow that ability was like imprinted in my mind after I had met Satan. I actually wonder, if I may be able to grow black wings like Lucifer, hehe.", ttalked Aleg to himself.

He turned to Gavro and congratulated him for finding the village:" Congratulations, old man. I could have sworn the strange method you had used to track them woulld be a hoax."

Gavro replied:" Hoho, thank you Master. Sometimes the ways of the wicked are truly strange. Nonetheless the results are still the same. The only important thing is to reach the set goal, the method used doesnt matter."

*rattle rattle*

"Hide quickly Mila! Someone is coming from the trees over there! They might be from the red tribe.", ordered Annie in a loud voice.

Once she saw Aleg and Gavro coming out of the woods, a wave of happiness and calmness had hit her. She immidiately ran torwards Aleg to jump straight into his arms yelling:" It is Aleg, Mila. You can come out!", only 3 meters away from Aleg, " I have missed youuuuu!"

Aleg sidestepped and Annie had involuntarely smashed her head into a tree and her arms automatically hugged the tree.

"Sooo meaaan, to sidestep my hug!", she exclaimed.

He replied coldly:" Serves you right for yelling like an idiot, when you didnt even identify us from when we were coming out of the woods. We might have been from the red oni tribe looking for survivors.."

She pouted and apologized while rubbing her hand all over her face, that had been scratched from the forceful tree hug.

Mila had come. back to them with shining eyes and did her most polite bow thanking Aleg:" Thank you Lord, for coming to help me."

Aleg's face was as distorted as when he had bitten into a very sour lemon:" No problem Kiddo, let's save your tribe really fast, so I can continue my way."

Before Aleg had forgotten it, he summoned a demon's contract and telling Annie to sign it.

"What is that?", she unpolitely asked.

"A fucking contract now sign it.", he forced her.

She started reading the contents and the more she read the more bulged her eyes out.

*Aleg's demon contract with a human soul Annie ( Master-Servant).

The soul, with whom the contract has been made, has to serve Demon Aleg for eternity. Any disobeyance is punished with the absorbtion of the soul core. The soul in turn gains a boost to her physical abilities.

"Why do I have to sign this? Gavro didnt have to sign anything.", she said.

"Actually I made Gavro something similar.."

Gavro nodded towards Annie, after Aleg had mentioned him.

"Whatever, I will sign it.. Not that I ever plan on disobeying you and the physical boost doesnt sound too bad." While she thought:" Maybe with the superior strength, that I will receive, I might actually help Aleg in combat out!" Her heart pounded harder after thinking of fighting side by side with her love interest.

Annie signed the contract.

"Good now that we have this out of this way, let's raid an oni village. I have to vent my frustration somewhere for walking around the forest. Kiddo how far is the red oni village?", Aleg asked.

Mila replied:" ten kilometers.. My Lord."

Annie interrupted her:" They have lots of treasures!!"

Aleg frowned at the idea for walking another ten kilometers through the dense forest. However he had decided he will rescue that blue tribe and if they dont give him their most valuable treasures, then he will just massacre both of the tribes."

Once they were walking through the forest, tjey had encountered some jelly spirits, demon wolves and foxes. The funniest part though was how Annie had crushed every single demon with her punch. She happily spoke to Aleg:" I love this physical boost! Hopefully we will always fight together, Aleg!"

After a painfully long walk through the dense forest, they had reached the red oni tribe village. The village looked just as the blue oni one. Black wooden houses, a campfire in the middle, however there was a big cage made out of black marmoe to contain the blue oni.

"So what is the plan master, it looks like we have to deal with 40 warriors from the red oni tribe.

Mila sobbed in the back, but before she could let out a cry from sadness, her mouth has been covered by Gavro.

"Shhhhhhh, my dear Mila. We dont want to alert the red oni, dont we?", spoke Gavro to her.

She had somewhat calmed down and told them:" They killed most people from our tribe." Indicating that only 10 prisoners were seen out of 80.

Annie calmed her further down:" Maybe they managed to flee or they are hidden somewhere."

Aleg had a grin on his face like a small happy child:" I have the perfect plan to rescue them, hehehe!!"

He explained:" Liste , I wanna test out the new abilities, that I had gotten fron Leila. Most likely it will work."

They waited for the dark cloak of the night until all the oni fell asleep, since they werent nocturnal types.

Aleg activated his Eyes of the Void and entered the minds of all the red oni demons. One by one. He noticed he could not tamper around much in their minds. He could either absorb the last five minutes a soul had experienced or swap basic stuff in their mind. What Aleg did was truly cunning. He changed the sight perception of red and blue swapping them out. He was finished swapping out the colors in their minds after 15 minutes.

The rest of his team was wondering what he was doing, but they didnt dare to disturb him.

"Alright. I am done time to sleep.", told them Aleg.

"Wait, whaaaat?! Dont we want to ambush them or something?", Annie asked.

He ordered any to shut up and told Mila soon your tribe will be rescued.

Thus they went to sleep. The next morning had arrived and Aleg and his companions were awakened by sudden battle cries and the screams of dying onis.

The scene was marvelous. Red onis were slaugjtering each other and everyone was confused as to why they had been circled around by blue onis. They all thought they had killed most of the blue oni tribe members. Some of the red oni saw their kin in the prison cells, where the blue ones were one day ago. They frantically tried to break the lock down. So at least they had the advantage in numbers.

Once the prison doors were forced open, the apparently red oni joined the fray and started killing the blue ones. It was truly a marvelous view for Aleg and his teammembers.

Mila asked astonished:" What did you do, great Lord? The rrd oni aee killing each other and some other red onis helped our blue oni out of the prison cells."

"Control the mind, control the body.", replied Aleg with his eyes of the Void activated and sitting crosslegged. He was absorbing all the black mist, that had been accumulating from all the corpses.

The onis were too focused on killing each other and they didnt notice, how a stream of black mist with extremely fast speed flew into the woords, directly into the Eyes of a particular demon.

The screams ceased and Aleg finished absorbing the mist. Suddenly he got a headache though for no apparent reason.

Gavro told Aleg:" Oooh, black demonic horns had started growing from that sudden huge amount of soul cores."

Aleg couldnt believe what he heard and touched his head. Indeed two small bulges had started growing and they were incredibly hard.