Demon's Virtue

Chapter 33 - Disguise

For another little while, the Imp just started to experiment with his new weapon a bit, finding that he was able to control it as if it was part of his body, similar to how he controlled his own blood by letting his heat flow inside of it. It was kind of tough at first, and the Imp nearly stabbed his own eye out once, but one of his new horns luckily stopped any damage from happening to him, by blocking the blade.

It still hurt a little, but at the very least the Imp wasn't damaged or anything. And while he wasn't being taken over by this weapon, the Imp knew that he was starting to feel incredibly tired after using it for too long, and soon just pulled his heat back out of the weapon and made it turn back into a card.

This would definitely end up being pretty useful to the Imp, although for now, he wanted to continue using the weapon that he had been using up until now, his Dagger.

"What was that weapon?" Arc asked curiously, and the Imp turned toward him with a frown, "The Three of... Swords. It belonged to... Gard." The Imp explained, and Arc raised his eyebrows surprised. "Oh, that guy's... I didn't see him use it, but it looks cooler when you have it..." Arc admitted slightly annoyedly, before starting to speak about something that apparenly just popped into his mind.

"Ah, and there's something else I need to tell you..." The boy explained, but the Imp just kept staring at him, waiting for him to start talking, "We need to stop by a Village soon, with a lot of people there..." Arc told him, and the Imp looked at him questioningly.

Why did they need to go to a 'Village'? If there were people there, the Imp didn't really want to go there at all. He barely liked these children, so he really didn't want to go somewhere with a lot of different people. Or any people, at that.

"No." The Imp replied quite clearly, but Arc just returned his look with a wry smile. "Err, Mister Imp, we need to go there... We don't have a lot of food for us left, and yours will be rotten sooner or later as well... And we need the milk for the babies too. If we don't have that, we'll be done for sooner or later." Arc explained, while the Imp just listened to him, before annoyedly nodding his head, making Arc grin broadly in reply.

"Alright, perfect! We'll be there in around... an hour?" Arc explained, in a manner that seemed to insinuate that this was the plan all along, and the Imp just looked back at him while grinding his teeth, before pushing his two cards into his bag and taking out his book. He needed to wait a bit until he wasn't as tired anymore, so while he was doing that, reading was probably a good way to pass the time. He already read about half of this book as well as he could, finding out about a lot of different cards that were supposed to exist. Some of them seemed really useful, others not at all, and then for others, the Imp wasn't even sure what they were supposed to do. But all of them had in common that they were given to someone by the 'Arcane Dealer', even if the Imp wasn't exactly sure who or what it was supposed to be.

Either way, the Imp liked this book, it told him a lot of different things that he didn't know before, and it wasn't scary like those dumb notifications. Even if they may be peaceful most of the time, the Imp knew that they would come back around to attack him somehow. That was something he was completely sure of.

But even then, this book was harmless, and most importantly, he got it from Avalin. So he wanted to take good care of it. Although then, Arc started to chuckle slightly. "You know, the town we're going to has a book store. We don't have a lot of money, but maybe we can spare a bit for one or two more books?" Arc explained, and the Imp, slightly surprised at hearing this, turned his head over toward the boy next to him.

"There are... more books?" The Imp asked, and Arc nodded his head immediately. "Yes, of course! I mean, I think there was a bookstore... I didn't get a good look at the place the last time... But I think there was!" Arc explained, and the Imp turned his face back toward the book currently on his lap, before nodding his head.

"Then we can... Go to the village." With a slight nod, that was the conclusion the Imp came to. If there were more books, then it might be a good enough reason to go. There was a lot of things he could learn from them, at least from what the Imp could tell, so maybe he could get some books that told him more about this 'Magic', or this weird 'Blessing' that he now had.

And while the child was just laughing a bit next to the Imp, he himself continued to read for now. Because he wanted to finish this book before starting with the next ones.

Around an hour later, which the Imp spent doing just that, Arc stopped the carriage by the side of the path they were on right now. The Village that Arc was talking about could be seen in the distance, and the Imp could feel a slightly eery feeling from there, similar to that 'Monster Repellant' that was in the carriage before.

But the Imp managed to fight through such things long ago, and it was nothing against what he felt while close to that floating island and the lake. Even then, the Imp was confused as to why they were stopping all of a sudden, because they weren't actually at the Village yet. And before the Imp could even ask, Arc already pulled him off of the front of the carriage to bring him to the back.

