“Hey, is it a bad thought that I want to make peace between the demons and humans?” I turned towards the expressionless vampire, waiting for me to get up. And as I handed the girl over to what seemed to be her injured big brother, the man opened his mouth.

“If that’s what you want, I can’t stop you. It’ll be troublesome, though, because of both sides. But if you want to achieve true peace, which is what I think you want to do, you must have demons and gods in the same field of thinking. Real peace will come from a fresh treaty between demons and gods.”

“A fresh one? So are you saying there is an already existing treaty between both sides?” I asked, continuing my way down the street. And as the vampire walked next to me, his eyes went cold just as he began to explain further.

“I guess you’re new here, or maybe a fallen one from the overworld, but the demons and gods have a non-aggression pact. Both, to be honest, can simply be put in terms as… on a cease-fire, per se. That’s the only real way to explain it. And this cease-fire has been going on for a couple of centuries.”

I continued to ask him miscellaneous questions about the demons and gods, but most were stuff I already knew. The things I did learn about were pretty useless when it came to the broader spectrum and my goals. But at least it let me kill enough time till we finally arrived at the vampire estate. And I was so excited to see Orion.

Upon stepping up to the outer layer of the estate, I was greeted by a massive fence surrounding the perimeter. And I could just barely see it, but it sparked with electricity. Although, there was a strange effect with the electricity that made it blood red. It was creepily similar to that of an attack created by a monster I encountered not too long ago.

The Lightning Flesh Beast was a common monster within the massive expanse of empty land in Hell. It roamed nomadically, constantly searching for food and new places to settle in order to avoid large patches of drought that are very common within Hell. But what made it so special was that its skin, when touched, would unleash a shock of lightning that was blood-red.

Now, at first, we thought this was just a visual effect and didn’t pay much mind to it. I mean, the electricity barely even tickled, so should we have even bothered to pay attention to it in the first place? But, slowly, we all began to feel sweat gather around our backs until Luna, the first one to drop, fainted, nearly breaking her neck as she fell onto the ground.

The effects were so slow we thought it was some kind of sickness, but until we noticed her limp eyeballs spark with red electricity did we know what had happened. And upon checking her vitals which were decently stable, we also noticed she had tons of internal bleeding. It was extremely spread out, lessening the effects, but internal bleeding was still internal bleeding, so we were forced to take a detour to a nearby town and get healed up with demonic magic.

“Don’t touch that,” The vampire muttered, waiting for a few servants on the other side of the fence to push it open like a double-doored gate. There was no outline for the gate, but they still managed to split it like the red sea. It was impressively well hidden.

As we walked into the estate, I felt a chilly sensation rub against the back of my neck. It was like thousands of eyes were watching me, but when I did a full scan of my surroundings, the only thing that came up was a few carnivorous flowers drooling at my presence.

There were tons of these little things scattered everywhere. Their use? Well, possibly to defend against intruders who don’t know any better, or maybe just for their aesthetic? Because no matter how hard I tried to connect and wrap my brain around these plants, I came up with absolutely no result. There were no similar connections besides their carnivorous nature, so I decided to just stop overanalyzing everything and relax as a man greeted me on his front steps.

“Greetings, you must be Aisa, a friend of our guest here. We have already prepared a room for you to stay in, so allow me to bring you. Oh, and I’m the son of the duchess here, but please just refer to me however you would like,” he smiled, but deep down, under that slimy expression of his, I could tell he was looking down on me. He was trying to gain my favor, nothing more, as vampires are selfish creatures. They only think of themselves and occasionally close family members, but even then, that’s a bit of a stretch.

“Umm… Is it fine if I can see Orion first?” I asked genuinely, yet the man laughed like it was some kind of joke. He eventually stopped upon realizing I was serious, and with a complete change of expression, he sternly said, “No. Come with me. Now.”

Chills shooting down my spine, I decided to just give up and follow the man. He took me to the very top floor where I met my new room for the potential few next days. I was excited since I had never had such private time with Orion before, and even though that may seem weird, I do look up to him quite a lot.

He was strong, confident, and powerful. And even though he has some moments of weakness, it was obvious he learned from it and continued to press forward. He was inspirational, even though that may seem a bit cheesy to say. And if I said it out loud to him, I knew he would just laugh at me or at least snicker, so I kept these words bottled up inside me.

After checking out my new room, I was finally given permission to visit Orion, who was out at the training yard. It was smack dab in the middle of the estate, and as this place was perched at the top of a mountain arch, they had a railing that allowed for a beautiful view of the city. If it was the overworld and the night had finally arrived, it would have been even more beautiful than this.

“Oh, look who finally came,” A young man smirked, his heterochromatic eyes slightly lighting upon seeing me. But unlike him, my eyes gleaned like glowing stars, piercing through the darkness of hell and wrapping around Orion like a slithery snake.

Quickly, my feet picked up the pace, running faster and faster until I slammed into the young man, tackling him to the ground as my arms wrapped around him. We both laughed as he hugged me back gently, but only for a few seconds, as I soon threw myself off. It was a bit too much affection for his emo heart… or so I thought.

As we both stood up, he had a genuine smile on his face. He looked genuinely happy to see me, and that feeling was even stronger as he tapped my shoulder with his right hand. It was warm, and for some reason, he had a different vibe to him.

“You seem… different?” I muttered, unable to suppress my glowing smile from shining onto him. And as he attempted to shield my brightness, he chuckled just a bit before cracking open his lips and explaining.

“In these past few days… weeks, how long has it been since we arrived here? Anyway, since we split up, I’ve been through a lot. I may tell you about it some other time, but hey, look at you. You look like some kind of soldier,” Orion laughed, looking at my outfit from head to toe. I even gave him a little spin which made both of us cringe, so we quickly wrote it off as something we didn’t even attempt to do. 𝗈𝐯𝗅xt.𝗇𝓔t

I was currently wearing a very tight soldier fit that was more for the looks than anything else. Its uniform was mostly black but had streaks of white dotted about that complemented my lighter hair and lighter eyes. It was a simple fit that I had chosen for this meeting.

“So, what have you been doing since we split up? I have a lot, but I feel like you have something to say for abandoning me like that?” The young man smirked as he walked over to the edge of the training grounds and picked up a bottle of water. Quickly gulping down some of its liquid, he walked back towards me, handing me what looked to be another bottle of water. But for some reason, the liquid was shimmering with a golden glow.

“Don’t worry. That’s just a serum that helps with recovery. You don’t need to drink it now, but I assume that asshole who welcomed you didn’t even offer some food or a drink.”