“Demon-related jobs? Huh, well, I can’t say anything certain but there are quite a few things that might be that sort of jobs…”

The innkeeper looked upward as he was rummaging his thought. Zecruix smiled tiredly at him. He took out five denurs out from the purse bag and held it out to the innkeeper.

“It’s alright, I check again tomorrow with you. Here’s a down payment for the information.”

“No need for that, I owe yer master a favour. Just come back tomorrow. I’ll snoop around for any demon-related info around this village and by extension the region.”

He smiled brightly at Zecruix and gave him a key. Zecruix sighed in relief.

“So your room is in the inner most of the hallway upstair on your right!”

“Thank you.”

As he said that, he nodded. He then went up stair.

--

It was time for dinner so he took out the slightly luxurious can of salted meat and handful of brown rice from the supplies.

After finishing his meal, he washed himself, changed clothes and went to bed for sleep but Zecruix kept the oil lamp inside the room lit. It was one of many things that Zecruix was afraid of which was sleeping in the dark.

Sleeping alone is fine but trying to sleep in the dark was a terrifying prospect for him ever since he was a child. That’s why he always left the lamp or any source of lighting up throughout the night.

Although, he couldn’t sleep as he was still troubled. It was all too sudden. Was this how all of the demonhunters in the past had been through? There wasn’t enough time for him to prepare both physically and mentally.

He was losing sleep because he couldn’t help but mull over this fact.

After three hours of zoning out, staring at the ceiling, he finally felt the calling into the dream world.

--

The first thing his eyes see was the blinding light. The sun rays coming from outside of the window had pierced his eyes.

He groaned as his whole body was uncomfortably rigid. He got out from the bed and went straight to the door to the hallway.

He went down stair and just like yesterday, it was full of patrons but the atmosphere was calm and light-hearted unlike yesterday.

The innkeeper who was behind the counter saw Zecruix and hollered at him.

“Morning young un! You woke up pretty late.”

“Really, what time is it?”

“Judging by the clock tower at the village square, it was nine o’ clock last I check a while.”

Zecruix sighed. His troubled mind had causes him the trouble of being late. He took an empty stool near the counter.

“I’m sorry, this quite unprofessional of me…”

“Ah don’t mind it; in fact, I thought I was late because I asked too much!”

The innkeeper guffawed.

“Huh, well thanks for doing this much for me, I’ll have my breakfast by the way.”

“Sure thing, then while you eat, I’ll tell you what I find after snooping around.”

Zecruix nodded as the innkeeper walk a bit near the kitchen behind the counter. After a while, he came back with Zecruix’s breakfast. He put in front of Zecruix.

“Thank you very much.”

“No problem!”

Zecruix starts eating his breakfast.

“To start with, there are more rumours than actual information but I guess if connecting the dots, most of the rumour seems to be linked.”

“Linked?”

“Yeah, because this quite a large village, so people talk a lot and fabricates but it all leads to the same source.”

Zecruix shrugged his shoulder to the explanation that the innkeeper gave.

“Okay, I gave you this. There’s a high chance that it’s demon-related so… ahem… there’s a particular rich merchant here that had a mysterious problem. You see, it’s mysterious because most people here know he had some sort of problem but unsure of what it is and from there, speculations went rampant. I said it was demon-related because there were several rumours that when some villagers passed by his

manor, they felt uneasy feeling like they were being probed. Some of them felt ominous presence looming inside.”

Zecruix had finished his breakfast by the time the innkeeper finished his information. He was in deep thought and after a minute, he nodded. He got up from the seat.

“It’s worth checking, by the way, can you give me the direction to the manor and is there anything else?”

The innkeeper took a paper and a pen and wrote down the instruction to the manor.

“Uh, wait a minute and about the other information’s… well there’s a farmer accusing another farmer that his pig is demon-corrupted and an old lady who lives on the outskirt complaining about bird-like cawing at the tree near her house… That’s all.”

When Zecruix was told of the other two, he just smiled amusingly and took the note.