The following day, Danny left the factory compound after a night of peaceful rest.

He was already feeling better, and most of his bruises had started to disappear and stopped troubling him, the previous sharp pain in some areas that annoyed him being replaced by a much more manageable dull ache. This lent credence to his theory that he was indeed healing faster due to the crystals.

After scouting the nearby area for a couple hours and killing a few more zombies that got in his way – never forgetting to collect their soul gems and add them to his hoard -, Danny settled inside a furniture shop which seemed to be mostly intact.

Then, he made sure that the perimeter was secured, blocking the exits with the merchandise the store once offered to its customers, before heading to the second floor and waiting for the night to descend.

He could have spent his time in a more productive way, like hunting for zombies outside, but he felt like he had earned himself a break after dealing with the horde. Besides, he could use the down time to gather his focus and get into the right frame of mind.

He would need his wits about him if he was to deal with the willy demon tonight.

Danny could feel the growing apprehension building up within him as the night drew nearer and nearer. The tension in the air was palpable, as moments before facing the shadowy creature tended to be.

‘I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to this.’ He thought while looking at his opening and closing fists with restlessness. His eyes narrowed.

His stressed nerves and rigid muscles demanded that he did something, anything, to release some of the pent-up energy coming from all the anticipation, so he walked back and forth while listening to some music, checked and rechecked if the perimeter was truly secured and that he hadn’t overlooked anything, cracked his knuckles and did everything he could to prevent himself from remaining still.

Danny wasn’t fearful however. He didn’t think he would encounter any danger tonight. Even still, nothing got under his skin as much as Tutu did, which to be fair, was to be expected considering their history.

As the sun finally came down and the darkness set in, Danny sat on a couch at the second floor and touched his shadow. Willing the pitch-black chalice to emerge, he pulled the magical object from within his shadow as if it was a dark pool under his feet instead of a light projection.

His awe at the event not at all diminished even after doing the very same thing numerous times before.

With the chalice in his hands, Danny placed it at the top of a center piece table which stood in front of him before swiftly cutting a gash on his forearm. He was getting more and more proficient with withstanding wounds as well as inflicting them upon himself without hesitation. He didn’t even flinch as the bright red liquid dripped into the chalice and slowly filled it up.

Once it was completely topped off, Danny bandaged his cut and waited with bated breath for the demon to show itself.

As the seconds trickled down, passing without anything of notice happening, Danny begun to second-guess himself. It hadn’t been that long even, less than a minute really, yet, he couldn’t help but worry if he had been wrong.

What if the demon did not appear? What if it was too soon for him to summon Tutu and he had been too eager? Was his mind playing tricks on him and had he interpreted their deal wrong? Should he have waited until it was closer to the 15-day deadline? What if the demon was caught up somewhere else? To this very day, he had no idea where Tutu spent his time when the creature was not haunting Danny himself.

‘Did I cut myself for nothing?’

Those and many other questions coursed through his mind under the span of a minute. Danny let his mind run wildly and unimpeded as his insecurities were given free reign. The most varied speculations on how things could go wrong took his brain by storm.

Yet, it was all uncalled for. Mere products of the accumulated stress of fighting and surviving in this dangerous land every day, added by his own paranoia and fear of his childhood monster.

Soon, the darkness around the room thickened, adding an extra flavor to the gloom of the ambient. Immediately, Danny knew that Tutu was close and he quieted the murmurs that had been plaguing his mind.

His thoughts rapidly acquiring a certain stoicism and forbearance that was necessary when confronted with something much more powerful than himself. He couldn’t afford self-doubt. There was no room for weakness of mind when dealing with Tutu.

“Well, well, well. Who would have thought that the young and frightened little Danny would miss me so much to the point of calling me ahead of schedule. You have grown so much from that terrified snot-nosed brat… I’m touched, really.” A raspy voice laced with sarcasm came from within the shadows.

Danny heard the creature’s voice before seeing it, Tutu announcing his arrival before showing himself. His voice ever-changing much like the demon’s shape, but something hiding underneath every single one of the resounding words made it so that the identity of the speaker was unmistakable.

