Chương 140: Chapter 136

Medy was easily lured out of the gas station by bribery, and all the loot she had hauled off with Leon as her unwitting first Earth victim. Eri was bribed with aviator sunglasses, which he eagerly added to his collection of human fashion. But Bael was the difficult one to get into the car. As in physically difficult. The demon was seven feet with horns. Zin's jet black SUV Wade would have expected to be used to ferry VIP's in movies - well, while it could fit seven people, it couldn't for seven foot tall people.

Which meant Bael had to scrunch up like a shrimp to fit inside. Zin was upset that the demon would likely scratch the details with his horns and hooves, but otherwise the entire team did manage the clown car routine. Despite Leon and Bael taking up far more room than auto engineers would have advised. Medy took a window seat, and spent the ride glued looking out, eyes darting left and right, badgering Leon with unending questions about human society and what all the different buildings she spotted were for.

Eri sat on the other end, equally glued to a window, silently watching the highway lights pass by. All through the ride, Zin's eyes kept flickering up over the rearview mirror, watching the trouble behind him. Medy would be fine, she was an Archdemon like himself. Bael however, would be the first test on demonkind. Most demons were more like Bael. Generally calm, generally collected and mostly focused on themselves. Emotions didn't run the same among their kind compared to mortals.

Except when it involved contracts. One of the few topics that demonkind actually felt strong emotions over. And the majority of demonkind had sworn either to others, or to themselves, to attack and hunt Archdemons wherever they could be found hiding. All they needed to do in the past was kill the Archdemon once, and they'd be sent back into the mithril sea with nothing but their horns and hooves to work with. Zin was powerful by nature. He wasn't blackrot empowered strong however.

Some of the bigger creatures could still be a threat to him, and the rest of demonkind knew it. Question now was how far that hatred ran even on a new world. Zin didn't know, and given the drumming fingers on the wheel, he was nervous. If Bael couldn't be convinced, most of demonkind would be the same. Fortunately, Bael never asked his name yet, assuming Zin would offer it himself at some point in the future.

There was a polite manner to do such things, and Zin had already dropped the expected hints that he'd announce himself first, and he'd do so at the mansion. The SUV climbed the winding road into the hills above Los Angeles, where even the air smelled different, as in actually cleaner. Like money had its own atmosphere. Not a single pothole or rough patch to greet them, just smooth black expensive roads that looked build last month to Wade's senses. It felt alien.

Zin slowed the car up to a gate and security booth, where a guard gave them a tired wave. A single ID shown from the Archdemon was all that was needed, and the gate swung open as he returned the card into his suit pocket.

"Wow, security is tight." Wade said, staring backwards as the car drove through the gate. He'd never seen a full on security guard detail for a gated community. To be fair to the ex-retail worker, he thought magnetic automated gates were already the high end of luxury.

"Kid, I could've lifted sunglasses off my face and told him I was here to sell girl scout cookies and that guy would've opened that gate just as fast. Now, if you see gate guards holding rifles, well, that's when you need maybe a bit more than a pizza box and delivery boy hat." Wade was barely hearing anything by that point however because the road revealed another country. Wade spent years clocking in at Hobby Froggy's and a gas station, rotating shifts like a hamster on a wheel.

And here he was, rolling through a neighborhood where the mailboxes probably cost more than half his monthly rent. He was honestly not certain if that was an exaggeration or not. The houses here were basically goddamn micro-kingdoms. Each one sat on its own massive plot of perfectly trimmed lawn, separated from its neighbors by walls of hedge and iron. Pools were everywhere. Some might as well have been part of golf courses. Medy couldn't even understand these were houses.

They looked more like small communities or shared living. To her, the amount of land being used for one single person to live at was the insane part, not just the architecture being so ill-prepared to handle environment issues. They eventually turned into a driveway that curved through a corridor of strategically planted trees, and ahead Wade got the first sight of their potential base of operations.

Granite rough walls, dark wood accents, a modern roofline that was clearly tailor built by some high prized architect. Floor-to-ceiling windows everywhere, or at least everywhere that could be reasonable for it, and a few places where it was very unreasonable. All lit up from the inside. There was a moat. A goddamn moat.

Minus the water, it looked more like a subfloor with a well lit garden path snaking under, but there was a wide lit up bridge leading up to the house proper ahead which might as well be a moat to Wade. He did some quick mental math on what a place like this cost and stopped when the number got too abstract to mean anything. It was the kind of money that existed in a different language. Like comparing inches to light-years. And with the car engine off, they were about to walk inside.

