Demon's Virtue
chapter-24

"Air... Magic?" The Imp asked himself confused, trying to figure out what that actually was. He did hear the word 'Magic' before sometime, didn't he? The Imp really wasn't entirely sure where he heard it, but he was close to positive that he did.

And then, slowly, the Imp started to remember. It was mentioned a few times whenever the three that the Imp was with before were doing really weird things. One of those was when Avalin immediately put the fire out with a few hand movements.

That was magic, wasn't it? So what exactly just happened before that notification appeared? As far as he could remember, all he did was close his eyes, and breath in and out deeply. There was that weirdly hot feeling inside of his chest that the Imp wanted to get rid of, maybe that was part of it.

And so, the Imp slowly tried to dig for it, he tried to actively seek that feeling out. It took him a while to do so, but when he managed to find the same hot feeling, he once more tried to push it out of his mouth, although he was trying to watch what was going on this time.

Without the Imp understanding why and how it became so strong, the breath that the Imp pushed out of his mouth seemed to cause even the leaves of the bushes in the distance to wave around strongly for a few moments. It was a weird feeling, but at the same time, it was pretty interesting as well. The only thing that the Imp didn't like about it was that it made him pretty tired to do that, but at the very least, he managed to figure out how to breath real hard!

The Imp had not the slightest clue how that might come in useful, but it was nice to play around with! Although, there was something else that the Imp also wanted to play around with, it was that second card that he found. He somehow instinctively knew that he couldn't use the card that he got first for another while, even without the notification appearing that would tell him how long it would actually take.

It was similar with this card, just that he instinctively knew that it would be dangerous to use that card for a long time. Slowly, he touched the card and tried to do something with it, just activate it in the same way that he activated the other card back then.

But how did the Imp actually activate that card? He was too scared to even think back then, so maybe it was just a lucky coincidence that it appeared just when he needed it. Although that did also seem pretty unlikely to the Imp.

He could feel something else when he was touching that second card though. The Imp's hands became really, really cold, but it wasn't that the card itself was cold, but his hands themselves were slowly cooling down in response to him touching the card.

"Cold? So... Need hot!" The Imp exclaimed as he thought about it for a while, and slowly tried to repeat that 'Magic' from before, attempting to blow it directly onto the card.

All that did, however, was blow the card out of the Imp's hands to make it fly away pretty far, making the Imp have to quickly stand up to go get it. He hurried back just as quickly when he grabbed the card again, there might be something even stronger than that man from before out there in the dark, after all.

Either way, it seemed like that didn't really work. That did make sense though, the heat was just inside of his body, his actual breath wasn't warmer than it usually was, so the weird heat probably didn't work anymore when it left his body.

Then that just left one solution to the Imp! A rather simple one, at that! He just had to swallow the card, didn't he?

That made the most sense, and the Imp was really proud of himself for seeing this so quickly. He was a real Big Brain Imp, after all. And so, the Imp swiftly pushed the card into his mouth and tried to push it down his throat, although he soon noticed a fatal mistake in his plan. He wasn't actually able to bend the card, it was like a really hard piece of metal most of the time, even if it was so light and thin. And the card was way too big to swallow it just like that, so this solution might have to wait until the Imp was larger than now.

And so, the Imp just sat there in front of the fire, trying to dry the card with his saliva on it, although when he did so, the Imp noticed something else that was weird.

His cloak was all ripped up, so he took it off sometime before, but even then he didn't notice it at all up until then. The Imp's beautiful, red, soft skin... had turned blue right in the center of his chest! And in a weird pattern, at that!

So disgusting! The Imp really had to cover that part of his body up now, so he had to get his hands on a new cloak somehow. Other clothes seemed too annoying, and he was at least somewhat used to a cloak by now.

He quickly looked around the area, mostly around the two people that were laying there on the ground, and quickly found what he was looking for. It seemed a little too big though, so the Imp cut the end off of it so that it wouldn't drag along the ground.

