Chapter 130: Welcome to Hell. Can I Kill You Again?
A Devil sprinted through a chasm in a barren, gray mountain range. He was on a mission. One last mission, to kill Arlan Nota himself.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s finish this.”
“Did you say something, Xhag?” the voice of his superior spoke into his ear.
“No, Superior,” he said. “Just eager to get back home.”
“Yes, I’m sure you are. Just think of everything you’ll get back once this is done.”
He nodded. Everything would come back. All he wanted was for things to go back to being the way they were. He just wanted some of that respect he was once afforded, some of that stability, some of that basic level of fulfillment. This would bring it all back to him. “Is Arlan Nota still moving in the same direction?”
“Hold on, let me get one of the Diviners to check.”
There was a shuffling sound, and then silence. The Devil was speaking to his superior over a Communication Crystal, with her remotely giving him orders from the Underworld. The general plan of action was simple. She’d locate Arlan Nota, then send the Devil to take him out. It was quick and easy—something the Devil wished he could have done when he was in charge.
But he couldn’t have done it back then. That ‘locate Arlan Nota’ part had proven extremely difficult time after time, considering the resources given to him. The main method to locate someone was using Diviners; that was how they’d found the Human in the first place. But using Diviners took time, and the only way to speed up that process was to add more Diviners to the group doing the locating. And, unfortunately, the Devil had been denied each and every time he attempted to ask for more to add to his teams.
So, the first time they were trying to find Arlan Nota, it was relatively easy; they had plenty of time, he wasn’t moving around too much, and there was nothing else the Devil had to worry about managing at the time. But after that, it was suddenly borderline impossible to use those same teams to find him. The couple days that had once been an acceptable time to take trying to find him were way too long to wait now that they had a fugitive on the run, and even if they did take that time to find him, by the time the Diviners’ results had come back, Arlan Nota would have been long gone from the location they found him in.
However, the Devil’s superior didn’t have to deal with those problems now that she was in charge. All she had to do was use her own authority to simply get more Diviners on the team. A request that had been denied time and time again when the Devil was in charge. He was completely aware of the unfairness of the situation, but he pushed it out of his mind. If he could get his old life back, he’d deal with whatever it took.
And dealing with whatever it took was what he was doing. Working as a simple footsoldier, fighting on the ground of the Overworld, it wasn’t exactly a glamorous position. In fact, it was borderline blasphemous for the Devil to so blatantly work in a position that was unbefitting of his Race. Working on the same level as the Infernals and Hellions? Something like this was normally punishable by death—or at least demotion to being a hall monitor. But his superior had explicitly asked him to do it, so he supposed she didn’t care.
So he continued to move through the mountain valley, pushing any thoughts about whether this was a good decision out of his mind. At the end of the day, it was either doing it or dying. He was just protecting himself.
“Xhag, I have word back from the Diviners,” his superior spoke to him. “Arlan Nota has abruptly left the trail. He moved into the mountains in the west, so he should be to your northwest.”
“Do you know where he is specifically?”
“No, just that general direction. He is most likely hiding. Find him.”
The Devil nodded, though nobody could see him nod, and climbed up out of the path he’d been running through, into the wilderness. It would be irritating to move through because of the wild monsters out here, but as long as he avoided anything too dangerous he should have been fine. Most Drakes wouldn’t be an issue, but the higher-Leveled ones and the Dragons would obviously pose a problem if they set their sights on him. He may have been strong compared to many beings in the Overworld, but there were some things he simply could not beat alone. Or, at the very least, that would slow him down if he was forced to fight them.
But, ideally, those same monsters would pose the same threat to Arlan Nota. It seemed like they were taking a gamble here, running the risk of dying to monsters to avoid the certainty of dying to him. And it did seem like they knew that was a certainty. Why else would they randomly flee into the wilderness? The Devil didn’t know exactly how the Human’s powers that he stole from Temporus worked, but he did know that the kid could move through time. Seemed like the Devil had already killed him at least once, then.
That put some confidence into him. He just had to do what the alternate him had already accomplished. Though he did wish he could have remembered doing so. He understood that Arlan Nota hadn’t technically done anything to him—really, the Human probably barely even knew who the Devil was.
And the Devil even forgave the boy for killing Temporus and stealing its powers. After his time interacting with the Humans, he now understood the perspective they had. It was completely natural for a Human to go out and acquire power that they weren’t born with—that they were never meant to hold—and then learn and grow until they fit that position. It felt a bit backwards, sure, but if it worked for them, who cared? Arlan Nota didn’t know he was stealing from the Demons, so, while the Devil still thought they should try to take back what was theirs, he also didn’t hold a grudge against the Human. They were simply two groups with opposing goals. Nobody had the moral high ground here.
But still, despite those feelings, he really wanted to see the boy die. Just on a basic, emotional level, seeing the person who had been the source of his suffering, of him losing all hope, of him borderline losing his own mind, seeing the source of all of that lose his own hope in turn? Seeing that person go through everything the Devil had gone through? It would be beyond cathartic.