The front door opened into a living room that could have swallowed Wade's entire apartment including Ann's loft. Twice. Maybe three times if it was feeling peckish. Frankly, he wasn't even sure if living room was the right term for this. Welcoming hall? Foyer? What was the name for a room that had clearly zero reason to exist other than to look huge and set first impressions to anyone small enough to walk in? Ann would know.

She's probably know the exact name and function for that, right down to the history and when the first buildings started featuring that kind of thing. All Wade knew is that it probably came with a budget that would have made him jump out the very wide windows here. Faint white wooden floors were everywhere, and all without a hint of water damage or discoloration anywhere. Wade could tell this wasn't the landlord special to bait new tenants in either. This was the real deal: A perfectly maintained house.

Medy was already gone before the group could even cross into the room properly. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. She'd slipped past Zin before the door closed, pressing her face against the nearest wall and inhaling deeply. Then she moved to the curtains. Then the couch armrest. Then a decorative pillow. She seemed almost compelled to touch and smell everything. Nobody stopped her this time.

Eri had already disappeared down a hallway, and Wade could hear the faint tap-tap-tap of knuckles testing surfaces. The skeleton knocked on a wall, paused, knocked again two inches to the left, then moved further down. Perhaps his life as a slave in the mines made him want to study human stone buildings, or maybe just enjoying the acoustics. Hard to tell with that one. But he knew Wade and the others would be talking about boring things and he could be out here exploring a triumph of humanity instead.

The choice was obvious to him. Leon stood in the center, hands in his pockets, rotating slowly. The man looked genuinely small for the first time since Wade had known him.

"Ooooh blyat," Leon whistled.

"My whole apartment fitting in this room."

"You and me both man. Ann would freak out if she were here." Wade was almost certain she'd probably know the exact architect that designed this place too.

"Could this work as a base?" He asked the Archdemon up ahead, currently leading them through an archway into the kitchen. Behind the two humans, Bael formed up the last rank, eyes scanning around the strange alien architecture. To him, the place felt like a religious church of some kind, or perhaps a government structure. Only large scale projects for a city got this much attention to detail. Everything was so utterly perfect.

And none of the building looked even slightly built to fend off storms, gravity wells, or even earthquakes. So many windows everywhere, it was the most undefended and easy to invade structure he'd ever seen. Very beautiful in the strange design. Humanity clearly lived in an indulgent period of power to his senses.

"Not even two minutes into my house and he already wants to use it as his lair for plans and schemes. Love that. A-plus hustle." Zin walked into the kitchen, immediately opened a cabinet, and yanked out a half-started wine bottle along with a clean glass to pour it out into.

"But here's the thing, here's the kicker, the little thorn in your blissfully HOA-free schemes Mr. Wade: We have sensible neighbors here. And by sensible I mean the kind with too much time, wine and and their current third affair not exciting enough anymore. That type. You get what I'm putting out here?" He gestured towards one of the many windows, where out in the distance Wade could see the glowing lights of the next micro-kingdom.

"The faster someone calls 911, the faster we have to wrap up everything here and say goodbye to my spa and jacuzzi."

"I was just throwing out ideas." Wade waved him off, "I do get we'll probably start from a giant empty warehouse out somewhere." The one he'd introduced him to the bomb experts and sold him his weapons was a good one. The group gravitated toward a massive granite kitchen table, eight seats around it, each chair probably worth an amount of money Wade wasn't emotionally prepared to handle. But the table wasn't the centerpiece. The entire far wall was glass. Floor to ceiling, edge to edge.

Nothing but crystal-clear panels framing LA below. The darkness of night out there was finally starting to lift, a very dim navy blue starting to fade in as the dawn approached. Wade was almost certain this was probably the best view in the city when it came to that, almost directly east over the LA skyline. There was some polite discussion, in which Zin confirmed this was where he went scurrying off every now and then during the morning hours just to 'remember what it's like to live here.'

as he so cryptically put out. He didn't sit anywhere either. His white gloved fingers rested on the chair's back, drumming it. Then he straightened his cuffs, adjusted his tie and looked directly at Bael.

"So…. with all these charming pleasantries out of the way, I believe we haven't been formally introduced."

"You've been doing everything to avoid it." Bael answered back.

"Why." Zin gulped, then once more adjusted his tie before finally taking a deep breath and exhaling it all.

"All right, guess we should just skip to the part where you may or may not try to strangle me."

"Sorry, just passing by real quick, taking in the sights!" Medy said, swinging into the kitchen. Likely the smell of potential food here had lured her, or her tour thus far of touching everything had led her here. Bael gave a grunt, eyes still locked on Zin.

"Were you waiting until you heard her arriving? Considerate." Zin just flashed back a nervous grin.