And then, the Imp chose to get back to work stripping the two dead people's bodies off their meat so that he could eat it later. The Children would need something to eat after all, and because they were useful to him, the Imp figured he should prepare as much as he could.

And so, the Imp continued to cut as much meat off of the bodies as he could manage. He really got a lot better at it, that was something that the Imp was sure of. Just comparing the first piece that he cut off with the last piece that he cut off, it was as clear as night and day!

Proud of his work, the Imp wrapped some of the meat that he cut off in some cloth and put it away to the side, while going ahead and cooking some of the rest. He did only manage to take half of the woman apart though, so her upper half was still very much there. She looked a little weird just sitting there with such skinny legs, but the Imp knew that there was no helping it.

Just like that, the Imp started to prepare some food for the rest of the night, even if he was soon interrupted by certain little creature.

It started crying again, just like yesterday, so the Imp swiftly placed all of the meat that he had to the side and rushed over toward it, trying to see what it was this time. Quickly, he looked for the bottle with the 'Milk' and held it up to its mouth, and to the Imp's luck it quickly took the tip of it into its mouth and began to suck, slowly drinking the milk inside of it until it seemed somewhat satisfied. But even then, the tiny child continued crying, and the Imp was pretty confused.

"You ate! Why cry?" The Imp exclaimed confused, before leaning in toward it, noticing a horrifically strong smell coming from it. Did it soil itself again?

With a slightly disgusted expression, the Imp slowly uncovered it from the small blanket on top of its body and placed that blanket onto the ground, before placing the child down there. And then, there was the next mystery that the Imp had to solve. The child was wearing something completely different to yesterday, and it had not the slightest clue how he was supposed to get to that stinky mass inside of its 'Diaper'. Was it supposed to just cut the clothes open?

That seemed pretty wrong, though. After a little bit of searching though, the Imp found that he could pretty easily open up the top of the one-piece thing that the child was wearing, before pulling it out of that piece of clothing, setting it down onto the blanket while placing the clothes into the basket for now. And then, the Imp just had to remember how that woman did this yesterday. To his luck, the moment that he managed to even loosen it, the sheer weight of the shit inside of this child's pants made it all drop open. Although the Imp wasn't necessarily sure if that was actually something he could call himself lucky about, because with his new perception, it was really insanely disgusting.

Swiftly, the Imp picked the diapers up and brought them away to the forest, quickly throwing its contents away. He quickly came back to the child, though, and then the Imp just needed to figure out a proper way how to clean the child and this soiled piece of cloth up. But then, the Imp realized something. It was just cloth! There was some cloth leftover from when he cut his new cloak up, so he really didn't even need to clean this dirty one! And if he really did need to use it, then he could just tell one of the children to do it.

Either way, the Imp swiftly cut the leftover piece of cloth into the shape of the old cloth diaper and then swiftly placed it onto the child after using some of the little bit of water left there to clean the child itself up a bit.

And then, the Imp just put the clothes back onto the child and placed it back into the basket, before the Imp continued cooking until the sun completely went up, before swiftly wrapping the cooked meat up in some cloth as well, and then placed it down next to the basket with the uncooked meat and the child. He didn't really feel like staying here much longer to take the woman's body apart as well, and the meat that he got so far should last him for a little while. But even then, the Imp collected everything that seemed a little interesting, including the weird yellow stick that the first man the Imp killed swung around.

And when he did all of that, he opened up the door at the back of the carriage and looked at the children inside of there. The five of them seemed pretty scared at the Imp, but he really didn't care all that much and just called the child from last night out of the carriage.

"Put inside." The Imp said in a commanding tone, pointing at the basket with the tiny child in it as well as the meat next to it and the shiny things next to that.

Slowly, the child nodded its head and did as told, but even then, it obviously had to hold itself back not to freak out in response to seeing the two people there cut up, or rather one and a half people completely cut up because of the Woman's current state.

But for some reason, the child didn't seem as disgusted as the Imp thought it would be. Instead, he thought he actually saw a slight grin on its face.