"What are you... doing?" The Imp asked confused as he pulled his arm away from Arc, and the boy replied quite swiftly, "Well, you can't go into town looking like that, you'll be recognized as a monster right away... And we need someone to act as an adult for us, because children aren't allowed to be alone like this." The child told him, and then slowly opened the door of the carriage.

"Rudy, is everything done?" Arc asked, and soon, the boy stepped outside and nodded his head in reply. "Yes, here it is. The Mask should be good enough for now, there's some spare pants that I shortened and tightened, a shirt, and some of Mr Irnhoff's old gloves... And then of course some shoes as well, although they're Mr Henson's, because, you know..." Rudy explained and just pointed at the Imp's feet, which were a bit larger compared to a person's, also because of the slight claws at the toes.

"Coolio. Mister, get dressed please." Arc told him and then handed him all of the things that Rudy seemed to have somehow changed around to make them fit better to the Imp's body. But the Imp was still a little confused about everything. Why did he have to wear all those different things and cover up his beautiful red skin?

And as if Arc could read his thoughts, the boy started to laugh a bit. "As I said, you can't be recognized as a monster, and I have personally never seen anyone with red skin, so... We need to hide it." Arc explained, but the Imp just clicked his tongue and took the different things from the boy's hands, and then with a few instructions from the children got dressed in them. They felt really uncomfortable, but at least they fit him. The Imp hoped he would get used to these as quickly as he got used to the cloak, though.

After all, he was constantly wearing that cloak now, no matter what happened, and he even made himself a new one after the old one was ripped up. It felt weird to wear something else on his chest underneath the cloak, though. The gloves and shoes felt especially out of place, but he just had to live with it. If someone noticed that he was a monster, he would probably be attacked, right? And then, the Imp would have to either flee, would be killed, or would kill whoever attacked him. And he really wasn't feeling up to any of those things right now.

But either way, the one thing that the Imp somehow didn't mind was the mask that covered up his face completely. It was blank on the front and only had two holes that he could look through, but the Imp didn't necessarily mind wearing this for at least a little while. Not constantly, but for now it would be fine.

"Alright, now he looks like just a really short person! But... How can we convince people that he's really an adult?" Arc asked with his head tilted to the side, comparing his own height with the Imp's, "He's way too short to be an adult." He explained, and the Imp thought about this issue for a little while as well, until he remembered a type of person that was supposed to be very short even at the tallest they could be. Avalin showed him some of those on that floating island, after all.

"Can we say... I am a Gnome?" The Imp asked, slowly getting a bit more used to his new ability to speak properly, and Sammy stepped up into the Carriage's Doorframe and shook her head.

"A Gnome is way shorter than you are though, right? It's like... you're right in the middle of being a human adult and a gnome?" She suggested, and Rudy immediately nodded his head, seemingly having a relatively good idea.

"Then let's just say his Father was a Gnome, and his Mother a Human!" Rudy added, and Arc smiled brightly at that idea. "Ooh, sounds good! That should work, definitely! And Mister's voice sounds more adult-like than ours as well, so it should wok!" Arc exclaimed optimistically as ever, and the Imp just shrugged. They should know other people better than the Imp, so it would probably be fine.

"Then let's go!" Suggested the young boy and quickly made his way to the front of the carriage, although he wanted to do something else for now that the Imp didn't expect, giving him the reigns of the horses, explaining step-by-step what he had to do for now.

According to him, it would look weird if a child was driving a carriage and the adult was just sitting next to it, reading a book.

Slightly nervous about this, the group approached the Village and the small gate in front of it. As they were doing so, Arc grabbed the book that the Imp was reading before and flipped it open to a seemingly random page, and started to move his legs back and forth in opposite directions all the time while smiling brightly.

When they came into sight, a seemingly very slow, overweight and lethargic man stood up from a small stool by the side of the gate set into the wooden wall. While he didn't seem to be very excited, the younger man, fully clothed in shiny metal armor and holding a spear in his hand, was shaking nervously.

The older man seemed somewhat surprised by the Imp's clothing, but just then, Arc spoke up with a happy smile, "Daddy, look! What's this word here?" He asked the Imp as he held the book toward the Imp, pointing at a random word, and the Imp looked at it and frowned underneath his mask, "Fairy."

He replied quite clearly, and just when the Imp thought they were going to be stopped, the older man that seemed slightly suspicious at first simply waved them through the gate with a slight smile.