"Isn't this place lovely Bael?" Medy asked, giving him a far warmer smile that actually felt genuine in comparison.

"Charming." Bael confirmed dryly.

"A real feast for the eyes. Shame we've got unfinished business first."

"Oh, what kind of business? Did Wade already give us work to do? I'll get it done right away boss!" She hopped on her hooves, turning to Wade.

"Where's the alchemist sanctum? Just point me in that direction, I'll take care of the rest! I've got so many things already in my pockets, all these wrappers I can just tell they have essences I haven't yet worked with! Just need tools and a catalyst and I can start the research!"

"Not quite that business-business." Zin turned to slowly look over to Bael.

"More of a standoff."

"No one dodges introductions without cause." Bael answered.

"None that I know of could be good."

"Oh right! I totally forgot! We didn't get your name mister!" She turned to Zin, and extended a hand out, "Medea'Vee, just two names, never really got anything done right but hoping to take a new name for myself here! Preferably a Phadim if I can, having Medea'Phadim would be my dream." It… almost sounded like she'd used her name and master alchemist put together, but even Market's blessing wasn't translating it right to Wade's ears.

There was more to demonic names that couldn't be understood by mortals and it had more to do with identity and… concept of being? Well, Market's blessing didn't translate names anyhow, Lapushka had sounded russian to Wade until he tried using the word in a sentence and realized what it meant. Demon names on the other hand really couldn't be used in any kind of sentence. Zin blinked, shaking her hand back.

"How... delightful. I'm certain you'll make quick work up the names." He very clearly did not reply with his own name back and Bael noticed.

"I've kept my horns down in case this mortal realm binds names differently from ours. Is this world different enough?"

"Well, good news, no it's not." Zin said, still smiling.

"Same song and dance here, if someone's got enough of your name and a strong enough catalyst to veto your opinion, you can still be on the hook for the usual summoning part."

"I see. Medy. move aside." Bael said, his voice going real cold. Then his eyes locked on Zin.

"Bael'Nazradim'Elgor'Asent. Your name now."

"Would you at lea- gah, you plebeians are so crass with everything!" Zin threw his hands up.

"You don't even have a fifth name, but congrats on the master smithing, you really picked one direction and tunnel visioned hard on it. Seems almost like a character flaw."

"Name." Bael said, and now it sounded more like a threat.

"Definitly a character flaw." Zin turned in a circle, hands extended out with exasperation, then gave his watch a quick check before he looked out to the growing blue dawn ahead of the kitchen.

"Fine, fine! I'd have preferred a bit more time to explain things, timing's not gonna be perfect, but I think we both know you're just itching to strangle me already." Bael gave a grunt.

"Because you're an Archdemon." Medy stopped bouncing on her hooves and went dead still. Very slowly she started looking around the room with newfound understanding. There was fear in her eyes.

"Say it." Bael continued.

"Out loud. So when I punch you into the ground and wrap my hands around your throat, there's no room for misunderstanding."

"Hold on, wait," Wade said, "He's got a good plan in action here, you should lis-""Not your fight, mortal. Whatever story he sold you, you don't understand what he's done." Zin gave a choked laugh, "What I've done, he says. What I've done is survive. Same as you, same as everyone else!"

"Convenient. Now give me your name." This wasn't going down right. Wade stared at the two demons, then over to Leon who looked just as helpless. The Russian looked back and shrugged. Zin silently took off his good suit, carefully put it out of the way, before rolling the white sleeves of his collared shirt up.

"You do know this isn't going to end well for you, right cupcake?" He very carefully removed his white gloves, neatly stacking them on the table. Medy had outright vanished, but when Wade looked around he realized she'd come to hide behind him. They looked at one another, and all Wade could notice was the way she was breathing like she was undergoing a panic attack. On the other end of the table from Wade, was Leon, equally looking completely out of his element.

"Wouldn't be the first time. I'll make it count." Bael answered, slowly pacing around the kitchen table, ending with both demons staring at one another with a clear space in between.

"Your name, betrayer." New Fleeting Quest - Charisma Check: Manage to convince Bael'Nazradim'Elgor'Asent to willingly work with his enemy before he is slain. Rewards: Storefront options. Insignificant leveling experience. Wade stared at the popup, which had come up exactly at the worst possible moment. And then he realized it had actual rewards. Which meant it wouldn't be easy.

"Well," Zin gave a few sardonic chuckles of a man backed into a corner, hand going through his hair over and over, before he finally stopped then straightened his tie one last time.

"Alright. Fine, let's get it over with. Zin'Cronox'Ulas-" Bael lunged forward with a punch.