The inn was modest and reminded Kuro of those multistoried onsens with wrap-around balconies and fancy latticework back home. Inside, he got comfortable on his bed with his contract book. He figured there would be enough time to get acquainted with it while Cinti was at the adjoining bathhouse. Thumbing through its slightly abrasive pages, he skipped the foreword, guild rules, and proper etiquette, until he came to the first section titled Stats.

  A stat tree spread thin branches across the pages, broken into three main categories: Body, Mind, and Spirit.

  Each of those was further broken down into several sub stats.

  Under Body, there was Strength, Constitution, Vitality, Reflexes, Dexterity, and so on. Mind consisted of Intelligence, Wisdom, Knowledge, and Charisma among others. He cringed when he saw that he was scoring low across the board in all categories.

  Interestingly, the last attribute, Spirit, was the only one at which he was not a dismal failure. There were only four natures: Solid, Liquid, Gas, and Plasma, each having three different polarities—Negative, Neutral, and Positive.

  He wouldn’t have called himself an otaku in his old life, but still, he recognised the system as similar to the elemental system that had become ubiquitous within certain anime and pop culture.

  ‘Gas must correspond to air, liquid to water, solid to earth, and plasma to fire. The polarity could correspond to light and dark… but then, what is neutral supposed to be?’ And what am I supposed to do with this information?’

  As he puzzled over that, he heard footsteps in the hallway outside the room. Perfect timing. He could just ask her.

  Bolting from the room, he rounded the corner only to smack right into a wall. The impact dazed him and he slid down the length of it. When he looked up to see what he’d walked into, Cinti’s womanhood stared back only inched from his face. Her bathrobe was dishevelled and halfway open, and her face shifted from shock and fast realisation.

  He could have fainted right then and there. “Kuro!” Cinti gasped, struggling to shut and tie her robe. “You just walked right into me—are you okay?”

  She helped him to his feet, gasping again as they both noticed a stream of blood trickling from his nose.

  “Oh my goodness, you’re bleeding! Did I do that?” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  He smiled, but was still trying to come to grips with what his eyes had been blessed to see. Was it getting hot in the hall? He pressed his nose between his fingers and waved off her concerns.

  “No. I should be the one apologizing. I should have looked where I was going.”

  She continued fretting over him, leading him back to his room. The whole way there, he was unresponsive, his mind a growing bubble of lurid thoughts that threatened to burst at any moment.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

  He faced her with that faraway look and smiled again. A loose, giddy smile.

  “Um, I'm pretty sure I needed your help with something.”

  He paused and looked strained for a beat. “Right, my book. I wanted your help understanding it.”

  “Is that all?” Cinti giggled. “I thought you were about to tell me something much more troubling. I’ll be with you in a bit and we’ll go over it together. Just let me slip into my nightclothes.”

  She walked to the door opposite his and slipped inside.

  Kuro bit his lip. Why couldn’t life be a fantasy for real? He was dying to share a bedroom with her, especially in this kind of cozy setting that made him feel like they were on a honeymoon.

  He shook his head and returned to his own room.

  ‘What are you even thinking about right now? You have to get up at some godforsaken hour to wade through elf shit tomorrow. I need to get my priorities straight.’ he thought bitterly.

  Then another, stranger thought came to him. ‘Wait, do elves even poop?’

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, he thought he could try asking Cinti, but then quickly changed his mind. But there was someone else he could talk to while he waited.

  “I summon, Imp!”

  At once, the orb obeyed, opening its spatial tear that allowed the imp to step out. It immediately regarded him with disdain.

  “Master…” it sighed.

  Kuro was about to respond when he remembered Cinti’s warning about speaking the demon tongue in elven territory, and his words stuck in his throat. For a second, he wracked his brain to try to get around it.

  New words formed in his mind, almost at a subconscious level. He tried them.

  "Demon, you speak Elven?”

  The little creature hissed like an affronted cat. “Unfortunately, I do now.”

  “Well, you clearly know the language because I don’t and here I am speaking it.”

  The connection between master and slave truly was a wonder. The imp did not respond.

