Demon's Virtue

Chapter 2 - Big Blue Boxes

With a grunt from behind, an Imp hurried up in its step and continued along the path filled with its brothers as long as its eyes could see.

Like all of those brothers, this Imp had a single role in life. 'Do as you're told'. It didn't know why it had to, but it did know that if it didn't, it would be killed like many of its brothers were every single day, especially on this most recent venture to a place the Imp didn't know much about. It knew why they were going through, to retrieve some lump of meat somewhere! That was the most that it knew, however.

So instead of thinking about what was going on, the Imp simply looked at the back of his brother in front of him. It was so nice and red and shiny! The Imp liked red things, especially the juice that always came out of things that it killed! Well, the Imp itself didn't kill anything yet, but it was there while its brothers killed things!

But then, the Imp suddenly noticed something on the back of the brother in front of it, a small lump. The Imp walking in front of the Imp was a good brother, it always went out into fights first, and even managed to kill something alone once! But now, something was different about this brother, and the Imp didn't like that at all.

With a loud shriek, the Imp began to push against the lump on the Imp in front of it, immediately drawing attention from not only the other Imps around it but also the stronger monsters that were following the group to keep them in check.

"You. Quiet." One of them, a big, thick-furred guy grunted out of its nose and pointed a stick at the Imp, but it simply stared back and kept hitting against the lump on the back of the Imp in front of it, as it didn't understand what the big guy just told it.

"Lump, Different. Different, evo. Evo, good." The big guy grunted out again and pushed through the group of imps before grabbing the lumped-imp by the back of its neck and then dragged him further down the incredibly large group of monsters toward where the stronger ones were.

The Imp was actually quite jealous. It itself wasn't able to grunt in that way to make that 'Evo' sound, but it would really like to be able to because it seemed like a lot of fun. The Imp was only able to grunt or shriek, or huff and puff, but never ended up speaking. That way, it would be able to ask about this 'Evo' thing that it kept hearing about. Whenever one of its brothers was seen with something different on its body, it was dragged away, and the stronger monsters would mutter 'Evo' over and over again.

It had thought that 'Evo' meant something bad, but the big guy just now clearly grunted 'Evo' with a smile, so maybe it was actually something good. And if it was, then the Imp did something good for its brother. The feeling of doing such a thing immediately imprinted itself into the Imp's brain as the first helpful gesture it had ever committed! And it hated it!

"Grah!" It grunted out before spitting in front of it at the spot that the lumped-imp was at before while it simply kept walking. Of course, the Imp didn't notice that a strong wind was blowing, and even if it had noticed, it most likely wouldn't have expected the spit to fly back onto its body.

"Bleeh!" The Imp exclaimed as it looked down at its body and rubbed its hand over the spot that its spit landed at, before removing the sticky liquid annoyedly. And then, the Imp realized something. If the spit that it spat in front of it was able to turn back and hit the Imp again, then if he spat up, it would hit the Imp behind it!

The Imp didn't know why it wanted to spit at the one behind it, but all of a sudden, it felt like playing a prank on it again. It was the perfect crime! Most likely, none of the other Imps knew about the peculiar effect of spit, so they probably wouldn't be able to find out it was him, because all it was doing was looking up a little bit!

And so, the Imp moved its tongue around in its mouth to gather as much spit as it could, before raising its chin and pushing it out of its mouth all at once! And a few moments later, it heard the grunts of an Imp behind it. It didn't hit the one directly behind the Imp, but instead, it hit one even more behind that, which made the young Monster even less likely to be found out!

With a grunting chuckle from the depth of its throat, the Demon began to celebrate the success of this trick, although that celebration was quickly interrupted by a certain annoying entity.

[You have drawn a correct conclusion. Intelligence Stat unlocked]

There was this weird, very, very annoying blue box floating in front of the Imp. It didn't know what it was or why it had those weird squiggly lines inside of it. The Imp finally did something super fun for the first time in its life, which had started only a few days ago and quite literally felt its mind go from small brain to big brain because it did such a fun thing, but then this annoying box appeared and ruined the moment!

"Grugh!" The Imp grunted out angrily and swung its hands at the box, and the moment he did so, the box disappeared in a cloud of blue mist. Happy that he was able to get rid of such a challenging enemy so easily, the Imp bared its crooked teeth in a proud grin and continued on the seemingly infinite march.

And that march continued on until night nearly came. This truly surprised the Imp, as they usually kept constantly walking up until the moon was high up in the sky, but now, the sun was still there, and the stronger Monsters, which were very very scary to the Imp, were apparently preparing for something at the back of the enormous group of hundreds, or even thousands of monsters.