Tutu had arrived.

Following that, Danny heard the clicking of claws or something similar on the floor before a silhouette emerged from the darkness. This time, Tutu appeared as a mix between a bobcat and an armadillo. It had the shape of the feline predator but was covered in the black scales similar to the armored animal.

As always, Tutu sported a predatory grin and human-like features that felt wrong on the animal-like black body it manifested. Seeing the contradiction, the wrongness in front of him, invoked an instinctual primal fear on Danny’s chest. Something he fought to bottle back down without letting any of it show on his face.

“Pray tell tasty Danny, to what do I owe the pleasure?” The scaled bobcat asked as it stopped on the other side of the table, across from Danny, its shadowy tail stretching from its back to coil around the blood-filled chalice, as if there was no limit to the lengths the manifested limb could reach, before pulling the magical cup to its lips.

The close proximity to the creature was more than Danny was comfortable with, but thinking over the questions he wanted answered and the fast-one he would soon be trying to pull, Danny refrained from letting his displeasure and unease show.

Instead, he calmly stated: “We need to talk.”

As Danny made his way back to the factory the following day, his thoughts went back to his encounter with the demon last night.

Surprisingly enough, his meeting had gone smoothly. Altogether, it had been a very enlightening night, as strange as it sounded.

That was just the thing about Tutu. Danny could never guess what agenda the shadowy demon hid due to his erratic behavior.

One night, it seemed as if he was talking to a wall, the tight-lipped demon refusing to share anything with him unless Danny paid the tribute the creature demanded. No matter how much he pleaded, begged, bargained or argued, Tutu would simply not be moved.

On other occasions, the demon almost appeared friendly - despite its ever-present mirth -, being incredibly forthcoming and oddly generous with the information he divulged to Danny.

It puzzled him tremendously.

What could possibly be the reason behind such irregular behavior patterns?

Danny couldn’t trace any parallel between the questions he asked and how the demon acted. Also, he had no idea if acting unpredictably was some sort of racial trait among demons or if that was simply how Tutu himself was. He couldn’t dismiss the possibility that it was all just a quirk and not something more complex after all.

Either way, the demon remained a mystery to him.

At the very least, the incongruity in the demon’s actions made it more believable that he really stuck to Danny just because he enjoyed the ‘taste’ of his blood and found the human amusing, instead of having some nefarious scheme prepared behind the scenes.

‘At least I hope that to be the case…’ Danny thought with furrowed brows.

He didn’t like the fact that there were so many unanswered questions about the demon’s origins and intentions but he knew that confronting Tutu directly about it was foolish. At best the demon would scoff at him for his straightforward line of questioning. At worst… Danny did not want to think about what was the worst that could happen.

In any case, those considerations were of little importance at the moment.

Yesterday, he thought that meeting the demon didn’t pose a danger to him. He had been right. Despite the nervousness he felt every time he faced Tutu, there was most likely nothing to fear, that is, as long as he continued conducting himself as he had.

Erratic as the demon’s behavior might seem, it seemed that Danny really could count on Tutu adhering to their deal in the end.

Therefore, it wasn’t critical for him to find out what underlying intentions the demons had. No, what was important was to focus on his own development and finding out more about the soul crystals and other practical matters, which, fortunately enough, he did.

As stated before, the demon could either be uncooperative or forthcoming at different times. Much to Danny’s delight, last night had been the latter case.

When Danny touched the subject of how to measure one’s growing power and how the powers that be out there on the universe gauged individual strength and progress, Tutu had leveled a knowing gaze at him.

Immediately after, he knew that his mental gymnastics had not impressed the creature.

His attempt at encompassing the matter under the umbrella of things the demon had allowed Danny to ask was shaky and would not stand under closer scrutiny. A look from Tutu was all it took for him to know that the demon knew exactly what he was trying to do. His intent of swindling some information out of the demon was plain and easy for Tutu to see.

Yet, against all his expectations, the demon had answered him all the same, even if incompletely.

Though Tutu had left a lot of details out of his explanations, Danny was not complaining. It was already a huge win to find the demon in a giving mood, so he would take what he could get and be happy with it.