  “Stop pouting. We’ll be talking in that language from now on, so get used to it,” Kuro continued.

  “You sure you’re not a demon? Forcing a demon to speak this abhorrent tongue… you’re sadistic.”

  Despite what it said, a wicked grin spread up its chubby face and a fiery spark glinted in its black eyes.

  ‘Nothing unsettling about that,’ Kuro thought dryly.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  He started to ask about elf poop, when he stopped himself again. The summoning had tired him out quickly last time because he’d been injured, but who was to say it wouldn’t tire him at some point even while healthy. Forget the dumb questions, he had more important things he’d never gotten to discuss.

  “Let’s drop the formalities,” he started. “No more master nonsense. Just call me Kuro.”

  “I’ll do as you command.”

  “Good. What’s your name?”

  “Sandoval.”

  Kuro nodded. “So, Sando? Can I call you that?”

  The imp crossed its arms and trotted to the foot of the bed where it sat facing him.

  “You’re going to be a pain, aren’t you?” it sighed. “I can see it all over your stupid face. You want my demonic secrets and whatnot. If that’s the case we’re going to be here all night.”

  Kuro narrowed his eyes in confusion. “No, I was going to ask if the underworld is Hell.”

  “Huh? What's that?”

  It crossed its legs and leaned back into the bedpost.

  “Why did I ever think you would ask me something of importance? Look, I don’t know if you hit your head, but it’s called Pergamim. Are you too young or simply too foolish to know these basic facts?”

  Kuro hesitated if he should explain his background to him. Why not? The imp was his quarry, and so he answered only to him.

  “I’m actually not from this reality,” he blurted.

  Sandoval peered at him through slits and cautiously leaned in, suddenly more interested in the human who had dared to enslave him.

  “Well, well, what’s this… I sense no falsehood,” he muttered, and bared those pointed teeth. “Since it seems that she-elf accompanying you earlier failed to enlighten you, allow me.”

  He stood, still grinning, and began a steady pacing up and down the bottom of the bed.

  “It might be hard to understand, but this world is divided into three planes: the underworld, the surface, and the heavens, all occupying the same space and all linked by bridges, or gates. Only, the elves and humans destroyed the gate to the underworld, cutting off demonkin from passing.”

  “How come?”

  Kuro was getting invested. The contract book lay on the bedside table, forgotten for the moment.

  “There was a great war,” Sandoval said, getting quiet. “The elves destroyed the Wayfare, the large gate to our plane. The tunnels were still available, or so we thought, but when we arrived at their entrances, we discovered they had blocked those with treacherous dungeons. That was our last way home. And they filled them with monsters and traps, leaving us stranded here on the surface.”

  Kuro blinked back his awe at the tale. A pang of sympathy struck him, but he had to ask, “Don’t you want to go back? Why don’t the demons team up to fight their way through?”

  Sandoval roared, swooping into the air on his batlike wings. “Of course I want to return! Who would want to suffer in the wastes?”

  Vicious purple fire licked from the corners of his mouth as he hovered inches from Kuro's face. Kuro jerked back instinctively. The door burst open just then, and Cinti stormed in, draped in a sheer nightgown.

  Kuro fell all the way back now, straight into the pillows.

  “You lie, demon!” she hissed, shutting the door so that their conversation could be had in private. “The elves and the rest of the free folk, stopped your kind from invading the surface world to enslave us. That's the only reason your kind is stuck here. If demons weren’t so bent on enslaving everyone, the way to the underworld would not have had to be cut off. In fact, why don’t you tell us exactly what your real purpose was at that encampment?”

  Sandoval said nothing.

  Kuro was busy staring wide-eyed at the milky skin beneath her clothes, reaching up to stymy his returning nosebleed.

  But as she glared knives at Sandoval, an awkward silence filled the room and Kuro glanced between Cinti and the imp. He had still given no response. In fact, he didn’t even acknowledge her. Kuro frowned as he tried to figure out if Sandoval was pretending she didn’t exist on purpose.

  “Are you ignoring her?” he said.

  “Yes, obviously. Why would I acknowledge a filthy elf?”

  “What are you talking about? She’s human.”