So while everyone stopped walking, the Imp didn't know exactly what to do, and as such, simply chose to follow its fellow Imps around. They surely knew what to do, right?

Well, either way, the group of a total of five Imps then began to walk in the direction of the forest, where they seemed to smell something delicious. The group stepped further and further into the woods until they could hear some noise in the distance.

"…careful…" They heard a voice yell out, although none of the Imps knew exactly what kind of creature that voice came from, or what those weird words it was saying meant. So, of course, as curious as Imps are, they continued walking in the direction that they heard the voice come from before one of them began to grunt.

"Grek!" It exclaimed toward its comrades as it pointed into the direction, and all of them began to sprint there with the exception of your very own big-brain Imp. It had seen a lot of dangerous things over the last few days, and from what it remembered, the most dangerous things made a lot of noise. For example, the big hairy, horned thing that one of the stronger monsters killed screamed loud enough to make the Imp's ear-holes hurt!

[You remembered a past event and learned from it. Wisdom stat unlocked]

With an annoyed frown, the Imp stared at the blue box that reappeared after the Imp killed it before, and just swung at it again, which once more made the box disappear and die in a weird blue cloud.

Satisfied at having killed this persistent enemy once more, the Imp turned around and tried to find the other Imps again, although it then quickly noticed that the enemy had tricked it! It was smaller than before, so it most likely sacrificed some of its body for this sudden second attack!

[You learned from past experiences. Wisdom +1]

Angrily, the Imp kept staring at the box, trying to figure out what it was planning, before simply hissing and growling at it to make it run away, but it didn't seem like it worked, as the box just continued floating in the air, mocking the Imp with its weird squiggly lines!

But then, the Imp had an idea. Instead of trying to attack it outright, it could maybe do other things. After all, it was a big-brain Imp now, so it would be a small-brain thing to not use that big-brain! It remembered that once, a super-strong Monster from the group came from the back and killed one of the enemies that nearly hurt the Imp and its brethren, and it was doing so by pretending not to notice the enemy. Then the enemy attacked, and the strong Monster killed it immediately!

The Imp didn't know how it did that, but it remembered what exactly happened, so the Imp simply repeated that. Slowly, he stood similar to the Monster from back then, with its back straight as it looked in the opposite direction.

But then suddenly, the unimaginable happened.

[You learned from past experiences. Wisdom +1]

A Second one showed up! Immediately, the Imp jumped away from both of the blue boxes, especially the one that just appeared out of nowhere, before the two small boxes were joined by a third one, a big box!

[You evaded something you saw as dangerous. Evasion stat unlocked]

Scared at what was going on and why the enemies were suddenly multiplying, the Imp had one choice. Running! It turned around and simply began to sprint away, but he was soon met with another box appearing in front of him.

[You made the choice of Tactical retreat. Intelligence +1]

The Imp, for some reason, was able to react far quicker than before! Well, that didn't mean much, as such reactions were still incomparably low to the reactions of a rock, but it did change something to the Imp. The issue was just that, even if it could run away from the boxes properly, it didn't mean that he could run away from everything. Especially if the issue was the fact that he was running in the first place.

The Imp hadn't thought about the fact that he was in a forest ever since the group of boxes appeared, and without looking at the ground had just been booking it. But it probably should have noticed that he was doing something wrong beforehand, although it was too late when the Imp dropped to the ground and hit its head against a hard rock.

It managed to stand up quite swiftly, but there was another problem now. Three more enemies returned, and one of them was a new type! Instead of blue like the sky, it was red like that juice that comes out of enemies!

[You fell to the ground and injured yourself. Resistance Stat unlocked]

[-10 Health]

[You realized your mistake and want to learn from it. Wisdom +1]

Immediately, the Imp jumped up from the ground again and tried to continue running from them. It was slowly realizing that these were enemies far beyond what the young Monster could ever hope to beat, but he, at the very least, had to try to survive! That was the conclusion that he came to, and he wouldn't let some dumb boxes beat him! He was a proud Imp! Such boxes couldn't do anything to him!

[You have formed Self Identity. As you currently are unnamed, it is possible to change your name if you wish to do so]

[Widsom +2][Intelligence +2]

And now, the Imp once more realized what it had to do in order to get away from the numerous enemies that were surrounding him. Simply run for his life and search for his brothers! They stank like a frog's nether-regions, so it probably wouldn't be that hard if the Imp used his sniffer!