He ran through the mountains, valleys, hills, and rocks of the wilds, paying close attention for any sign of the fugitives. Strange sounds or smells, seeing a hint of clothing behind a bush or even a half of a footprint would be all he needed to begin tracking them. Unfortunately, the wilderness was pretty large. But with his superior’s help, he knew it was just a matter of time before he found them.
As he glanced around, he looked up and saw something in the distance. Perched up on one of the rocky spires poking through the sky was a Dragon. Its shimmering white scales glinted in the uncomfortably-bright sun as it glared around the range of mountains encircling it.
“You said he was northwest?” he asked, looking up at the distant Dragon.
“Yes. Is there a problem?”
“No problem, just a roadblock. There’s a monster I’ll have to go around if I want to go that direction.”
“Just be sure you don’t miss the fugitive if you’re going around something. He could be hiding near that monster.”
“No way he is. It’s a Dragon. And I can’t think of any reason he could convince another Dragon to help him. If I go and confront it, it’ll just attack and slow me down. I’ll move around and keep going until I find him.”
If he got too close to the Dragon, there was a likely possibility it’d attack him on sight, which would either end in his projected body’s death or with him having to flee, neither of which would be good. And there was no way it was guarding Arlan Nota, or anything. Why would it be? Agreeing to fight off their enemies for them? It would have nothing to gain, and everything to risk. No, Arlan Nota had probably just intentionally moved to position the Dragon in between the Devil and them to try and get the Devil to antagonize it and die. He wouldn’t be falling for that.
So he began moving in a wide arc around the massive beast atop its crag, looking around and surveying the terrain around itself. He marched through the rocks and shrubbery, half hiding from the monster and half looking for his target. As he moved, though, the monster suddenly flapped its wings and took flight. After a moment’s fear, thinking it may have spotted him, he was relieved to see it was moving away from the Devil, not toward him.
It turned and moved in the direction of the Empire, which wasn’t actually too far away, at this point. Maybe it was leaving to go to its home, which was in that direction? But wait, no, just as the Devil thought it’d fly up and disappear into the skies, it suddenly moved back down and landed on another cliffside, only about a hundred paces away from its starting point. And then it simply continued surveying the landscape below it.
Huh. Weird. The Devil wasn’t totally sure what had caused the Dragon to move to some random other nearby mound of rock just to continue sitting around and doing what it’d done before, but it didn’t matter. At least now, it wasn’t in the way of his attempt to get to Arlan Nota.
So he just continued on, no longer forced to move in such a wide arc. Although he was still in range of eyesight of that massive thing, so it wasn’t like he could totally ignore caution.
He continued on for a few more minutes, until he saw the Dragon out of the corner of his eye flap its wings and take flight again. Watching it, he saw as it moved along yet another couple hundred paces, perching itself again on a random mountain ledge and doing nothing.
He stopped. This was getting weird. What was it doing? What was the point? His suspicions that this Dragon had something to do with Arlan Nota began to mount higher and higher. Why would it move like that?
“Superior,” he said, “what direction from me is Arlan Nota now?”
“The fugitive is north, slightly northwest.”
He looked upward to the sky so he could orient himself with the cardinal directions—something he’d learned how to do recently when speaking to the Human subordinates he’d hired. Yes, it was as he’d suspected. The direction the Dragon had moved perfectly lined up with the direction Arlan Nota was in.
There was something going on here, and he didn’t like it.
He waited a couple minutes, and like he’d suspected, the Dragon flew up once again to fly just around a hundred paces away, perching itself once again.
“He is still in the same direction?” the Devil asked.
“Yes.”
That confirmed it. The Dragon, for some reason, was following Arlan Nota. Or maybe the Human was following the Dragon. Whatever it was, it seemed he could follow the monster to find the fugitive. The Devil had no idea how the man had convinced that damn thing to not kill him, but whatever the method, it seemed like Arlan Nota had somehow grouped up with a Dragon, following them in their travel to the Empire. If the Devil had just passed the thing by, he’d effectively had been led on a wild goose chase through the wilderness, trying to find the fugitive while never being able to actually approach him because of the Dragon guarding him.
But was the Dragon actually guarding them? The Devil couldn’t think of a world where that was the case. They had absolutely nothing to offer in exchange. So why was it helping? And if they had gotten it to follow them, why would they do it if it wasn’t to get it to guard them? He was stuck knowing exactly where the damn man was, but completely unable to approach because they’d somehow convinced the strongest beast in the mountain range to kill him if he did.
He frowned. Maybe that was the point. Maybe it wasn’t guarding them at all. Or, at least, not knowingly. They could have come up with some random bullshit reason for the Dragon to follow them—leading it to some valuable made-up treasure, or something—in an attempt to make it look like the Dragon was their guard. It’d scare the Devil off without even knowing it was doing so.
He grinned. Clever tricksters. He’d always known the Humans were crafty little fuckers, but this was the first time he’d been the one on the receiving end of their deceptions. But he’d seen through it.
So he walked straight forward toward them, intent on confronting his target directly.
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