  “Ha!” Sandoval floated down again. His sinister grin returned and he shook his head like he’d just heard something hopeless. “I know you can’t smell the elven blood in her veins, but even for someone not of this world, are you really this dense?”

  Kuro whipped up at Cinti, who flushed a defiant red. She clutched the skirt of her nightgown and cast down her eyes.

  “I wasn’t trying to hide it but, yes. My mother was an elf.”

  “See? You can’t trust elves,” Sandoval said.

  Kuro raised a palm to stop him. “It doesn’t matter what she is. You will trust her. Think of her as family now, or at the very least, a friend of a friend.”

  A growl rose in the imp’s throat, surprising Kuro at how much power there was behind it.

  “You may have absolute control over my actions, but my thoughts and opinions remain mine. I will never accept either of you. Most certainly not that disgusting, half-breed failure.”

  Cinti’s mouth fell agape and she stumbled back into a lounge chair. She seemed to cave in on herself at those words.

  “That’s too far,” Kuro said, glaring at the demon. He stood, making his way over to Cinti’s side. “Just go back if you can’t control yourself.”

  “Wait!” Sandoval said, “Fine. I’ll play along for now. Don’t you want to hear about the encampment?”

  Kuro paused. Cinti lifted her head. The fire behind her eyes slowly returned in a burning fury.

  “What’s there to tell? You would just try to deceive us anyway,” she said, sitting straighter. “All you and your ilk do is rape and kill. If we hadn’t come when we did, you’d probably have already disposed of Mahara’s used up corpse.”

  Then she looked at Kuro who now stood before her, and shook her head solemnly. “Sorry, Kuro. There’s no way I can get along with a demon. Don’t forget what he's done.”

  "More elven lies!” Sandoval said. “I had nothing to do with that she-elf at the encampment."

  Kuro cut in pre-emptively. “Don’t start again, you two. Clearly you both believe what you're saying. I mean, cause Sando can’t lie to me, right?”

  The demon nodded and only Cinti sighed in agreement.

  “Besides, Cinti, they were pillaging. There’s a reason the phrase is ‘rape and pillage’; what do you expect? And in Sando’s defence, it didn’t look like he was involved. He was just watching from a corner like a perverted creep.”

  “Excuse me?” Sandoval muttered, narrowing his eyes.

  Cinti gaped at Kuro, openly shocked. A shadow crossed the room and Sandoval was flitting beside Kuro, coming to land on his shoulder. He observed Cinti’s expression with some sadistic glee and folded his arms in smug appreciation.

  “On further consideration, you’re not so empty headed after all,” he said.

  “Weren’t you supposed to be explaining the invasion? You’re overstaying your welcome,” Kuro replied.

  Sandoval shrugged idly. “There was a Blood Moon and the encampment was unprepared for warfare. We simply raided the while they were weakest. It’s how we survive.”

  Cinti scoffed. “But how did you know they’d be vulnerable? Even with the Blood Moon, their military status should not have been readily known.”

  “I don’t answer to you,” Sandoval said cheekily.

  “But you do answer to me,” Kuro said. “ So talk. I’m losing patience.”

  “Of course you’d pick your bedwench’s side,” he muttered. “Look, I didn’t want to admit this, but I don’t know the details. The higher ups just say we’re going on a raid and the underlings’ job is to prepare. When they open the portals, we charge in and do what we do best.”

  “Rape and kill,” Cinti sneered.

  “Enough.”

  Kuro returned Sandoval to the orb and faced Cinti who looked defeated.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But don’t let what that gremlin said get you down. Why don’t we still look over the book?”

  Cinti got to her feet suddenly. She shook her head and made for the door.

  “Actually, I’m tired and it’s getting late. I’ll come get you before daybreak.”

  Kuro’s shoulders slumped as he watched her go. And when the door shut, leaving him to his thoughts, he put his head in his hands and groaned at how badly he’d fumbled.

  The whole time he’d been struggling to act natural when Cinti came in with her nipples peeking at him behind the gauzy material. Beating the lumps from his pillow, he plunged facefirst into it and let out another groan of a man under intense strain.